**** DONE: GB-36 1/48 Ki-61-Id Hien - Axis Manufactured Aircraft of WWII

[Crimea_River]

Lovely work.

 

[fubar57]

Very nice innards John.

 

[le_steph40]

Great work John... Another future beauty in your hands

 

[Airframes]

Nice work all round John.

 

[parsifal]

cockpit is gorgeous.

 

[Jeff Hunt]

Cheers,.

Jeff

 

[Wayne Little]

 

[turbo]

Excellent John!!

 

[JKim]

Here's an update to my Tamiya Hien build. I've managed to finish riveting all of the main components.

The fuselage sides...

And the wing bottoms....

I put a pretty big gouge in the starboard fuselage when the piece slipped in my hand during a rivet run. You can barely make it out in the first photograph towards the tail. This has been filled with Mr Dissolved Putty.

The Tamiya kit is wonderful and a superior model can be built strictly out of the box. But there are a couple of things that I am a stickler for: hollow exhausts and convincing gun barrels. So I chose to augment this build with a couple of aftermarket items.

I usually hollow out exhausts manually but the design of the kit exhaust would make this task VERY difficult. The Quickboost resin exhausts should be a good drop-in upgrade.

I picked up some Quickboost gun barrels as well. Although it would be easy to hollow out the kit guns, I liked the added detail of the holes in the cooling jacket over the barrels. Quickboost also added hollow versions of the wing cannon.

I've made some minor modifications to the cockpit. Geo discretely let me know that the blue oxygen regulator on the starboard sidewall was US equipment on a captured Hien. After some internal debate, I decided to remove it and paint the panel behind it black.

I've also added a small circular crosshair to the gunsight.

I was curious to test the legendary fit of these new Tamiya kits so I put the major components together with tape.

Color me impressed! The fit is wonderful. If it looks this tight with tape only, I can only imagine how positive the glue joins will be.

I don't want to mar the Hien's smooth lines with pimples around every rivet so I made sure to sand all of the surfaces down. The white in the rivets and panel lines is the residue from sanding.

 

[Crimea_River]

Looks nice.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Lovely work so far John!

 

[parsifal]

I agree. Are you happy with the Quickboost aftermarket parts. I'm thinking of getting some myself....

 

[turbo]

Looks great John! I love the new Tamiya and Eduard kits and the like. I know they can be pricey, but life's too short to be messing about with ill-fitting kits!

 

[Airframes]

Good stuff John
One question (and I really don't know, which is why I'm asking !), is the back rest of the seat in the correct position ?
With the head armour overlapping, and the back rest quite far back, I would have thought that would be rather uncomfortable, even with a life jacket and parachute harness to add to the 'padding'.

 

[JKim]

I agree. Are you happy with the Quickboost aftermarket parts. I'm thinking of getting some myself....

They look good but I haven't used them yet. I'm sure they'll be fine as there isn't much wrong that could go wrong. The exhausts seem to have the same tabs and slots as the kit exhausts so I am hoping it is a simple replacement.

Good stuff John
One question (and I really don't know, which is why I'm asking !), is the back rest of the seat in the correct position ?
With the head armour overlapping, and the back rest quite far back, I would have thought that would be rather uncomfortable, even with a life jacket and parachute harness to add to the 'padding'.

Good question. Not much room for error given how tight the Tamiya kit fits and I'm pretty sure I put it together correctly. I don't have a photo but this drawing shows a similar relationship between the back rest and head rest.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Airframes]

Thanks John.

 

[Wayne Little]

Looking good John.

 

[JKim]

Here's Tamiya's engine. It's got some detail but it looks a bit bland... not something that I would want to show off without some major work performed on it. And I'm not going to do that on this build.

The engine is going in unpainted as the engine cowling will be permanently attached. From this view you can see the cannon bodies.

But the guns pull a disappearing act and are completely blanked off by the engine bulkhead. Don't mind the gap... the bulkhead will be flush with the fuselage once the cockpit is glued into place.

The Quickboost exhausts are a good fit as expected.

Hard to do any detailed painting of the exhaust stacks at this scale. I used my normal routine on these. Alclad Steel followed by Alclad Exhaust Manifold. A bit of dry-dabbed rusty brown and then the tips sprayed with black.

I tried out the Quickboost gun barrels too. Tamiya provides a backing for the gun barrels. This allows one to insert the gun barrels AFTER painting, which is a nice touch.

The backing has slots that are staggered so there is no guesswork... just insert the barrels all the way in.

The Quickboost gun barrels have the cooling jacket holes, which is a nice detail above and beyond the kit supplied gun barrels. These have been painted Alclad Stainless Steel.

The fuselage section behind the cockpit has been painted.

The mesh grills and baffle system for the under-fuselage radiator have been painted.