The Little World

Goes a wonderful dive bomber…

Pardon the punning. It has been a good week in the Little Workshop with the completion of the Fujimi Aichi Grace. The experiment of serial building seems to be paying off.

The Fujimi kit has also proved to be better than some of their previous offerings – based upon the design of the aircraft and the fact that the kit has been made to a specific version – not a modular one.

Purists will find flaws, of course, but then pure flaws are highly prized amongst judges. They are platforms upon which officials can mount up to be observed by the masses.

I am delighted with the strange colour choice used by the Japanese designers in the interior of the aircraft. The exterior is staid, but imminently do-able with either alcohol or HC solvent-based acrylics. The final coat, after the decals, was a flat lacquer.

I was also able to correct one anomaly that has occurred on other aircraft – the frames of many canopies have been rendered shiny when they might have been dull. This time I mixed a drop of flat base into the paint used in the bow pen – it flowed more easily and has dried to the same reflectance as the rest of the fuselage.

I suppose one day I will be forced to make a weathered Japanese aircraft…something a little less beaten up than my A6M wreck on Lakanuki Island. I’ve weathered larger car models so I guess it will be just the same within a smaller compass.

Note that there is a rather fearsome 800 Kg bomb in that internal bay, suspended in a trapeze mechanism to allow it to launch in a dive.

I am now officially delighted that this model was pressed on me.