Sunday 14 September 2014

Mitsubishi J2M3 "Raiden" (Jack) by Bernhard Tomaschitz - WIP#5

The fifth part of building SWS J2M3 Raiden.
This contains all missing steps according to the manual. Except complete assembly.
The a/c is painted and got decals. Weathering is not finished. External parts are all done and completed and painted. Not all parts are yet assembled.
The decision for the a/c was easy done, since the a/c with the lightning looks great. Question decal or painting? I started with cutting the decals and reproducing them for masking from masking sheet from Tamiya. It worked out good. So I decided to spray the lightning. To spray the hinomarus, I tried to avoid the task of masking the white outline. The error which may ruin the model is an eccentric hinomarus, which happened to me at a Ki-43. The decals have a very thick film. Therefore I removed the film of the decals for the hinomarus. The setting of the decals without film is very poor. Here Zoukei Mura could improve drastically on the quality of decals.
What did I find to improve?
• The aerial. Where does the wire start at the fin? Where does it end? What about the wire which leads to the radio compartment?
• The lighting of the cockpit does not exist. Like in most kits of a/c. The pilot who is flying an a/c needs to see the instruments. To read it. Lighting is necessary in every cockpit. Like Oxygen.
• Oxygen equipment is not here, but just the bottles.
• What can I learn out of it? The guys from Zoukei Mura should learn to operate an aircraft, so they can find out by themselves, that the wonderful kit represents now just the grounded a/c in the museum. There are some gaps to the real a/c. Some details like this mentioned are missing.
• How about mirror equipment in the hood? I do not know it. Does anybody know something about it?
• The installation of the external fuel tank I do not understand. Since manuals and drawings show a different mounting. Does anybody know more about it in detail?
The last part will show the assembling and the weathering.
 
 
 


 
 



 

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