**** DONE: GB-54 1:48 Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien - Pacific Theatre

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I think the information below gives the answer to your question and some more details as well.
Copied from Japanese Army Air Force Camouflage and Markings World War II :

Cheers!
 

Here the kind of marking is almost unvisible. But I may agree that the four pointed mark was the marking type. IMHO Yves hit the nail.

 
Thanks again everyone. CATCH 22 and Wurger thanks also for the additional info. I do have the book quoted in Yves' post above and it confirms what I already knew about the 4 pointed mark over the gun ports. It still does not explain the wider patch or panel colour though. Here's what the unfinished "panel" looks like:



And here's what Tamiya have called up:



The area to be painted is a separate panel defined by seams and MIGHT be a removable panel for inserting and removing the wing MGs. Decal 19 in the above instruction detail is the yellow leading edge, which I did not use as I painted these instead. However, the red 4-pointed mark is part of decal 19 and so I will need to cut that out and apply it. The part I'm interested in is decal 67 which covers the entire panel around the MG and it is bright red. It also covers part of the red 4-pointed star but the horizontal points can still be seen.

I'm going to paint that panel, as it is clear from the B&W pics of this plane that it is a colour other than yellow. The question is, is it red, brown, or a dark bare metal? I know that this plane had the MGs removed and reinstalled at least once during its service so I can see the possibility that maybe these panels are unpainted replacements.
 
Looking at your colourized pic, reminded me of the red RAF gun port patches. I've been through all my Ki.61 specific books and haven't seen anything similar. I haven't looked into the colour of Japanese primer paint yet
 
fubar57 said:
Looking at your colourized pic, reminded me of the red RAF gun port patches.....
Click to expand...
After posting the excerpt from the book yesterday I was absolutely sure that these are markings and not patches, as I mentioned before.
Crimea_River said:
The part I'm interested in is decal 67 which covers the entire panel around the MG and it is bright red. It also covers part of the red 4-pointed star but the horizontal points can still be seen.
Click to expand...
What if:
A. The red diamond/star is the original (old) gun port marking, painted in red. The big rectangle is a red painted gun port panel, added (or painted) later after new gun installation. The red colour of the latter could appear differently (darker). The horizontal parts of the older star show because they are outside of the panel.
B. The red diamond/star is the original (old) gun port marking, painted in red. The big rectangle is a red patch over the entire gun port panel, added later after new gun installation. The red colour of the latter could appear differently (darker). The horizontal parts of the older star show because they are outside of the panel.
I personally prefer A.
Cheers!
 
Thanks Hugh.

Decal work was the focus of the last two days. First off, I fixed the buggered up decal on the wheel cover as shown below. Left is the before and right is the same piece after the fix superimposed over the old picture. The black lines were fixed by cutting slices off an old black decal. The red lettering was done by simply applying red paint with a pin.



After having successfully applied numerous stencils using a dab of Solvaset without any problems, the curling issue reared its head again on this decal at the nose which I suppose is a timing mark stencil. I applied the decal as per all the others, walked away and was met with this:



It's supposed to be straight and no amount of application of any solution was going to budge it so I'll leave it and paint it over.

I had more success with the thin walk-lines which was a welcome surprise. The trick was to remove the excess film that would have hung over the trailing edge of the flaps and this allowed the line to hug the edge nicely. These went without a hitch.



That said, this light angle really shows the extent of the clear film around these decals and hopefully the soon-to-come mottles along with a matte coat will hide these. The 3 "No Step" characters were all one piece on the decal sheet with lots of clear film between the characters. I cut these out and applied them individually to reduce the amount of unsightly film.

As we stand the white 244th Sentai insignia has been applied to one side of the vertical stab and is setting up as we speak. I'm taking these slowly and letting them fully dry before doing more on the stab so I don't risk damaging these and I'll show the finished application when done.

Thanks again for looking in.
 
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