21st Century 1/32 A6M3 "Zero"

[stona]

You can see how this went together here

http://www.scale-models.co.uk/threads/a-stop-gap-project.19820/

It's built straight out of the box and according to the instructions was with the Rabaul Flying Group in 1943.

I checked Rabaul and it's hot and remote (Papua New Guinea) so I decided to make this look a bit tired and faded.

Anyway here it is:



















Cheers

Steve

[yak face]

Top job steve! As far as bang for your buck goes these take some beating , lovely paintwork and nice restrained chipping , cheers tony

[spanner570]

Great build Steve. As Tony writes these 1/32 scale 21st Century kits are - or were - good 'bang for your bucks'

I still have a couple of 109's and a Veltro in the stash....shame 21st went to the wall.

Ron

[flyjoe180]

Lovely job Steve. As for your earlier comment/query about the exhausts, the pipes on the A6M3 were located either side below the lowest cooling gills on the cowls, just below a line with the leading edge. Most exhaust staining would have been minimal as the fumes would have been ejected clear of the aeroplane under the lower inboard sections of the wings. A great job Steve.

[Ian M]

A great job there Steve. Seams odd seeing a Jap with so much paint still on it.

Ian M

[papa 695]

Another great build from the Stona stable great work Steve

[stona]

Cheers chaps.

Thanks for the info Joe, I'm going to leave it now.

I didn't want to overdo the chipping. I read an article somewhere about how these Mitsubishi built aircraft were primed (some of the chipping on the cowling reveals primer rather than aluminium) and that the idea that the paint fell off in sheets was a bit unrealistic in 1942/3

This is supposed to show the red primer!



The trouble with salt chipping is getting crystals small enough to be in scale, but not so small that they dissolve on the dampened surface.

Cheers

Steve