Ziggy: Sounds good! Just put you down.

Glad it's 1/72nd scale - not like Steve putting PE eyeglasses on his 1/350th scale pilots there...

All joking aside that looks amazing Steve, love oh LOVE how she's going.

Those Airfix Zeeks are usually nice kits.

Here are the first 3 aircraft attached to the aft deck. Kates with the torpedos. I need to put 36 AC on the deck so there's not a lot of room to work with. It looks like the wings are touching but they're not.

Gamera, I would like to join in, if I can, and finish my Zero.

Here's where I left off...

Thanks guys.

I completed the planes last night, am doing some touch up and installing a maintance crew member in a few of them. Reading "Shattered Sword" The Japanese maintance crew would start the planes and and run them up for at least 15 minutes prior to the pilot and crew boarding. Since the Japanese didn't assign a plane to a pilot, the pilots would take whatever plane was avaliable. The pilot of A1-101,Tamiya's 1/48 Zero, P01c Takao Kimura, thought he was in a diffrent plane until he saw some pictures to prove diffrently.. The higher ranking pilots would have first pick and even some would take the same plane but they wern't assigned apperently. I guess in even rarer cases the plane and pilot would stay the same. They also didn't assign "kills" like the US did, it was more like the British, where one kill was acrededeted to the group. Sometimes they were counted, credit given to the pilot and even painted on the planes but not like the US and Germany.

BTW, just a side note, Tamiya's A1-101 was not Shotai No 2 leader as the decals show, it was a wingman. A1-102 was second wave Shotai no 2 commander. Of course, none of this painstaking research and getting the planes technically correct will make a hill of beans to the judges, or anyone else except me for that matter.

Like my father used to say...just another bit of useless information taking up brain space.

mawright20

Your forum name Is quite appropriate. Your insane Man!

 

You can say that again!

Steve is insane in a totally awesome sort of way!!!

Thanks Gam,

Here is this weekends work. Next is attaching the weapons and props, then dull coat on the Kates

Steve: Oh wow, those look awesome!!!

Continuing on with the rest of the air group I have the rest of the Kates and Zeeks assembled and painted. I'll next add some weathering and then clear coat before decals.

Sure! Just got you down, both of those sound cool!

Put me down for a Tamiya 1/48 Raiden and Rufe, please. The Rufe has minor early construction at time of starting and the Raiden has nothing but putty on a single ejector mark.

Both are OOB, Rufe is probably going to be finished in the semi-mythical brown/lilac Aluetians scheme and I'm thinking of treating the Raiden as a weathering exercise. 

TWA

These builds are so impressive!  Well done all!

That is an interesting photo! The leading edge on the port wing does look slightly lighter but other than that I can't tell much. I assume it's just the camo.

I painted them yellow, and then went back and repainted them red. I just don't feel like going back and painting them again.

I hear ya, I don't buy into the brown version either. I mean why bother for trial aircraft, or were these 109's ever put into combat use?

I also question the reasoning that red leading edge stripes were already added in Germany.  Found this other front view photo,  and does not look like stripes at all are present, but more likely camou demarcation lines - so probably an early photo when first delivered??

regards,

Jack

Thank Jack!!!

Though now I'm more confused than ever!

My Bf-109 is painted, preshaded, and about half-way decaled right now. So I'm just going with her as she is. Thanks for all the help, will store it away in case I ever build a second Japanese Bf-109.

My head hurts.....

Found another article by Nick Millman on the IJA 109E, though it's more of a review of Finemolds 'brownish' instructions:

http://www.aviationofjapan.com/2020/08/that-brown-109.html

Below in the comments section though, there is a different explanation about the IFF leading edge stripes.  Firstly, they were only introduced during the summer of 1942, but also red was intended for those aircraft that weren't camouflaged.

Am also wondering if the conclusion that red was the stripe colour based on b/w photos, in which case that is not guranteed since a blue filter would cause the film to capture a dark tone.

-----

Anyhow, great looking builds everyone, but must give special mention to Steve and his Akagi - wow!

regards,

Jack

That is insane Steve. Love those!

They'd put me in the funny farm for sure...

Thanks Gam

This weekend I started the last 23 planes. I ground out all of the Kates and installed the interiors. The fuse walls are so thin that there are some filling that needs to be done. I'm going to try sprue goo to see if that holds up better than filler.

These are the first Kates with their weapons.

Those look awesome to me Steve! 

I've been dealing with moths bigger than those! 

I worked hours on the planes and have the 12 done where I like them. Some have maintenance personnel in the cockpit monitoring the gages and other tasks. I'm missing the bombs which I'll build up tonight. Going on week three for these aircraft. Hopefully I'll speed up some.

I added some prop spin both idle and running at a higher RPM.

Waikong: Sounds good! Great choice! 

GAF

Real G,

Do you have an aquarium? 

Gary

 

Ha ha, no - it would need a small kiddie pool!  

Steve, you can always put the Akagi in my house. :) Fantastic build.

Gamera, what a great looking paint job so far. Am intrigued by this whole Japanese 109 thing.

I have also decided to do the 1/48 finemolds ki-43 in Manchukuo markings.

Apparently the Messerschmitt factory painted the fighters with hinomaru and painted the leading edge stripes the same colour. Or at least the photos didn't seem to show any overpainted German insignia. 

Seems the Japanese did overpaint the leading edges with a more typical yellow as the war went on but left the German camo schemes only touching up nicks and dings with their own camo paint. I wasn't able to find much in the way of photos other than the delivery schemes though. 

The leading edge color and stripe at the tail alone would make me question it's heritage, but it's a 109 for sure. I wonder why they didn't repaint it in JA colors, or a striking "don't shoot, I'm a friendly" colors.

Bleeding paint Pfft. It's red, it's always going to bleed. That, yellow and white.

Anyway the Japanese Bf-109. Bit shocked, first time I'd gotten no overspray or seepage under the mask.

Looking forward to getting the hinomaru on there so she actually looks Japanese... 

Looks great G! I'd be worried about the stabs breaking off too, good idea with the spar. 

Real G,

Do you have an aquarium? 

Gary

Good idea with the stabs G. I guess you could hang it from the celing.

I can't find a place for my Akagi either. I was looking at my stash Friday night wondering if I was going to get to them all and where in the world I was going to put them once done.

Steve, the Akagi indeed looks most magnificent!   

The KX-03 meanwhile continues to be hammered into shape.  The stabilizers are heavy and the mounting tabs are short, so I cut them all off and made a 0.060" thick continuous spar.

The wings have a nice pair of spars that do the job of supporting the big wings.

With a bit of sanding, the wings fit well.

It's biiiiiiig:

I finally did a clearance check in my display case and found out the model will not fit!  I guess one of those Rubbermaid under bed storage containers wil be its hangar.