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After finishing a multi-month project (Ford Tri-motor diorama at the "Mountains of Madness") I needed something quick and relatively brainless to get my juices flowing again. Looking through my stash, I selected Tamiya's 1/72 Ki-61 Hien (Tony): Right off, I'll say the engineering in this kit is top-notch! Everything falls together with almost no fretting or putty needed. And the detail Tamiya includes in this little bird leaves little room for aftermarket. It turned out to be an excellent choice for my mojo-restorer. Stew Dapple has already posted a definitive WIP on this subject -- I couldn't improve on Stew's thread so I decided not to post a WIP of my own. For anyone who is interested, Stew's double-build WIP can be found here: I also decided to do this completely Out-Of-the-Box, with an eye to entering my Tony in this summer's local modeling contest. Tamiya's Tony includes three camo options. Stew chose the all-metal and overall green schemes for his two builds. That left me to do the version with overall-metal and mottled-green upper surfaces. This particular aircraft was flown by Major Tembico Kobayashi, with 14 kills to his credit (one being a ramming attack!) For the most part, I followed the instructions "to the letter", including paint call-outs. I deviated from the painting info in a couple of places. Stew used Colourcoats paints for his gray-green interior and the reddish-brown prop. I couldn't find Colourcoats here in the U.S., so I substituted with the paints shown below: I also used AK Interactive Xtreme Metal enamels to create the natural metal finish: Finally, for the mottled green upper surfaces, I cheated and bought a set of decals from Tamiya's Detail-Up Parts Series: That's enough jawing for now, let's get to the pics! First, some "beauty shots" taken in natural sunlight: And now a few under more controlled lighting conditions: Next, some detail pics: Beautifully-detailed interior: Yes, I used the kit's decals for my seatbelts: Gauges on the IP are also a kit decal: The canopy is extraordinarily clear, so my time spent on the interior paid off: Note the "ramming attack" kill marking! Gun barrels are molded in, but you can't tell by looking! b The landing light looks great, but I did have to sand and polish the clear part to fair it in to the wing leading edge. Landing gear bay. I wanted this to be a "clean" bird so I kept weathering to a minimum. Antenna wire was made using Uschi's "Rig That Thing" rigging line" And now, the bad news :-(( I used generous amounts of DioSol on the mottling decals. It really wasn't needed (except for a couple of small places), but I've never before applied large decals like these and I wanted to be sure they would go down properly. Well, as I'm sure you know, DioSol causes decals to wrinkle before finally settling in place. Apparently, when the decals wrinkled they took some of the Xtreme Metal paint with them, afterward leaving a fossil record in the metallic surface. Looking closely, one sees this: The camera makes it look worse than it appears to the eyeball, but it's extremely irritating nonetheless. Arrrgggghhhhh!!! So, there we are. Mojo successfully restored and I'm now looking for my next "big project". Thanks for viewing! P.S. If you didn't catch my Tri-motor diorama, you can check it out here: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235052025-at-the-mountains-of-madness/&page=1