6th. May 2022
This iconic Japanese fighter attracted me with its design and colour scheme, an interesting change from the camouflage of the British RAF planes I have modelled so far.
I hope to place a fairly detailed record of this one model of my efforts in a series of posts to show those interested more idea of what is involved. This will be mainly pictorial description.
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| Box art on most kits is exemplary contrasting with the stark reality of grey plastic sprues inside the box. |
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| There are other bits and pieces but the main construction comes from cutting these parts from the sprue, glueing them together and painting. Some parts have already been removed here. |
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| Modules are built as far as one can go before painting. There are about half a dozen parts here forming the cockpit floor. The whole cockpit interior is built up as a free standing unit. |
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| The visible part of the interior fuselage painted on each half and detailed equipment added snd painted. |
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| Pilot's seat. There are six separate pieces here |
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| All the parts to complete the cockpit have been painted using my air brush. Details are then picked out by hand-painting over the base colour. The parts are held down on Blue Tack to stop them being blasted into oblivion by the sir brush. |
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| The completed cockpit module and below with the machine guns added. The bare grey plastic will not be seen inside the fuselage. Also not much of this detail will be visible although I do intend to model with the canopy open so that one will be able to see some of the detail. I made the seat belts from 1mm. masking tape thus voiding the tedious use of photoetch parts included in the kit (photoetch is a subject all on its own and too involved to explain here, for the moment.) |
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| Seeing this enlarged photo I realised the ends of the gun barrels needed trimming - 'tis now done. |
To be continued.
I look forward to following the build Conrad. My most recent models were the Apollo 11 Command and Service Module and the Lunar Module - I'll put them on the blog today. I have about 6 kits waiting for my attention, all spacecraft-related.
ReplyDeleteafoot - Hi Gibson. Do you use an air brush or hand paint?
ReplyDeleteHand paint. An air brush is better of course, particularly with larger models, but the results I get by hand are quite acceptable most of the time. I imagine 'weathering' would be difficult using a hand brush although there are ways to do it.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall the Zero (or maybe its sibling, the Minus One) was developed from a sporting - possibly training - plane of the time. And that it lacked any kind of protection against pilot-perforation by machine-gun bullets. Not surprising, it was quite speedy.
ReplyDeleteRR - I see your recent exploration of mathematics is paying off.
ReplyDeleteThere is a detailed history of the development with the kit but no mention of your recollection of it being designed for anything other than a speedy fighting plane with aircraft carrier capability.
That comment by RR raises the 'interesting' question - were any fighter planes provide with bullet proofing of the pilots areas ? - to be effective, it must have been heavy and thus degraded life and combat vital speed and manoeuvrability. Not that the answer is going to change life today that much, but might be a further revelation of the courage and daring of the pilots of whatever 'side'.
ReplyDeleteI dunno know where I got the info about a modified sports plane, other than it sticks in my mind. However it seems the plane did have one major disadvantage, as this quote suggests: "performance had been achieved by the light construction of the aircraft, and this was the undoing of the type when more powerful allied fighters appeared."
ReplyDelete