1/72 LS Nakajima Ki-43 I

Gallery Article by Gustavo Antonelli on Apr 2 2014

 

 

This kit is a very old LS (1963 I think) I found in a military and historical book store in Buenos Aires. Old model kits belonging to those days are not very detailed. This one has a very nicely detailed wings, fuselage and control surfaces, but there is not any detail in the cockpit and wheel wells. In this sense, it only gives a quite slim pilot figure, that was quickly discarded.

So, I decided to scratch build the cockpit, following some old pictures and diagrams that I found in the net. 

 

Click on images below to see larger images

I used streched plastic, some bits of plasticard and other bits from the spare box to build both cockpit sides, instrument boards, control stick and pedals, and the seat. I made the seat belts with Tamiya masking tape. I also filled the wheel wells, taking my Hasegawa Ki-43 II as a model.

The kit had no decals, so I got some Hinomarus and I cut other small decal pieces from the spares box. I chose to represent an a/c from the 1st Sentai, and, maybe from the 1st Chutai, but not really sure about that.

I chose a three colour camouflage scheme: dark green, brown and IJA green gray. I wanted to get a heavily chipped effect, so I applied the hair spray method combined with the salt method to achieve this. I painted the whole kit with Revell silver, I then gave it an acrylic gloss varnish, and when everything was dry I gave two coats of hair spray with my airbrush, dropping some salt grains on the areas where I wanted to be more chipped. Then, I followed the usual steps to finish with the painting and weathering according to the above mentioned methods.
Best regards,

Gustavo Antonelli

Click on images below to see larger images

 

      

Photos and text © by Gustavo Antonelli