Plans to upgrade the Royal New Zealand Air Force's small fleet of McDonnell Douglas A-4K and TA-4K Skyhawks in the mid-1980s under Project Kahu were postponed by an economic recession. Once the economy had recovered, the RNZAF in the late 1980s took another look at its requirements and decided instead to replace rather than upgrade its Skyhawks. The subsequent competition led to selection of the AMX-K and two-seat AMX-TK offered by AMX International, a joint venture between Italy's Aermacchi and Brazil's Embraer, The aircraft were fitted with Fiar Grifo multimode radars and armed with, among other weapons, Kongsberg Penguin anti-ship missiles.



This is Italeri's new 1/72 AMX Ghibli. It is a nice kit, lots of parts, lovely detail and a great fit (only filler used was where I messed up). I have always wanted to model the AMX (and have made HobbyBoss' 1/48 kit) but until now there has never been a 1/72 kit of this little cutie. Weird that Italeri would finally release a kit just as the AMX (as the A-11 Ghibli) was retired from Italian Air Force service. It is still flying with the Brazilian Air Force as the modernised A-1M. But the AMX never had any export success, which is a shame as it was a true "little Tornado" and very capable.


She is tiny and quite, quite lovely. Sorry about the picture quality, A grey day here.


Model is largely OOB, painted in the three-colour European 1 scheme initially carried by the RNZAF's Project Kahu Skyhawks (later they had an all-over green scheme with low-vis markings, but I prefer this scheme). Decals are from the kit for the stencils, Ventura Decals sheet V7281 for the tiny national markings and home-printed for the even smaller codes and squadron markings. The Penguins are MPH Hobbies 3D-printed resin (these are meant for helicopters like the New Zealand Defence Force's Kaman SH-2G Seasprites and have folded fins, so had to be modified).

Very nice indeed

    

This looks great! NZ would have been a natural for this aircraft. I did a Fujimi Skyhawk in this scheme quite a while ago. Now I have to get an Italeri kit of the AMX and try it out.

That DOES look good, specially as a 2 seater.   

Very nice, a very convincing choice of finish 👍

Nice, and looks very natural/plausible. 

Quote from: PR19_Kit on May 14, 2024, 10:47:00 PMThat DOES look good, specially as a 2 seater.   

That's the Single seater Kit. Although I agree, it does look nice. Gives me an idea to do one of my BAe Hawks in a similar scheme.

Gondor

Thanks folks. I love the AMX. I have the 1/72 Italeri two-seater and plans for it (in an even more difficult colour scheme).

That does look good   

Quote from: Gondor on May 15, 2024, 04:53:13 AMThat's the Single seater Kit. Although I agree, it does look nice. Gives me an idea to do one of my BAe Hawks in a similar scheme.

Oh sorry, it's that big hump of a canopy that made me think it was 2 seater.

Quote from: PR19_Kit on May 15, 2024, 11:48:03 AM

Quote from: Gondor on May 15, 2024, 04:53:13 AMThat's the Single seater Kit. Although I agree, it does look nice. Gives me an idea to do one of my BAe Hawks in a similar scheme.

Oh sorry, it's that big hump of a canopy that made me think it was 2 seater.

Easy mistake to make Kit, the single seat Hawk has a BIG canopy as well which gives a simmilar look to the AMX.

Gondor

 

Very very nice 👌 👍
Would be cool if we had the AMX cause we've got zero pure combat aircraft in our so called air force .

Nice.