Italeri – 1460 – AMX Ghibli

Description:

Unassembled plastic model kit in 1/72 scale of an AMX International AMX, aground attack aircraft developed as join venture of the Italian brands Aeritalia, Aermacchi and the Brazilian Embraer, designed since late 70s but not introduced in service till 1989. Italian designation is A-11 Ghibli while the Brazilian designation is A-1. The original design and production model is a single seat attack aircraft, as the model depict, but other two seat trainer versions and reconnaissance variants were developed, and some of the aircrafts remains active yet.

New tooled kit in 2023, kit includes a small PE detail parts sheet, is divided in three frames one of them with the clear parts, mainly for canopy, which can be build opened. Kit includes different payload options as well as optional parts to build an early ACOL variant, providing different nose parts.

The kit is a very good exponent of the brand capabilities and can be considered a good set. The kit provides nice payload options including GBU-12 Paveway 500lb laser-guided bombs, Orpheus reconnaissance pod or a Litening III target designation pod and AIM-9L/M sidewinders plus fuel tanks. Everything is decently tooled and depicted though there are some confusion in between decals and parts, for example for the Litening III pod, named on decals as RecceLite, a reconnaissance pod not included in the kit, but also usable in the AMX Ghibli. With some scratch work, the Litening can be converted in a RecceLite (The RecceLite is a further develop of the Litening series and are quite similar externally).

Other nice features of the kit are the cockpit and seat details, nicely done, with instruments molded in the parts rather than just a decal sheet for a flat surface.

The kit includes a decal sheet with 4 markings, all for the Italian Air Force, strangely no Brazilian marking is included and this would be one of the flaws to mention in the package.

The model depict as injected plastic model kit the AMX Ghibli in 1/72 scale for first time in the hobby (except for a short run 90s kit by Aeroclub).