One-Oh-Four

Hi Dave, the Zulu-sheet is gorgeous! How is 35002, the stencilling sheet coming along? Cheers, Erik.

Hmm, this link doesn’t work?...

As I’ve seen the sprues at Flanders Modelling Festival in March: you’ll be VERY pleasantly surprised!

As for the missing depth of the cockpit, as stated earlier, that would be around 3.5mm. That translates to 11.2cm or 4.4 inch in real life. With the ejection seat in place, how visible will that really be, I wonder?

Does anybody know of photos of the instrument panel of the RF-5E?

Well, yes, I do. On a car tire it's quite visible, on a motorcycle tire, it's not. At least not when the motorcycle is standing on it's side stand. Riding a motorcycle on a track does involve lowering the tire pressure, to get the tire to warm up better and to increase the contact patch, but you'll be hard pressed to see bulges on the sidewalls or a flat spot where the tire rests on the ground. A typical motorcycle contact patch: You can see the flat spot when the tire is under load, but one hardly sees a bike modelled like this. This is me on the Zandvoort track in 2009 or 2010, BTW: Cheers, Erik.

Hahaha, you’re right. But generally I like the material Tamiya uses for their tires. BTW, if you see bulges / flat spots on a motorcycle tire, it’s either because the tire has a hole in it or is underinflated. You DON’T want to ride it like that, it’ll wallow and scare you to death!

Hmmmm, Trumpeter's SBD Dauntless-series could do with new tires, too!

I have yet to see modellers swap out Tamiya's tires with their car and motorcycle-kits.... Because AMT/ERTL botched them 25 years ago, doesn't mean that it's ALL bad.... Although seam-lines ARE a hassle...!

That's great! Thanks!

David, does that mean that the pilot sits in front and the gunner in the back? The Playstation pad will be used by the gunner I assume? Edit: Oh, never mind, on SVSM I see that both cockpits feature the controller... Don't know why I missed that on your model...!

Wow, great info, Ryan! I'll chop out the brackets I used and try to replicate these!

A little babystep. As pointed out already, the double compressed air-bottle setup on the left fuselage side was an A6M5-feature so I have been busy fabricating two horizontal single-bottle brackets. Comparing them to the photo posted by Scott of the setup in an A6M3 I freewheeled a bit. If they'll be visible at all remains to be seen.... This was the Eduard-modified kit setup: I first tried to copy the Eduard bracket for the single bottle as found on the back of the cockpit bulkhead from plasticard, but I was already dissatisfied even while I was cutting it. When the knife went a little wide; that was it! New tactic: making a photocopy of the bracket, trying to drill the lightening holes after which the bracket could simply be cut out with a small pair of decal-scissors. Of course, drilling in a piece of paper doesn't work! I didn't want to abandon the basic idea at that moment yet so I repeated the photocopying, this time punching the holes with the punch-and-die, what sort-of worked. After cutting out the part, I immersed it in Future, hoping to reinforce the paper with it after it had dried. This also sort-of worked, but I couldn't get excited about it... Nothing beats the instructional value of (other people's) failure, so: Then I had my Eureka-moment: why not try to cut the original double bracket in half, thereby creating two single brackets? Lo and behold, it worked! I cut the two bottles apart and sanded the bottom of one round to conform to the shape of the horizontal bottle on the fuselage floor. Because the bottle only poses for this photo, the straps haven't been fastened over the bottle yet. Hmmmm, looking at the photo of the A6M3, it looks significantly different..... Maybe I'll try something else, yet...

It also seems that unprotected aotake loses (much?) of it’s color over the years. The IWM A6M5 shows only aluminium color aft of the rear cockpit bulkhead and the oil tank etc. on the Merrill Island A6M2 also looks aluminium instead of a translucent blue/green.

Great news! Thanks!