Italeri has released a boxing of the very good 1/48 Hasegawa Mc. 205, which is enhanced by a super decal sheet for 6 different camouflages. Not only that, but the decal sheet includes “smoke rings”! I believe this is the first time that “smoke rings” are included as part of a regular boxing.

Like most airplanes models construction starts with the cockpit and this is no exception. The plastic parts are capable of delivering a convincing “front office” if care is taken during painting. The instrument panel faces are provided as decals and they certainly enhance the look of the panel as the pictures show. I decided to add a set of Eduard Photo-Etch Italian Seatbelts (Steel) to round up the cockpit. It would have been nice to see at least a decal to reproduce the seatbelt.

When closing the fuselage, I had a bit of trouble with the back part of the cockpit floor. I had to do some trimming of the cockpit floor to be able to close the fuselage without a gap. Don’t forget to capture the propeller hub at this time.

After closing the fuselage, assembly moves into the wing and wheel well. I strongly recommend assembling the wheel well first, including the bulkhead on the back of the wheel well, and to glue that subassembly to the lower wing. Then present the wheel well/lower wing subassembly to the fuselage and finally add the top wings in place. That will ensure no gaps (or a minimal one) in the wing-root, plus a properly aligned wheel well assembly.

The assembly continues with some details around the fuselage like air intake, oil coolers, oil filters and tail surfaces. I decided to drill out the gun openings to enhance the looks of the model. By the way, I did sand down the oil coolers a bit (the ones in each side of the nose) to reduce the seam.

After the main assembly was completed I started working on the landing gear, which I decided to keep as a subassembly until the very end of construction. The landing gear and landing gear cover have several parts and they only need to be properly cleaned of any sprue attachment parts for perfect fit.

At this point, I prepared the model for painting (did some very minor seam sanding along the fuselage spine) and painted the lower surfaces with Italian Gray. After that I masked the lower parts and painted the upper surfaces with Italian Sand, making sure the Italian Sand wrapped around the wing leading edge.

After a couple of days letting the enamels cure, and with all the decals ahead of me, I decided to apply two thin layers of Future and after about 30 mins a third, “wet” layer of Future. That created a great shiny finish for the decals.

I first applied all the smoke rings decals. The smoke rings look very dark in the sheet (almost black), but once on the model (over the Italian Sand) look great with a deep shade of green. They are individual decals –no continuous carrier- and based on the instruction sheet each one has a specific location. Honestly, I placed them where I thought they will look good, not where the instructions told me to. I took three evenings, with about 90 minutes each just to get the smoke ring decals in place. I applied MicroSet/Sol and gave the decals a few days to settle in.

At that point I started to apply the squadron markings and national markings. I was a bit worried about the color density of the Italian flags (ANR Markings) over the smoke rings, so I cut-to-fit white decal sheet and applied it on top of the smoke rings. Then on top of the white decal I applied the Italian flags. Make sure you get the green pointing towards the front of the fuselage on both sides!

With all the decals in place another coat of Future was airbrushed and when cured an acrylic panel line wash was applied to highlight detail. At this point I started adding all the final details, like the aerials (E-Z line), the landing gear, the propeller, the Pitot tube and a flat coat wrapped up construction.

I used a few pastels for light weathering around the guns and the landing gear. When weathering an ANR airplane you have to think these airframes had a short life, and most of the time they were in the ground and hidden, so weathering should be kept on the light side.

I spent a bit over 30 hours working in this model, a bit more than I normally spend in a single engine airplane (I’m normally in the 20 to 25 hours range). There were plenty of decals to apply so perhaps that is why I took longer than average. At any rate, I did not mind at all the extra time as it was a very enjoyable build: Great fit and excellent decals!

I would like to thank Hobbico, Italeri and IPMS/USA for the review sample.