Bonjour,
I mentioned it in my short
presentation on the "Hasegawa 1/32 Mitsubishi Raiden J2M-3" posted in ARC a few weeks ago, I am currently
finishing on completing at the same scale the "Mitsubishi Japanese Navy WWII Airplanes" at this scale.
My "Tamiya A6M-5 Zero" is nearly finished (still a bit of weathering to do) and I have already completed building the "Special Hobby A5M" that I
am presenting in this article.
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Of course, despite some very nice engraved details, it is surely not
playing in the same "Tamigawa" category for getting a correct and well
aligned parts assembling. From there, main problem has been to get a correct continuity between
the fuselage and the wings for both the upper and lower levels where I had to use heavy quantities of putty, followed by a re-engraving of
panel lines lost in the filling and erasing processes. Second issue was to obtain a correct dihedron: I had to cut at the
fuselage junction of both extrados about 2 mm of plastic in order to prevent the wings to get a
"Stuka shape".
Otherwise, nothing really specific: adding plugs cables on the engine, thinning the trailing edges, cutting away the elevator control surfaces
to stick them in a more dynamic position than a "basic neutral one"...
As for the deco and markings, I wanted to do something more original than the usual overall grey with black cowling and red tail for the
squadrons operating in China in the late 30's. I did a bit of web research to eventually find a nice
camo, using some unusual colors such as a bright green and a sandy brown.
I could not resist going for it and here is the result.
Final touch: I also could not resist to add a small
Japanese rising sun flag attached to the antenna mast as I saw this particular plane carried
"this tiny patriotic touch" for some time (I think it was used to designate the leading squadron plane).
I used a very thin lead sheet that I shaped to get a flag "floating in
the wind" and that I delicately painted with the red "radiating hinomaru".
To finish, a bit of aging and weathering and here is the first Mitsubishi IJN fighter of WWII ready to fly!
Hope you'll enjoy...
Olivier Barles
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