Barely fitting before July’s closing, I finally accomplished a lifelong dream – attaining my Private Pilot Certificate. And as a great bonus, my parents were visiting from Houston couple weeks later and I got to take them for a ride, after all they have been listening to me spout on about airplanes and becoming a pilot for more than 30 years. My model represents one of the Cessna 172s at the flying school.
The day after getting my license I was inspired, and somewhat driven to jump on e-bay and pick up Cessna 172 model kit, which turned out to be Arii’s 1/72 offering. The only reasonably priced kit was the sea plane version but, after scouring the web for reviews I knew the kit came with standard landing gear.
Unless you absolutely must have a 1/72 scale Cessna, do not bother with this kit. The most frustrating parts were the transparencies, they are very thick with part of the tree bulging into and thickening rear and front windows. The rear window required a lot of scalping and sanding to fit; the side windows did not fit well either. For one side I split the fore and aft and that still did not help. I mop and glowed and blue-tinted them but, through all the rough handling I managed to really bugger them up during construction; they look foggy. Even if they remained clear it takes some serious peering and neck bending to actually see into the interior, as the windows are under the wings and the curvature of the front windshield distorts any views through.
The tail on my model was horribly warped, I heated, bent and cooled repeatedly but, there is still a bend in the tail. The bottom of the fuselage had huge holes, one approximately center allowing to mount the kit on a stand. A second at the rear is due to a fin that belongs on the sea plane version. The landing gear is aggravatingly fidly, I am waiting for the kit to collapse on itself at any time. There is not any real positive mating surface for the main gear, or the panted wheels. Additionally, instead of being straight the landing gear legs have a rounded downward bend to them. Neither of the wing struts actually reached from wing to fuselage, with one being almost 1/8” short. The nose air inlet also needs some filling as it had a massive gap below the prop giving a “smiling” appearance. The air inlets are not evenly shaped because the prop is displaced to one side.
The markings are thanks to Airliners.net, Photoshop and Testors decal paper. I found a similarly marked Cessna 172 in a great profile pic on Airliners.net. Once in Photoshop I traced the markings and saved it as a simple .jpeg. I then sized it in MS Word and printed it onto Testors decal paper. I am surprised there are not any after-market markings for these birds, especially since there are several “standard” factory finishes.
I applied the decals, applied black wash to differentiate control surfaces and doors then medium gray into the remaining panel lines. Foresight to glue fishing lead into the nose keeps my little Cessna on its nose-gear.
The pics are from various angles while it sitting on the hobby desk, helping show just how tiny this kit is for being a 1/72 four-seater. The final pic is the Cessna nestled between a 1/72 Buchon and 1/72 Sea Fury for a better size comparison.
