Hasegawa Morane Saolnier M.S.406

Here's a short report about the other kit in Hasegawa's 'Battle of France' combo-box - the Morane-Saolnier M.S.406. As can be seen in photos of the sprues, it's another very simple kit. And indeed, the first impression based on contents of the box, is correct - it is a very basic kit, but at the same time, the finished model is quite pleasant to the eye.

There isn't much to tell about the building process - everything fits together rather nicely. Extra attention needs however to be paid when gluing together the wing component - despite the presence of guiding plugs, it is possible to misalign upper and lower wing surfaces, so give them en extra check once they're put together. Another thing I rather liked in this kit was the way cockpit component is fastened in the fuselage. Usually one needs to glue the sides of cockpit to the sides of the fuselage. Here, Hasegawa chose to anchor the cockpit assembly from beneath, with help of four square anchor points. I was a bit worried about the 'flimsiness' of that arrangement, but it worked like a charm. Advantage of this approach is that fuselage halfs can be glued together without having to worry about the cockpit assembly also being fitted and aligned at the same time.

The model was painted Lifecolor paints, in almost in the same way as its sibling -  UA026 Light Compas Ghost Grey (FS36375), UA094 Medium Sea Grey (FS36270) and UA143 French Brown (FS30045). The green disruptive patches were painted with UA146 French Green (FS34128).