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

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On this next episode, a very rainy day gave me lots of time for this model and so I spent it finishing off the main undercarriage. I drilled the second torque link and detailed the towing bolt at the front of the strut, though this is too tiny to show up well in the pic. You can just make out the white bits under the rubber boot on the strut in the foreground. The brake lines, made of lead wire, were then threaded under the tow bolts and glued to the struts.



After painting the upper end of the strut semi-gloss black and the bottom portion aluminum like the instructions say, I noticed in pics of 4424 that the upper strut looked much lighter than pure black. So back I went, did some tricky remasking, and shot some XF-24 grey onto the upper struts. I then had to paint the brake line black and then added the chrome-coloured clips using strips of adhesive aluminum foil. The wheels were also painted and are just dry fit in place for this pic:



That's all for today. More rain expected tomorrow so you may see more of me then. Thanks for watching.
 
Shinpachi said:
Reconfirmed 3295, 4424, 5262 and unknown one which I heard was in service from February to April, 1945.
This can be confirmed in your pic too.

View attachment 673602
Click to expand...
There is another aircraft attributed to Kobayashi with 14 Victories in 2 rows of 7 above a broad probably Blue stripe along the fuselage and Dark Green Upper surface and the number 87 on the undercarriage cover, this would place it in the April - may period?
 
There is a room for discussion but my conclusion after scrutiny at the moment is that this airframe in question would be repainted Kobayashi's 4424 on the day when it was handed over to 2nd Lt. Syunzo Takahashi of the 159th Shinbu-tai(corps) in May as the side stripe does not look red but blue. In this case, it would be no wonder even though the camouflage pattern was different as repainted.

Andy's pic



If I may borrow Totalize's pic to compare again -
 
Great stuff here guys, thanks. Studying things on the camo a bit further, it seems that some mottles were clearly sprayed whereas those near the nose have a very hard edge. Let's look at this pic, taken from our Image catalogue, posted by Wojtek:



Nose detail:



It seems I'll need to pay close attention to overspray in this area and possibly mask these small mottles. Note how the one mottle above and forward of the forward exhaust stack seems to be sprayed into the blue ID stripe. This is confirmed in other pics as well.

I do have a question regarding the Hinamaru and blue ID stripe colours as I will be masking and painting these. Any suggestions on what I should do with the Tamiya XF-7 Red to replicate the correct Hinamaru colour? Should I use it straight or mix it with something? Apply straight over the silver NMF surface or make a white circle first? Same goes for the blue stripe where I will be starting with Tamiya XF-8 Blue. Thanks!
 
Some more progress today. As I mentioned earlier, I decided to display an open radiator flap and that meant carefully cutting the moulded-in flap loose.



The job was a bit tricky as there's not much meat near the back edge and I did nick a bit off so that would need to be repaired later. Next, I cleaned up the kit flap and added some side walls cut from styrene card. Sorry for the lousy pic:



I scratched up some actuator details on both sides and test fitted everything together with the parts taped on.


The actuator rod was trimmed a bit shorter and when I was satisfied that it all fit, I painted the parts and glued it all together.



Also on the agenda was to scribe in the gun cowl seam and fasteners that we discussed a few days back. I actually messed up the scribed line with a slip of the tool and so had to fill in the scratch with primer. All worked well so you can't really see the repair here:



I also realized that I forgot to add some wiring behind the instrument panel. This area will actually be seen through the windscreen and quarter windows and so a bit of spaghetti was called for:



In the above pic, the sun visor on the gun sight is missing because it didn't survive a knock but it's now back on and is resting comfortably.

Lastly, I added the wing guns and the nav light lens. The guns are moulded with a slight muzzle opening but I drilled these a bit deeper so they look a bit better. The parts all fit perfectly.



All the above is working toward getting the base coat on for the aluminum finish which, if all goes well, may happen tomorrow. Thanks again for your interest and support.
 
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