Alex

Finished all of the rigging attachment points, finally. The wires that run from the forward fuselage to the upper wing inboard of the cabane struts emerge from fairly large holes in the sheetmetal, obviously being anchored to some fitting within, as shown in photos from the walkaround that Max did: These holes are not represented in the kit, so I drilled them. I could have thinned the plastic from the back to get scale-ish thickness at the lip, but I'm trying to do this kit in less than the three months that the Zero took, so I'll just paint the interiors black when the time comes and call that good. I then glued some little pieces of plasticard to the back to close them up: And drilled smaller holes to glue the rigging (EZ-Line) into when I get to that step. You can kind of see them... I've actually done a bunch of additional parts prep such that almost every part I need is off the sprue and cleaned up. I keep feeling antsy to shoot some paint on something, but I still need to do the cockpit control linkages and wiring first. Then the thing should start coming together rapidly. I will also have to do a much longer session on the Silhouette software to make all the masks. Probably won't be able to fid time to focus on that until next weekend, though.

I couldn't resist this one even though I don't know thing one about modeling aircraft that lack propellors. I saw a really slick photo of a Hellenic Air Force F-4E on line. Then discovered that someone made a decal set for it. THEN discovered that Z-M was days away from releasing a new F-4E kit (in 1/48 - these modern fighters are big enough models without needing 1/32 scale). So the die was cast... My Training Day build is going pretty quickly, so maybe I'll slot this one in for this winter, before I head back to obsessing over WWII in the Pacific.

Thanks Max, it would be good to see if you have some photos of Annabelle’s plane that are not in your walk around post. I don’t think it will be difficult to build them up in situ. A bit time consuming, probably.

This will be great to see! And a very interesting subject - I had no idea any of these aircraft were still in military use into the 50s (although a few are still operational in private hands today, which is itself amazing). I have a Hasegawa boxing of this kit that is slated to get built as a Soviet loaner to the Nationalist Chinese circa 1939. I will be very interested to hear how your build progresses.

Spent some time today trying to get both upper and lower wings ready to paint. The leading edges required modest, but not onerous, filling and sanding. I had to tweak the ailerons just a bit as well to get a good fit before gluing them in place. In anticipation of doing lots of masking and not wanting to pull up paint, I gave the whole surface of both wings a solid sanding with a 2500-grit sponge to give the surface some good tooth. I'll wipe it down thoroughly with alcohol before coating with Mr. Primer Surfacer 1000. Hopefully this will give a solid bond! I also taped up the fuselage to check fits (good) and glue the forward side pieces in place so I could have the full fuselage halves up to the firewall in one piece before doing any interior detailing. I can only guess that there are other variants of the kit in the works that would use a different version of that forward part; otherwise why make it separate? This also allowed me to check the fit of lower wing to fuselage, which is also pretty good (especially relative to the SH Nate): I then began work on the anchor points for all of the rigging wires. On the actual aircraft, some of these attachment points are covered with leather or rubber boots, as you can see here on the attachment points just inboard of the interwing struts: No provision is made for these boots in the kit, but Quickboost makes some resin ones, which I ordered. If those look nice and straight forward to use, I'll go that way; otherwise I might try to make them with e.g. built-up layers of PVA glue over the attachments. For the other attachment points, that don't have boots, I'm just gluing in tiny wire eyebolts that I can connect the rigging wires to. I've got more of that to do tomorrow...

Max, those photos are just the ticket! Thanks. And what a fun toy to own - your friend is very lucky!

No real interesting progress to show - I've been prepping parts and investigating cockpit photos of existing Buckers with an eye to scratchbuilding some hopefully-somewhat-accurate control linkages and similar detail. One thing I have determined pretty definitively is that the engine included in this kit is incorrect. It is a Hirth HM504, which is appropriate for the Bucker Bu131. What I've discovered is that the Hitachi Hatsukaze engine, while derived under license from the HM504, by the time it made it's appearance in later-war planes like this Cypress, as the Ha-11, it was quite different. Most importantly, the HM504 has both intake and exhaust valves on the same side of the cylinder head: Note the exhaust header (and barely visible intake manifold) both on the port side of the plane. There are almost no photos of Hatsukaze engines available out there in interweb land, EXCEPT, some beautiful photos of one engine preserved by the Smithsonian: Note intake on near side and exhaust on opposite (starboard) side. ICM has included in the kit a supplemental sprue that has the different cowl pieces for the Japanese model, including exhaust header clearance holes on the starboard underside to accommodate the above engine configuration. But no revised engine - it's an HM504. All of this is just a longwinded way of saying that this is going to be a closed-cowl model. I probably won't even install the engine since the exhaust headers are supplied as stubs that attach to the inside of the cowl. Maybe if this kit goes well overall I will have to build a second one as a Bu 131 so I can build a detachable cowl (I had already figured out how I was going to do it) and detail the engine.

That looks great. Really liking how this is coming together.

That's such a cool technology. Maybe when I retire I will have time to learn it. The possibilities (as you've shown) are limitless...

OK! With my Zero project officially promoted to the display shelf, we're off to the races with this model. I'll have some photos of plastic shortly, but for now, the scheme I'm going to attempt: This is obviously going to be a mask-making challenge, even with the new Silhouette machine on deck. According to ICM's info, the camo pattern was painted on both upper- and undersides of both wings. I'll have to deviate from the kit build sequence enough that I can do the finished paint scheme on each wing and the fuselage separately, then join them. Need to get the fit dialed in the bare plastic so that no filler is needed, if at all possible. Because every project needs to be harder than the one before, I guess. I hope to pull this off without using any decals at all. I scanned the kit decal sheet: None should be terribly hard to do as masks *except* for those pesky little white Kanji characters at the bottom, which need to go on the vertical stabilizer. May take a few test runs on plasticard to sort out how I want to do those.

And that's a wrap. Couple minor tweaks based on folks' feedback. RFI is here:

And then with the wingtips extended and cowling buttoned up, as spotted on deck prior to the raid on Pearl Harbor. (the extended version of the wingtips has too thin a coat of paint on them. I will fix this at some point...) And one of the undersides, for completeness

Some more views of the "opened up" mode.

By far my longest, most involved project to date. Many people followed along and offered advice and encouragement on my build thread, but I would like to especially call out and thank Ryan (A6M) whose expert advice on all things Zero was immensely helpful and made this a better model than I otherwise would have been able to build. I tried to up my RFI game a bit on this one by purchasing a cheap tablecloth to use as a background and actually digging out my old DSLR (versus just taking iPhone photos). Perhaps for the next model I will further improve on this by ironing the tablecloth... First some shots featuring the detailed innards of the forward fuselage, plus the folded wingtips.

Looking good! That is a dark green but I think you are right to go with what the guys who research this stuff think. All of our eyes are biased by decades of whatever color the model kit box illustrators decided to paint with. Same deal with the pale gray Zero that is so common in illustrations and never existed in fact. I'm not looking forward to those outside jobs - the season starts in a month or so here and I'll lose 2 or 3 weekends to picking up leaves and clearing out the garden for winter. Once it starts snowing, more modeling time will be available...

Thanks for the kind words, all. Your advice and interest in following the build makes me a better modeler.

Thanks Ryan, I can certainly do that. And thank you very much for all of your research and suggestions along the way. Mine’s just the latest Zero here that has benefited from your assistance!

So I think this is a wrap for this model. I'll post the usual iPhone photo on messy bench for the record here, but I am going to try to do a better RFI. I ordered a cheap gray tablecloth from Amazon to use as a visually neutral backdrop, and I dug out and charged up my Cannon DSLR (which I don't think I've touched in 3 years). I'm going to try and make some better looking photos to document the completed model. Next up will be a Ki-86a IJAAF trainer (a license-built Bucker Bu131) over in the Training Day group build forum! I am excited to get started on that.

Thank you! That's very helpful!

Superb stuff there! The linen texture decals are very nicely done - really looks “printed” on to the surface of the kit. where do you source your rigging supplies? Any good tutorials you can recommend? I’ve got a biplane up next and this really isn’t my area of expertise.

Trying to resist the temptation to rush the final bits.

That was actually easier to do that it was to get a clear photo of it. Needs to be repainted now, but that's fine. Next to the mast is the tiny aluminum ring that I'm imagining I can use as the "insulator" on the tail bungee attachment. Wish me luck on that ;-) The mast top looks like it might not be completely filled, but it is. The CA is translucent near the top.

I'm going to go fill the notch with CA glue now...

I was actually just thinking sort of along those same lines as I stared at the photo I had taken of the part. But had not considered making a slot. Even a shallow cut would be enough to glue the end of a piece of monofilament into, then the sides of the cut could be filled and smoothed. I can make the bungee on the other end out of heavy gauge EZ-line to hold everything taut. Thanks

Thanks!