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Anyone who’s a Beatles fan will be familiar with the term ‘dark horse’ attributed to George Harrison whose talents blossomed late in the Beatles’ career with the Abbey Road album. A dark horse is a previously lesser-known person or thing that emerges to prominence in a situation, especially in a competition involving multiple rivals or a contestant that on paper should be unlikely to succeed but yet still might. (Wikipedia) In our hobby, the ICM FIAT CR.42 is just that. Released without much fanfare two years ago, the Falco was obscured by its ‘rival’ the Gladiator but nevertheless became a modellers’ favourite in internet forums especially among beginners at large scale biplanes. Now hot on the heels of our friends @Fanes @spook @Dpgsbody55 and some others, here’s my take on the FIAT biplane with a nod to my host country: Belgium. In a nutshell, in September 1939, Belgian authorities ordered 34 CR.42 from FIAT. On March 6, the first of 30 planes arrived in Belgium still carrying Italian camouflage, to be assembled. They were assigned the serials R-1 to R-30 and were attributed to the IIe Groupe de Chasse between escadrilles 3/II and 4/II whose pilots began to convert in their new mounts. Two months later, on May 10 the Wermacht launched its attack against the Low Countries and Belgium. The nearly obsolete Fiat were pitted against the vastly superior Bf 109E. All the CR.42 of the 4/II were destroyed on the ground. The remaining squadron retreated to France and surrendered to the Wermacht after Belgium asked Germany for an armistice on June 28 1940. Thus ended the brief life of the Belgian FIAT. It was almost 4 months after the Belgians took delivery of their first Fiat. For a detailed account of the short combat life of the CR.42 in Belgian service, click HERE For the inventory photos of the CR.42 in Belgian service, check out the excellent Daniel Brackx’s BELGIAN WINGS. The familiar ICM kit A modern colorized version Since there are already a few detailed articles about the building of this kit, I ‘d like to concentrate on the camouflage and the painting of this model. There are quite a few period photographs of the Belgian FIAT as one can discover on the BELGIAN WINGS site. Nevertheless they all are in monochrome. There are a few controversies about the colours of the camouflage. Sure we all know they came in ‘Italian camouflage’ but which one? as it’s a VERY complex subject as we will find out. Hopefully some connoisseurs will chime in. Thank you for your commentaries and your invaluable input. Until next time, Cheers, Quang

Hi, Here is my last finish build. It was my "summer build", as for summer holidays i wanted to build a simple model, almost OOB, fast and simple. I have already unsprued most of the parts while on a journey and thought it would be very fast to then glue and paint it. But it wasnt so fast. I firstly very enjoyed the new Revell kit, as the OOB details are pretty good in the cockpit and wheel bays. But when i started to build it, i understood why there was so much critics about the strange engineering. Yes it's strange and sometime quite silly (mutiple parts gear legs, joints to be filled only a few millimeters from a panel line, and so on...). Filling and sanding the engine cowling was not easy and very time consuming. I've not built it 100% OOB as i've used the Alleycat correction resin set. I was not impressed by this set and i think it is under their usual quality. I may have been unlucky and maybe i've got a bad set, but it was not good. Some parts were useless because they were oversized, some were badly cast (soft and undefined, a real paint to clean up), and a number of bubbles. But some parts were used (radiator cowling, exhausts, spinner and propeller, cowling bulges....) and the set was not very expensive, so i'm not that upset. I've also used a quickboost bf109G gun set. The gondolas and the dust filter come from a Hasegawa kit. I know as a trop 109 there should be the umbrella holder brackets but i think i was a bit lazy (and i'm not sure they were fitted on all tropical 109) So in my opinion it's a good kit, nicely detailed and more accurate than the Hasegawa kit in some areas, but at the moment i still prefer the Hasegawa 109 as it is simpler and faster to build. I will soon try some Trumpeter 109, i'm going to see if it is better. The decals are from the Chris Busbridge Regia Aeronautica Bf109 set. They are very nicely printed and the film is thin and easy to move. I will have no worries to use any other decals printed by Fantasy Printshop.