Special Hobby 1/72 Fouga CM-170 Magister build report

I finished my Special Hobby 1/72 Fouga CM-170 Magister build, all in all it was a lot of fun building this little trainer aircraft. The Fouga CM-170 Magister was developed in the late 1940’s as a jet trainer aircraft by the French Company “Établissements Fouga & Cie“. Besides the french airforce, there where a lot of foreign users of this plane. The model i build is an aircraft used by the German navy (Marineflieger).

The Special Hobby kit is a nice little kit with a lot of detail out of the box. This boxing contains some intresting decal options for Austrian airforce, Finish airforce and German navy.

The cockpit

I started with the cockpit, first i cut all the parts from the sprue. i cleaned up the parts with a hobbyknife and some sandpaper. The overal quality of the kit is pretty good, so there was only a little bit of cleanup needed. There are no seatbelts for the kit supplied seats so i had to scratch build them myself. I used some small strips of masking tape for this. After finishing the clean up of the cockpit parts i continued with the fuselage halves. In short, they where cut from the sprue and cleaned with a hobby knife and sandpaper. As mentioned before the kit quality is pretty good but i did have to fill some small ejectorpin marks.

Painting the cockpit

When i finished the clean up of all the cockpit and fuselage parts i gave them a black primer coat with my airbrush. For this i used Ultimate Modeling Products black primer. In my opinion the UMP primer works verry well, it flows out nice and smooth and gives a verry good base for further painting.

As the main interior color of the cockpit is black, i kept the UMP black primer color for this. I wanted to add some more visual intrest to the cockpit so i drybrush the cockpit parts with some light grey paint to pick out the details. Special Hobby supplied some great looking instrument decals. So i decided to use these decals instead of painting all the individual instruments, the finished instrument panel looks verry nice with the decals and raised detail.

In this case all the other small parts and details where painted with a brush, according the instructions and reference photo’s. I applied a darkbrown wash to the seats and sealed everything by airbrushing a flatcoat. Before i could install the cockpit into the fuselage i needed to paint the air intakes and exhausts. The air intakes where airbrushed in an Aluminum color and the exhausts where sprayed in a “Burnt iron” color.

Fuselage assembly

Now that all the cockpit and interior parts where completed i could start with the assembly of the fuselage. First i glued the cockpit into the forward part of the fuselage. When the glue cured for some time i closed up the entire fuselage. Since the overal fit was pretty good only some small seamlines needed to be taken care of. I filled the seamlines using some “sprue goo”, this is a mixture of Tamiya extra thin cement with some disolved left over sprue. You can brush this over the seamlines and it cures into hard plastic wich you can easily sand and rescribe.

After letting the “sprue goo” cure overnight i sanded all the seams nice and smooth. followed by restoring the lost detail. I started by rescribing all the lost panel lines, when this was finished i had to restore the lost hatches and bumps on the fuselage. These where restored by glueing some small styreen plates on top of the fuselage and sanding them to shape.

Because i didnt want the kit to become a tailsitter i added some fishing weights to the nose. I fixed these with some white glue. When the glue was dry i attached the nosecone and tail part to the fuselage. Next up was the installation of the small antennas and such. Followed by the installation of the tail wings.

Wing assembly and painting preperations

Now that the fuselage of my Special Hobby 1/72 Fouga CM-170 Magister assembly was completed my attention shifted to the wings. I started by cutting all the wing and wheelbay parts from the sprues. Then i glued the wheelbays and airbrake parts into place. the wheelbay interiors where airbrushed with a coat of Mr Hobby H34 Pale Yellow as the instructions mentioned this. Next up was glueing the wing halves together and attaching them to the fuselage. The wings went togheter perfectly only a little bit of sanding was needed to smooth the leading edges. Finally i glued the wings to the fuselage, the fit here was great aswell and i didnt need any filler. Finally i glued the cockpit parts to the fuselage.

Painting preperations

The next step was to mask off the canopy’s. In this case i used some Tamiya tape and maskol. Now everything was ready for a primer coat, i used a UMP black primer for this. For the most part everything looked verry nice altought there where some small seams left in the fuselage, i took care of those and applied a second primer coat and she was ready for painting.

Painting

I started the painting process of my Special Hobby 1/72 Fouga CM-170 Magister by airbrushing a white basecoat on the fuel tanks and horizontal stabilizers, I used Hataka A101 for this. Next up was painting the underside. This was painted in Mr Hobby H315 Gray, the color was build up in thin layers. Followed by adding some shadows and highlight. This was done by adding some other colors to the basecolor. For the shadows i added some dark grey to the base color and for the highlights i added some white. To prevent any overspray from the Dayglow color i masked off the entire underside. Then i airbrushed the fuel tanks and horizontal stabilizers Dayglow, for this i used Hataka A194 “Luminous Orange”

Camouflage time.

Once i masked the Dayglow color and the underside, i could start with the painting of the topside camouflage. I started by airbrushing Mr Hobby Aqueous H340 “Field Green” as the first camoflage color. Then i added some highlights and shadows by adding some Yellow and Darker green color to the basecoat. When the green color was dry i masked it off following the painting scheme in the instructions. I then sprayed the second color Mr Hobby Aqueous H301 “gray” as noted in the instructions. In the same way as with the green i added some highlights and shadows by adding some lighter and darker colors to the basecoat.

Now that the painting of main colors was finished i removed the masking tape. I then started masking all the small parts like the air intakes, exhaust nozzles, tail and antenna’s. Finally all the small parts where airbrushed or painted by hand with a brush. Now that i had painted all the small detail i removed the masking tape

Decalling

Now that i finished all the paintwork it was time to start preparations for decalling. Therefore i airbrushed a glosscoat, for this i used Mr. Color GX 100 thinned with Mr. Color Thinner. I let the glosscoat dry overnight and then started with decalling. Applying the decals was pretty straight forward, with the use of some Microscale Set and Sol they settled perfectly into the recessed detail.

the last steps

Before i could finish the kit there where some last things to do, i started with painting all the small bits like the landinggear, geardoors ,wheels and the nose and tiptank lights. I painted the inside of the tiptank lights in a translucent blue en red so when they where glued over the silver of the tiptank lights you would get the impression of a colored light. When all the paint was dry i gave everything another glosscoat of Mr. Color GX100 in prepration for weathering.

Finally i added some panelline washes, for the geardoors, wheels and landing gear i applied a “Dark brown” Tamiya panelline wash. On the underside i applied a Ammo Mig Dark Gray panelline wash and on the topside i applied a Tamiya black panelline wash. All the washes where cleaned up with some oderless thinner, cotton buds and a small brush.

The final result

I like how this build turned out. The Special Hobby 1/72 Fouga CM-170 Magister is a great little kit and a joy to build. Overall the fit was pretty good, there where some small seams to fill but nothing that cant be overcome. There are some other boxings of this kit with verry intresting decal schemes so maybe i build an other one in the future. So here are the pics of the end result.