Hasegawa Nakajima Ki 84 Hayate

[dennismcc]

 

 

For 2017 I decided to build some Hasegawa kits as they tend to be quality kits that fit well but do not have the complexity of open panels, detailed engines etc. My completed model collection contains only two Japanese subjects so I was going to build three Hasegawa kits of Japanese subjects.

The first one up was to be a Nakajima Ki84 Hayate, I can remember building a 1/72 scale kit (Revell maybe) when I was very young and liked the look of it.

I know very little about Japanese aircraft so I started this project by reading my Thorpe’s Japanese Army Air Force camouflage and markings book from end to end.

Then I started reading through my meagre collection of books on the Ki 84, including the Aero Detail 24 book.

Then onto the internet and the J Aircraft website, copying and reading everything that I could find concerning the Ki 84 and Japanese WW2 paintwork.

 Then I went through Nick Millman’s Aviation of Japan blog searching for more information.

A lot of the data that I have collected is contradictory, so as usual I will read it and then make my own mind up.

I was most surprised to read that only one Ki 84 has survived, mind you having a copy of Broken Wings of the Samurai I should have realised that Japanese WW2 aircraft would be a bit thin on the ground but as it was one of the most effective of their fighters it’s surprising that others were not saved.

Nick Millman very kindly helped me with information when I built my Special Hobby Ki 27 Nate so I contacted him again requesting his help once more, Nick was extremely helpful and with his input I put together a plan of action.

The subject that I have chosen for my build will be aircraft 45 of the 47^th Flight Regiment, 3^rd Squadron Narimasu Airfield in Feb 1945.

The kit instructions call for an Olive Drab FS34087 for the upper surface but Nick recommends FS3070 as it is the closest to the actual Hayate factory colour.

For the undersides FS16350 is the nearest to the factory colour so I searched for a model paint nearest to this.

After discussions with Nick I devised the following plan using Nick's advise and what paint that I had or could get so any mistakes are down to me and not Nick:

Upper surface colour

 

Sovereign Colourcoats ARJ0,1 this is the nearest to FS33070 that I could find though there is a new Colourcoats paint that is a dedicated aircraft colour ACJ22 - IJAAF #7 Ohryoku nana go shoku, which I picked up at Telford.

 

 

Under surface colour

 

I compared Humbrol 168 Hemp, Sovereign Colourcoats ACJ016 and Xtracolor X16 Hemp, they all look very similar but I like working with Xtracolor so will go with X16

 

 

Cockpit

 

Humbrol 78 Matt Cockpit Green mixed with Humbrol 28 Camouflage Grey, a 2:1 mix of 78 and 28 roughly matches FS34226 (not 266) which Nick recommends, though it could have been painted with the exterior colour, in the end using a new tinlet I made a 78 and 28 mix.

 

Area Under the windscreen and canopy

 

Revell 9 Anthracite

 

 

Anti Glare Panel

 

The kit instructions do not show an anti glare panel but on Nick's advice I will go with one using  Revell 9 Anthracite

 

 

Wheel wells

 

Humbrol 78

 

 

Prop and Spinner

 

FS 34082 is quoted for these but Humbrol 78 is recommended by Nick

 

 

ID Bands

 

X106 Insignia Yellow or ACJ19

 

 

Hinomaru

 

Humbrol 19 or Sovereign Colourcoats ACJ20, will probably use the latter.

 

 

Inside Engine Cowling

 

Upper surface colour , Sovereign Colourcoats ARJ01or ACJ22

 

More soon

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

Edited November 5, 2018 by dennismcc
spelling

[dennismcc]

As well as sourcing the paints I also sent away for an Aires cockpit, some Maketar paint masks and some paint that I did not have in stock. I also ordered some RB seatbelts for IJA aircraft, these surprisingly are only lap belts.

The usual box photo

 

References

 

More tomorrow

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[steel_tiger]

Built this kit. I really enjoyed it. I used the Aires cockpit as well. Fit was pretty good. I built mine with a natural metal cockpit. With some cockpit panels painted green to represent wartime availability of parts.

[Collin]

I have this kit together on the bench now. Should be painting by the end of the week. Fit is good, but expect to need a spreader to improve the wing root fit. Standard seam clean up but that’s minimal, then main parts fit well. 

 

Cheers

Collin

[dennismcc]

Continuing from yesterday, the story of my very long and much stalled build which I am happy to say is now back on track and in the paint shop as we speak

Back to 2017:

As usual first up was the cockpit, the Aires resin parts were washed in warm soapy water and left to dry.

Then came the dry fitting, all went reasonably well until I tried to fit the floor into the cockpit and found that it was too short.

So I decided to use the kit floor with the resin front bulkhead, the kit rear bulkhead and the resin side walls.

The latter will be glued to the fuselage sides rather than making up a “tub” as I was concerned with having gaps between the resin wall and the fuselage sides.

And of course the resin seat will be used rather than the clunky kit seat.

All the cockpit parts and the fuselage halves were airbrushed with the H78/H28  mixture and left to dry.

 

Life then came into the mix and the builders arrived to build a two storey extension  to the house, the lower part will be a new garage for my motorbikes as the existing garage is too small. Above the garage will be my newer bigger study, the building of this extension lasted from May to September so modelling was suspended, then to go with the new parts of the house the rest of the house had to be decorated and refitted. This was completed just before Christmas and I got back to this build having forgotten all the things that I had learned about the Hayate and Japanese aircraft.

 

A re appraisal of the cockpit saw me revert to the kit cockpit parts apart from the seat as I wanted this to be a fast track build rather than waste time messing about with resin. In hindsight which is really useless I wish that I had used the resin parts but that was the decision I made at the time.

 

The kit cockpit parts were dug out, cleaned up, and painted as per the Hasegawa  instructions, though the kit control column had vanished so the resin one was used.

 

For the main cockpit colour I still used the H78/H28  mixture, then added all the detail painting.

The control panel was painted semi gloss black using Humbrol 85, I very nearly sanded down the raised detail and used the instrument decal but this tends to leave a very flat looking IP. Instead I used Mr Surfacer 500 to fill in the instrument dials to give a flat surface to place the instrument decals on (MDC and Airscale). This was not a good idea and did not work terribly well. It’s a shame YAHU haven’t got around to making an IP for this kit.

 

The side consol was painted black (H85) and the details picked out with a brush, this was less than successful, so the raised detail was sanded back and the kit decal used. This looked ever so much neater.

 

Some weathering was carried out using Pro Modeller mud and dark washes. I had not used these for years and only small amounts were used.

 

The various knobs and levers were painted as per the instructions and put to one side as I continued to plough through the sprues.

Next up was the lap belt using the RB productions version which was a pleasure to put together, I then drilled some holes in the side of the seat, inserted some fine fuse wire and attached the belt.

 

With the seat ready to go I continued with the cockpit and assembled the “tub” which went together beautifully. For the cowl on top of the instrument panel I used Revell 9 Anthracite which looks good

 

The tub was then glued in place in a fuselage half and the fuselage was closed this fitted really well so hopefully I’ll have the minimum amount of filling/sanding to do.

 

This did work out well as the filling/sanding was minimal, once done the panel detail was re done and attention turned to the wings.

 

 

More very soon

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

[ChuckD]

As I have this exact kit on the bench and I'm at pretty much the exact same spot, I'll be following this thread closely.  

[dennismcc]

13 hours ago, steel_tiger said:

Built this kit. I really enjoyed it. I used the Aires cockpit as well. Fit was pretty good. I built mine with a natural metal cockpit. With some cockpit panels painted green to represent wartime availability of parts.

Yes it is a great kit, I must admit that I really like Hasegawa kits I haven't come across a bad one yet, you must post a photo of your build or did I miss it if you already have

2 hours ago, Collin said:

I have this kit together on the bench now. Should be painting by the end of the week. Fit is good, but expect to need a spreader to improve the wing root fit. Standard seam clean up but that’s minimal, then main parts fit well. 

 

Cheers

Collin

I must admit that I have progressed beyond the wing/fuselage join on mine and the fit was good, but I know it can vary from kit to kit, I recently built two HB Spitfires, one fitted perfect, the other needed a bit (not much) of fettling and these were the same kits.

17 minutes ago, Gewehr 43 said:

As I have this exact kit on the bench and I'm at pretty much the exact same spot, I'll be following this thread closely.  

Welcome board it's very handy watching someone else's build I have copied about 5 build threads from this and other websites and studied them before attempting mine.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[1to1scale]

I built this kit and it was the best one I built so far, I added the Eduard interior PE set and Montex masks to mine. The whole plane is painted, zero decals. See the link in my signature.

 

 

[dennismcc]

4 hours ago, 1to1scale said:

I built this kit and it was the best one I built so far, I added the Eduard interior PE set and Montex masks to mine. The whole plane is painted, zero decals. See the link in my signature.

 

 

 

 

Yes your build was one that I studied before starting my build, as usual I will be using masks on mine as well but may use a decal for the tail even though I hate using them. My weathering skills are not as good as yours so mine will probably just be a faded and dirty jobby.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Bill_S]

It's a great kit! Mine took a first place in our local club's contest in September.

[dennismcc]

14 hours ago, Bill_S said:

It's a great kit! Mine took a first place in our local club's contest in September.

Congrats on that, and it is a great kit, I don't think that my effort will win any prizes, I will be happy to see it finished to my usual standard, it's been sitting on the shelf neglected for far too long.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[dennismcc]

Carrying right on from my build log, I keep one for each kit that I build irrespective of whether I publish it on a website or not, it means I can use it for a reference when I do something right or or more commonly wrong.

Next up all the engine parts were removed from their sprues, cleaned up and painted, the cylinders were painted Humbrol Matt Aluminium and given a wash with very thinned matt black. The crankcase was painted with a light grey colour (H128 US Compass Grey). The pushrod ring was painted Polished Aluminium, after this was dried the individual push rods were painted grey (H128).

The ends of the exhausts were opened out a little, this was very fiddly as they are not round so the results were non too neat, they were then painted with Humbrol 113 prior to getting the pencil lead treatment.

Motivated by some other peoples builds I decided to wire up the HT leads on the engine, so some 5 amp fuse wire was painted with Humbrol 85 satin black.

The spark plug holes were then drilled out leaving the tricky question of where to attach the leads to on the ring, in the end I decide to drill the ring itself, looking at period photos I decided that black for the HT leads was probably wrong so they were repainted with a tan colour.

Then I cleaned up the main undercarriage legs and painted them matt aluminium, and for the first time used my Molotow liquid chrome pen which worked really well, most impressive.

I then made up some hydraulic lines for the undercarriage and attempted to fit them, first of all using some thin strips of Bare Metal Foil, this failed, then thin strips of Tamiya tape, this also failed. As I was on a roll I tried some thin strips of PE this also failed so I gave up.

 

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

 

[Bill_S]

1 hour ago, dennismcc said:

I then made up some hydraulic lines for the undercarriage and attempted to fit them, first of all using some thin strips of Bare Metal Foil, this failed, then thin strips of Tamiya tape, this also failed. As I was on a roll I tried some thin strips of PE this also failed so I gave up.

 

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

 

Dennis, Try some lead foil - the top of a wine bottle is a good source!

[dennismcc]

34 minutes ago, Bill_S said:

Dennis, Try some lead foil - the top of a wine bottle is a good source!

Yes I will have to try and get the hang of this for the future.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[dennismcc]

Thanks again Bill as we are not wine drinkers I've just ordered some fly fishing adhesive lead foil from eBay and we shall see how I get on, hopefully well.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis