Hasegawa 1/48 Aichi D3A1 “Val”
OOB with Eduard Express Canopy Mask
Golden Fluid Acrylics, Vallejo Model
Color, Gunze metallics
The Kit:
I've been modeling for about two years
now. Because I do a sequence of plane/AFV/ship I haven't built very
many airplanes considering the time. (May explain why none of them
have been anything special.) I counted up everything done in 48 scale
and it comes out to be three Eduards, one Zvezda, one Classic
Airframe, one Academy and Tamiya's old Ki-84. If you're used to
building Eastern European models, imagine the impact of a Hasegawa.
It was a little confusing actually. Absolutely everything fit.
Although this kit is a little long on the teeth, the part count is
120 and the cockpit pretty detailed. (I saluted the fact by making
seatbelts out of fine wire and masking tape. My planes don't go to
contests, so I haven't quite seen the wisdom of buying PE sets or
resin accessories. But I made seat belts. Nobody will see them, but
they're there.) I sat in something like a stupor as a fully assembled
cockpit assembly simply popped into the two halves of the fuselage
without a whimper. No surgery. Very little sanding. I wasn't sure
that I did it right. Everything else was more or less the same. Any
problems were do to my tendency to experiment: this time it was using
PA as a seem filler. Worked nicely indeed, but as I learned you have
to be very careful where the residue ends up. My only quibble is the
instructions. They were nicely done but left the one rather complex
step of the build – inserting the rear gunner's position – more
or less to the imagination.
I screwed some things up of course
because I always do. Hasegawa gives you two complete canopies so you
can have it open or nicely tidy when closed. I've never really made a
good cockpit, so I thought I'd mask both of them and use the better
of the two upon examination. I ended that by losing the front section
of the open cockpit: eaten by a snake maybe. (Later in the build both
landing lights became laser rockets: I didn't bother to look and used
Testor's window maker.) So I amputated the front section of the big
canopy so my Val could have it's machine gun. Actually I regret it.
As I looked at pictures I decided the Val had cleaner lines with the
closed cockpit.
Paint
My kit is the “Midway Island” version so should wear green &
grey colors. I've got too many Japanese planes in the stash to do
that. So that meant early war amber grey. Which meant getting
involved in the great Zero Color Debate that's been going on for
twenty years now. I didn't buy PE but I did spend $12 on a splendid
booklet “Painting the Early Zero-Sen” by British modeler Nick
Millman. (Nick can be reached at njim.msm@btinternet.com ). This is a
really neat work: it goes through the whole story of the quibble
illustrated with a couple of dozen color chips. Paint freaks will
like it because he goes into the strange world of color perception
along with Munsell ratings, Federal Standard Numbers, comparisons of
both fading and aging. He gives a compelling case for his version of
the definitive color and tells the modeler how to alter paints by all
of the major manufacturers to get close to Zero nirvana. (From what I
can tell, he thinks the LifeColor version of RLM 02 (LC 039) is the
best of the lot out of the bottle.) Check it out if you like messing
with paints: far more valuable than an Osprey “how to” book.
Nick was kind enough to forward a chip for the early war Val which
is similar in hue to the Zero but darker. (Vals transitioned to green
in stages: some of Hiryu's may have been green at Pearl Harbor. But
amber grey was the norm until Combined Fleet returned from Ceylon.) I
thought it would be great fun to make my own – I have a good supply
of Golden Fluid Acrylics and Vallejo Model Color paints and all mix
beautifully. The major pigments were neutral grey and ochre. Simple
enough, right? Well, there's a reason people have been fighting over
the proper Zero color for twenty years plus. Ochre and grey really is
code for yellow and black, and that means green. To get the right
result I spent four days mixing dozens of colors – and I still may
have too much khaki in it. Describing this color as complex is an
understatement. When it came time to photograph the plane, my little
Nikon went nuts trying to figure out how to average the colors –
almost all of the photos showed too much green. Odd really as there's
only a microscopic amount of green in the color. (I think interior
“yuck green” didn't help the camera out any, nor did the
weathering. The clearest picture of the color used is probably one
below that I took prior to weathering. Some of the details are pretty
close too. To my eyes the color used is a kind of tan with a hint of
khaki – this is adjusted to scale of course.) The cowl is
blue/black. The only decals used were the numbers on the tail. Rest
of the markings were sprayed on using Floquil “Soo Red” which is
quite dark and was the closest of the seven reds I own to the color
of the Japanese national insignia. Although the number indicates a
plane from the Kaga, I consider the model a grunt Val from the early
war. The decals provided are for the elaborate markings used by
squadron or flight leaders. Their followers wore the much simpler
attire that I copied. On Milman's advice I painted the control
surfaces a color much closer to light grey.
Weathering
An Osprey book describes the IJN aircraft at Pearl Harbor as
“pristine.” I doubt that very much. The Japanese waxed their
aircraft at this stage, hence the satin finish. (I didn't think a
true gloss would look right.) That said, Yamamoto had his air groups
training intensely in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. So no
doubt nervous aircrew polished away as they steamed toward Hawaii,
but the planes available would have been well broken in. More to the
point, Kido Butai was very busy the first four months of war – more
so than any period following. (Oil shortages became an issue as early
as fall 1942.) After attacking Pearl Harbor they whacked the Indies,
raided Darwin Australia, whacked the Indies again, mauled a British
fleet in the Indian Ocean and whacked the Indies. So I was trying to
model an aircraft as it would have looked on the way back from
Ceylon. Generally, I think this meant a well maintained and well
cared for plane, but one with a “lived in” look. Sort of like a
rental car.
Actually weathering a little is harder than weathering a lot. I
did no chipping, although a little probably would have been in order.
I didn't want heavy fading so filters and full washes were out. On
the other hand, to show some wear and to break the surface colors I
decided to give my Val a full plane dot fade with artist oils.
(There's a detail photo below of a wing portion: you can see the
subtle variations that resulted.) Panel lines confuse me. Are you
trying to show shadow or grime? A heavy weather model would invite
heavy use of oil washes followed up with pigments as needed. But what
about a lightly weathered model? The kind of crisp, precise lines
favored by many take real skill to apply. But, frankly, I don't think
the resulting models look like real airplanes. I wanted something
lighter and more irregular. I did one wing with acrylic inks,
something that's worked before. But my pens didn't work with this
color. I had better luck with black and brown Verithin artist
pencils. (Ship Meister Jim Baumann makes wide use of pencils on his
incredible models.) I should have started with them – I think it
would have looked pretty good. But it clashed with the ink work which
clashed with the weird color. So I chickened out and gave the plane a
light panel wash of burnt umber/black oils. (For kicks I did some
mini streaking using a technique from Gary Edmundson. You put masking
tape on a major panel line, put a dot of oil or enamel on it and drag
it down with a brush. When you remove the tape, it really does look
as though it came from between wing segments.)
On one point I took a different road from other Val builders. I
know from past research that radial engines burn oil and Japanese
radials were not up to US standards so they burnt even more. I'm
convinced that a Japanese aircraft would have shown oil around the
cowl and certainly underneath where the Val's exhaust ports point.
(Japan's inability to fine tune engine tolerances was the primary
reason why a successor to the Oscar and Zero didn't arrive until late
1944 and none were reliable in American terms.) The photo below is a
replica but shows how the exhaust was ported and do note the
condition of the plane beneath and behind the exhaust. The artist who
drew the box art also pictured has it right I think. I almost pulled
this one off. I wanted a mix of black, brown, sepia, green and gloss
varnish to emulate the odd color oil makes. One of the advantages of
Golden paints is that you know the opacity of each color. So I was
layering these colors very thin at low psi, dark to light. And like
an idiot, the last color applied, which was supposed to be an almost
invisible sepia was a fully opaque brown. So, yes, it's too dark. But
that was the end of the day and the last thing I had in mind was
repainting the wing. Live and learn.
Pics below
Eric
