Great entry, my friend @coling!

The Sparviero is one of the planes I have affection for, goodness knows why! Not that it was a bad plane - it was a good one...

...I think the reason of affection is a combination of "exotic" (or, not very "standardized") design, colorful (nice!) schemes, good performance (but quick obsolescence...), maybe also the fact that it fought over Greece, during the Italian offensive during WWII, who knows?

I have built a SMER (Artiplast Jurrasic era mold) 1/48 (which actually is 1/50), have another one to build and also a Trumpeter one (which has been criticized accuracy wise, possibly justifiably - do not ask my opinion: I just build! 🙂 ).

The CA kit is not a toss together kit, but it is definitely buildable and looks to be the way to go, if you want an accurate Sparviero.

Our friend @tcinla has done a great job with the CA kit, that you might be interested to look at:

https://www.modelingmadness.com/review/axis/ity/cleaversm79.htm

Provided that some bench space is cleared (famous last words...), I might enter one of my two - less than stellar- stashed Sparviero kits!

Looking forward to your super build!

Thanks for your detailed response, Spiros. You are very welcome to add either your SMER or your Trumpeter kit. I think the only issue with the Trumpeter was the cowlings, which were a bit wide - hardly noticeable and also a debatable "problem" - like the Accurate Miniatures B-25 cowlings. BTW, you would probably find the Osprey book on the S.79 torpedo bomber units interesting - some great profiles too. It is always all the more interesting when the historical action is close to home.

Be sure to read my reviews of this kit at Modeling Madness. It makes up into a good result, but you will slog through hell getting there.

https://modelingmadness.com/review/axis/ity/cleaversm79.htm

BTW - The SM 79 version in the kit you have is a sub-type that didn't serve in North Africa. It's ANR, not Regia Aeronautica.

There is usually one "tricky part" to the assembly of any Classic Airframes kit, wherein if you do not do it right you will have a very difficult time resolving the problem successfully. On this kit, the modeler's instinct to build the fuselage as a sub-assembly and then the wing too, must be resisted. DO NOT build the wing as a sub-assembly!

Here is the easy way to assemble the wing to the fuselage:

The wing is in five pieces - two upper halves, to outer lower halves and a center section. Attach the center section to the fuselage first, and align it properly. The wing does not have any dihedral. You will need to test-fit this part and modify it a bit to get a close fit, but it is easy to do. Once this center section has set up, attach the upper wing halves. You will find you need to change the shape of the wingroot to match that of the fuselage, but test-fitting and fiddling a bit will result in a nice tight fit and no further problems. Then assemble the outer lower wing halves. Seen head-on, the centerline of the wing should be entirely flat, with the upper surface sloping down to the wingtip while the lower surface slopes up. Once you have accomplished this, everything else is a breeze. Attach the horizontal stabilizers, apply some Mr. Surfacer 500 to the various seams, and set it aside to dry overnight.

After sanding the seams smooth the next day, I attached the braces to the horizontal stabilizer and attached the various small parts to the lower flaps and aileron surfaces - these are all resin, so be careful you don't break them taking them off the mold blocks.

I then painted the engines and glued the cowlings to them. Be careful here - the cowlings are marked to take the exhaust on the lower left side of all three, which is correct for the early bomber versions that the kit makes up as. If you are doing a later version, as I was, you will have to modify the right wing engine cowling to take the exhaust on the right side. I found that rotating the cowl 90 degrees set everything up close enough that I had only a bit of rescribing to do on that cowling. I attached the resin exhausts and saw there was going to be a need for a lot of putty at the front end, to properly fair them into the collector ring. I applied that and set the cowls aside.

I had futured the canopy glass, and proceeded to attach it. The rear windows in the gunner's compartment are a bit big for the opening, so sand them down around the edges, and test fit - if you get them just right they pop in with no gaps. I also had to sand the edges of the cockpit canopy and windshield to get it to fit, then had to putty over the joint in the front of the "hump" to get it smooth. None of this was particularly difficult. I masked the windows with scotch magic transparent tape.

Here's the other review (a comparison with the godawful Trumpeter abomination):

https://modelingmadness.com/review/axis/ity/cleaver79.htm

Good news. My recollection of that particular version of the kit didn't include the RA options.

My understanding of Italian cockpits is they use a light green very similar to British Interior Green. I use Tamiya XF-71 "Cockpit Green" which is the Mitsubishi interior color and very close to both British and Italian interior green. Not sure about wood cockpits other than they wouldn't have used lacquer, so maybe it was just varnished. Having not seen any color interior shots of S.79s, there's nothing definitive I would know.

I’ll be following this one, Colin. I have the Spanish Civil War boxing to do one of these days.

I too usually use Hu120 for the Italian cockpits, my friend @j-healy : though I am not the guy to count on, regarding color accuracies (I am "easy", not too picky), I believe Hu120 is a safe bet.

Thanks, Spiros. Humbrol paints obviously have good properties and you get excellent results with them. One of the things I promised myself in getting back into the hobby was to manage toxic inputs as far as possible. For that reason, I use acrylics exclusively, water thinner, if possible, a powerful spray booth, etc. I hope I can get the right tones with the Tamiya XF-71. It looked really nice for my Betty pit and has got to be better than the weird shade of MM Acryl Pale Green - kind of the color of pesticide, somehow. I have plans to get on with painting and assembly today. In fact, I will do a bit on each model in this GB and also mask my 109 Gustav for further painting.