This
is my Hasegawa 1/48 Mitsubishi F-1.
The
kit is very good and builds up quite nicely, detail is much, much better than
the old Fujimi kit, by the way even in this new tooled kit I found some fit
problems. The airscoops are very complicated pieces made of several parts that
didn’t fit together easily. Interior detail of the airscoops is also very bad
and several sink marks need to be sanded flat.
Since
I noticed that this plane has always had the slats lowered when on ground, I choose
to cut them from the kit wing leading edge. I also added a resin seat by
Aconuaga. The kit’s seat in not that bad, but, you know, a good resin one
really add something to every jet kit. To the low part of the canopy I added
some small PE pieces taken from the PE set designed (for the Fujimi kit) by my
friend Luois (I build this kit around Easter 2005 when Plats and Eduard PE sets
were still to come).
To
paint it I used Gunze acrylics since this is the only one with correct JASF
shades. The kit was painted with my new Aztek 480 metal airbrush using the fine
tan nozzles and a few pieces of paper as a guide. After the 4 colours of the
camouflage I sprayed a good coat of Future to seal the paint and prepare it for
decals. For a couple of weeks all went well, then the Future sprayed over the tan
colour cracked all over. Nothing happened over the two greens or the
undersurface grey, but all the Future need to be removed from over the tan paint.
I made that using very fine wet’n dry paper and then restored the area with
Tamiya clear gloss. Now I know (thank to the many Hyperscalers that told me) to
never use Future over Gunze paint, even if it still works on some glossy paints,
but really not over the flat tan.
I
have several pictures of Mitsubishi F-1 that is one of my favourite jet and I
want to make it as one from 3°Hikotai with shark mouth as shown during bombing
exercises Senkyo in mid ‘80s.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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The
decals for the shark mouth come from the Fujimi kit, but as soon as the decals
were on I realized I was making a mistake. In the ‘80s the F-1 still have the
framed windshield as the one used on the T-2, while the Hasegawa kit only gives
you the post Mid Life Upgrade all clear windshield. Using the piece from the
Fujimi was impossible: too wrong in shape and too thick so I ordered the clear parts from the T-2 kit
from
Hasegawa and used that windshield on my F-1.
With
the decals dry a spayed a final coat of flat paint from Polly’s and my F-1
was finished.
Since
the Senkyo meeting are just for training I choose to add only training rounds to
my jet.
I
really hope you like it.
Pierpaolo
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