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ICM Ki-27a 1:72nd


Si2

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As I finish my Tony, I start this Nate.

This is an ICM kit,

I had a look and the parts look quite nice.

But appearances can be deceptive...

 

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There is a lot of very fine rivet detail, any work at all to the surface in the form of filler or sanding will remove it.

I've not idea how to put it back.

The kit has a number of fit idiosyncracies that will reveal themselves as I progress through the build.

 

I assemled the cockpit floor on the wing lower and painted it, along with the interior.

The colour was a weird blue/green, apparently like a luftwaffe blue...

I went with this. It's quite a nice change.

The cockpit is sparse but builds up quite nice with a few exceptions.

The seat sits wonky so needed a little tweak, I think it's too far back as well.

The joystick is bent to go around the seat edge, but it's nowhere near the seat..?

I painted the seat back leather look and the base aluminium, I'll be adding some belts before I seal it up.

Both rudder pedals were short shots, unless the prototype has these weird shape paddles?

The engine is a great little piece composed of many parts that the instructions sort of vaguely suggest where and how they go together.

 

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The cockpit has these big guns to stick on the floor on some raised bosses. I'm not sure that's where they should go as there are some rebates on the fuse sides that are nowhere near the guns when placed as shown.

In the end I took them off - they were supposed to thread through the engine, but they didn't and were just in completely the wrong area.

The fit is awful, the fuse sort of locks over the wings and it hits and fouls everywhere.

Took about an hour of fiddling to get it to fit.

The engine exhausts do poke through the fuse cowl quite nicely and the engine is great, shame you can't really see it.

 

a7acb212-0c21-406d-ba0d-37f02a7fb1ea.jpg

 

 

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Picture are a little random as I was really focussed on fitting this thing together...

 

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The undercarriage is weird.

The tops of the spats are moulded into the wing lower halves.

Then you have the lower parts that have a giant bent pin effect that pokes right up throug the wing and out of the top....

At first I though maybe this is a landing gear down indicator - but I doubt they were fitted to an aircraft with fixed undercarriage :)

So the rod pokes up and through and then you trim and sand it off.

Destroying the nice light rivet marking etc...

Pain.

 

You can see the guns are long gone on this photo...

 

 

 

 

Edited by Si2
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The tail plane horizontal surfaces slot in nicely when you clean the slot up.

They are a combined unit.

Then the fun begins.

The rudder is seperate, yay!

But it's joined to the tail skid.

So if you fit the rudder offset, like you might want to as it's sepreate, the tail skid turns with it.

Tail skids are not oftern steerable, as they are skids, not wheels...

When you try to stuff this nasty little piece in the back it means you cannot fit the part that finishes off the tail.

Like a little set of bomb fins.

This needs extensive cutting and sanding to get it to fit, it's about 3mm out to start.

4838e32c-386f-4867-a1a2-894c2806df5a.jpg

 

nasty...

 

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Bit of a gap....

 

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bit of fettling..

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3bb06c75-7383-4459-90ff-cc2142a95ada.jpg

 

that's as good as it gets...

I cut the elevators so they drooped as well.

Adding a little bit of interest.

 

wing tops stuck on and guns removed.

 

0181a3e2-bd5b-4084-84c0-433aa5f2feb0.jpg

 

 

 

 

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You're making a great start on an interesting aeroplane. Looks like the kit has a few tricks up its sleeve, so-to-speak, but you've got them nicely sorted.

 

I'll tag along again, if I may, and see how it all comes together.

 

Kind regards,

 

Mark

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Great start on that a bit challenging kit. Mind you, The tops of the undercarriage struts are supposed to stick out of wing upper surface when the aircraft is standing on the ground. In flight, with the u/c extended, they would be flush.

 

Jan

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On 31/10/2020 at 13:16, Jani said:

Great start on that a bit challenging kit. Mind you, The tops of the undercarriage struts are supposed to stick out of wing upper surface when the aircraft is standing on the ground. In flight, with the u/c extended, they would be flush.

 

Jan

Aha, great news. Then there is a reason behind the straneg configuration. 

I thought it was a lot of effort if there was no reason.

I did what I should really of doe at the start, a load of google research.

I found a really nice video of a plane in Japan, but it is a replica, the way it's painted makes it look like a large model...

I made some more progress last night fitting a few more parts.

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I moved a little further last night. I competed the cockpit by adding some belts and a lever.

This allowed me to stick the fuselage on the wings. Once this is on place I realised you can't really see anything in through the tiny opening.

So I'd glad I didnt spend ages making a super cockpit :)

The seat looks too far back as I mentioned, I have a feeling it should sit in front of the bulkhead.

I popped the undercarriage parts on and filled a few areas underneath.

 

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With the wins on the fuse I added the front deck and cowling.

It's a tight fit in there and I needed to sand down some valve covers.

 

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I added a strip of plastic to flare the front fuselage section a while back, this means the top decking doesn't quite fit as well as it should.

I have had to fill and sand the cowling. I use thin super glue and lot of coats.

It's not looking too bad now.

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It's actually a really nice engine and the oil cooler is nice prominent feature.

 

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10 hours ago, 2996 Victor said:

Coming along very nicely! 

 

Not being familiar with the Ki-27, are the guns mounted in the lower fuselage?

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

They are, they poke through the cylinder heads.

I tried to fit them, but it was an impossible task.

I have a feeling the fitting point wasn't correct and also the way you need to thread the engine though means it clashes on the way in.

I left them out.

You might be able to see them through the little windows I cut in the fuselage side, but I doubt it.

In all the photos I've looked at you cannot see the barrells.

 

 

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4 hours ago, Si2 said:

They are, they poke through the cylinder heads.

I tried to fit them, but it was an impossible task.

I have a feeling the fitting point wasn't correct and also the way you need to thread the engine though means it clashes on the way in.

I left them out.

You might be able to see them through the little windows I cut in the fuselage side, but I doubt it.

In all the photos I've looked at you cannot see the barrells.

 

 

 

Interesting! Not sure I've come across that configuration before.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

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I thought it was weird to have the guns on the floor.

Looking at the pictures you can see two little windows, one on each side about where the breeches are, so the guns can be reloaded with light, as they are so deep in the cockpit.

I had to scoop those little holes out, they are probably horribly over scale but are quite prominent features.

I wanted them to be visible, they will be left open till the end and then I'll pop some crystal clear in there.

This picture shows the landing gear stumps on top of the wing really well.

And some good detail if you want to make the engine look better. I feel mine looks a little too dirty, that central area looks really neat in this picture.

There's also some great detail on the sight and the prop.

I wonder what that set of marks is around the lip of the cowl??

Looks like timing marks for the engine, I bet setting the timing an engine thig big is complex.

The exhaust stubs are nicely presented here too - a great picture all round!

 

Nakajima-Ki-27-15.jpg

 

 

Some great pictures here, none of which show the guns 'poking' out.

https://axis-and-allies-paintworks.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?329

 

I will progress a little more tonight with the application of some primer, so I can see where the surface needs some work.

I'm heading for another light grey/green plane here. I really like the powder blue tail surfaces on the early variant I am doing with the balloon tyres, probably for rough airfields.

I have several shades of light grey that I will mix up a bit for this one.

I have planes already in the VMA IJA grey/green straight out of the bottle, so I will aim for a little shade variation.

thanks for reading 

 

Edited by Si2
additional info and the correction of my usual spelling errors.
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My guns were stuck where the instructions show them, but I think this is the wrong place.

They would be better on top of the lumps at the side. There are grooves in the internal walls of the fuselage that would probably allow them to pass by the firewall better and probably make their way past the engine.

And then they might fit :)

 

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This is from a larger scale kit and looks better..

I also notice the twin push rods for each pedal...

 

kop27l.jpg

 

 

Edited by Si2
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Now I look at it, the guns would probably fit on top of those floor bumps quite nicely...

I'm tempted to pull the whole thing to bits again.

Not tempted that much, but slightly tempted...

I wonder if I could fiddle them in with tweezers?

Edited by Si2
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Some great photographs there, but as you say the guns' muzzles are invisible! Pity the kit instructions are so vague about where the guns should be fitted. I'm not sure I could take everything apart again to fit them, though, and fiddling them in with tweezers looks a pretty difficult proposition.....

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

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I am now at a point where I've started to paint this little bird.

I used alclad primer in white.

Did a coat, sanded a bit, another coat and more fettling.

Then on to a top coat. I used VMA IJN medium grey this time instead of my usual grey green.

I know that's labelled as a Navy colour :(

I really just wanted a slightly different colour to my Navy Zero for this plane as this is an Army fighter.

You can spend years reading the data on Japanese aircraft colours, I have read a lot and I believe there was a lot of variation in the field.

This grey/green/caramel/ash colour is not a particular shade. More knowledgable people than me will probably correct me and I'd welcome that data.

 

I just wanted a subtle variation from my Navy planes.

 

Here it is blown over.

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I fettled about a bit and locally touched up.

When you get an all over colour on like this you can spot those areas of concern.

I need to scribe the panel lines on the cowl manually as they've gone during assembly.

There is an area on a wing that looks like the tool has cracked...

a very thin spider web mark across the outer tip.

 

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Next stage is to get the overall colour coverage good and then on to details like the flying surfaces different colour, the cowls and some basic panel shading.

 

 

 

Edited by Si2
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This is where the instructions say to stick the guns...

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I'm pretty sure that the holes are not the correct place and they should sit on top of those little ramps.

 

The instructions have a few weird features.

These little wheel spacers illustrated are not on the sprues, I am not sure where they popped up from for the picture.

17e05b6b-ef01-4914-acc9-824ec85054f3.jpg

 

The wheels seem to fit on ok.

The painting guide has the red and yellow swapping positions in different views. Good job the box art is pretty easy to follow.

083fd92f-072a-4da6-80aa-fd35acd77af0.jpg

 

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I made a start on the colours, all a bit slap dash so far.

The yellow nose is taking a while to get a good depth of colour, I think I'm on coat 16 so far.

The panel lines are al gone, I'm not sure if I should pen them on or scribe them in.

 

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Once these colours are blocked on nicely I'll add a bit of gloss and decals!

Then an overcoat of satin and start the weathering and panel shading.

I am looking to have this complete by the weekend as I have that Tamiya to get back to.

 

 

 

 

 

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Another step closer.

Some rudimentary shading added, colours enhanced on the nose.

Ancillaries get painted and varnished.

65cec078-a0d2-4faf-94ed-4ff33fb55209.jpg

 

I'm firing up the compressor for varnish application today.

I'm not looking forward to the decals much, they look a bit complicated.

The airframe surface is not particularly heavily details, so they should sit smooth.

 

 

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The decals went on without issue, they fit reasonably well, if a little thick.

They have a certain fabric texture, possibly from screen printing.

I masked the cockpit glass and sprayed a satin coat on. Then a little bit of weathering and dirt.

I lost the little pitot tube, so made a new one from wire and sprue

d1909de0-1476-4355-8390-413d25903608.jpg

 

 

7bb12a4c-2d27-4861-b270-6ac5eaa14b43.jpg

 

some weathering added with a bit of sponge

083fdce6-0fa7-4ac5-80ba-2f6f7c298aac.jpg

 

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