Italeri FIAT G91 P.A.N./Gina query

[rodenlee]

Hi folks

I'm looking for a 1/48 FIAT G91 to make a Luftwaffe R version.  The Italeri PAN kit seems to be readily available as a starting point but I can't see from instructions or reviews if the PAN kit has the different (i.e. non-pointy) nose of the R version.

 

Does anyone know if the kit does contain the R nose please?

 

Thanks

Cheers

Shaun 

[scotthldr]

It would appear that both noses are in the kit. The R nose is on the second sprue and the PAN nose is a separate piece altogether.

[72modeler]

Not my scale, but it has always been a  favorite of mine, kinda like a low-fat F-86D, but looking at the l,ink to the sprues, it does appear that the PAN boxing has both noses. Does this help?

Mike

 

https://www.gigakits.com.br/MLB-1357982691-avio-fiat-g-91-pan-148-kit-italeri-plastimodelismo-_JM

[rodenlee]

Outstanding work folks!!  I can see the R nose in your link Mike.

 

Thank you both for taking the time to help me out!

 

Cheers

Shaun

[tempestfan]

You will not only need the nose, but also the nose side panels for the DEFAs - the sprue shots here show they are included too.

[bar side]

This is the nose you get in the old ESCI 1/48 offering.  Original decals too

 

[72modeler]

@bar side

 

That's a very nice Gina! I have the 1/72 Meng kit, and it's supposed to be the most accurate in 1/72 scale. Your dayglo looks great, BTW! 

Mike

[bar side]

No idea how accurate the ESCI kit is, but I rescribed the surface detail & tidied up the cockpit.  She looks nice to me but she is tiny next to the Phantom

 

[rodenlee]

Thanks everyone for your advice (DEFA) and inspiration (completed models).  I have one on the way and have also bought a resin cockpit upgrade which I have read is very good.

 

Cheers to all

 

Shaun

[Robertone139]

14 hours ago, 72modeler said:

@bar side

 

That's a very nice Gina! I have the 1/72 Meng kit, and it's supposed to be the most accurate in 1/72 scale. Your dayglo looks great, BTW! 

Mike

Sorry to partially hijacking this thread.
Mike, after comparing the drawings in the Warpaint G.91 book with both Revell and Meng kits, the Revell comes out winner for accuracy (specially in the main landing gear bays curvature department) and detail.

The Meng Frecce Tricolori boxing though has a very nice selection of decals, including the rare US ARMY ones.

[72modeler]

5 hours ago, Robertone139 said:

Sorry to partially hijacking this thread.
Mike, after comparing the drawings in the Warpaint G.91 book with both Revell and Meng kits, the Revell comes out winner for accuracy (specially in the main landing gear bays curvature department) and detail.

The Meng Frecce Tricolori boxing though has a very nice selection of decals, including the rare US ARMY ones.

Now I am confused, as the kit reviews I had read stated the 1/72 Meng kit was the more accurate one. I'm also not really sold on the accuracy of the scale drawings that are in many of the Warpaint monographs. I got rid of my Revell kit quite a while back based on what I had read. Guess I will do more research when I get ready to build a G.91, but I do appreciate the heads-up! Wonder if  @Giorgio N might be a good source for information on either kit's accuracy?

Mike

[Giorgio N]

G.91 kits accuracy... the Esci kit has some problems, mainly:

Rear fuselage is too short, IIRC around 4 mm.

The exhaust area should be wider and the lower rear fuselage sweeps upward too much

The hump behind the canopy is too short.

Are these noticeable? Up to each modeller to decide.

The Revell kit shares the same problems, guess it was based on that kit or on the same drawings. Rumours are that Esci designed the kit from an old set of drawings from Richard Caruana. The same author later revised and improved the drawings but I don't know if all these issues were corrected or what. Now I don't have the Warpaint book but I feel confident enough to bet that the drawings included are Caruana's... that would explain why the Revell kit matches the drawings. In Caruana's defence, I've heard that drawings from Fiat shows similar problems.

The Meng fuselage looks much more accurate, is correctly longer and when compared to pictures better represents the shapes of the real aircraft.

I'll take a few pictures to show yhe differences

Edited March 20, 2021 by Giorgio N

[MiG-Mech]

In 1/72 Meng is the better.

At the Recell kit the edge on fuselage in the engine area between the red lines is too long. Belongs more to Y or T.

I also saw a 1/48 model with too long edge

[Bedders]

I have the Meng kit half done, and hope to finish it soon. I realky ,ike the Gina and it's amazing to see one next to a Sabre which looks like its big brother. On the kit the seat is a bit nasty, and the canopy is the early style rather than the later bulbous version. The main undercarriage bay is a work of fiction, and needs reworking. The main legs are over-simplified and have the wrong geometry, but it's fixable. The overall shape is quite good and the detail on the main parts is nice. The PAN decals are a bit rubbish unfortunately. I've seen some nice builds from it though, so fingers crossed.

 

Justin

[Giorgio N]

As promised, here's a comparison of the Meng and Heller fuselages. Now the Meng fuselage is already assembled while the Revell part is still on the sprues, so it may not be easy to see what I mean but hopefully it will not be too hard either

 

 

 

 

Revell fuselage half top, Meng assembled fuselage bottom. Now the Revell part lacks the nose and the side armament panels, in any case I tried to align everything so that the line where the nose joins the fuselage is the same for both kits. From the picutre we can see:

- The hump behind the cockpit is quite a bit shorter on the Revell kit, making this less streamlined.

- The Meng kit is longer, with the length difference being mainly spread between the cockpit rear end and the tail.

- The lower fuselage line at the exhaust sweeps up much more on the Revell kit, leading to a lower diameter exhaust. The same happens in the width of the fuselage, although this is not visible here.

Speaking of fuselage width, I've been told that the sections on the Revell fuselage are not correct, I've not compared the width of these against the Meng kit but I have to say that all pictures I've seen of the completed Revell kit give me the idea of a "fatter" version of the aircraft. It may just be because it's lacking in length, I've also been told about problems in the wing, IIRC Revell gave this too much sweep, but I've not checked this yet against pictures.

 

Now to decide which kit is more correct, have a look at this picture of the real thing, taken almost perfectly from the side

http://www.vmas.it/VMAS_vecchio_sito/velivoli/G-91/MM6398 G-91R-1B NC202 2-44 TV 31-07-89.jpg

 

To me the Meng kit captures the lines of the fuselage much better. Of the various problems, the excessively short hump behind the canopy is maybe the most immediately visible.

 

One error that both kits seem to share is the shape of the taiplanes. have a look at the sprues for Revell:

http://www.internetmodeler.com/2002/july/first-looks/revell_g91-parts1-lg.jpg

And meng:

http://www.internetmodeler.com/scalemodels/flaviation/Meng-1-72-Fiat-G-91R-Gina-Light-Fighter-Bomber.php

 

Now compare with this picture of the real thing ( a PAN rather than an R but tailplanes are the same)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/G.91_in_volo.jpg/1280px-G.91_in_volo.jpg

 

The sweep angle at the leading edge looks excessive on both kits and is the same on the Esci kit and its reboxes and clones. The reason is likely that the prototype had smaller chord at the tip, as represented in the kits, and while this was changed none of the Fiat drawings included this modification

 

So where does this leave the modeller ? In 1/72 scale my view is that the Meng kit, while having some inaccurate detail and other small issues, is shapewise better than the Revell kit. It is also more sharply moulded, although panel lines are pretty shallow (Revell's on the other hand are quite heavy). The Meng kit is unfortunately not at the same quality level as the later F-102 and F-106 kits from the same company but it would still be my favourite starting point. It is considerably more expensive than the price Revell asked for their kit but at the same time the Meng kit is easily available while Revell has not reissued theirs for quite a while and they seem to go for relatively high prices on sites like Ebay.

In 1/48 there's only the Esci kit, today reboxed by Italeri, and the Occidental clone. They seem to share the same accuracy issues of the Revell kit, although completed models look IMHO better than the German 1/72 offering. I know modellers that have modified the Esci kit by adding 4 mm somewhere behind the canopy, lengthened the hump, widened the exhaust area and modified the tailplanes, that are not extremely difficult things to do but may not be things that everyone want to do.

The alternative in 1/48 would be to get the ADV Models G.91Y, that however is an Y so quite a different aircraft from the R. ADV made a fantastic kit but it's in resin and OOP, meaning it can be very expensive today.

Even harder to find may be the PD Models kit. This was a small Italian "cottage industry" company that made resin kits of a number of Italian jets, including a 1/48 G.91R and a T. Don't know what it was like accuracy-wise though.

There have been rumours of some Asian manufacturer working on a 1/48 G.91 but nothing seems to have materialised yet, so for now I guess that correcting or accepting the Esci kit flaws is the only option.

 

 

 

 

[tempestfan]

Your post has prompted me to look at the title pic on F40 #36, Giorgio. Revell it's not... The "shelf" for the tailplane actuators starts almost in line with the fin leading edge, which is quite wrong, very visible and will not be easy to correct. The hump behind the canopy is definitely short. A rather clear profile shot on p.17 of that publications suggest the fuselage in the tailpipe area may just be a tad too long in relation to the "wedge" which constitutes the extreme end of the fuselage, but the end of the fuselage in the tailpipe area is almost perpendicular to the ground, not that exaggerated curve as done by Revell.

[Giorgio N]

5 hours ago, tempestfan said:

Your post has prompted me to look at the title pic on F40 #36, Giorgio. Revell it's not... The "shelf" for the tailplane actuators starts almost in line with the fin leading edge, which is quite wrong, very visible and will not be easy to correct. The hump behind the canopy is definitely short. A rather clear profile shot on p.17 of that publications suggest the fuselage in the tailpipe area may just be a tad too long in relation to the "wedge" which constitutes the extreme end of the fuselage, but the end of the fuselage in the tailpipe area is almost perpendicular to the ground, not that exaggerated curve as done by Revell.

 

Well spotted, I had not noticed this before. I remember someone saying that the rear fuselage of the Revell kit was more like that of the T variant, and it may be right, as the T has a longer "shelf" for the actuators. I should check more stuff on that kit...

[72modeler]

Whaaaat? I found this photo of a preserved Fiat G.91PAN at Boeing Field in Seattle, of all places! Nice shot of the bang seat and canopy. Did you know about this one, and how it came to be in the U.S., @Giorgio N?

Mike

 

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Italy-Air-Force/Fiat-G-91PAN/6316615/L?qsp=eJwtjEEKwjAQRa8is5ZCEQS704UudeEFhsxHg9WEyUANpXd3Gtw93v%2B8mUL6GL52rxk0UAFreNKWMiu/Cw0zvVCnpOJM58i2uXSH3g8lqZ2qS2HDMQRkg/z9VQW6TiihtR7e7h2gt8a027uXWPLIrQHjONKy/ACf7i8e

[Giorgio N]

Mike, she's MM6244, an aircraft that was originally exhibited at Fiat's in Turin after retirement from the Air Force and was later given to the Intrepid Museum in New York. From these she moved after a little time to Seattle. The Intrepid have had for quite a while an MB.339 in PAN colours, this was officially donated by Italy while I don't know how and why the G.91 was sent there.