Special Hobby's 1/48 IMAM Ro.43 by Roland Sachsenhofer

Special Hobby's 1/48 scale
IMAM Ro.43

by Roland Sachsenhofer

IMAM Ro.43

Special Hobby's IMAM Ro.43 is available online from Squadron.com for only $41.99!

Description

The IMAM Ro.43 has been in widespread use from the mid- Thirties till the withdrawal of fascist Italy in 1943. Being a remarkable and adaptable construction, some deflected Ro.43s have even been flown in Francos Spain till the Fifties.

The type was the main aircraft for the use on Italy’s heavy Navy units like battle ships and cruisers. My model shows a plane flown from the heavy cruiser “Montecuccoli” in the years before the outbreak of war. Therefore it shows an attractive red –stripe painting on the upper wing. I have used for this the kits decals, which proved to be of excellent quality.

In many other respects this kit can´t or would not hide its rather basic and “short run” nature. There are as good as no attachment points for all the struts and rigging, the modeller has to be prepared to show a lot of initiative in preparing information of how to assembly that complex aircraft.

The building manuel contains some errors –the part numbers of the lower fuselage struts are not correct for example- and is too vague regarding some construction steps.

It´s a piece of luck that there are quite high qualities photographs available of an original Ro.43 from the Vigna di Valla museum near Rome. To put it in slightly exaggerated words: forget the building manuel –and check the original.

I am quite happy to have mastered the challenges connected with a fragile biplane and –of more concern- of attaching a clumsy float in the necessary way.

Finished it´s quite an attractive and evocative model which brings a glint of silver and red into your showcase!