Aerials on A6M3 Reisen 32 from New Guinea

[DominikS]

A question to Japanese aviation experts. I'm building an A6M3 Reisen 32 from New Guinea and I'm wondering if I should place aerials (radio and direction finding) on her. I know that very often Japanese pilots had radio aerial deleted, together with the radio, to make a/c lighter.

The only photos I've found show only wreck. Maybe someone has the service photo of this aircraft.

[DominikS]

This is the link to the website with the photo:

http://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=13054

The Reisen is Q-102 Houkou 872.

[Seawinder]

Well, I'm no expert, but there's pretty clearly no mast, which would probably imply no antenna?

[Nick Millman]

I've not seen a photo of Q-102 in service but Q-122 getting airborne at Rabaul has no aerial mast and generally, apart from the profile in the Aero Detail book, 2 Ku A6M3's have been depicted with all the radio equipment removed and the mast completely absent rather than cut down to the level of the canopy like the masts on 251 Ku Model 22's.

Q-102 is one of the subjects in the recent Tamiya 1/72nd scale kit which also instructs to delete the mast from that option.

Nick

[DominikS]

NIck

I'm just building this very Tamiya's Reisen but I just want to be sure about the mast. So next week I can close the canopy and will probably have billions of questions to you about details.