(Vintage) Tamiya 1:72 A6M3 Zero (Hamp)

"I've been thinking, which is something a man should never do" Those words were spoken by Dean Jagger, in the 1949 Film "Twelve O'Clock High". And my thought that day was I should go in ebay and search "Tamiya Zero" and while browsing through all the new tooled Zero kits, I happened across this vintage box. The price was good as was the shipping, and upon clicking the link I discovered that the item was located in British Columbia, one province over from where I am. As I mentioned the price and shipping were really good less than the cost of a new tooled kit. I decided that this one might be fun to see where Tamiya first got it's start and too see how far the company has progressed. 

The A6M3 (Model 32)was designed with clipped wings, a rounded top of the Cowling, and improved engine. The Clipped wings got it the Allied codename "Hamp". The design was to enable the Zero to roll faster, with an improved engine this new Zero variant had mixed reviews from her pilots. Though the plane did roll better the engine was lacking in enough power to really do any significant difference, so the clipped wings on later A6M3's were rounded (Model 33), and on the A6M5 (Model 52) shortened so they didn't need to be folded, as was the design on the A6M2b (Model 21). The "Hamp" was one of the first of the Zero's to be painted Green on top of the Sky Grey/Green Camouflage. This was usually random splotches or squiggly lines quickly painted on by the ground crews, until a universal Green top, and Grey/Green underside was chosen. 

It's very interesting when a company comes out with a brand new tooling of and old kit, which is probably why many modellers get such a thrill out of seeing what new tooled kit is going to be released from Airfix. Certainly the new tooled Airfix Zero leaves their older kit in the dust. I've tried doing some research on this kit and I think (don't quote me) that Tamiya released this kit in 1964, which is the same year as the Airfix Zero, but let's just say the 60's. For 2 kits form the 60's Tamiya was still rocking the market, and it's surprisingly a much superior kit, though the two do feature some similarities.

Regardless of the year this kit was released I'm not sure if this kit is a second release from the 70' or ever 80's. Opening the box I got a whiff of that old model kit smell, yeah I took a minute to savour it. Over the years is sat in storage quite a few of the pieces had rattled off the sprues, but the bag was still stapled shut, with a nice blue A6M3 HAMP banner on the top. The detail is pretty nice, and Tamiya got a lot of the kit quite accurate. It even includes a Pilot figure and display stand. Though there's no cockpit interior only two pegs, reminiscent of the Airfix kit. The thing that really surprised me was that Tamiya had built the landing flaps to be movable. Pretty cool for an old kit. 3 Markings are included and the decals look to be in excellent condition with the exception of 1 Hinomaru that had a piece of plastic slightly dent it.

I do plan on building this kit, even though some would call it an atrocity for building a vintage kit, but I really can't wait. I don't have a new tooled A6M3 yet but I really want to have both completed sitting on the shelf. Again showing where they've come from, to where they are now, producing one of the best Zero kits in the industry. I'm going to build it straight our of the box, I'm thinking it would be nice to build it with the Green splotches. Oh and the landing flaps down.

Darn more kits to buy....

Academy/ Minicraft 1:240 B-17 Flying Fortress "Sky Giant"

Of all the my model finds and the Nanton Model Show 2015, this was one I wasn't expecting. I have an older Academy model catalogue from 2006, and since the B-17 is tied for my favourite aircraft of all time I try and keep up with what B-17's have been built. But this one stumped me, as I've never been able to find good pictures of the sprue layout, or anything about the kit in general. The vendor I bought it from sold it to me for a $1, so I couldn't pass on that. Upon returning home form the show I was very surprised to find a pretty nice B-17 kit. It's missing a display stand and has a few inaccuracies but it's still a decent little kit.

So I began searching the web for the kit, starting with who built it, Academy or Minicraft? Neither, my search led me to discover it's actually a Japanese Company Entex, and that the scale is really 1:200 as the display stand says. Entex had a series of kits in the day called "Sky Giants", which is why "Sky Giant" is printed on the box, and it looks like Academy bought a bunch of these moulds. 

Now that I've discovered the origins of this kit, let's take a look. The plastic is a light Brown, and has quite a few inaccuracies. That being said this kit was made on the 70's, so I give a pass to the errors, but that doesn't mean I won't point them out. The cockpit is the wrong shape, the front windscreen should be bigger and a different shape with a divider down the middle. The bombardier's gunner window in in the wrong location (the biggest window should be in the middle). Bottom turret is too low, as are the waist gunner positions, and the tail is the wrong shape. Lastly the landing gear is moulded to the wings, so if you want it parked, you're going to have to do some extra work.

The kit's decals look pretty good, but have thick film edges, and are the older Academy style decals that don't like to stick to surfaces, so I know I'm in for a fight. No color guide, the box simply tells you to look at the box art. And no guns were ever built to the kit.

Final thoughts, despite all the wrongs with the kit, I LOVE it! This little B-17 looks great, I can tell its going to be a fun build all the way through. And nice to have a B-17 that doesn't take up all my desk and shelf space. I mentioned that the display stand was missing but that's easy to replace and I've already got another diorama in mind for it. I wish that more companies would produce small kits like this, they are simple builds and lots of youth desperately want to build a B-17, so why not a quick kit like this for $5, that would take an afternoon to build? I love that Airfix is coming out with starter kits, including Acrylic paints and glue, but some of those kits are a bit beyond the skill level of a beginner. Bring back small kits like this, with good detail, clear instructions, and above all a low price, and I think the hobby would start bouncing back again. 

Warhammer -- Ogre Tyrant

I'm not much into miniature gaming, but I really appreciate the work that goes into painting armies. Some modellers that are able to paint amazing small details, and then highlight shade and weather, is awe-inspiring.  I'm not big on painting figures but it's a nice break from all the Aircraft and Sci-Fi, I usually paint.

Games workshop figures used to mainly be made out of metal and plastic. Lately they've switched all the metal figures for resin. It's ok, but there's nothing that compares to the weight of a metal figure. So I went to my local comic book store and found this metal Ogre Tyrant figure. He was on a huge discount, which I didn't realize was because it was used and had parts missing, so I bought a new resin kit to have an extra arm. The other reason for building this kit was to try Vallejo paints, I've wanted to try these for a few years and this Ogre was a perfect piece to test.

He didn't come with a display base so I made on out of and old biscuit tin lid, added some textures and grass and he was done, a really fun figure to build. I'm not going to go all out and build a Ogre army but the experience hasn't stopped me from wanting to build a few more in the future.

SWEET 1:144 A5M "Claude"

At the time of it's release the A5M was a pretty good aircraft. It was one of the first mono-winged aircraft to successfully have the ability to land on aircraft carriers. It's armament was light compared to other aircraft and featured 2 7.7mm machine guns in the cockpit that fed through to the nose. It also featured an optional external drop tank. But lacked a closed canopy, as did many other aircraft at the time, but this did hinder a pilot from flying at higher altitudes.

Designed by famed aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi, the fighter was successful in it's role for a period of time, however due to advances in Europe the A5M was becoming obsolete. The A5M stayed in service until the end of WWII. It was replaced by Horikoshi's more famous A6M Zero, but continued in some areas to be a fighter and then trainer. During the ending years of WWII the A5M's were turned into Kamikaze fighters.

The A5M was a high priority on my modeling list, and thankfully Hobby Boss had just built a new one a few years ago. It's a basic kit but a very good one, featuring great external detail, and an easy build.

Hobby Boss 1:72 A5M

Yearly I look forward to the month of May, that means that the Shizuoka hobby show is coming, and the Greg @ stevethefishdotnet is going to attend the show in Shizuoka. You can see his videos covering the 2015 show here: Part 1  , Part 2,  Part 3.  as Greg toured the show he made his way to the SWEET booth. I've known about SWEET models and that they only want to build kits in 1:144th scale, and it's totally worth it, SWEET have really raised the bar on quality and detail in these tiny kits, they have a wide variety of model kits (including a large variant of Zeros).  So a few weeks ago I was surprised to see a parcel in the mail from Greg, inside was a SWEET new tooled A5M kit. Along with a note that this kit isn't suppose to be released until June (I got it June 3rd), So thanks again Greg for this kit.

Color Painting Guide

Saburo Sakai's A5M awesome!

Cleanly moulded, with more detail than

the Hobby Boss kit.

Opposite side, no Cockpit detail.

Crystal Clear Parts.

I assume are Decal Instructions.

Cartograf Decals :) Check out the tiny stencils 

Easy to read instructions.

I'm going to be starting this kit soon, and to be honest the level of detail in this kit is impressive. Even with the open cockpit there's no interior detail save a bucket was amazed as to how clear the window is, you can read through it. The only things that worry me about the kit are the R & L White/Red bands on the fuselage, but since they're made by Cartograf I'm a bit more relaxed. Lastly is masking off the Red tail, and getting it all to properly conform over the model, but I'm sure it will all work out. This is going to be a fun build. 

The Build

All right time to get building this kit. Fist of all there are modellers out there who get really mad when a 1:144th scale kit doesn't have any interior detail. I'm not one of those. To each his own, I really don't care, but since it's an opened canopy I decided to at least add a seatbelt. As it would be something seen. I've got a decal of one from a Tamiya 1:72 Zero, I them photocopied it down to the proper size and cut it out. I painted it with Tamiya Weathering kit "A" and glued it to the seat. A small detail but one I think is necessary to the model.

The overall assembly of the kit is beautiful, I used very little filler on it, mainly on the bottom of the wing to fuselage gap. That blended over nicely and the plastic quality is unlike anything I've ever seen before, it's very tough and bonds together very well with Tamiya glue. 

I used Testors Enamel Flat Aluminium for this build, as the Testors metallic colors level really well compared to Tamiya Acrylics. I felt this was necessary on this model due to its small size, I really wanted to keep the details. I used Tamiya X-7 Gloss Red for the tail, It's a really nice color and it levelled well. I thought that taping the slanted tail line was going to be difficult, but just taking some more time to be patient really got me through, and after all my efforts  I was thrilled to find no bleeding.

The best Cartograph decals I've ever used were on Airfix's 1:72 new tooled P-51D (Tuskegee), These were a very close second place, nearly tied for first. Absolutely wonderful, which it something you'd want with a small scale, no fuss.  The 2 decals that worried me the most were the white bands on the fuselage, but with a but extra Decal Solvent I left them alone for 5 minutes and came back, they fit perfectly into the crevices, and then an hour later perfectly conformed to the surface details. What's also great is that SWEET gives you a few spare decals in case something goes wrong, or you loose a decal on you finger.

I then gave the model a panel line wash, and cleaned it up. some of the panel lines were to small to keep the paint but over all it gave the model a war weary look which I really liked having. I then added on the clear parts and the engine cowling, which was painted with Tamiya X-18 Semi-Gloss Black.

I had planned on a simple display base but that idea quickly snow balled out of control. I spray painted a biscuit tin lid Black, and layered some Citadel "Green Stuff" on the base. Then a layer of Tamiya "Diorama Texture Paint" Light Sand. It's a weird cool paint that applies very well, I then uses Tamiya 2-part Epoxy to make sand bags, but I couldn't get them to be the right shape. So I searched through my books to see what was really done on the airfields. 

I found some laminated wood, and made these small sheets, then gluing them to the sides of the putty, I added the Sand on the insides, and cut small pieces of balsa wood to create the beams and braces on top.

I found some ting N scale metal barrels that would make great gas barrels. I then added various layers of grasses and shrubs to further the detail. I wanted to show a story of workers fuelling up the drop tank, so I left it off the model and scratch built a small trolley out of styrene. I them placed the barrels and scratch built a fuelling pump and hose. I'm very pleased with how the whole base turned out, the only thing left was to add N scale figures. I went looking for a train yard crews but I couldn't find anything that fit properly, nothing I could paint into a Japanese aircrew so I'll continue on my search for that. 

I'm very happy with the end result of this kit. It's a fantastic build with no fuss. The small scale might turn some modellers off but it's a nice break. And an odd psychological game to see how much detail you can add into the kit. I was a fan of SWEET models before, but not that I've built one I'm a huge Fan.