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Hasegawa 1/48 D3A1 Type99 Model 11 VAL


Ran

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With all this WFH the Rufe is speeding to its finish and it's time to pick the next one. I was looking at the boxes on the upper shelves trying to notice a rise in the Mojo level.

Then I noticed a bag of nylon with parts in it. It turns out it is a kit I picked off eBay and it came in a bag. With some parts off the spruces, some decals missing and the lower wing broken. A kind of a mule bought cheap to hone it my skills. 

I looked inside and saw its the perfect next build after the Stuka and the Rufe - an IJN dive bomber with fixed landing gear !!!!

As it turns out - its also a more complicated kit compared to the last couple of ones so its a good choice. With a bunch of small parts and a total count of 119 parts - its a more challenging kit.

The plastic itself is dark green and quite brittle - these will add to the challenge.

 

sIWgtX5m.jpg (I got this off the web :) )

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I started with trying to fix the lower wing:

 

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That's it for today

 

Ran

 

 

 

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Could not resist :)

Started to paint small parts, build some sub-assemblies, group parts that need the same paint - the usual stuff

 

6PvDGCum.jpg 

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Some of the engineering is ... well - questionable. Tiny parts with microscopic location pins and no structural support whats so ever. The gunners seat contraption requires you to balance 4 parts in a close formation in 3D space - and then glue them ALL TOGETHER at the same time :(

 

That's it for today

Ran

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have to say the engineering of putting the cockpit tub and closing the fuselage proved to be excellent. The cockpit sticks in with positive feedback and serve as a huge locator plug for the fuselage

 

Painting and closing up the cockpit was just fun. detail picking done with white and silver pencils and red/yellow paint. Heavy brown/black wash was also applied.

Seat belts were also added - an Eduard one for the front seat and an self-made one for the gunner.

 

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Then the fuselage halves where glues together, followed by the lower wing and then each upper wing in its turn. This was done to limit the gap at the wing root.

I did forgot to drill out the holes for the bomb racks. :(

 

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The cockpit is a pretty darn small space:

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Canopy masking followed - but I want to forget these hours

 

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Then the model was primed, checked, filled, sanded, re-primed with Mr. Surfacer 1500, checked, sanded, re-primed - the whole fun cycle

 

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This time I remembered to pre-shade :)

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Before walking a way from the bench I had to repair a small mistake I did. I glues the engine without the piece that should hold the spinner axis. I could have opted to just glue the propeller - but AMS kicked in (almost for the first time in this kit). I drilled the engine block through and then improvised an axle

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That's it

Comments are welcomed

 

Ran

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Looks pretty good to me from my seat! You aren’t kidding about the plastic being brittle, that wing break looks almost like a cut! Nice recovery. Your cockpit came out very nice, also!

 

Keep up the good work.

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  • 4 weeks later...

With the Covid-19 Work-from-home winding down - I have less time building and even less time writing. 

The VAL is DONE!! - bees so for more than a week but only know I think I may have the time and willing to update.

 

In my last report - the kit was just pre-shaded (heavily) and the prop axis was re-fabricated.

 

These are the tales of the VAL as it progressed to the shelf:

 

Painting started with the red tail (Tamiya X-7) - what a lovely start.

yyZBCAJl.jpg

Interesting point - the panel lines at the base of the vertical stabilizer are not identical on both sides.

 

Next came the upper green. The pre-wash was way too heavy so it produced a very weary yet clean effect. I though about it for a while and decided to let it go.

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Then came the gray under side:

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I hate this gray as it covers sooo badly. It did create a worn out effect which I was half happy with.

 

Last but not least - the black front. I cut out a mask using a scaled print out of the instructions:

The paint was Tamiya Semi Gloss Black X-18 with a bit of Metali Blue - X-13. This does really come out in the picture but is a nice tonal break on the kit itself. 

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After some touch ups:

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This was followed by Alclad Aqua Gloss Clear and some washes:

 

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This worked relatively fine on the gray but I decided to waive it on the red tail. These a/c were kept quite clean - so I'm told. 

 

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I then tried some dark and white washes on the top side:

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Decided to skip panel washes on the wings and keep in on the engine coaling. 

I has some thoughts about pin washes - these big steppes of green just call for one. After looking up some ref - it looked like the too-heavy pre-wash is enough.

 

Next came the decals - which performed very good.

The yellow stripes with the blue ribbon - another example of great engineering. 

 

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It took a lot of MicroSet for the decals to conform - by they did at the end.

 

Only at this stage I noticed I'm missing a yellow stripe. Fast-Backwards to the original images:

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Yup - yellow strips ARE missing.

 

No alternative but paint them:

Paint matching was a problem but I gambled on Tamiya Lemon Yellow X-8:

 

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Looks good apart from the wiffle up on the right side when removing the masking too early in fear of leakages:

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This will require some white touch up later on

 

The decals of the wheel pods just suck. They are wrong in size. Luckily I read somewhere that this is a problem and tackled this by putting the decals as good as I could and after setting - added the missing parts not covered by the decals in the front of the pod - with paint. I used MM 4714.

RsQOH07m.jpg zVa2ArYm.jpg

 

For the first time I tried a technique for the wing tip lights:

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Installing the gunner chair was a big headache. Its amazing how Hasegawa put some very smart engineering on some parts and questionable at best in others.

 

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The canopy turned, well - passable:

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The underbelly bomb is also a nice example of smart engineering - with the holes in the fuselage for the support legs provide firm location and angle:

AQZPcq5l.jpg

 

Kit prop was attached with just a drop of CA to the fab-ed axle.

 

Well - this is it - a couple of shots before the format Ready-for-Inspection:

 

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So, what did we have here:

 

1. Fastest kit to day - just under 5 weeks.

2. First time doing wing tip lights

3. Lots of masking

4. Fixing the snapped wing

5. First IJN a/c

6. Re-fab of the kit's prop axle

7. Not getting into AMS 

 

Not bad for a could of $ kit off eBay.

 

Comments are welcomed as always.

 

Ran

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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