Hasegawa A6M3

[Guest]

Hi all.

This is what my 1/48 Hasegawa tipe 22 Zero/Zeke looks like after about 3 hours of work.

The quality of this kit is second to none (by my usual standards) and the only add-on was to make the safety harnass.

The fit so far is exelent and I must say that this kit made up my mind for me that I NEED to get the Hasegawa ME109 asap!!!

I still need to put on the gun sight. Only thing I am uncertain about is the correct collour fior the interior. I have surfed dozens if reviews, walk-arounds and not one of them shows the same green! Even the FS code does not come standard in Tamiya,Testors or Humbrol. I had a look at a Zero being rebuilt and there was a pannel showing the collour as close as I could get it.

It seems that the green differed between Mitsubishi and Nakajima built planes and even from bach to bach! So, I recon I must be correct for atleast one of them LOL!!!

Strange though that this kit with such high quality decals, for the instruments (I didn't use them on the raised dails, drybrushed it) doesn't come with the decal for the harnass, like Tamiya usually does.

Theuns

[Guest]

Second try on the pix

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[stona]

Looks okay to me! I know very little about Japanese aircraft colours but your searches confirm what I've heard,they varied considerably by time frame ,service and manufacturer.

Cheers

Steve

[Guest]

I think it looks great,always a difficult thing finding good info of these Japanese aircaft

[Guest]

Here is the lastes.The fuseelarge joints are almost perfect, the glue allone was enough to fuse the halves together, no filler needed. The winf fit was a slight dissapointment for me, as I thought Hasegawa was a shake and bake kit.

During dryfitting I found the fuselarge wingroot fairing to be about 1mm to wide for a good wing fit, so I glued on the two wing upper halves to the fuse using CA and then made the lower wing section fit that.

Atleast now the dihedral angle is correct.

The only flilling I needed to do was the wingroot, tailroot and a little under the fueslarge. I didn't use any putty, I sealed the gaps with thin CA and then built up several layers of Tamiya acrylic aplied with a brush and then sande using 1500 and 2000 water paper.

I will have to rescribe a few lines, but nothing to bad.

Sofar I am rather pleased with the kit, especially the price I got it for. I am leaning towards the light grey collours of the Navy with some shading and light weathering, not the standard "bare metal connected with a few paches of pait" look LOL!

Theuns

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[Guest]

Forgot to add,the radial engine is a real beaut! Ijust had to CA the pushrods to the rocker covers as they stood a little away.

T

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[Guest]

The weathering on this Zero is done with the salt-chipping tecnique ( a first for me) and I put on some pre-shading.Not the most acurate, but I am still learning the airbrush LOL!

You can say the Zero is Lightly salted now.

Something interesting comming up with this build.........stay tuned!

Theuns

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