15 articles · 0.8K karma · 6 friends · active 10 years, 6 months ago
Modeler over 40 years. Auto mechanic by profession 33 years. Airshow announcer and moderator for events at Planes Of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California over 15 years.
Fine Molds was begun as a sideline in the late 80s by a few guys working at Hasegawa. Since that time, the small company has produced some interesting and rare subject matter, and reproduced them all quite faithfully. I have never heard [...]
Aichi's B7A (allied code-name "Grace") was an Imperial Japanese Navy attack plane built around some strange but valid perameters. It was to carry a torpedo (a BIG one) or similarly-weighted attack ordnance. It was to be at least [...]
The Mitsubishi A7M Reppu was originally conceived in 1942 to eventually replace the A6M Zero carrier-fighter in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Bigger, more powerful and much faster than the Zero, the "Reppu" (hurricane) was a victim [...]
Nakajima's C6N three-man reconnaissance plane was originally intended to serve from Japan's aircraft carrier fleet, but by the time it entered service, there were really no more carriers to fly from. Flying from land-bases, the [...]
The Mitsubishi J2M Raiden (Jack) was a radical departure from conventional Japanese fighter design. It's wide, barrel-like fuselage design stemmed from the layout of its Kasei engine, and was used primarily for home defense. As an [...]
Hasegawa's 1/48 N1K2-J shown here is the late-90s re-tool. Previously, the company had released their first 1/48 N1K2-J in the late 70s/early 80s with raised panel lines, about the same time as the 1/48 Kyushu Shinden.
This new-tool kit [...]
Here are the other Hasegawa 1/48 Zeros in my collection (so far).
They include the A6M3 type 32 "Hamp" with squared-off wingtips and deleted radio and antenna, A6M3 type 22 with white fuselage band, and A6M5c type 52 [...]
Here are some more Hasegawa 1/48 Zeros. The A6M2 Model 11, A6M2 Model 21, and the A6M2-K trainer in bright orange. The latter is from Hasegawa's 65th anniversary limited-edition Zero box set released in 2005. The A6M2-K is now available as [...]
In 2005, Hasegawa offered a very limited-edition "65th anniversary" box set of Mitsubishi A6M "type 0" fighter kits in 1/48 scale. Fifteen different kits were included in the set, some of which were never previously [...]
Here's a pair of the Fine Molds 1/48 Mitsubishi A5M "Claudes" that I did last year. Fine Molds did several versions of this plane, these two being the A5M1 and A5M2b. The most accurate A5M kits in 1/48, the kits are really quite [...]
