Its been quite a
while since I finished a kit, so here is the latest addition to my
Philippine based WWII aircraft collection. This is a 1/48 Hasegawa
Nakajima C6N1 Saiun (Myrt) that I built out of the box.
Building this kit was fun and straight forward. The parts were flash free
and fit well. I applied no putty at all except for a few
drops of Mr. Surfacer 500 in small gaps in the wings. The kit
comes with an open or closed canopy option. I opted to use the closed
position as it was easier for me to mask the large single middle section.
The interior detail is good and I just added seatbelts made from masking
tape and wires for the buckles. I painted the interior with my own
mix of Nakajima Interior Green.
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In preparation
for the painting, I pre-shaded the panel lines with Tamiya semi gloss
black. After I painted the grey green fabric covered areas in the
ailerons and elevators. After they were masked, I spray painted the
undersides with Gunze Mr. Color Silver (#8). Although the
instruction called for an IJN Light Grey undersides, the subject wherein I
based my model had a NMF underside based on photographs. For the upper
camo, I misted the model with Mr.Color IJN Dark Green (#15) and applied
several light coats of Mr. Color Nakajima Dark Green (#129) to get as
close as possible to the Nakajima Dark Green color. The cowling area
was a combination of Tamiya Semi Gloss Black and Mr.Color 125 (Cowling
Color). I applied a thin black wash and once it was dry, I painted
the fuel caps with red. Then I weathered the model using a fine
brush and Tamiya X-11 and then applied exhaust stains by using an
airbrush. For the kit decals, I went to my spares for the tail
numbers, although the kits supplied the same numbers but in white, I chose
yellow because the subject in which I based my kit had yellow tail
markings in real life. I used stretched sprue for the aerials.
The model depicts a
C6N1 Myrt with the 762nd Kokutai, Imperial Japanese Navy when it was based
in the Philippines during WWII. Although primarily the 762nd Ku was
stationed at the Clark Field, this particular Myrt (762-03) was found in bad
shape together with several derelict Japanese aircraft on January
1945 at Bamban Airfield, Tarlac, a few miles from the Clark - Mabalacat
airfield complex. I decided to build the plane on how it looked like when
it patrolled the skies over the Philippines during the war.
Cheers,
Tony
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