1/48 Hasegawa G4M2A Betty

Gallery Article by Andrew Marriott on July 6  2011 

 

I’m pleased to share another model from Guam.  Once again my focus has been aircraft that were based on the island, or fought in the area in the major land and carrier battles in the Marianas.  The Betty is the wonderful Hasegawa kit.  It has adequate internal detail (except seatbelts) and the overall construction is very easy.  My model was a little more difficult as it was sent half constructed from Washington DC to Guam, which created some broken off guns and antenna.  Aside from that the kit is highly recommended.

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Overall the construction involved two major steps.  The first was assembling in DC, and the second was trying to repair in Guam.  Once these two steps were done the painting followed my usual routine.  This is simply painting the base coat, followed by some light panel center lightening.  At this point gloss coat and decals are added.  The kit decals are a little thick, but went down fine with Solvaset.  Any color in the pictures except a green, or some shade thereof, is a decal.  I wanted to try all kit decals (especially the thick Hasegawa ones) and they turned out fine. 

For the final weathering steps I continued with my normal post fade techniques.  After the decals are on I shoot a flat coat with a touch of lighter color.  I then keep lightening the mix and working into the center of the panels.  At this point another gloss coat goes on and a panel line wash of black oils goes on.  This is finished off with a very thin mix of flat and a touch of white and the base color (this is pretty random).  My last step is post shade of red brown and black highly thinned.  Hope you all enjoy!

Andrew Marriott

Photos and text © by Andrew Marriott