While visiting the Palm Springs Air Museum with my girl, I mentioned that a model we saw in a case looked awesome. A week later UPS delivered the 1/72 SuperModel CANT Z Bis Italian bomber to my place. I have a cool girlfriend!
I am a figure/armor and diorama guy and have never built a plane. I have pretty decent skills and I was going to build the most awesome CANT Z ever! Cut to the end, It kicked my butt. I have the utmost respect for all the fine aircraft modelers out there.
I tried to airbrush the correct camoflauge scheme a few times. I just gave up and freehanded some bologna pattern I made up. I fogged up the turret glass with glue. Kept breaking off the machine guns. My masking skills were seriously chaleneged and the pilot canopy was a nightmare. The best thing I did was the pilots which you can barely see. Haha. I had to finish it because my girlfriend bought it for me but my heart wasn’t into it at the end. My girlfriend likes it so that makes me happy.
The kit isn’t great FYI. Lots of gaps.
Thanks for looking. Perhaps I’ll try a plane again next year!
Like Check, I know nothing about Italian aircraft but this is a nice looking build. Sounds like you have a great GF as well. Like you, my other half has bought me a few kits, a couple of which were not really my thing and my heart wasn’t in it but I felt I had to finish it. But its has got me building things I would not have bought myself which is always nice to do now and again. I build armour as well as aircraft and build diorama’s for both. They do certainly have different approach’s for both. My challenge now is to build some ship models. Each genre has its own challengers.
When I see some of the planes on this site It blows my mind! I don’t think I have the forbearing to get to that level. Just some of the cockpit detailing alone is incredible. I saw your plane build thread, Bish, and it looks sweet.
A ship would be a nice challenge. I’ve never tried that either. I need to finish this M706 Comando armored car I’m on then perhaps…
You didn’t do too bad of a job on the kit from what I could see. Fogging on the canopy could be from using suprer clue on clear parts. A lesson to invest in some clear glue specificly for clear canopies.
I agree with the others, you actually did make a very good job of it. The camo pattern looks quite good, if you had not said anything about it, I would have thought it to be an accurate reproduction of the real thing.
After reading what you said I was expecting something that needed some help
BUT once I scrolled to the picture it was really a nice job.
The pilot figures look really great!!!
Italian camoflage is VERY challenging along with German Luftwaffe. When it is done right it is awesome looking.
Like your girlfriend my wife has been supportive and has even bought a few kits for me for Father’s Day and my birthday!!
If I am downstairs working on models with our 11 year old son she lets him stay up a little later so we can finish up a session. I can go on and on about so many of the positives about model building. We both saw how it helped our son who barely passed his reading skills test in Kindergarden to reading at a 4th grade level when he was in 2nd Grade!!!
