Planet Models’ 1/72 SIAI S.211

By Scott Van Aken

History

The SIAI S.211 is a trainer or light attack aircraft developed in Italy about 20 years ago. Despite it being a very nice aircraft, sales have been quite disappointing with fewer than 70 airframes being produced. In fact, only four air arms have ever flown the aircraft: the Philippine, Singapore, Brunei, and Haitian Air Forces. It was not chosen by the Italian Air Force. Both the Philippine and Singapore AF constructed their aircraft from kits supplied by the factory. The Haitian Air Force was unable to maintain their four examples and sold them off to private owners. When the JPATS trainer program was underway in the US, the S.211 was one of the aircraft under consideration, being promoted by Grumman.

The Kit (Click on thumbnails for full-size image)

Planet Models has been well known for producing interesting and unusual subjects. This kit of the SIAI S.211 is no exception. Molded in the now common light tan resin, this kit has superb detail in the form of lightly engraved panel lines. There is minimal flash on the large parts and almost none of the air bubbles that are a bane to those building resin kits.

The kit’s packaging is superb. Not only are the major bits segregated from each other to cut down on damage, but also the entire ensemble is double bagged. There are 40 resin and one vacuformed part in the kit. 32 of the resin parts are contained within three wafers of resin, but cleanup should be quite easy. The decal sheet is by Propagteam; renowned for their superb detail and fidelity of color. They are also known for being a real bear to put on because of their extreme thinness and their proclivity to stick like limpets where they are first put down. As an aside to the color instructions given by Planet Models, the S.211 in the non-camouflage scheme as delivered to the PAF were in overall aluminum paint with International Orange nose, outer wing and tail.

The instruction sheet is a folded 8 1/2 by 12-inch sheet, with an exploded view of the kit on one side and decal and painting instructions for the exterior of the aircraft on the other. There is also a very brief history of the aircraft. Missing is any kind of interior color information.

Four things were noticed about this kit that you need to be aware of. First of all, some of the large pieces have some sort of metallic looking foreign material embedded in them. Secondly, there is only one vacuform canopy (this is a problem for me as I'm not good at working with them!). Next, I noticed a lack of places to put in nose weight. This aircraft has most of its weight aft of the main gear so it may be impossible to prevent it from tail sitting. Finally the landing gear is admirably thin, but they are resin. Having built several kits with resin landing gear, I can tell you that in a year or so, the resin will start to deform under the weight of the aircraft. These may be better replaced by wire or styrene plastic rod at a later date.

Aside from these initial concerns, it appears to be a superbly designed kit of this rather rare modern aircraft. I look forward to actually building it and seeing how it turns out!

Review sample courtesy of Planet Models and Dan Johnson.