Search the Community

Hi all and just a bit of fun finished for the KUTA GB here on the forum. Very short build thread is here but built OOB except for two crew for the 'Fry Way to the Danger Zone' tribute. Hasegawa_F-14A_Eggplane_1 (9) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Hasegawa_F-14A_Eggplane_1 (3) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Hasegawa_F-14A_Eggplane_1 (2) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Hasegawa_F-14A_Eggplane_1 (10) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Hasegawa_F-14A_Eggplane_1 (8) by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Thanks for looking, stay safe and happy modelling Cheers, Dermot

This is Hasegawa's excellent P-39/P-400 built from the latest P-39N/Q boxing, but backdated to a P-400. The kit includes essentially all the parts needed for the earlier Aircobra, minus the early propeller and a few bumps and and lumps. I had a set of Montex masks for the markings. These were harder to use than I thought they would be. Read on. There is not much to say about the build, that isn't standard for a Hasegawa kit. It was fairly easy, but care was needed to ensure proper fit. I used a little bit of filler on where the back of the lower wing half meets the fuselage, but if I recall, that was it, Painting was also a pretty standard affair. I used AK Real Colors mixed with Tamiya and Mr. Color paints, and Mr. Leveling Thinner. I ran into some trouble with the Montex Masks and Hasegawa's decals. The masks for the US Army lettering, and the national insignia worked beautifully, but I had trouble lining up the different layers of the shark mouth. The result is that I have some white paint showing on the outside of the red lips, and it makes the red paint look "raised", like a thick decal would appear. I tried sanding it down a bit, but gave up. It only shows from certain angles and doesn't bother me enough to fix it. What bothered me more were Hasegawa's stencil decals. They are printed with several stencils to a large shape (for example a line of no walk signs), which is intended to make the stenciling process faster. However, the decals are quite thick, and it took a lot of sanding and feathering of the decal edges to get them to look flat against the finish. I would have preferred to just apply a thinner decal if each stencil separately. The boxing rooster and Hell's Bells decals came with the Montex Mask set, and are excellent. I weathered the plane to make it look heavily worked, but not completely worn out. These aircraft were on Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942, when supply lines were stretched, and conditions at Henderson Field were less than ideal. The result is a pretty dirty plane, exposed to the elements, and to many hours of combat. There are several sepia and green washes, acrylic glazes for oil and fuel spills, and tan and brown acrylic inks daubed on with a sponge to simulate mud on the landing gear and where crews walked with muddy boots.

Hi all and am taking the plunge with this one: Hasegawa_F-14_Tomcat_1_72 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Will be OOB build with decals by Hi-Decal for the blue splinter scheme used at the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center in the late Nineties. I've never built this Hasegawa kit so here's hoping it goes ok. Any advice always appreciated! A few references to feed the habit... Tomcat references by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Thanks for stopping by and looking forward to following your builds! Happy modelling, Dermot

Hi all, hope you're well. Hoping to join with this stalled build if that's possible. That would be eggscellent. Hasegawa_Egg_F_14 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Cheers, Dermot

Time to throw my hat into the ring with my choice for this GB which I have been looking forward to since the last one finished, as I built a Swedish subject last time I thought I should choose one from one of the other eligible countries. This lead me to choosing a subject from Finland and one that I have wanted to do for a while, a Draken. Unlike a certain Australian member of the forum who posts pictures of kits downloaded from the internet and claims to have them in his stash but never actually builds them I do have one in my stash and enough (for me anyway) goodies to make a half decent Finnish machine. So we will start with the usual box and un-touched contents pictures; You will notice that this boxing is for Swedish machines and as such only came with markings for them, fortunately a couple of years ago another member of the forum who had the Finnish boxing wanted to build a Swedish aircraft so we swapped decal sheets and copies of the painting guides, a win win situation for us both. Hear are the decals and one of the painting guides; As you can see these are the earlier large national markings, and the ones that I like the best. The only additional goodies that I will be using on the build are a quickboost ejector seat that come with the belts moulded on (much better than trying to work with etched brass as far as I am concerned) and a set of brass probes by Master; I hope to be able to make a start on this one very soon in between working on my Hs-126, thanks for looking in and as usual all comments and criticisms are gratefully received. Craig.

This is my F-104J of the Japan Air Self Defence Force, 2nd Air Wing, 203rd tactical fighter squadron (hikotai). I built it for the Interceptors Group Build, starting in November...last year! Just finished it finally about two weeks ago and took some photos today. I chose the 203rd because it based at Chitose Air Base on the island of Hokkaido, a place dear to my heart after some lovely holidays there a few years ago when we lived close to Japan. I miss it very much. Also, I chose this because of the awesome tail marking. It's what you'd expect from Hasegawa - high quality but a bit finicky. My boxing came with the two seater as well but I think I will hold off on building that one for a while. I sprayed the wings and fuselage with tamiya sprays and the rest is done with Vallejo acrylics. The decals were very nice and easy to apply. I'm not an enormous fan of the F-104 but I do think it looks cool. The double box set was a bargain when I got it, which was why I got it, but in the end I am glad I did because this is one of the better models I've made in a good while. Thanks for looking! Here is the rather drawn out build thread for those interested:

For the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I had chosen to build one of the perpetrators of that raid. I was told that japanese naval aircraft early in the war were kept in pristine condition so I did very little weathering to it. Other than the red stripes not quite aligning on the starboard landing gear leg, I was satisfied with this one.

The Hasegawa set of twelve figures contains four Luftwaffe, four Japanese and four RAF/USAAF (though these last four are more suited to US subjects). Major Werner Molders, a leading fighter ace in the German Air Force, 1941. He wears the Fliegermutze and a non-issue black leather flying jacket with a self-inflating life jacket over it, and Oberlieutnant Erich Hartman serving with Jagdgeschwader 52 in 1944. The two Japanese pilots are dressed as a Captain, Japanese Air Force, 1943, with both having flight suit and parachute harness. The first figure is in the process of clambering in or out of his aircraft, has the parachute seat pack which his colleague lacks, and so is ready for immediate action. The other man has the flaps of his flying helmet clearly visible, which may be a fur-lined winter version. The next figure wears a field cap and a jacket (something like an A-2) and what look like ordinary uniform trousers. I have used one as Sergeant Harold Oliver of Royal Air Force Coastal Command, 1943. He is shown wearing a sidecap, Frock White polo sweater, Irvin sheepskin jacket and pre-war flying suit. Alternatively the figure could be used for a Captain (P-51B pilot), US Army Air Force, 1944. He has the sidecap, brown leather flying jacket over OD trousers. The second man wears a flying helmet and life jacket, and presumably a flying suit although this is without any details such as pockets and openings, so its identity is unclear. This may be suitable for an Aircrewman, US Army Air Force, 1944. He wears olive green flying overalls and a flak-suit.

Hi, I love Phantoms and I wouldn't want to miss out on the GB. I'd like to finish in time, so I won't be going for one of the big 1/48 projects. Here's my beloved Hasegawa kit, straight from the 1990's and still wrapped in plastic. This box-art is in my top two of Shigeo Koike's work, the other one being the Bicentennial F-4N's that are on some boxings of the 1/48 F-4B/N kit. For the decals I'll use the VMFA-314 option from this microscale sheet. I've always wanted a VMFA-314 F-4B. I wish there were more 1/72 decals for USMC Phantoms in Vietnam. If they turn out to be too old to be useable, I'll switch to another squadron. I'm aiming to keep this simple and finish on time. Cheers, Stefan.

The empire is hard at work below decks preparing for December 7th. This is my first attempt at painting my own insignias, but I guess there's nothing easier than Japanese roundels.

As this GB has quite a long "shelf life" as it were, and I have quite a few other potentially eligible kits, I will probably build several more, though I will no doubt need to put more shelving up in my roof to store them - particularly if I were to attempt some of the larger kits such as the Hercules. For the moment I rather fancy building a replacement for my old 1979 moulding Hasegawa Crusader. With this in mind I bought the 1999 reboxed version 20 years ago. When it entered service air to air misssiles were beginning to replace guns in the USN, and it did eventually aquire 4 Sidewinders, but it still retained 4 x 20mm cannon as a standard fit, unlike the F4 Phantom which replaced it, thus earning the nickname in my title. Although not eligible for this GB as it is "mid wing" I will also be building my replacement Grumman F-11F Tiger in parallel which is rather appropriate as the two were in competition for the fleet fighter role I believe - no doubt it will appear in the background from time to time, but more on that later. Pete

Good afternoon. I picked up this Hasegawa kit unboxed as part of a Job Lot purchase. Looks complete, but we shall see. I have dug out the Master metal nose probe out of the vault to go with this as well... The main challenge in this build is likely to be the decals. I have seen plenty of online builds with the undercarriage up, which would make this easier. However, who wants a quiet life? The undercarriage will be down, which obviously means some surgical dissection on the decals down the line. Thanks for looking, Icarus

Hi all, this Hasegawa kit was given to me to build a few months back, the owner of the kit is restoring a full size bike and wants me to build this "mini me" version. I have built Hasegawa's Suzuki GT380 Sebring a while back, and it was a real pleasure to put together, so this Kawa triple should be just as good.

I was alluding to bad decisions in my other post...well, this is it. With how well the dual F-16 build is going and my curiosity of the manufacturing differences between 2 companies 3 decades apart is making me want to take the plunge. That and I love the look of the Norm81 birds. I think I'm actually going to be able to get away with minimal AM on this one. I decided to hold off on seats, as after closer examination I think the kit ones may end up looking just fine w/ some belts added...I'll make final decisions after I build one up. As far as exhausts, I think I can make the stock Academy cans out of the Eduard kit work on this with a little bit of modification (I've already done a bit of mocking up before deciding to move forward with this). I've got some resin wheels & AIM-120s ordered...and hopefully that will be the extent of AM for this project...which is just fine as the cost of paint (converting to MRP for external paint) is costing more than I paid for the kit and the 2 pieces of AM (I'm blaming Rich for that). It'll be a little bit before this one goes. It'll be worked alongside the Z-M JASDF build (and the Draken) after the F-16s are finished up. Which is fine, as it will give me a chance to find out a bit more about the late ICE update package which added the AIM-120 capability. According to the decals "technically" only the 2 test/eval schemes carried the 120s. One of the late schemes (81b) might be "close enough" to me since I'd rather build a service jet rather than a test/eval. We'll see.

The 527th only operated these aircraft for a couple of years, never reaching its intended full complement of 18 jets. Just 12 were flown at Bentwaters, being the only F-16s to ever be based in the UK and attracting a whole plethora of USAF, RAF and NATO squadrons to Bentwaters for DACT. Interesting article here with more info: http://homepages.force9.net/ffour/Oldstuff/2004/aggressors/aggress.htm This is the old 1/48 Hasegawa F-16C kit, built mostly from the box, but with Eduard cockpit etch and Afterburner decals. I scratch built the finless AIM-9 round from a kit missile. Paints used were all Tamiya spray cans, following the colours and markings shown on the aftermarket decal pack. Interestingly, 86-0229 is still serving to this day, now based in Texas with the 457th FS/301st FW.

From what I've read, Iranian pilots really liked the Phantom. It's speed, weapons and durability were put to good use against Iraq especially, conducting bombing, fighter sweep and reconnaissance duties, However when equipped with the Maverick air to ground missile, the Phantom found a new and deadly role; tank killing. Nearly 50 machines are still in service with the IRIAF today. The 1/72 Hasegawa Phantoms are pretty decent kits, although do watch out for the fit of the forward fuselage to the body and the fit of the air intakes, it can be tricky to get right and the better you get the fit the less sanding you will have to do. The instructions give you three machines, but I was not happy with the colour call outs, so I went with matching colours to the box top that I believe look better. I did use their suggested Gunze 44 flesh for the sand colour, but picked RLM 71 over their suggested Gunze 303 for green which I think was too light and I went with Revell SM381 brown. Gunze 311 grey was used for the under surface and RLM 70 for the drop tanks as the green here looks darker than the air frame colour. You will have to source weapons as only three drop tanks are included, but Hasegawa has put the inner pylons along with sidewinder launch rails in the kit. The Mavericks and launch rails come from the Hasegawa weapons set.

The meanest looking jet fighter of all times is IMHO the Phantom. My model depicts a Phantom that was one of the 34 USAF fighters that the US sent as emergency replacements to Israel during the Yom Kippur war in October, 1973. This was because during the first eight days of the conflict the IAF had lost 23 fighters to the efficient SAM's of the Arab adversaries. The US Phantoms were urgently flown to Israel in their Vietnam war camo and they were immediately sent to action. Only the national markings and some warning stencils were replaced. The Phantoms were operated by the IAF 69 "Hammers" Squadron and the Hebrew nickname of the Phantom was "kurnass" or "sledgehammer". I built the model quite many years ago from an excellent Hasegawa kit. I also used a lot of aftermarket parts for instance Verlinden and Eduard photoeches to the cockpit and Cutting Edge resin parts for the jet nozzles. The main decals and stencils I ordered from IsraDecals.

It was a choice between this and VF-51 MiG Killer, but the limited edition deserves to be built. As you can see I've already been testing paints to see what I had that was close enough as we have restictions on movement still in Melbourne so the hobby shops are closed. Anyways I think I have paints that are about right, not sure what I will do with loads yet, you can really bomb them up or later in the Iran-Iraq war they became rather deadly tank killers due to the Iranians adapting them to carry Mavericks.

Hello everyone, it’s been a long time since I have participated in a group build but as I was planning to build a Phantom anyway it made sense to join the fun! The Phantom is without a doubt my favourite jet, I used to have quite a few completed models but they were damaged beyond repair while in storage back in the UK. I’ve been slowly rebuilding my collection and I’ve completed the two British ‘tooms shown below: For this GB I’m planning on building the Hobbytime (Hasegawa) 1/48 F-4E as a Greek AUP Phantom using a mountain of Eduard goodies plus some other parts. This kit contains some PE which I will be chopping up to more closely resemble the AUP Phantom. Some photos of the kit and extras are below (apologies for the sideways photos, I’ll fix that in future updates!): I’ll be using the Hataka Greek Air Force set as I think the colours looked pretty good on my Kinetic F-5. I love the look of these colours on the Phantom! So far I’ve primed some of the cockpit parts and I’ll try to get some paint and PE on them tomorrow. Thanks for looking guys and looking forward to seeing lots of wonderful ‘tooms take shape during this GB! Chris

I built the IAF A-4 Skyhawk (Ayit) from an old but excellent Hasegawa kit. There were no mentionable difficulties or problems in assembling the kit. It was more or less the good old "shake and bake" process 😃 My model depicts the plane that was used in the pilots' training academy. IAF Skyhawks were also operational in combat missions for instance during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. I bought the pilots' training academy markings from Sky's decals and painted the colourful IAF camo with Xtracolor enamels.I ordered the dorsal avionics hump and the resin jet pipe extension from Cutting edge. This modification was installed in IAF Skyhawks to minimize the effect of the heat guided SAM missiles. I took this picture in 2005 of an A-4 Skyhawk at the Israeli Air Force museum in Hatzerim (near the town of Be'ersheva).

For the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor coming up in a month, my next build will be one of the perpetrators of that attack. I hope to release the Let's Build video and the showcase photos on December 7th. Stay tuned.

Hi all This is Hasegawa's 1/48 N1K1 Shiden, finished in the markings of an aircraft from the IJN's 201st Flying Group, based at Luzon, Philippines, in late 1944. An 'ungainly looking plane, but nevertheless one of Japan's best and most capable fighters of the war, easily on a par with US Hellcats and Corsairs in the right hands. This particular a/c is fairly well documented and seems to have been in good condition when found, with none of the fairly typical weather-beaten effects seen on many late-war Japanese fighters (which made the job a bit easier). The kit went together really well, with no major fit issues, requiring just enough filler here and there to make it interesting, rather than tedious..

Good day, Here is my sixth completed kit for 2021. I chose this Hasegawa F-86D as I had a small window of time to complete a model. I chose a subject that was simple to construct and required few colors. Here are the highlights…………… 1. Paint A. AK Interactive Extreme Matt Aluminum ( airframe ), White Aluminum ( center section of wings), & Steel ( exhaust section ) B. Mission Models Dark Gull Gray ( cockpit ), Tire Black C.Model Master Chevy Red ( seat cushions ), flat black, and white D. Tamiya Titanium Silver X-32 ( gear wells ), Chrome Silver X-11 ( landing gear oleos ), and Flat Aluminum XF-16 ( landing gear ), Deep Green XF-26 ( anti-glare panel ), Clear Red & Clear Green ( wing ID lights ) 2. Vallejo washes : Black, light gray, light rust, and brown 3. Chalk pastels : Black & dark gray 4. Painted Tamiya tape for the seat belts and permanent marker for the belt loop holes. I enjoyed this longstanding kit from Hasegawa. It has very good surface detail and I added some minor extras in the cockpit to help dress it up. I used the kit supplied decals for the Japanese Self Defense Force. Up to four squadron options are provided. I recommend this kit for all skill levels. Thank you in advance!!!!!! Mike

Hello to all.After a long time I have manage to finish this awesome f-14.The kit itself is the well known hasegawa kit and all of the issues that I red about are true.I added the aires resin cockpit and the exhausts.The cockpit is a pain in the you know what to install.My customer asked for a closed cockpit and that complicated matters even more.The jasmine decals I partialy used are bad and innacurate so I had to use the hasegawa OOB ones for it. Enjoy the photos.