Your Hayate goes better and better . Great masking and painting Colin (@coling) . Happy and creative new year !

I am now getting down to final details of painting and assembly. As earlier photos show, I had elected to pre-paint the anti-glare panel and entire fuselage and engine cowling with engine before they were joined. This has since presented assembly challenges that took a while to overcome. First, in attaching the windscreen, I found that it was not a perfect fit. I was forced to build up some styrene ribbing inside to slightly spread the windscreen when it was glued down.

Some liquid glue inevitably leaked around the piece and onto the anti-glare panel, leaving a shiny border. So, I masked off the windscreen frame and the anti-glare panel while also mummy wrapping the whole front end to avoid over-spray . Then, I airbrushed the anti-glare panel again and covered the glue leak areas with fresh paint. That worked very well as a seamless fix.

My second challenge was finishing and attaching the exhaust stacks to the cowling before attaching the heavy cowling/engine assembly. I did the stacks in flat black with a dusting of red brown, followed by rubbing on powdered graphite for a metallic rust effect.

I did my best to scrape away painted surfaces at attachment points and then glued on the engine assembly. That took some work as it is a tight fit with liquid glue not wanting to adhere in places.

A third challenge was painting the prop in all of its details to avoid use of decals later. This turned out fine.

I still have to do the metallic collar for each prop blade at the base using Rub n Buff. Meanwhile, I have some bigger stuff to paint, including the metallic colour of the flap well and upper part of each manoeuvring flap as well as the landing gear legs. Of course there will be clear coating, detail decals like stencils on the wings, an oil wash and matt coat, so much more to do.

Here is the way it looks now with the prop and hub test-fitted for the time being. I fit things together like this now and then to motivate me to get the project done.

Anyway, hope it looks good so far. Comments welcome.

Excellent progress, Colin @coling

Thanks, John. I hope to get this one done soon.

Thanks, Tom. Happy New Year! This will be my first build of 2025, I guess.

Thanks, Carl. I checked out your Mohawk build. That is quite a saga of determined craftsmanship with some impressive results. I admire your experimentation with casting and crafting new parts. I wish you well in getting it finished up and on display.

Some more progress. I applied the gloss coat and oil wash and took time adding layers of pigment. I did a dot filter application with various oil paint colours. The effect looks a bit stark with the gloss coat on, but I am confident it will look subtler with the final matt coat.

Next came the very fine upper wing decals - with special care for the fine yellow borders to service areas. I expected these to shatter but, oddly enough, they were fine. The really delicate decals turned out to be the yellow fuel cap markers. A couple of those broke up and had to be removed.

Of the kit decals, I only have some Japanese language stencils to add today. I will use fragments of white decal to do the Japanese character for "demon" which was painted on the rudder.

I applied decal hinomarus to the underside of the wings. It was too much work to paint these on and they snuggled down very nicely over the riveting anyway.

Most of the work is now complete on the landing gear, but I will touch up the tire colour today and add brake lines before installation.

Obviously there is more to be done with oil paints as well as some airbrushing to add exhaust and oil stains.

BTW, I was lamenting not having a good spray stand for holding the model when I suddenly remembered having set aside a Tamiya version I bought years ago and discarded as impractical. At the time, I thought the wire braces would scratch the paint on a finished model. On rethinking this, I realized all I had to do was slice some foam rubber to cover the wire and also extend to length of the support. It works very well and I have used it a lot since.

Anyway, this build is nearly complete. More soon. Comments welcome.