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.