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Be careful what you wish for...Or if there is one thing worse than not getting what you want it is getting what you want. I had long wanted a model of the Campini Caproni N1 to add to my collection of early jets as it was quite a significant a/c. The Italians long believed that they had produced the first jet a/c not knowing that the Heinkel 178 had flown nearly a year earlier. Its propulsion system was indeed a jet but not a turbojet. A piston engine in the nose drove a fan which compressed the air which was then burned in the aft section. It was not very efficient and was very much an aeronautical ‘dead end’. I believe that the first flight was made without the ‘afterburner’ meaning that it was at that stage a form of ducted fan. The only kit ever made seemed to be the one by Delta 2 which, I think, dates back to the seventies. They did appear on Ebay from time to time but fetched silly prices. Last summer I managed to get one at a price I was prepared to pay not knowing that the drop in prices was probably due to the appearance of a kit from Valom. It was not an easy build as the parts were warped and ill-fitting and, according to a book about the a/c, not terribly accurate. The fuselage was dreadful and I tried to the force parts into shape whilst the glue set but I ended up with it shaped like a banana and twisted as well. Out came the razor saw, the halves were separated and the each was taped to a metal ruler and soaked in hot water for some time. It was then possible to glue the halves together with a satisfactory result. Fitting the fuselage to the one piece wing resulted in a large gap that had to be filled but everything went well until I tried to fit the canopy. It looks as if it was designed to slide open like the real a/c but nothing fitted so it was more or less plonked on after much surgery. After finishing the Delta 2 version of this kit I discovered that Valom had recently produced a new version. Since the Delta 2 version was old and inaccurate and as I felt that it fell into the ‘toy’ category I decided to get the newer kit. This produced its own set of problems. The accuracy is somewhat suspect and whilst the main bits fitted together reasonably well the interior bits were a disaster, as nothing fitted without much trimming, and the cockpit components, including photo-etch controls, seemed to scale out at something closer to 1/48 scale. There is a photo of the cockpit on the Internet and a line drawing equivalent of it in the kit instructions so how they came to get the inside so wrong is an interesting question. The photo shows the original control wheel and its replacement made from a piece of tube. The cockpit cover was a nightmare, being moulded out of ‘thick clingfilm’, and does not fit very well. There is no representation of the mount in which it slides. The final straw was fitting the mainwheel legs only to find that they are apparently too short. Note the difference in track between the Delta and Valom versions. Neither matches track shown in the 3-view in the book. There were several variations of the markings. This Valom model represents the N1 around the time of its first flight and the Delta version at a later stage in testing. Keen eyes will note that I managed to get markings on the wings swapped over on the Delta version. The Valom kit is in the foreground with the rear canopy open, the coloured nose marking and large cross on the fin [/url] This shows the difference between the original control wheel and my replacement ( which is probably a bit too small)