[Serpiko]

Now that the job is done, I find it hard to give a proper valutation to this kit. I'm very pleased with the finished model, and I'm sure that a more skilled modeler can get even better results; but some features of the kit set up a few "traps" in the building process. The nose area is a pain in the @xx and, although it CAN fit decently (see photos), you will swear quite a few to achieve this.



THE KIT

The box contains the "classic" things: two grey sprues plus a transparent one with parts, instructions and decals sheet. There's little or no flash. I found the plastic to be quite "soft" compared to other kits, but this didn't cause any particular problem in cutting out the pieces. Panel lines are engraved. Wings are clipped by default, and rounded tips can be attached later. There are parts for either small or large air intake, two alternative rudders (rounded and "pointy"), and the transparent sprue provides not only two alternative canopy-windshield combinations, but also two different rear view mirrors (round and square). There are also a gunsight and the upper "light bulb" that goes behind the antenna.
There are decals for 3 planes:

- mh526 LO-D of squadron 602 "City of Glasgow" (although it is not reported, this is the plane flown by Pierre Clostermann before being assigned to Tempests);
- mk959 5A-K of squadron 329/G.C.1/2 "Cicognes";
- mk126 5J-G of squadron 126.



BUILDING

There are three things to keep in mind: dry fitting, dry fitting, and DRY FITTING!

The cockpit itself isn't difficult to build but, once you try to join the two fuselage halves together, you will meet the first fitting flaw: the instrument panel turns out to be undersized and fails to touch both sides of the fuselage. DON'T squeeze the fuselage to make it fit, as this would later cause a huge gap on wing roots! Just paste the panel on one side, if you build the canopy closed the internal gap will be invisible.

Here comes the tricky part. According to instructions sheet, you are supposed to build the nose separately, paste it to the fuselage, and then attach the wing section. Well, DON'T DO THAT! Instead, you'd better building the wings first, paste the fuselage on them, and only then build the nose on the fuselage: this way, you will minimize your headache when trying to fit all parts together.

The fitting between upper and lower parts of the wings is acceptable, but take care of the external alignment in case you want to add the rounded tips. By attaching the fuselage now, you get almost no gap at the wing roots (unless you disregarded the hint about the instrument panel!)
The main gear is intended to be built lowered. If you want to build it retracted as I did, you need to sand the outer side of the wheels until they are about 1/3 of their original thickness, in order to make them fit inside their bays. Gear panels are shorter than they should be to fit correctly in closed position, and will leave a few millimeters gap at the gear root. It can be filled, although I didn't.
Luckily, the tail section shows no particular problems. Now take a deep breath and keep aspirines at hand, here we go with the nose...

Let's start by saying that propeller pitch is adjustable. That means, you have 4 separate prop blades and have to paste them all on the rear part of the spinner.
The nose is composed by two upper halves plus the "chin" cowling. This one has two little pins that should help positioning it, but actually you'd better cutting them off. The fact is, the whole thing tends to stick in a narrow shape that just doesn't fit with the rest of the model, leaving awful gaps on fuselage and wing roots. In order to avoid this you should fix the upper halves first, adjusting them to fit correctly onto the rest of the model, then add the chin in a position that offers a good "compromise". Once this is done there will be a gap where the three pieces join at the front, but that's no problem as the spinner will completely hide it. The exhausts come in separate pieces.
Last comes the air intake. There's little to discuss here: it's just molded wrong. I built the larger intake, but nothing suggests that the smaller one would have been better. Both options consist of two pieces (rear and front) which barely fit between each other; then, it turns out that the junction line is flat, while the surface where it is supposed to be placed is rounded! This also causes another ugly gap where the front part of the intake should meet the chin cowling. There's no choice here but to slice off part of the "internal" side, giving it a rounded profile to fit on the belly; this will also reduce the gap on the chin.

As I already said, the best thing to do is to try and fit dry parts until you find the best compromise among them all.