This kit is a very old LS (1963 I think) I found in a military and historical book store in Buenos Aires. Old model kits belonging to those days are not very detailed. This one has a very nicely detailed wings, fuselage and control surfaces, but there
is not any detail in the cockpit and wheel wells. In this sense, it only gives a quite slim pilot figure, that was quickly discarded.
So, I decided to scratch build the cockpit, following some old pictures and diagrams that I found in the net.
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I used streched plastic, some bits of plasticard and other bits from the spare box to build both cockpit sides, instrument boards, control stick and pedals, and the seat. I made the seat belts with Tamiya masking tape. I also filled the wheel wells, taking my Hasegawa Ki-43 II as a model.
The kit had no decals, so I got some Hinomarus and I cut other small decal pieces from the spares box. I chose to represent an a/c from the 1st Sentai, and, maybe from the 1st
Chutai, but not really sure about that.
I chose a three colour camouflage
scheme: dark green, brown and IJA green gray. I wanted to get a heavily chipped effect, so I applied the hair spray method combined with the salt method to achieve this. I painted the whole kit with Revell silver, I then gave
it an acrylic gloss varnish, and when everything was dry I gave two coats of hair spray with my airbrush, dropping some salt grains on the areas where I wanted to be more chipped. Then, I followed the usual steps to finish with the painting and weathering according to the above mentioned methods.
Best regards,
Gustavo Antonelli
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