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Regia Aeronautica Cockpits - Air Set (A.MIG-7236) AMMO of Mig Jiménez


Julien

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Regia Aeronautica Cockpits - Air Set (A.MIG-7236)

AMMO of Mig Jiménez

 

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This set is for your WWII Italian cockpits. This four paint set arrives in a clear clamshell box with a card header with some colour use suggestions on the rear.  Inside are four bottles  each containing 17ml of paint that is dispensed by a dropper that is found under the yellow screw-top cap.  Inside each bottle is a little stirring ball that rattles when agitated.  AMMO paints separate quite readily so having a ball in the bottle makes mixing them a lot easier.  We’re all familiar with the quality of AMMO paints by now, and they have a pretty good reputation amongst us modellers, and dry a little slower than some of the competition, which can be useful to avoid paint drying on the tip of your needle when spraying.

 

The paints are as follows:

 

A.MIG-0238 Verde Mimetico 2

A.MIG-0272 Giallo Mimetico 4

A.MIG-0273 Verde Anticorrosione

A.MIG-0194 Matt Aluminium 

 

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Conclusion

It’s great to be able to get sets of paint that will set you up for any Italian WWII cockpit project in one hit (or not as it may seem) with just the addition of some white and black to assist you with modulation if that’s your methodology. 

 

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Review sample courtesy of

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A bit puzzled here... what would be the use of these colours in the cockpit ? What's the use of the two colours from the "serie mimetica" ? They were meant for camouflage.. and then why these and not others from the same series ?

Good to see a matt aluminum, afterall a number of aircraft, particularly before prewar types or early in the war, had interior fabric surfaces painted this way.

Verde anticorrosione... I thought that the idea of one such colour being used on all aircraft had been abandoned by now. More recent research has shown that there were a number of primers in use, some grey, some green and some grey-green (and even a yellowish one). In any case these were primers and often cockpits received a coat of a different paint over the primer. And even when such a light grey-green was used, this was a primer for aluminum alloys, steel, wood and fabric were treated with different primers.. and a number of well known aircraft featured these materials heavily (SM.79 above all).

Last but not least, why no grey ???? The vast majority of Italian WW2 aircraft had grey cockpits ! Not only all aircraft were supposed to have grey cockpits after the introduction of the "Tavola 10" instructions in 1941, it is also known by both official documents and by the analysis of specimen that many aircraft had grey cockpits even earlier than this, with the use of this colour dating to before the war on several types.

Can't comment on the quality of the paints or on how accurately they may reproduce the intended colours, what I however can say is that the selection of colours is puzzling and omits the colours that were actually used in the majority of Italian WW2 aircraft while including one that was used much less than old information has led modellers to believe. Personally I'm pretty disappointed

Edited by Giorgio N
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Julien, I was not intending on posing the question to you as reviewer of the set, I agree that any question should be posed to Ammo as producers... although I'd expect no answer.

Since the review is on the forum I follow though I consider important to voice my reservations about the set, reservations that come from having tried to understand the subject over the last 4-5 years. Hopefully these will help some other modeller on the forum to ponder if the set is right for their needs. This set is clearly not a one-stop solution to the needs of modellers who want to paint cockpits of Italian WW2 aircraft. Not saying that may not have its uses (I'm one who believes that one paint bottle too many is always better than one too few), but the content leaves me not impressed at all.

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It's the lighter one that would be used for interiors.  Sorry, I should have specified.  I've only recently become interested in Italian aircraft of the Second World War and have been collecting the Ali di Italia books, so my references are limited.

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13 hours ago, Cometracer said:

It's the lighter one that would be used for interiors.  Sorry, I should have specified.  I've only recently become interested in Italian aircraft of the Second World War and have been collecting the Ali di Italia books, so my references are limited.

 

Ok, I see what you mean.

The Ali d'Italia books are very nice and they have been maybe the first well researched series dealing with these machines in English language (ok, bilingual...).

However some aspects of their research has today been superceded and the various primers and cockpit colours used in Italy in the '30s and '40s are now better understood, although with some bits of knowledge still missing...

The light green that Ammo has included here was one of a series of primers that the Italian equivalent of the Air Ministry had approved for use on aircraft aluminum parts. So yes, this colour was used but was not the only one and other primers were in different greens or in grey or yellow. Each company used to buy paints from one or more paint company and so could use one or the other or more of these primers.

Even more important, these were primers and the actual cockpit colours were painted over these primers. Before the introduction of a standard in 1941, each company followed their own procedure and some seem to have used a similar light grey-green while others used grey paint or sometime even aluminum paint. Starting in 1941 all aircraft were supposed to leave the factory with grey cockpits (using the same colour of the undersides), but it is known that companies were allowed to exhaust their stocks of previously acquired paint. After the armistice, it's not qell understood what happened as documentation is lacking.

Of course, any part in wood, steel or fabric could not be coated with a primer formulated for aluminum alloys, so there were coated with different primers and then coated with paints specific for these materials... and this include a lot of aricraft types.

If you're interested in this subject I suggest checking some of the threads that have appeared here or in the Stormo forum, where some of these details are discussed in more depth for certain aircraft types. It is a fascinating subject that unfortunately suffers from a language barrier (most research appears on italian sources) and the lack of documentation, as a lot of this has been destroyed... most often not during the War but in later years, when companies cleared their archives of material that they considered of no interest to anyone to make room for the material related to the then current projects

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