1/48 Arii (Otaki) Ki-43 Hayabusa (Finished!!)

Outstanding work there Chad. The pit looks very convincing.

Fantastic looking innards. I'm just going to leave mine in the box until everyone forgets about this build

Thanks guys, Glad it looks the part!

fubar57
Awe, c'mon George, you do nice work. I would love to see you resume your build. The SBS cockpit you have is more accurate for a type 2 cockpit than what Hasegawa provides anyways, as my research indicates that their cockpit is that of a type 1 except for the instrument panel.

Chad

Hi all! Been plugging away at this and I have a good bit of progress to show, so I think I will break this up into a few different posts. I have been back and forth between different areas, not really any one section at once. Through pictures and editing though, I will try to make it more logical and streamlined to make it easier to follow along. Here we go!

First area of improvement is the cowlings and the cowl flaps.


This is the part representing the cowl flaps from the kit. It mounts to the front of the fuselage and also serves as the "firewall" that the kit engine mounts to via the center hole. I thought these were overly thick and too static looking for my taste.


I placed Tamiya masking tape on the flaps to make a template for making the replacement flaps. I didn't take a picture of it, but I removed the tape template and laid it onto soda can aluminum and proceeded to cut out thinner individual flaps. I numbered them to keep things orderly so as to know which piece would go where later.


Next I thinned the inside of the cowlings with an electric grinder and various bits to a more scale thickness. I was careful to avoid the protruding parts of the cowl as those will be needed for a proper fit to the fuselage later. For mounting the new cowl flaps I used TET to attach a plastic strip to each side, leaving a lip where the flaps will attach to.


I CA glued pieces of plasticard to each flap with a hole drilled in each one to better match my references. I then used more CA to attach the flaps to the cowlings.


The final step of detailing the cowl flaps was to add the actuator arms and the ring they attach to from aluminum wire. This is pretty simplified compared to reference pictures. I went for a compromise between detail and simplicity for my own sanity, the effect I desire to achieve is adding a bit of visual interest to what would otherwise be an empty space with the flaps being opened up now. Hopefully it will be convincing enough. Notice at the bottom of the picture some of the actuating rods are absent due to them and some of the flaps being knocked off during handling. I will replace these just before painting and final attachment so as to tempt fate as little as possible. In a word, fragile.


View of the flaps from the outside. Not too bad I guess. First time ever doing this cowl flap business by the way.


After I was sure the flaps looked satisfactory, I removed the kit ones. This "firewall" will still serve as the mounting point for the engine but now will also become the exhaust collector ring. We will revisit this part later on and it should be clear what exactly I mean then.


Lastly I modified the front of the cowl. Now, I did not take measurements to justify this (shame on me ) but to my eye the opening looked a little too big. I glued a thin styrene strip around the entire inner lip to ever so slightly narrow the opening. I then faired this in with milliput followed by light sanding. Though not visible at this angle, I also opened up the air intake at the top of the cowlings. I smoothed the inside with more milliput. In opening up the intake I managed to gouge the dividing strake. That will have to be fixed with more putty. Will also have to hit this area with primer to make sure everything is indeed well blended.

That's it for now. I have more progress and pictures to show so will be updating again soon. Hope you like it so far. I'm all ears be it good bad or ugly.

Chad

Nice work.

Nicely modified Chad

Like what you're doing there Chad.

Thanks all!

Next update as promised.

Started work on the engine.

On the left is the front cylinder bank seen here from the rear. It has pipes molded to the back of each cylinder head which I found interferes with the two cylinder banks fitting together properly. These are inaccurate as presented anyway so I don't feel bad getting rid of these.


I got caught up in putting bits together so I failed to take pictures of how the parts initially did not fit well. Here it is though with everything now lined up properly and no longer offset. I have added the rods from aluminum wire and also drilled holes in each cylinder head to later accept the ignition wires. I also made the magneto from pieces of scrap styrene.


I added the exhaust piping to the back of the cylinders from styrene rod. Still have some tidying up to do on some of the joints. This area will also be visible through the open cowl flaps which is why I am going through the trouble of adding stuff that normally will not be seen.



The wheel wells were very shallow. I cut them out and used sheet styrene to build up deeper wells. Not super great but passable. I still need to fare in some areas with putty.


I removed the ailerons and elevators so that I can reposition them later. Not too hard using my razor saw to do the job.


So all the main parts are glued together now. Fit was pretty good with only a little filler needed on the seams.

Not a very exciting update but things are getting closer to being brought together and painting everything inching closer.

great work on those cowl flaps. That is quite an undertaking in any scale even 72.

Update time!

The engine is finished except for a wire or two to be added to the magneto.


The engine was brush painted with Model Master acrylic flat black. Once it had dried I brush painted it MM Acryl steel. The crank case was painted RLM 65. The exhaust plumbing was painted MM Acryl Jet (a sort of slightly silvery-gold metallic color) followed by burnt iron craft paint (a bronze colored metallic). The push rods were painted MM Acryl semi-gloss black as well as the top of the magneto. After all was dry I gave the whole thing a wash of a black and raw umber oil paint mix, removing the excess with a cotton swab. I didn't want to break out the airbrush for just this little bit of work and was quite pleased with metallic paints being brush painted. The black base is key to achieving a good metallic finish, especially if using a hairy stick.


The next step was to add the ignition harness. The pictured harness ended up being a failure, I'll explain why.

In the kit the engine push rods were supplied integrally as one piece on a plastic ring. Sorry, I don't have a picture of this as supplied as i started modifying it before I started posting any of my builds here. Anyways, the rods were thick and would have been where the wire harness should be if used OOB. I trimmed off the rods and replaced them as seen earlier from aluminum wire placed closer to the cylinders. I sanded the ring smooth and sliced of pieces of wire insulation to make rings (the red pieces) to later accept the ignition wires. These were glued using CA. I then cut 28 pieces of copper wire and added 2 to each receptacle using more CA, that is two wires for each cylinder. Well, so far so good. This is where the trouble started though.

I placed the ring in place (not glued yet) on the front of the engine. When I started trying to bend the copper wire to their corresponding holes in each cylinder so that I could trim them to length, I found the copper wire, though it bent easily enough, was actually too stiff and put too much stress on their glued attachment points and they kept popping off before I could get them even close to being in position. Only then did I remember that I had lead wire that would also have been suitable, but it was too late by now. I ripped off all the wires and their receptacles to try to start over. The ring was a mess and would be difficult to get it smooth again. Back to square one.


I came up with a better solution using lead wire. First I used a thicker gauge to match the size of the now ruined ring. A mechanical pencil I had at hand had the correct inside diameter I needed and I used that to form a nice round ring, trimming to fit around the magneto. I glued this in place with CA. I didn't want to fool with cutting 14 tiny rings again to accept the wires as I had before. Also, references showed each wire coming from its own receptical instead of sharing a single one anyways, so that influenced my decision as well. I then cut 28 more wires from .010 lead wire and glued each one into their predrilled holes on the front and back of each cylinder. I now had a metallic spider of sorts with all wires in place. Next was just a matter of bending the wires to shape with tweezers and nipping them at the proper length. Each pair was secured to the center ring with a tiny drop of CA and a toothpick. Much better result, and though still tedious, much less so than my previous idea.


Once all glue was cured, I painted the wires with a light brown.

I have more to add, just going to do it in another post to make this easier to take in and not become a bigger wall of text. More on the way.

Chad

Very nice. I miss not being able to purchase Model Master acrylic paint

fubar57 said:

Very nice. I miss not being able to purchase Model Master acrylic paint

Click to expand...

Thanks!

I take it's hard to come by where you're at? In my area it is the only option available to me, no one around here carries any of the exotic stuff like Gunze or AK Interactive. I have to drive two hours away if I want anything by Tamiya. The hobby shops have just about dried up around here. Hobby Lobby craft store only has a limited selection of supplies. I miss having a fully stocked hobby shop close by.

Check out this link Chad...MR. HOBBY PAINT Unfortunately for me, I now have to wait for the Canadian dollar to get over $0.80US to make it worthwhile. When I did order a few months ago it was cheaper than Tamiya and Vallejo even with the shipping. Email them your order before purchase to include the cheapest shipping. There is a hobby shop in Canada that will be stocking Mr.Hobby

Fantastic George, thanks for the link! I haven't tried them yet, but have heard good things so have been curious to try em out.

Here's the next part.

Remember in a previous post I had mentioned the firewall the cowl flaps were trimmed off of and how I would come back to it later with how I planned to use it to make the exhaust collection ring? Well guys, it is now later.


To make the ring I made some snakes of yellow-grey Milliput and pressed them into place on both sides of the trimmed down firewall. After shaping them with my fingers and water I pressed the engine into place, the exhaust pipes purposely leaving indentions in the putty. I also made dents with the exhaust stubs that will also be added later. I removed the engine and allowed the putty to fully cure. The indentations would serve as keys later to properly place the engine and to minimize gaps between the pipes and the ring. After fully cured I lightly sanded any imperfections caused by the displaced putty.

I was concerned with how I was going to attach the engine to the firewall as fit was not good at all. There was a 1-1.5 mm gap between the engine plug and the inside hole of the firewall, to say fit was bad is being modest as the engine didn't contact the mating part at all when centered. I had wracked my brain plenty with various ideas of shimming, or various combinations of filling and making a new hole, none of which were very appealing. Well, once in a while things come together in such a way that problems seem to solve themselves. This is one of those problems.


I used CA glue to attach the exhaust stubs and also to fill any gaps between them and the collection ring. This was then painted flat black, then steel and the ring and stubs finished in MM jet. Weathring will be added when attached to the aircraft later.

Back to mating the engine to the firewall. I put a drop of CA on each exhaust pipe and then attached them to the exhaust ring. This tacked the engine in place. In the picture you can see the gap between the engine and firewall as viewed from the back. Then it was clear as to what the solution should be. Fill the gap with CA! Done! No more worries about how to securely attach the engine and worrying about it coming loose later on. I generously but carefully filled the gap and the parts are now one for eternity.


Here are some different angles showing the finished engine/exhaust assembly.

Still more updates to post, don't touch that dial.

Chad

Very nice

Very nice work.