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The Kit

This 1/72 scale kit is supplied in a standard sized Choroszy Modelbud box, despite being from the more expensive B range. The multitude of parts are safely packaged in a number of variously sized sealed bags. In fact, there is a veritable forest of strut material, so much so that after working out which ones were needed, there were still about 20 left. As expected, the casting quality of all the parts are first rate, although a few air bubbles did crop up in a few places. The wings in particular deserve special mention. They are extremely well cast, with no evidence of warpage. The fuselage halves too are delicately moulded, although care is needed to remove the waste casting material. There are a number of parts for the cockpit and the engine is nicely detailed. After inspection, it became apparent that some pieces were missing (not for the first time). In this instance, despite the sheer number of them, two of the larger cabane struts were nowhere to be seen. Neither was the cockpit windscreen and 3 circular discs for the upper fuselage deck. Another item that will need to be corrected is the beaching trolley, as the kit version does not match the type that's often used with this aircraft. The kit is equipped with early style floats, so anyone wishing to model a later variant will have to scratch build new ones. The decal sheet is nicely printed but incomplete.

Instruction sheet

The instructions follow the familiar Choroszy Modelbud layout, 2 photocopied folded A4 sheets starting with a brief history, followed by a series of assembly diagrams, a 3-view drawing and a colour scheme. No accurate colour matches are given and colour call-outs are restricted to the scheme only. Colours for the smaller detail parts will have to be guessed at, this includes the cockpit interior.

Assembly

Starting with the cockpit, it was decided to go with a predominately varnished wood interior, including the seat. There is a floor, rear bulkhead, a very simple instrument "bar", gun breeches as well as
ammunition boxes. The instructions do not show very clearly where each part should go in the cramped area of the fuselage. With a certain amount of guesswork involved, each item was gradually trimmed
until, at last, the two halves were finally able to meet up. After all that effort, though, all I could see was the seat!

The rudder was then glued onto the rear of the fuselage, but before painting the white & wooden areas of the fuselage, the top of the fuselage from the nose to the rear of the cockpit was sprayed Alclad II Aluminium. This is not shown on the colour guide, even though nearly all M.5 photos show a light metallic colour to this area. Other parts given a wood effect at this stage were the wing
floats, propeller and main interplane struts. A next stage is the engine and cabane strut assembly. The two halves of the engine casing, which are quite delicate, were glued together, the radiator trimmed to fit in afterwards.

The engine also had some of its extreme edge detail removed in order to get it to fit into its casing. It was easy to pick out the V shaped cabane struts from the parts, the alignment of which took several attempts to get right. The 2 forward cabane struts were missing, so I made new ones out of brass Strutz. The next task was to fine tune the length of these struts to their correct length. This took some time, as only tiny amounts could trimmed off at a time. It was important to get this bit right otherwise the top wing will not line up properly. Once satisified, the whole engine assembly was sprayed in Alclad Aluminium, the engine itself given a wash of diluted black to bring out all that detail. It was then glued to the fuselage.

The missing cockpit windscreen was fashioned out of clear stock and its frame painted silver. The missing white disc items for the rear fuselage deck were made from sections of white rod. I also made up new outer wing support struts, as the resin items were over-scale and
would have spoilt the appearance of the model. I still feel they are a bit too thick. The left and right top wing pieces were joined together and was sprayed with Xtracolor Doped Linen, together with
the lower wings and rear stabilisers. The red and green panels on the lower surfaces of each wing were sprayed, using Humbrol 3 for the green and a 50/50 mix of H19 & H20 for the red. (no decals were
provided for these wing panels and were not even indicated in the colour scheme). The decal for the rudder did not allow for the fact that the green portion was larger, so I ended up airbrushing that as
well. Once all these parts had dried, the final stage of construction could commence, gluing the wings, floats etc together, finishing up by placing the completed model on the scratch built beaching trolley.

Accuracy

The kit measures out at a length of 112mm, a span of 166mm and a height of 41mm. When compared to published measurements of 8.06m length, 11.95m span and height of 2.85m, the kit is very nearly spot-
on, being just slightly over on the height. The model has captured the distinctive look of this aircraft extremely well.

Colour options

The instruction sheet provides decals for two options, both with the rather simple scheme of varnished wood fuselage, with a white base, and clear doped linen wings. The rudder has the Italian tricolori. Not shown on the sheet, but definitely used, were the tricolori red & green panels on the lower surfaces of each wing, which were applied outwards from the main struts on the top wing and from the floats on
the lower. The Windsock Datafile shows that more interesting schemes are possible, as some aircraft began to appear with quite interesting markings, such as a saw tooth edge to the white portion of the fuselage. A unique example had a dragons head painted over the entire nose area and another had bold black and white stripes over the whole fuselage. Although no aftermarket decals are known, it should not be too difficult to replicate some of these schemes.

Decals

The decal sheet is rather disappointing. It has an insufficient number of roundels, two types of rudder tricolori, neither of which were correct, and 2 sets of serial numbers, one of which was for a later variant. It was difficult to make out which serial number is used in conjunction with the 12 numeral, but I applied it to the model anyway. The green has a rather olive hue, which does not look
quite right to me. The diagram also shows the roundels in the wrong position. The top roundels should be placed just inboard of the ailerons (Italian ruling did not permit any roundels to intrude
control surfaces). The smaller lower roundels, had they been printed, would have been placed at the midpoint between the floats and fuselage. I noticed cracks appearing in the large wing roundels when they were dipped in water. Luckily they disappeared when applied with Future. Although the decals were easy to apply, they still only get a 3/10 rating.

Conclusions/Recommendation

The casting, particularly the wings and fuselage, are excellent quality, so it's a shame that some smaller parts were missing, that the colour diagram was not entirely correct and that the decal sheet was "incomplete". The need for care and accuracy during construction would probably be intimidating for the less experienced modeler, but others may relish the chance of using this model to improve their general skills (including a little bit of scratchbuilding). The finished result is a very attractive and distinctive aircraft, particularly if one of the more colourful schemes were applied. Despite the problems mentioned, which are not insurmountable by any means, this model can still be recommended for the more experienced modeler.