If ever a model could be
considered to be cursed, it's this one. I built it, painted
it, stripped it, painted it again, stripped it again,
repainted it (again), dropped it, rebuilt it, broke pieces
off, fixed them, touched up the paint, clear coated it
(with Alclad Clear - a product I will never use again.
It doesn't dry... ever.), stripped the clear coat, lost
pieces in the move back to Canada, made new ones... well,
you get the idea. I didn't think I was ever going to finish
this, but at last here it is, warts and all.
A pretty ancient kit but
stll quite nice. Completely lacking in cockpit and wheel
well detail but the outlines look good. It looks like
a Ki-44 in other words. I used an Eduard etched set for
the gear doors and other bits and pieces and a True Details
resin cockpit. The gear wells were scratchbuilt, though
I didn't have a good picture of them at the time so they
are mostly a best guess. Having since found a picture
of the gear bays I wasn't too far off. Hasegawa missed
the bulge on top of the cowling over the carb intake.
I built this up with a bit of plastic and filler.
Guns and pitot tube are
from Aber, canopy and landing light cover are Falcon's
finest and the antenna mast was filed and sanded from
some flattened brass rod. Antenna is Uschi elastic.
The model represents aircraft
2321 from the 3rd Chutai, 246th Sentai, based at Taisho
airfield in Osaka, 1944. All the markings were masked
and painted, with the exception of the unit badge on the
tail and the shadow shading on the gear door numbers.
I created decals for these and printed them in black on
clear decal paper with a laser printer. Metal finish is
various shades of Alclad.
Back
to 1/72 Aircraft Main
To
the construction page!