Hasegawa 1/32 Kawanishi Shiden Kai

By Daniel Scislo

Kawanishi Shiden Kai Who named this plane George? Violet lightning. That´s a name for a fighter, not Bf 109 or George! I love building Japanese planes. The colours, the weathering and the beauty of these Hasetamyfuji kits…..

The Hasegawa Kit has only on weak point: the cockpit. It should be a little bit deeper. So a new floor with backside was cut out of sheet. The seat came from the kit, also the instrument panel was used. The rest of the kit was no problem.

Now on to the painting! There are hundreds of articles about the painting and weathering Of jap planes. I have read a lot and one of the strangest was from a guy who made 17 Layers of green on his Zero! Wow!

I decided to go my own way and use a few tips from these big bunch of articles. My local Hobby shop has the range of the Vallejo acryl colours. These are water based colours for figure painting. I normaly use them to paint my 120mm figures, cause they have A huge range of different colours and they are easy to work with.

So at first I look in my reference for the right paint scheme.I want to build a plane from the famous 343 air group. That was a elite unit with hand picked veterans, defend the homeland. Names like Kato, Muto, Sakai, Kanno are only a few from this unit. I decided to take the plane from Lt. Takashi Oshibuchi, squadron leader of the 701st squ.. He was killed over the Bungo straight from VF-49 Hellcats on 24th of July.

At first I paint the whole model with Testors metal colours. I polish them after drying. Then the Vallejo colours where painted on, I use dark green. After a few minutes I Brushed a few highlights with a lighter green on. Then I CAREFULLY masked the Hinomarus (meat balls) and paint them dark red. You can use any red you want, from light to dark. Everything was in use and the paint faded quickly. After painting the whole model, I use A strong masking tape and rip the paint of. The acrylic paint did not stick very well on the polished surface, so I have a good control doing this. I also make a few scratches with a tooth pick or scrap the paint with my fingernails. After this I seal the whole model with clear coat and do a little oil wash with raw umber oil paint. I did not seal this wash. I don´t want to damage the metal shine. At last I paint the tank in yellow. The model was sold to a collector After finishing.

Hasegawa 1/32 Kawanishi Shiden Kai

By Daniel Scislo

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