1/48 Hasegawa Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate (Frank)

by Lorenzo Cassinadri

--------------------

 

Hi everybody!
This is my first submission here on ARC.  The model represents a "Frank" of the 1st Chutai, 102nd Hiko Sentai based on Kyushu Island during April 1945.  This plane showed a particularly heavy weathering, due to the poor quality of Japanese paints during WWII and intense use in harsh climatic conditions.  It also had some substituted panels left unpainted.

The kit is very well done.  The only relatively major flaw are the vinyl grommets for the main landing gear: they simply don't work as advertised.  Better ditch them and glue the landing gear in place the good old way.  I've built the kit out of the box and only added spark plug wiring to the engine, some tubes and pipes in the cockpit and brake lines to the landing gear, all made by copper wire of various diameters.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

  

  

About the painting, I've followed the indications of an article appeared in the n.23 / Nov. 1995 issue of "Tuttomodellismo", an Italian magazine unfortunately not on sale anymore.
Basically it's an undercoat of Tamiya XF-16 flat aluminium on which are first overpainted the hinomarus, the anti-glare panel, the yellow bands on the wings and the tail symbols. Then, after having masked them along with the substituted panels, I've painted the camo scheme with Tamiya XF-13 JA green. On the underside I've selectively painted some panels with Humbrol aluminium, silver and mix of alumium + a drop of gloss black to give it a more realistic natural metal look.
Paint chipping was made by stripping off the green paint with bits of scotch tape and Letraset tape for the smaller parts.  I know I've exaggerated a bit with it, but I had fun and in my opinion the effect is convincing enough.
Exhaust and gun stains are a mix of Humbrol matt black and brown.  Panels were profiled with a wash of black, raw umber and burnt sienna oils and shaded with grey and sepia inks sprayed along Post-it edges.

Lorenzo

Photos and text © by Lorenzo Cassinadri