1/72 LF Resins Reggiane Re 2005 

Saggitario

by Keith Hudson

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I've always thought the Reggiane Sagittario was the best looking Italian aircraft of the war- there is something sleek and purposeful about the lines that I find compelling.  When I found the LF resins 1/72nd scale kit of the Sagittario on E-bay,  I was a little surprised that I had never heard of it before- but it was a fairly reasonable purchase of $12 (and reasonable purchases seem to be hard to come by these days on e-bay)  so it was definitely bumped to the front of the assembly line when it finally arrived safe and sound. The kit itself is more of a second generation resin kit- some pin holes -slightly irregular surfaces and more worrisome- definitely irregular panel lines.  This combined with a few incompletely formed pieces pretty much guaranteed a full re-scribe and redo- but so do most of the resin kits of this age. C'est la vie!

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I separated the control surfaces and started the sanding and filling process- and with the few additions of some sheet styrene to replace incompletely formed areas the kit went together fairly well. The interior pieces were at best ill formed and the wrong size for this kit- and at this point I opted for the easy way out and installed a resin  Mc-202 interior - the first of many short-cuts to come. The engine intake and sand filter was also badly misformed and it was at this point I decided to snatch the one from my very old Pegasus kit of the same aircraft and form a resin replacement from it- but it wasn't much better. Now that I had the Pegasus kit out of the stash I decided to compare the old kit to the new- and found out they were the same!

The LF kit is a direct copy of the Pegasus kit with these slight changes- the wing was molded as a one piece unit- a nicer vacuformed canopy that the original injection molded one- and a general decrease in quality of all the panel lines and detail. They have also substituted a german propellor and spinner to make the 601/605 version of the aircraft. and a truly nice set of basic photo -etch including the landing gear doors. Picture number 5 shows the LF and the Pegasus belly radiators-with both needing the same repairs..... The scheme and decals were the LF box supplied one with some shading and pastel work to vary the coloring a bit.

Next up- the Pegasus kit in an Italian scheme to match it's propellor..

Regards all,

Keith

 

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Photos and text © by Keith Hudson