Tamiya 1/48 scale Kawasaki Ki-61-1 Tei Hien

I finished this on February 1, 2024, just about a month after completing the Tamiya 1/48 F-14A, which I thought, given its size and complexity, was the best engineered kit I had ever built. Well, this Ki-61 is obviously smaller and simpler, but it's an absolute gem of a kit with lots of clever, helpful engineering. The cockpit detail is some of the best I've seen for a WW2 fighter. I only added PE seat belts from Eduard. For the cockpit color, I went with what recent research has posited: the original color was IJA Gray-Green, but it became more tan due to photo-chemical reaction. I used Mr. Color Gray-Green and mixed in some SEA Tan 30219.

For the NMF, I used my favorite Alclad shade, Duraluminum. The other colors are all Gunze Mr. Color: Insignia Red, Orange-Yellow, Propeller Color, and Black. Virtually all the markings and stripes are painted. The only decals (from the kit) are the 244th Sentai tail emblems, the numbers on the gear doors, the port-side victory markings, and a few tiny trim tab stencils. I will say the Tamiya decals worked just fine (hot water), but I wanted to avoid decal film as much as possible since I didn't intend to apply any clear coats. I scanned and printed the kit decals to use as templates for the fuselage stripes, and I eyeball-masked for the wing walk lines. Montex provided the masks for the Hinomarus. To make the Kanji no-step symbols above the flaps, I scanned the decals and traced them to vector drawings using Adobe InDesign. I sent the artwork to my friend and fellow modeler Bill Michaels, who cut stencils using his Silhouette Cricut cutter. I wanted a basically clean model, but I did apply a dark brown panel line wash using Tamiya Panel Line Accent.

Most people seem to do the plane with blue stripes and blotch green camouflage. I was initially going to do that as well, but I was so happy with way the NMF turned out that I decided to go with the other kit scheme, a plane flown by ace Capt. Teruhiko Kobayashi. The fact that I have a very good friend whose last name is also Kobayashi sealed the deal.

Cheers, Pip

8 additional images. Click to enlarge.