Choroszy Modellbud 1/72 Breda 39S
Catalog No. A112
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Introduction
The Internet is a weird, wonderful thing. Consider my recent vacation;
my wife and I had made plans to go to Cyprus with some friends but these
fell through very late in the game, having already set aside the time
and money for this trip we cast around for other destinations. Since this
was our ten year anniversary we wanted to go somewhere extravigant and
I sent an email to a friend in Portugal. Now in this modern age a friend
can be someone you have never formally met, but can be someone who shares
an interest that you may have been corresponding with for a long period
of time. This was the case here, never having met Carlos, I considered
him a friend after several years of correspondance and hundreds of emails.
Plans were made and my wife and I had a wonderful time with Carlos and
his family and on our own in Portugal and a small bit of Spain. Still
a modeler at heart, I could not help but keep an eye open for hobby shops
and bookstores while on vacation, secretly hoping to find the motherload
of unobtainable European kits and reference material, but I only found
a lot to eat and drink and see, so I ate, drank and saw.
Now no matter what, friendships are the same the world over; on the
eve of our departure we returned to Lisbon but I could not help feeling
a bit disappointed that I was coming back virtually empty handed when
Carlos mentions that we could go to a shop nearby. Excited, we pile into
his car, follow some sketchy directions, call Pedro Soares (of IM fame)
when we got lost and eventually found the place. Once inside I knew that
I would not be returning empty handed. After a lot of browsing we made
our purchases and headed back to Pedro’s house for a nice dinner,
white port (yum!), wine and conversation. Again, the power of the internet;
three modelers who had, up to this point only corresponded, stayed up
until 3AM talking about models and aircraft, spreading Carlos’ newly
obtained Fairey III plans out on the grass, digging through Pedro’s
model stash, looking at the projects on his desk and his completed models
until we finally had to, reluctantly, go to bed.
Up early the next morning to catch our flight home, I couldn’t
help but think that I’d come home with something much better than
models… but I did buy some models:
I love racers and competition aircraft from the 20’s and 30’s,
especially European aircraft and had seen this Breda kit at the Nationals
in Atlanta; standing there talking to fellow modelers Buz Pezold and Michael
Kendix, Buz picks this kit up and says “This one’s got your
name all over it Tracy.” He was right.
Choroszy box their models in sturdy top opening boxes with a nice color
profile and this one is no different. The sleek mid-green racer on the
boxtop had me from the moment I saw it, the spatted wheels only sweetened
the deal.
History
The Breda 39 was a development of the very similar Breda 33, the former
competing in the 1934 Challenge International competition, the latter
in the 1932 competition. I have very little reference material on either
of these, so will rely on the kit instructions for some background on
the Breda 39S.
The first flight of the Breda 39 took place in September of 1932 and
a total of sixty machines were built for the Italian army, twenty as civil
machines, and another twenty for Colonial aviation. There were also three
seat versions built.
Powered by a Colombo six cylinder, water-cooled inverted inline engine
driving a two bladed wooden propeller, the monoplane was of mixed construction
and fabric covered.
The Kit:
 In
addition to the two folded A4 sheets making up the history/instructions/plans/markings
you get four bags of parts cast in cream resin and a very nice decal sheet
with markings for two aircraft; I-LUDO which competed in the 1934 Challenge
International and I-TODE, which I know nothing about but which does have
the fascist markings as well. These markings are, unfortunately not addressed
at all in the instructions, but are very colorful, containing a lovely
red flash for the fuselage.
Mercifully, two vacuformed canopies are included as well.
Choroszy’s casting is top notch but all of the parts will still
require some clean up, so set aside one evening for that. As with many
resin kits, the smaller bits and struts are well done, but it may be easier
to use them as patterns for scratchbuilt replacements than to try to separate
them and clean them up. I am happy to report that the wings have locating
pins and that the wheel wells are hollow. It may be a bit more trouble,
but I do not like spatted landing gear and wheels cast as one piece.
 The
cockpit has some nice sidewall detail but some seatbelts and bits from
the spares box are needed, as the canopy is rather large. One unusual
thing is the series of thin ovals that fit over the seats in the completed
fuselage; I can see these in some of the few photos that I have of this
plane, but am not sure what they are for, perhaps to add some rigidity
to the large cockpit opening? The examples in the kit are not uniform,
but perhaps these taper with the fuselage shape? Be prepared to replace
these if not, but this is a simple task.
Some of the small bits have pinholes in the casting but overall the
casting and surface quality is very nice.
Conclusion:
A box shaker? Probably not, but with a little time and care this should
not be a hard kit to build. Thankfully the kit is nicely detailed as reference
material is hard to come by and, in the case of my references, usually
in another language.
I wish Choroszy would come out with more of these competition aircraft,
they have released the DeHavilland DH 53 Hummingbird and Avro 509 in military
markings, but these aircraft also competed in the Lympne Light Airplane
Trials and would seem to be easy conversions. Stay tuned for reviews of
these in a future issue of Internet Modeler.
I bought my kit in Portugal, but Choroszy resin kits are available from
Joe Francesco at Joe’s
Models
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