[Paper Kosmonaut]

So of course most Macchi-C.200 Saettas have not survived their time of service and what is left of them is found in just a couple of museums. However, the Saetta was a pretty plane in its own right. Not your average sleek P-51 silvery goodness or bold as a P-47 jug coming at you, but pretty as... perhaps like a sea horse is pretty? The engine cowling with all those ribs over it, the bulged nose, I have to say it looks powerful. It might have been a joy to fly those things just for fun.

So, what would have happened if some of those Saettas escaped the scrapping machines, the crashes and the eventual museums and kept on flying in the hands of folks (with a lot of cash obviously) that actually kept the planes flying while giving them a lot of TLC.
Perhaps they could have looked like this.

I used the late Fabrizio Prudenziati's great model of the C.200 and recoloured it in two versions. One with a nice blue ribbon over the surfaces and one in a kind of Mediterranean sea green with a sea horse theme. The recolouring meant I had to redraw all the lines since Zio's way of colouring his planes appears to be non-digital. Lots of work but now I have a template I can use to give the planes every livery I would like.

I absolutely love Zio's aircraft models, by the way. They are a huge joy to build as a little quick result during small breaks while making larger and more time consuming projects.
The blue ribbon version was made by Zio's instruction drawing. I had some difficulties with attaching the readied wing to the fuselage. I decided to do a second one in a different way.

I made the sea horse one for my girlfriend who isn't an aviation fan at all but who does love these kinds of colours and also happens to like sea horses a lot.
The wings were done differently here: I first did the upper part of the wings first and attached them to the fuselage. it made for some very nice and tight fits with the curved chines. The central section was glued in between the two fuselage halves instead of between the wing tops. The lower part of the wings then was put together and glued to the upper wing section. This gave the plane a good shape and somehow it had a better fit than the official method.
In the end my GF liked my little plane enough to put it on a side table in her house. (-: