Alpha Flight's 1/48 Scale
CANT Z-1007

by Jean Barby

When I saw this kit advertised on HyperScale some time ago, my heart started to beat faster. "Wow! What a beast" I thought, and, as a matter of fact what a beast it was!

We are certainly living a golden age in modeling, but are we really aware of that? The 1/72nd Super model of the "Alcione" was not really good but it had the merit to exist in a real no man's land of Italian aircrafts. Sure, things have improved a lot and the subject is now much less obscure than it was, but yet, there was an empty hole to fill. Then came "Alpha Flight"!

Let's speak plain English: the model is an expensive, multi-media resin kit, have to order it in the US from Pacific Coast Models, references are scarce on the subject as there is no surviving sampler of the wooden bomber, but there it is....

When I decided to have a go at this kit, I chose to be very pragmatic. Which is to say that I got in touch with Simone Semeraro, the young and talented designer of the kit, sending him pics during the assembly process in order to prevent misunderstandings, and him, in return correcting my mistakes the same way. What a great way to work!! I even went for a visit to Porto-gruaro to meet my now Italian friend.

The concept of the hollow resin is a good one which allows representation of the internal structure and minimises total weight.

On the other hand, all parts are quite flexible which makes assembly a bit tricky. The worst part of the kit is the white metal parts which are unusable and which require replacement. The engines were made from the Piaggio engine of the Reggiane-2000 from Classic Airframe used as a master and duplicated in resin. The Scotti 12,7 machine gun was scratch-built as were the Breda-Safat 7,5mm from the waist gun positions. Last but not the least the propellers were made from a spare P-38 one from Hasegawa, but to make matters nore complicated, the port side one  is turning in the opposite direction! So two masters were made to have different resin props.

A lot of putty and sanding were ahead but the project was really an exciting one and slowly but surely the "beast" took shape.

Some work has to be done on the undercarriage retraction arms, evergreen, plastic card and patience were the winners, to replace the white metal parts from the kit.

Attaching the long green house to the fuselage was difficult but using the two canopies given with the kit, one was used as a dummy one and the second one was kept in reserve for the end of the assembly( all clear parts were dipped in Future and put aside). That was a clever move I must say as when I removed the protecting tape the clear part was not clear anymore!

I had to fight hundred of tiny bubbles each time my sanding went along and I fought those with super glue and resin powder from left over resin trees. It works really fine.

Then I assembled the undercarriage and wheels and when everything was set I was not satisfied with the stance of the plane. So I checked with pictures of the real plane and compared them with the model. Sure, I had to shorten the main undercarriage legs as they were too long of 3mm. A very easy task when everything is glued in place with cyano!

Now I was ready for painting.

The model was painted with the Testor Aztek airbrush.

The CANT scheme is quite unique and as such is not an easy task for the airbrusher. The underside is Griggio mimetico, that's for the easy part. Now, all upper surfaces are painted in Giallo mimetico n°3. Mr Kit is giving a good one of that shade but I use my own mixture of 50% RLM 79 and 50% of white from gunze+20%of future. Do not forget to mask the line of separation between the two colors.

Then you have to decide how you are going to reproduce that son-of-a-gun Picasso style of camouflage! Well this is what I did:

Taking a good picture of the plane showing as much camouflage as possible, I select one part of the picture, hiding the rest and I reproduce the mottling free hand. It took me 4 days to complete the paint job, and it has been a very tiring process because when you are finished with the Verde mimetico 3, you have to do it again with the marrone, and then you have to touch up where needed with any of the three colors. To soft all edges a very dilluted spray of Giallo mimetico is sprayed on the whole model. Of course you have cleaverly sprayed a large decal sheet to have the material needed for the long canopy frames!

Only one scheme is available in the kit so I used that one, a plane from the 193 a squadrglia, 30e stormo.
This model received the silver medal at the last Mondial de la Miniature in Paris last June, and there will be a complete article in the August issue of Replic.

Building the CANT was a real challenge for me, but painting it.... I let you guess.

Now what about that SM-84 from Alitaliane?

 

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Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2004 by Jean Barby
Page Created 26 September, 2004
Last Updated 24 December, 2007

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