Monday, November 30, 2020

Ansaldo Brescia racer, converted Pegasus 1/72nd kit

 

Here is one of the two Ansaldo "Brescia" racers, number 3, made specifically to race in the famous events hosted by that Italian city. Number 4 had a more powerful engine and some minor mods.

The base was a not bad Pegasus injection kit, with home-concocted decals.

The building post can be visited here:

 https://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2020/11/ansaldo-brescia-racer-modified-ansaldo.html

The drastically clipped wing and modified strut arrangement gives it an unusual -but to me, lover of oddities- appealing geometry.

The model was possible thanks to aviation historian Paolo Miana and his team, as information found in their book on their Ansaldo machines filled a number of voids. 

 https://www.gliarchiviritrovati.it/home/prodotto/gli-aerei-che-hanno-fatto-la-storia-ansaldo-sva/

They have publications on many other very interesting Italian subjects. Any potential inaccuracies are only mine.

This was an almost painless adaptation of an easily obtained kit (there are many others by different manufacturers readily available) that presents a known plane under a mostly unknown guise, just the type of modeling I love.

As always, I enjoyed very much reading about and working on an Italian racer, a nation that gave so much to that field of aviation, with luscious designs of undeniable appeal, even when they are unorthodox.

Some of the images show my 1/72nd Italian test pilots, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Pier Paolo Pasolini, assisted by their mechanics (out of the frame) Domenico Modugno and Adriano Celentano.

A very nice coincidence: Franz Kafka wrote a story about airplanes at an air show in Brescia, before the war: