Thanks, John. Happy to see you are following the build.

Thanks for commenting on that, George. I have the space issue somewhat under control for the moment. At least my office is still usable and not too cluttered for work and my other hobbies. I actually have 3 active 1/32nd builds going on now, including a 1/32nd Bf-110c,which I just finished masking prior to a pre-shading session.

, , This one is also fully riveted. I will post the pics of the build when I get some painting done this week maybe. The Spitfire and Hayate each go in a plastic box with parts on sprues, decals and detail bits in their original boxes. . The Bf 110 is too big for a storage box, so I keep it in my largest Ikea cabinet. It will fit almost anything, except for a 1/72 B-52 or Tu-95 Bear (future dream builds in my stash). It is current home to a finished 1/32 Tamiya F-4J and 1/48 Mitsubishi Betty as well as about 10 builds in advanced stages,including two Sherman tanks, and nearly finished builds in 1/48 of the SAAB Draken, MiG 15, F-86 Sabre and B5n Kate. Just no time to get to these lately. The cabinet keeps all the models dust free and safe, if a bit jumbled at the moment. I have another larger dust free Ikea display cabinet in the pic below that I recently rigged up with lighting for my 1/32nd models and some 1/48 kits. Still quite a bit of space in there with shelves above and below those pictured. I will build better shelves one day with more optimal viewing but I like the way the lights let me see the paintwork better on these finished models.

Thanks, John. I made some progress on the Hayate this weekend. Hopefully on a roll now. First, I retouched the IJA Grey to get it to the right shade. Didn't take any photos of that. It may be worth mentioning that the Gunze IJA Grey is too dark, especially over a pre-shade. I mixed it 50/50 with Flat White to get it to the shade of the Tamiya IJA Grey. The first photo shows the technique I used to work on the topside mottle while the underside Grey was still drying. The next two show the model ready to recieve the green upper camo with lower surfaces masked.

, , The camo green was a 50/50 mix of Gunze H 60 IJA Green and H52 Olive Drab 1. I wanted the more brownish shade mentioned in many sources for late war IJA camo - close to OD. The application went very well with marbling shining through just right (not so obvious in photos as I photographed the model on a cloudy day and later after dark with mostly artificial light). In spite of the nice overall effect with the camo, I faced one discouraging "disaster" for the day. After airbrushing and doing my usual surface inspection, I noticed a weird blob covering some of the rivet detail just below the cockpit under neath the green I had just applied. I fairly quickly deduced that this was a stray blob of dried superglue left over from doing corrections to rivet lines elsewhere on the model. GRRR. Anyway, I decided to attack this as I would damage to a metal finish when I get bits of debris in that. I masked off the panel that the blob resided in, making sure I had clear recessed panel lines all around to delimit the correction area and hide my repair work. I then stripped the paint down to the plastic with careful application of Windex. Removing any smaller area of paint would leave a visible scar on the surface of the paintjob. When the superglue blob was exposed I got out my trusty VMS Super Glue Debonder and applied tiny drops of it with a micro brush. The debonder melted away the blob completely without damaging the plastic or rivet detail.This was the result - very clean. I could then mask off the panel, and spray on my black base mix. , A bit of flat white was next for marbling. Finally, I reapplied the IJA Green/OD mix. Good as new now with ugly glue tumour removed! , Tomorrow I will work on the Hinos and the lightning bolt. I am impatient to remove the masking for the yellow ID panels and black anti glare panel but I will resist the temptation. So far so good.

Thanks, Spiros. More to come soon.

I do something very creative on every model that requires a partial repaint, Colin (@coling). Your careful efforts have resulted in a great repair job.

Got some work done on the Ki.84 over the holidays. I removed the masking on the anti-glare panel and corrected the alignment a bit on the port side by the windscreen (with repainting). I also test fitted the engine and cowling but removed them later to avoid damaging them with further painting.

I then embarked on the long process of creating my own masks with a circle cutter and Tamiya tape for the hinomarus. It was necessary to have the fuselage hinos in place to do the lightning bolts later. I did the wing markings and the fuselage ID stripe as well since I was in the rhythm of masking and spraying anyway. There was a tedious process of test fitting and repositioning masks to keep things sharp and properly aligned. However, I only had to do a few corrections along the way to fix leakage under the masks because my extra care and planning paid off. Well-burnished Tamiya tape masks were the key to success. , The lightning bolts came next. I used the positive forms to get these properly positioned. , , I then did the negative masking around them. White was first colour for the outline. This was masked with very thin strips of sliced Tamiya tape and the blue was filled in. , , . With the strips removed, the white looked good. I did a bit more masking to respray touch-ups around the bolts in white and olive green camo. The end result looked quite good, symmetrical and sharp. The lighting bolts did not have to be perfect as they were field painted, but I tried to get them as clean as possible. Finally, I removed the masks for the yellow panels on the wings. They looked good. I then reapplied some masking over leading an trailing edge of the wings to allow me to handle the model securely without damaging the paint. That's it for now. Comments welcome. Hope you like the result so far. More to come soon.

Those painted markings do look really good, Colin @coling
Lots of time spent on masking but it definitely paid off.

Thanks my friend @coling! Wishing you a happy, prosperous 2025!