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Mitsubishi Ki-15 I Asakaze J-BAAL civil courier - Mania 1/72nd


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Here is J-BAAL, Asakaze (morning breeze), twin plane of the better publicized J-BAAI Kamikaze (spirit wind).

The step-by-step building article is here also in Britmodeller:

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I went for it given that the registration most frequently represented is the latter (flew to London from Japan in a much reported feat).

Photos show changes in time on the paint scheme of J-BAAL. One is the same in general as J-BAAI, nose, top and part of the wheel pants blue (with of course different lettering), but there is another where the blue painted area is restricted to the fuselage nose, has hinomaru, and also the characters are different (and two instead of four)

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This Mania model as I mentioned during construction is using the decals from the ARII kit (which cover the two versions -but do not have two complete set of decals).
The quality of this "old" Mania/Hasegawa kit is remarkable (Scalemates states that the kit is from 1974!) , its finesse commendable, and certainly puts to shame a lot of much more recent kit releases.
Pity that the standards of this kit were not more widely imitated or achieved. The pattern makers and other people involved in the creation of this kit should be very proud.
This old kit (44 years old as I write this!) is a real pleasure to build; it has a more sophisticated interior than the ARII kit, but I like better ARII's canopy and main landing gear legs, with separate wheels, and detailed landing light (blank in the Mania kit).
Between the Ki-15 I and II (both released by Mania/Hasegawa and LS/ARII) there are a number of civil versions to build. I still have three more boxes!
A nice kit, for a convenient price, for which the passing of time is nothing.
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Edited by Moa
typo
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A beautiful build of one a much underrated series of kits. I built the Ki15 and Ki27 in the early 80's and they were excellent kits for their time. Well photographed as well. Not having largely grey skies for large chunks of the year must help. 

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On February 24, 2018 at 12:14 PM, Mr T said:

Well photographed as well. Not having largely grey skies for large chunks of the year must help. 

Indeed Mr T!

On the other hand, we have five seasons in Southern California, the most important and longer of them is drought, then follows wildfires, mudslides, earthquake and Oscars

Edited by Moa
typo
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On 2/24/2018 at 10:50 AM, Viking said:

Not a plane I am familiar with, but it looks great.

 

Cheers

 

John

Hi John

The almost identical twin plane, named Kamikaze (no relation to the later war connotation, being Kami a spiritual entity and Kaze wind) was officially denominated Karigane I. It reached London in 1937 from Japan in a very publicized flight for the ceremonies of the coronation of King George.

It was the first Japanese plane to reach Europe!

Asakaze (Morning Breeze) the model I made, is almost identical, but the blue nose starts at the leading edge of the wing, and not midway between leading edge and Townend ring as in Kamikaze.

They many times flew together to air shows and events, and in the Net there are a number of photos of both. 

The Ki-15s were refined and "modern" planes for their time, and their performance was excellent.

The Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, owned both. 

I posted recently here another Mitsubishi Karigane (a II type, though, long cowl) J-BACL, also owned by a newspaper.

Several other Japanese newspapers bought top of the line planes with great handling and speed, and used them as couriers. 

Their decorations are usually attractive. They used Japanese as well as foreign planes, and I would like to build, among others, a Lockheed Sirius I saw that is a feast for the eyes.

We know a lot about war aviation in Japan, but usually very little about its interesting and creative origins and its civil aviation. There is a great book -alas, only in Japanese-: J-BIRD. It is fully loaded with images of very beautiful but arcane types, but again, no information unfortunately can be extracted from it if you don't read Japanese.

Civil aviation history is such a rich field, and it is very rewarding to expand the scope of our interests (if you feel like), since you will find extraordinary types you never heard of or saw before, that eventually can help to create an interesting and diverse model collection, or at least to get acquainted with wondrous flying machines from all corners of the world. 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Moa
to correct typo
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1 hour ago, Moa said:

Indeed Mr T!

On the other hand, we have five seasons in Souther California, the most important and longer of them is drought, then follows wildfires, mudslides, earthquake and Oscars

My wife has family around LA, long story her being a North Yorkshire lass. I understand the weather has turned a tad unpredictable of late. When we were last there a while ago, I was fascinated by the Humming Birds. 

 

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53 minutes ago, Mr T said:

My wife has family around LA, long story her being a North Yorkshire lass.

My wife was also born in Yorkshire (aka the Third World, according to the M. Pythons) and has quite a lot of family there (Middlesbrough area)

We visited there a few years ago, I was delighted with her family (I write this in case it happens that you are a relative) and the landscape. We went also to the Lake District. I recall it rained every day of our month-long visit.

 

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With my wife's family, she might be, although they lived around Bradford and Ripon/Thirsk and up towards Westmorland. The Lake District is notoriously wet, although I have been there when it has been sunny, used to get a lot of military low flying there, but much less now I understand, largely because we have less military to fly. 

Edited by Mr T
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