1/72 Smer/Heller Amiot 143 &

Potez 540   Part 2

by Gabriel Stern

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The Potez 540 was a French reconnaissance/bomber in the mid 30's that participated in the Spanish Civil War. Wearing the somewhat trouble-maker "caqui" color (kakhi, kaqui, and many more are also correct), which provides with so many hours of animated conversation in the forums, and boasting thinly-framed turrets everywhere, is a delight for  modelers who want to venture beyond the usual mustang/messerschmidtt/whatever main stream kit.
  Better looking than its review companion, the previously described Amiot 143, with a hefty count of parts (about 130, some 24 of them on each engine/landing gear pod) that took some time to clean-up. Several air scoops and vents were opened-up and clear parts were sanded flat -they had some sink marks- and polished with the help of a 3-grit nail polisher.
  In general the parts are well molded, surface detail is good, almost no flash is present and a succinct interior will please the less demanding among us -me included-.

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Some almost credible scratch detail was added inside, painted, and the transparencies glued -being their skirt a little bit prominent for my taste-, and we are ready to close the boxy fuselage.
  Four long sticks that go on the front part of the cabin deck and aside the cockpit area are levers that command the automatic deliver of omelettes to the crew. Part 86 (a small rectangular frame) is the step for the door. It took me a while to realize it (yeap, you know the old adagio: if everything else fails, read the instructions).
  Dealing now with what I think is the most challenging part of the sequence, you have to face the engine/landing gear pods. One word about the landing gear: if you look carefully you will notice tiny marks -in circular shape- on the sides of the mudguards, that are intended as locators for the minute braces that will hold them, so don't sand them away, And if you look even more carefully you will see that in one of the extremes of those minute braces there is a recess that halves the brace for you to glue that side to the above-mentioned mudguards. The other end of the braces goes in small protruding features of the struts. To hold that maze together while working I used Uhu tack - a Blue tack alike product- (see image). A very nice touch, I would say, on part of Heller. You will find the same faint circular marks on the lower side of the stabilizers and on the sides of the aft fuselage, guiding the location of the tail struts. Again, be careful not to sand them away, or use a small drill bit to provide a more positive grip.

Don't forget to trap the whole wheel assembly and the retracting mechanism in joining the pod halves. No firewall is provided so I painted the interior in "I Don't Care" black, a new product that I was just reviewing. Note that a panel line runs on top of the real thing, so you don't need to erase the seem all the way. Check your references (yeap, some times, after collecting them, you can  even look at them).
  Having dealt with that I went to sleep.
  That night I had a dream: ICM announced the Kalinin K-7 and the Tupolev Ant-20 Maxim Gorkii, Italeri was launching the Caproni Stipa and new molds for the Caproni Campini N.1 -with detailed power plant- and the Savoia S.55, while Azur released the Farman Jabiru, all in in 1/72 scale. Airfix gave birth to the Beardmore Inflexible and A-model finally spawned the Transavia Airtruck and the Bellanca Airbus, being  Roden in charge of tackling the other Zeppelin Staaken, the E-4/20 passenger carrier of 1920.

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Fuselage, wings and engine pods were painted separately to facilitate the process; especially to deal with the clear parts framework, which I detailed with decal strips. Same goes for the diverse turrets. After decaling, the main assemblies were put together and a few details were added, like navigation lights. The reinforcement pieces for the main struts had to be made of stretched sprue, since the original ones were a tad short. Decals are a combination of those from the kit (that were better than the Amiot 143 ones), a few home made and a a pair from the spares bin. The markings intend to represent a machine from the Spanish civil war, although they are not completely accurate.
  I am very happy with this kit, in spite it took some time and effort to be completed.
  Now I can sit back and contemplate the job with a glass of (French) wine.

Gabriel

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Photos and text © by Gabriel Stern