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With some superb releases from the Revell stable over the past few years, the arrival of the Fiat G.91 has been eagerly awaited, anticipation being heightened by the postponement of it’s release. Indeed, the copyright engraving inside the fuselage carries the date "1999". When I saw the kit in my local model store, I was somewhat surprised at the relatively small amount of plastic in the large box, especially in view of the hefty GBP 8.95 price tag. This air of bemusement was not diminished when I conducted my initial inspection of the kit. It seems as though it has been released in some haste and that it should have had more work on the moulds…

Construction follows the usual sequence, starting with the interior details. First sub-assembly is the ejector seat, in three parts and fairly well detailed. I added some etched brass seat belts and a "pull handle", made in my preferred method with two plaited strands of pre-painted yellow and black electrical wire. The seat fits into a cockpit tub, which has moulded in rudder pedals and console detail. The underside of the cockpit tub also forms the interior of the engine intake. Next, the nose wheel well, main wheel well and air brake interior and the instrument panel are added, along with the jet pipe. All these have reasonable detail, as does the instrument panel. All the interior areas were painted Dark Compass Grey, with the instrument panel in Anthracite, drybrushed in pale grey to accentuate the instruments. I painted the jet pipe with Humbrol Metalcote Polished Steel, which buffs to a nice dull steel colour. On the instruction sheet, Stage 5 recommends the fitting of the cannon barrels to the gun bay panels. If you are going to build the "Sharkmouth"-decalled version, leave them off until the end – or you’ll have a hard time with the decals!

Before cementing the fuselage halves together, I added some lead shot, not into the area above the nosewheel as shown on the instructions (where it would be visible through the engine intake), but behind the cockpit interior, forward of the centre of gravity. This is a point worth remembering for any aircraft with a tricycle undercarriage, that you can add weight anywhere forward of the main wheels – including engine nacelles on prop jobs!

One note of caution here, on my example, the main wheel well/air brake well (part # 9) required some careful trimming to ensure a snug fit.

Next stage is to add the gun bay panels and the photo recce nose cone. The gun bay panels have detailed interiors, as do the gun bays themselves – but, there are no gun/cannon breeches, which adds to the impression that this kit was rushed through the final stages to get it onto the shelves. The fit of these parts is very poor and on my next example (yes, I’ll buy another one or two… when the price drops!) I’ll add some thin .05 thou plastic card around the edges. The nose itself has three poorly-defined camera ports, which I drilled out and squared off, once I’d worked out their layout. Note that the two oblique ports are asymmetric. The apertures were filled with Humbrol Clearfix after painting and varnishing were completed. The nose cone for the earlier versions of the "Gina" is also included in the kit, as are the underwing tanks used by the Frecce Tricolore PAN aircraft, leading me to believe that we should see an Italian Air Force version of this model, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

Stages 8, 9 and 10 are concerned with the assembly of the wings and ailerons. When fitting the wings in Stage 10, care must be taken with the alignment of the wheel wells, as the tabs on the wings have a fair amount of free play in their corresponding fuselage slots!

Assembly of the undercarriage and underwing stores and wing fences follows next. The instruction sheet recommends that the undercarriage is allowed to dry for at least 5 hours before standing the aircraft upright. Not so if you use CA adhesive! Each of the undercarriage bay doors and the airbrakes are all moulded as complete items and each has to be carefully split into their separate components before assembly. This makes life easier for those who like to display their models "in flight". The canopy is moulded in two parts, allowing it to be posed "open" and there appears to be a space in the clear sprue for the lower-profile canopy used on the earlier versions of this aircraft. I may yet be able to make a model of one of the trials aircraft tested by the US Army!

To paint the model, I used Xtracolor RAL colours Basaltgrau and Gelboliv on the upper surfaces with Silbergrau on the undersurfaces. The model was brush-painted, except for the Revell Day-Glo Orange on the drop tanks, which was airbrushed on over a white base coat.

The instructions suggest Revell paints and give mixes to get the correct colours, but the camouflage scheme diagrams also list the RAL paint numbers. I wish that more manufacturers would follow this example.

Finally, the decal sheet. This looked excellent at first glance and I must admit that the decals printed for Revell in Italy are usually much better than some of their stuff from the 1990’s! However, when I came to apply the decals, it soon became apparent that the register was very bad and that there was a lot of white undercoat showing around the markings, especially noticeable on the red warning stripes around the fuselage and on the wing roots. I solved this by carefully applied paint and even more careful use of a new blade in my scalpel to trim away the excess! I chose to depict the "Sharkmouth" version flown by Le.KG 41 in 1979. The "Sharkmouth" decals each had to be cut into three parts to allow me to bed them down over the cannon blisters, and I had to apply small areas of red paint to fill in some gaps. I also had to add some "missing" teeth at the front of the decal and inside the engine intake, for which there is an ill-fitting decal without a red background! Dentistry and modelling combined!!

There were numerous stencils to apply and most went on well, but I’m sad to say that there was some silvering, despite the decals being applied onto a very glossy surface and the use of Super Set and Super Sol. Generally though, the decals set nicely and bedded down into the panel detail very well.

Was it worth waiting for? Well, I enjoyed building it, especially as I’d committed myself to writing this, my first review! However, I do have some criticisms. Firstly, the cost – very expensive for what’s in the box, especially when you can get a superb Tornado or F-4 for the same price. Secondly, there are too many indications that production was rushed, including areas of superfluous detail in the gun bays and the totally wacky "How to make pitot tubes" instructions. Final criticism, please Revell, sort out your decal sheets! They are the only thing that consistently let down your superb recent kits!

And one for the aviation buffs…

…an "air to air" of a "Gina" of Le.KG 41