diy scale model paint rack
This is Hasegawa’s great 1/32 Scale Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate kit. It’s a simple and well-engineered kit that builds easily. Mine is out-of-the-box with masked and painted markings for an aircraft of the 29th Sentai operating from Formosa in 1944–45. I used Tamiya rattle cans for the natural metal finish.
The completed kit was too large for my Ikea bookshelf display cases so I ended up selling the model to a collector in Maryland. I’ve got two Hasegawa’s 1/48 versions in the stash and I’ll probably build this 29th Sentai aircraft again for my own collection.
This is a project I started long ago and has languished in a state of incompletion. The idea is a tiny little vignette with the aircraft and a pilot figure representing Kanno. I used a model railroad figure for the pilot and sculpted a flight suit for him using ApoxieSculpt. I scratch-built a basic cockpit and cut out the maneuvering flaps from the wings then built them back up using Evergreen stock.
Hopefully I’ll find a source of fresh motivation to finish this project up soon and will add to this post with any updates as progress is made.
The kit includes parts and decals for two aircraft. I’ll be doing Kanno’s “White 15”.
This is the wonderful Tamiya 1/48 scale P-51D Mustang kit with (if I remember correctly) CAM Decals. I built this back in 2007-ish and it’s won a few trophies at contests in Ohio and Georgia. Nothing much to say about this kit other than it has a low parts-count, its fit and engineering is brilliant, and its a quick, easy, and pleasant build. If you don’t have one of these in your stash, you need to get one!
This is P-51D/20-NA 44-63272 “Bad Angel”—the aircraft of double-ace Captain Lou Curdes of the 4th FS 3rd Air Commando Group. He is one of only a handful of Allied pilots who claimed kills against each of the three major Axis powers, and the only pilot of the Second World War to claim kills against three major Axis powers and the United States of America!
Victories in Aerial Combat
| April 29, 1943 April 29, 1943 May 19, 1943 June 24, 1943 July 30, 1943 August 27, 1943 February 7, 1945 February 10, 1945 |
Messerschmitt Bf-109 Messerschmitt Bf-109 Messerschmitt Bf-109 Macchi Mc202 Messerschmitt Bf-109 Messerschmitt Bf-109 Mitsubishi Ki-46 Douglas C-47 Dakota |
3 Destroyed 1 Damaged 2 Destroyed 1 Destroyed 1 Damaged 2 Destroyed 1 Destroyed 1 Destroyed |
The C-47 “kill” is the result of Curdes’s attempts to thwart the attempt of an errant American C-47 to land at an airfield in Formosa that had recently fallen to Japanese control. Unable to communicate with the aircraft via radio and after several attempts to force the aircraft to abandon its attempts to land, Curdes took out the Dakota’s engines forcing it to ditch in the sea where the entire crew was safely rescued by Allied forces.
If you’re a scale modeler with a passion for U.S. Navy Pacific Theater ops, then this has got to be your holy grail. As the highest-decorated U.S. ship ever, the “Big E” has been poorly represented by kit manufacturers in every scale. No wonder the builder of this magnificent model decided to scratch build her.
This is the old Tamiya 1/48 scale Ki-84 kit that was first released in the mid-1970’s (someone correct me if I’m wrong here). It’s still in production and can be had for about $8 as of the time of this writing.
This is one of the very first kits I bought when I returned to building models as an adult. As a kid, I don’t recall ever having any kits from a Japanese company—everything I built was either from American companies like Revell, AMT, and Monogram or from Europeans like ESCI and Italeri.
In surfing the web and forums, it was pretty clear that Tamiya was now the state-of-the-art and setting the standard for high-quality kits. I saw this kit with its very low price and thought “Wow. What a bargain!”
As most of you know, and as I didn’t know at the time, there are really two Tamiya’s: the “old” and the “new”. This kit is the “old” Tamiya and there is nothing state of the art about it. It’s actually toy-like. It was not a joy to build.
I’m not saying it wasn’t good in its day and I’m not saying a good modeler can’t make something of it. I’m saying that, for about $10 more, you can get the beautiful Hasegawa kit that is beautifully detailed and well engineered. Unless you already own the kit, built it as a kid and there’s some nostalgia factor, or are just the type of person who has to see it for themselves, I would steer clear of this one.
I lost interest in the build about halfway through. As I said, it wasn’t an enjoyable experience this shows in the finished work. I think this was my first attempt at chipping paint and I don’t think it looks very convincing.
All the markings are painted with masks I made myself and stem from a Polish book on late war IJAAF units. I can look up the specifics of this sentai if one of you needs the details.
