The Little World

I knew at the outset that the Dinah in IJAF trainer colours was rather special. The yellow is not the pure chrome of the RAF or RCAF trainers nor the red/yellow of a prewar US Navy aircraft wing – it has a distinct orange glow to it. I wasn’t sure whether the plastic that the kit is moulded in is exactly the same shade, but I know it probably wasn’t far off.

So I googled. and good old GSI Creos came to the rescue . Whether you wanted to do it with aqueous or solvent-based paint, they made an exact IJAF paint for it. No.58 in the Mr Color for me and it has proved to be all I could have hoped for.

Two coats of a semi-gloss paint and then it was ready for the decals. – no need for a glossing coat at that stage, as it is unlikely the hinomara would silver anyway.

I would like to ask a favour of kit makers in the future…if you could design the kits so that we may insert cockpit tubs, machine guns, and landing gear after the main painting and decaling has been done, it would be much appreciated. Masking a cockpit can be an exercise in sticky tape Tetris. Even the foam block method is tough if you have detail inside the tub.

One thing you can be sure of. Nobody at the Japanese air base ran into one of these in the dark by mistake.