The SF.260 is a 1964 Italian design used by military forces around the world as a basic trainer. Sleek and aerobatic, it is still flown today by aerial display teams and Air Combat USA as well as private owners. The trainer version was in service for over 40 years.

Knowing my interest in colorful trainers, John Noack asked if I would like to review the kit. I jumped at the offer, cleared my workbench, and began this, my first ever kit review.

Special Hobby has been a producer of unusual aircraft for many years, and I have a bunch of their kits. As time has passed and technology has improved their models have gotten much more refined. This kit has fine surface detail, small sprue gates, and some flash. There are no ejector pin marks in visible areas, but there are small sink marks on the fuselage halves where the alignment pins are molded, and a larger one on an antenna not used in my version.

There are three gray sprues containing 87 parts and one clear sprue with a second offcut of clear sprue with two parts on it, making a total of 6 clear parts. The gray sprues are loose in the box. The clear sprue is bagged, and that bag contains a second smaller bag with the second set of two clear parts. Decals are also separately bagged. A 12-page Instruction booklet in color has 13 steps with notes on differences between the three schemes provided. Paint callouts are for Gunze colors. Five parts are noted as not used- two wheel halves, a cowl front, an instrument panel and a small box which looks like an auxiliary instrument panel. In actual use there are more unused parts since each of the three versions has differences in instrument panels and antenna fit. Some minor scratch building is required- A small sheet plastic antenna for the Irish version, and .3 mm wire or rod for some antennas and gear door struts on all three versions. The wire/rod or plastic sheet needed is not included in the kit.

Markings are for a Yellow and Red Belgian SF.260M in a special scheme commemorating 250,000 hours on the type in Belgian service from 2003, an Orange Italian SF.260AM in a retirement scheme from 2009, and an Irish SF.260W “Warrior” in Forest Green and Dayglo Red. The latter uses the third gray sprue which contains pylons and rocket pods for this armed version. I chose the colorful Belgian version, partly because it has a nice “SF 260 Mike” decal on the rudder! Decals are provided for the three different instrument panel arrangements. Decal seatbelts and shoulder harnesses are included.

The SF.260 is a small aircraft in 1/48th scale, length less than 6” and wingspan less than 7”. Even so, it is an attractive and sleek aircraft. One thing that stands out is that there are several very tiny parts, some less than 1.5 mm long! Four of them are tiny levers which go in the cockpit (Three parts 23 and part 25). To keep the tiny parts from flying away I put them on a piece of masking tape while still on the Sprue and cut them free with my trusty UMM razor saw. All four parts stuck to the tape, ready to attach to the interior. Attaching the tiny control levers was a challenge. Even with my Optivisor and lots of light, holding the levers in a pair of tweezers was difficult, and one of the levers escaped twice. By some miracle I found it- once on the cutting board and once among the cat hair on the floor!

The instructions note “add weight” with an arrow pointing to the nose, but no quantity is given. The gear legs looked fragile, so I tried to find minimum weight needed to avoid a tail sitter. I used 1/2 ounce of fishing weights cut into pieces. It was just right to keep all three wheels on the ground even with the SF.260’s nose high stance.

Test fitting the major parts indicates good fit and alignment. Unlike older limited run kits, this one has alignment pins on many parts. More on those pins later. Engineering is designed to minimize seam filling issues.

Preparing and test fitting the parts revealed a few areas that needed attention. The slots in the fuselage halves for the horizontal stabilizers were too small and needed to be enlarged for the tabs to fit. The alignment pin at the very rear of the fuselage did not have a corresponding hole to fit into, so I cut it off. The wing halves have some ejector pin marks that need to be shaved off for the wing seams to close tightly. The holes in the wingtip tanks for the alignment pins on the wing tips were either too small or closed up and had to be drilled out. Throughout the build make sure you test fit, clean up mating surfaces, and be patient. Once these minor fixes are done the parts fit extremely well. Panel lines line up, and seams are relatively tight.

Actual construction starts in the cockpit, including side panels that are glued to the inside of the fuselage and a floor that holds the seats, control sticks, rudder pedals, center console and two small boxes. Again, some of the parts here are very small and I had to wonder why they were molded separately. In any case, they build up into a fairly detailed cockpit. After looking at the few photos of SF.260 interiors I could find online, I painted most of the cockpit NATO black with medium gray and gull gray details. The instrument decals went on over the raised detail on the panel quite nicely. The seat harness decals also went down well. I would have preferred photo etched or molded on harnesses because the decals snuggled down too well to the seat detail, but they look fine in the tiny cockpit with the canopy closed. One thing to watch for on the decals is that due to their thinness they are hard to move once laid down and will stick to themselves if they get folded over. I messed up one decal and had to paint on one of the harness straps, but luckily, I was able to save the buckle portion of the ruined decal.

The cockpit bulkheads, instrument panel, and nose gear well assembly were glued in prior to joining the fuselage halves. The interior of the nose, forward inside section of the lower fuselage, and part B13 were painted black prior to assembly since there are a couple of openings that might give some view of the interior. The cylinder detail on part B13 was given a rub with a Prismacolor steel pencil to bring out the detail. Based on a photo I found online the interior of the cowl, part B11, was sprayed with Alclad aluminum. You won’t be able to see this in the finished model however! Don’t forget to install and mask the landing light, part C6, prior to attaching the cowl to the fuselage.

I puzzled over how to deal with the exhausts, which must be attached prior to closing up the fuselage and painting. I decided to paint part of the underside of the nose with the final color, add the painted exhausts, and mask off that area prior to assembly. I drilled out the exhausts and painted them flat black followed by Alclad ALC 123 Exhaust Manifold before attaching them to the inside of the fuselage.

Next, I glued the tip tank halves together and added them to the wings. With a bit of scraping and sanding the fit was excellent. I also attached the separate flaps after working a bit on the alignment pins to get a good fit. Test fitting showed a nice clean wing to fuselage joint on top, with a small amount of filling and sanding needed on the underside rear center section joint.

Once the instrument panel was painted and decaled, I glued it and the two bulkheads in place in the right fuselage half. A bit of sanding and filing of the bulkheads and instrument panel was needed to get a tight fuselage seam. The fuselage halves lined up well, but due to the tight fit of the interior parts I carefully glued small sections of the fuselage together, giving each section some drying time before moving to the next. This helped keep the alignment as good as possible. There was only one area that needed any Mr. Surfacer 500 after the fuselage was closed up- the seam between the two halves on the underside behind the wing opening. The wing fit very well except for a gap at the rear as noted above. I filled it with thin sheet plastic and a tiny amount of Mr. Surfacer. The upper wing to fuselage joints were almost perfect, needing only a small amount of sanding. There is an angled joint on each side of the fuselage just in front of the wing that needed some filling. It is a little hard to sand in this area without damaging detail, but it came out well.

Before attaching the cowl front, I secured 1/2 ounce of lead weights above the nose gear well with 2-part epoxy. once this cured the cowl front was attached. This was also a very good fit. I installed the seats and prepared to fit the canopy and windscreen in the closed position. The canopy fits well, but the windscreen needs a bit of filing and sanding to get a good fit. Once adjusted it looks great.

Next came a coat of Tamiya Fine White Surface Primer decanted from the spray can and airbrushed on. I decided to paint the red trim first because I was worried that the red would turn orange if I painted it over yellow, and I thought the masking process would be easier if I painted the red trim first. I used MRP 123 Marking Red for the trim. After the red had fully dried, I masked it off and sprayed Vallejo Model Air 71.002 Medium Yellow. The yellow took several coats to get the color density I wanted based on reference photos. Once the yellow dried I masked and painted the anti-glare panel Tamiya XF-69 NATO Black and the canopy track on the fin fillet Alclad II Duraluminum. This was followed by a coat of Alclad II Aquagloss in preparation for the decals.

The decals went down very well. I was careful handling them to avoid any folding as I applied them. They went on well, even the spinner stripe, which was the most difficult to apply. There are lots of stencils and other markings, so it took a few sessions to get them all on the plane. The model definitely looks more impressive with all the decals on. Another coat of Aquagloss was applied, and then I carefully added Tamiya gray Panel Line Accent Color to the panel lines and recessed fasteners. A final coat of Alclad II Klear Kote Light Sheen ALC 311 produced the almost glossy finish I saw in my reference photos. AK Interactive Ultra Matte Varnish on the wing walks and anti-glare panel finished the painting. After removing the masking and a few touch-ups to the canopy frames, the canopy and windscreen were polished with Novus 2 Fine Scratch Remover and Novus 1 Plastic Clean and Shine.

It was now time for all the little details- gear legs, gear doors, and antennas. These all required some clean-up of parting lines and flash prior to painting. The mounting points for the wheels are quite tiny. One clear part, C4, was not mentioned in the instructions as far as I could tell. I believe it is a light that is at the rear tip of the fuselage. This part is so tiny (1mm x .5 mm) that it is almost impossible to see, let alone attach to the model. I cut the wire antennas from fine brass rod blackened with Birchwood Casey Brass Black and the gear door struts from .5 mm plastic rod. The plane balanced nicely on it’s wings on two Tamiya paint jars, making it easier to put down between the tedious steps of attaching antennas, the underside beacon, the wing mounted pitot and the canopy handle. The wire antenna from AK Interactive Super-Thin rigging line was stretched between the three mounting points using tape to hold it in place as the super glue set. I tried to install clear part C4 in the tail tip but it disappeared almost immediately. My solution was to use the clear sprue to stretch a suitable replacement, attach the end of the clear sprue to the tail, and cut off the excess when the superglue was cured. Much easier than installing the kit provided part!

The nose gear gave me an unpleasant surprise when I tried to fit it into the gear well. It was much too wide at the upper end to fit into the slots provided! Careful filing and fitting finally resulted in the gear leg agreeing to go where it belonged. As I feared, the minimal attachment points between the main gear legs and the wheels made for a weak joint. During the assembly process the wheels came off more times than I care to remember. I thought about trying to reinforce the attachment point with wire, but the gear leg is just too fine to drill through safely. Instead I reinforced the joint with as much superglue as I could without making a visible blob. Hopefully I can handle the model carefully enough to get the review done and get it to my display cabinet and out of harm’s way with the wheels still attached. The homemade gear door struts were first glued to the inner surfaces of the gear doors per the detail drawings in the instructions. The doors were then glued in place and the struts glued to the gear legs. That sounded easy, didn’t it? It was actually very fiddly getting the gear and gear doors on, and I knocked off the tail wire antennas several times in the process. Maybe I should have left them off until the end… Anyway, getting the plane on its gear took me a morning’s worth of work, and I had to walk away a few times to regain my sanity when things got really irritating. In the end all went together well, and the little trainer was done!

Conclusion

Despite the idiosyncrasies of the kit, I really enjoyed building this model. It actually went together much faster than I expected. I generally build at glacial speed, but I got this one done in two months, interrupted by COVID, my daughter’s wedding, and all the usual stuff.

Pros: a colorful, well-designed model of an unusual subject with generally good fit and good instructions. Decals are very thorough and went down very well with proper care.

Cons: a few sink marks, flash, tiny detail parts, a bit of scratch building required, poor wheel to gear leg attachment points, and careful clean up and alignment needed.

Overall, I highly recommend this kit to experienced modelers interested in colorful trainers. It is a bit challenging but a fun build. My thanks to Special Hobby for the review kit, and for kitting aircraft other manufacturers wouldn’t think of doing!