1/72 Special Hobby Macchi C.200 Saetta

by Craig Sargent

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Introduction

Many of us can easily remember the first model we ever built. For me it was the Revell 1/72 MACCHI MC.200 Saetta at the ripe old age of 5 (see box top picture below). To cut a long story short, I've always wanted to build a good kit of the Saetta in 1/72 by way of a nostalgic bit of modelling. When Special Hobby came out with their Bubbletop Macchi 200 I thought the humpback version can't be too far behind, but I waited and waited and it never came (actually I have found out since I finished this conversion that it was released with the humpback by Astrokit of Italy. Oh well, c'est la vie).

Because I was sick of waiting, I decide to convert the kit myself. I had a spare Hasegawa 1/72 C.202 and the RCR 1/72 C.200, and these along with the Special Hobby kit became the basis of the conversion.

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The hump was removed from the RCR kit and carefully grafted on to the fuselage halves of the Special Hobby kit. I also used the RCR C.200 etched instrument panel in the True Details C.202 cockpit (hey, it's close enough in 1/72!). I added a gunsight made from a Hasegawa Spitfire gunsight from the spares box suitably modified to represent the Macchi gunsight. Once the fuselage halves were joined, I built and assembled the wings. The two pitot tubes were scratchbuilt from copper wire and styrene tube. This aircraft featured two of the later style straight pitots. The wingtip and tail nav lights were drilled and had clear tinted resin pieces from the CMK resin lights set added.

The landing gear was a combination of the Hasegawa C.202 gear legs and doors with the etched parts from the other two kits. The canopy was replaced with a Squadron vac, cut apart to show the access doors open. Pushrods were added to the engine and that was then painted and inserted into the cowling (which had had it's exhausts drilled out).

The guns and venturi are provided as beautifully detailed resin pieces in the Special Hobby kit. All I did was drill the openings in the venturi tube and the gun barrels, and painted them.

Finishing

The fuselage band and tail cross were painted Gunze White H316 before being masked in preparation for the camouflage.

The cowling was airbrushed with Tamiya Copper XF-6, then washed, and then drybrushed with Humbrol Gold before being varnished and masked for the rest of the paint. The undersides were airbrushed with Gunze Light Grey H324, then masked with blue tack for a hard "soft" edge before the uppers and engine cowling were airbrushed with Gunze Dark Green H330.

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Reference

  • AeroDetail 15 Macchi C.200/202/205 (ISBN 1-872004-47-4)

Craig

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Photos and text © by Craig Sargent