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

[Luftace43]

So I resprayed the alclad on the underside and while giving that sufficient time to cure I decided to make this.

It is the antenna mast that the aerial wire will be attached to near the cowl. I used the kit part. I filled the divot left by the sprue and squared off the top of the mast. Going by reference pictures the attachment point for the aerial appears to be a metal band with an eyelet. I made this from a strip of aluminum from a soda can. For the eyelet I made a depression with a thumb tack to guide me drilling a hole with a micro drill bit. I then trimmed off the corners with my xacto to give it a triangular profile. I formed it around the top of the mast with tweezers and secured it with CA glue.

I tried painting wood grain with various shades of brown acrylic paint. This did not achieve the look I was going for so I repainted it with a light tan color and streaked on burnt umber oil paint instead to get the desired look. I secured it in a blob of poster tack before painting to avoid marring the delicate wood grain effect. I removed excess paint from the metal band with a cotton swab dampened with lacquer thinner. That's it for now. It will probably be about a month before the oil paint cures but the effect is worth it.

 

[Gnomey]

Nicely done so far!

 

[Crimea_River]

Very microscopic of you Chad,.

 

[Luftace43]

Very microscopic of you Chad,.

Why thank you sir! I can't help myself

 

[Wurger]

 

[fubar57]

Wow, fantastic. I also need to purchase an electron microscope...

 

[Luftace43]

Can I borrow that microscope Geo? I think it would enable me to make functioning instrument gauges and paint numbers on the faces.

 

[Airframes]

Excellent !

 

[Luftace43]

Here we go! The Oscar is finished but first I'll show the last few things I did prior to completion.

The propeller was painted with Model Master Panzer Schokoladen Braun as this is a pretty close match for the propeller color used by the Japanese. I masked and sprayed the yellow strips with Colourcoats Japanese ID yellow. After drying I carefully sanded the yellow areas with fine micro sanding pads to help reduce the edge created by masking and blending to achieve a smooth paint finish. I applied a dark brown and black oil wash to the hub. Paint chipping was achieved by saving light gray acrylic paint along the leading edges of the prop blades followed by a careful application of chrome silver in the same manner. Further refinement was done with a fine brush and the silver.

Aftermarket canopy is by Rob-Taurus. Absolutely beautiful products. The following lamenting is of my own making and has nothing to do with the quality of the canopy itself. I highly recommend these as they are the most detailed vac canopies I have seen with clearly and crisply defined frames and details.

The canopies were a pain, at least until I figured out a good way to mask them. This is the result of repainting for the third time.

I used tamiya tape to mask the first time. The problem there was I could not get the corners properly masked to my liking. They are round in most of the corners. My usual method of simply laying in tape strips to make nice neat corners would not work here. I had coated the canopy in future prior to painting so after the initial attempt at spraying them failed I simply soaked them in Windex window cleaner to remove everything down to the bare plastic again.

My next bright idea was to use liquid mask to achieve the rounded corners. This sort of worked but did not leave as clean of a demarcation as I would have liked.

Finally, even though the result was not terrible and still very passible I thought I could do better still. So out came the Windex and in went the canopy to start again. I had already purchased a second canopy beforehand and originally planned to just start over going that route but completely botched trimming it and ruined it. So much for that extra $8 investment. I decided to try again on the already painted canopy instead as I didn't want to buy another one again.

This time I found the solution. I played a piece of Tamiya tape on thin styrene card and used my punch to make 1mm circles. I peeled the tape circles from the styrene ones and placed these in the corners of the rounded frames. I then literally played connect the dots with strips of tape to mask all of the frames and filled in the rest of the windows with larger pieces of tape.

After a coat of enamel gloss black followed by Alclad airframe aluminum I removed the masks to reveal what you see above. Minimal touch ups were done with a brush, including the alclad.

A final detail I decided to add at the last minute were the tracks for the canopy behind the headrest. I made measurements using references and the canopy to be installed to determine the width of the tracks. I then used Dymo tape as a guide to scribe these. The inverted "U" at the back is actually part of the canopy frame that rode in these tracks. I made it from aluminum wire and glued it here instead of trying to attach it to the canopy and risk marring it with glue. The canopy will simply sit over this when finished and will appear attached even though it isn't. At the front of the tracks I made panels from aluminum tape in accordance with what I could see in my reference pictures. Both the panels and "U" were painted with Model Master gunmetal. I was too lazy to add red to the gunmetal to match the surrounding areas but figured a little contrast would be fine and the color difference is barely noticeable anyways.

That's all for now. I'm going to be gathering up the pictures of the finished model to hopefully have posted in an hour or so. Check back soon!

Chad

 

[Wurger]

Well done.

 

[Luftace43]

Wurger, could you please delete the previous post? I found it quicker and simpler just to make a new one. Thanks!

So here she is all finished. After several months working on and off I finally managed to complete a model again for the first time in 6 years! I will post more photos in a separate post in the completed kits section.

I made a simple base to give the model a feel of being deployed to the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

I used a cheap picture frame from the dollar store and filled in the center with foam core board cut to sized. Over this I applied a layer of Celluclay mixed with water, PVA glue and cheap brown acrylic paint. Scale jungle vegetation is difficult to find and still have it look realistic and not like the plastic plants that are often used for aquariums or floral arrangements. The laser cut paper ones look really nice but are cost prohibitive for me. My solution was to pick various plants and moss from around the yard and preserve them in a water and glycerin mixture. After soaking them for a few days I pulled them out and allowed them to dry on some paper towel. I later picked out the best looking ones to use as not all come out looking very good after soaking. For the ground work I applied fine sand I found in my driveway and tea leaves from a used tea bag for ground scatter and to add texture. I applied this while the cellular was still wet and gently pressed it in with my fingers so that it was not "floating" on top of the ground work.

I then glued the plants to the base using PVA as well as applied random patches of static grass. Once all was dry I sprayed everything a dark olive drab from a rattle can. Next I airbrushed various brown shades on the areas without vegetation. I drybrushed some lighter grays and browns to bring out the texture. I mixed up some thinned bright yellow-green oil paints and picked out the individual plants and short grass with a brush. The final step was to apply some long grass from Woodland Scenics that was already dyed a yellow green color. These were cut to the desired length and applied with PVA in tufts. I painted the frame with MM green drab and gave subtle highlight to the organic texture by drybrushing a tan color over it.
For the palm fronds I used the leaves from a Cedar tree. Perfect for this scale! I discovered that by accident just walking outside one day.

Here is a view of the tail marking showing this aircraft belonged to the 2nd Chutai of the 63rd Sentai. All markings were masked with tape and airbrushed. Also notice I implied ribbing on the control surfaces using oil paints, hopefully subtle and not over exaggerated.

Here is the finished canopy. It was attached with Gator Grip white glue. I outlined the frames by carefully applying a pinwash of flat black acrylic and went over the frames with a dark brown oil was to help blend them with the rest of the aircraft. The red bits at the trailing edge of the wings are the exposed tracks for the butterfly flaps I made from pieces of aluminum soda can. I used thinned oils to add streaking and stains around the fuel filler caps.

The exhaust stains seen here and in the above photo were made using brown and gray oil paints. I added a thin black streak to the top of the stain with black pastel chalk and a makeup applicator to match my reference pictures. The aerial antenna was made from smoke colored nylon mending tgread, insulators made from PVA and white paint. Look closely to the right of the forward fuel filler cap and you can see the landing gear indicator rod I made from aluminum wire painted red and inserted into a predrilled hole.

And here are a few shots of the overall aircraft.

I hope you like it. Let me know what you think.

Chad

 

[Wurger]

Wurger, could you please delete the previous post? I found it quicker and simpler just to make a new one. Thanks!

OK. Done.

Great final effect. I like it.

 

[Luftace43]

OK. Done.

Great final effect. I like it.

Thanks!!

 

[JKim]

Great work! I love your attention to details. The punched circles is also what I do to mask rounded corners.

 

[Luftace43]

Great work! I love your attention to details. The punched circles is also what I do to mask rounded corners.

Thank you John! The circle masks is such a simple idea and very effective. One of those things I wish I had thought to do sooner rather than later.

 

[Gnomey]

Great work!

 

[Crimea_River]

Excellent model and display Chad. As much as I'd like to make some nice display bases, I never seem to have enough mojo at the end of my aircraft build to start a detailed base. Yours looks spectacular.

 

[Airframes]

Very nicely done and presented.

 

[fubar57]

Fantastic finish. Now I have to buy freakin' punches

 

[Crimea_River]

I plan on making my own one of these days. Buy a drill index, drill through 2 pieces of acrylic, then use the drill shanks as the punches. Saw this somewhere many years ago but can't find anymore.