Hello!
This is my
latest build. It is a classic Hasegawa kit, which is still the best
choice in this scale. Unfortunately, like all Hasegawa kits from this
series, it suffers from a bare cockpit and mediocre engine detail.
Also, the canopy is only in one piece. These Hasegawa kits are still
unjustly holding a rather high price, although they are getting
really eclipsed by newer and cheaper kits from Academy and other
manufacturers. I bought this kit from a dealer on a local German airshow
for 10 euros. It was made in 1992(!) but everything was as it should be
and the decals didn't get yellow.
I built it
mainly OOB. The engine received some wiring detail from stretched sprue
and the pilot's seat got some lightening holes in the back + seatbelts
from Scotch tape. The fit wasn't perfect and I managed to screw several
things - I almost trashed it at 2 occasions but common sense prevailed:-)
Click on
images below to see larger images
I
decided to paint it as a personal airplane of Japan's greatest ace
Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, who flew this particular airplane from Rabaul in May
1943. Airplanes from his unit were originally painted in ordinary light
grey (like all Japanese naval fighters) but ground crews in Rabaul
modified this camo by hastily applying green squiggles over the upper
surfaces. All later Navy airplanes were properly painted
green in factories and received yellow wing recognition stripes, similar
to those on RAF fighters.
In order to
simulate the hastily applied original camo pattern in 1:72, I had to use
my finest paintbrush and thinned Model Master European green enamel paint.
There was no way I could use an airbrush on such a small scale
and be faithful to the original. Basically I painted it in Japanese
alphabet-repeatedly ;-) Canopy was also hand painted with the
same paintbrush.
First reactions from
my local modelling crowd were rather puzzled until they saw the photo of
the original airplane. Then they were all smiles :-) I hope you'll like it too!
Josip
Click on
images below to see larger images
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