This is the
Pacific Theatre Boxing of the excellent little Tamiya Buffalo Kit. The kit
has a mixture of raised and recessed panel lines. I decided early on I was
going to build this one straight out of the box and not get carried away.
I've pretty much stuck to that. If you've looked at some of other kits
you'd know that I have a thing for RNZAF or aircraft flown by Kiwis
in the RAF. This kit comes with the decals for a aircraft in a Kiwi Sqn
(No 488 Sqn RNZAF at Kallang, Singapore, Dec 1941) and it has the
interesting dragon nose art., so I was always going to build this
aircraft.
I read Mike Yeo's
review on ARC before starting, I had the problem with the step on the rear
decking behind the cockpit, a bit of Sqn green fixed that. I did experience a
small step along the rest of the fuselage join however as I was wary of this
when assembling I made sure the step was on the underside of the model. Again a
little bit of Squadron green fixed that. The pics below show me going
overboard with the filler. Once sanded down there virtually none of this left.
Another area that required a bit of work was the underside on the wing section
and where it joins to the fuselage. This needed bit of filler to as there was a
step between the 2. The cockpit is quite nicely detailed as most
Tamiya kits are. The decals for the instrument panel fit well and they look
reasonably effective.
The only modifications I made were re scribing all the raised lines (well all
bar 2 or 3 I missed), I also scratch built a rear vision mirror because
the 488 Sqn aircraft had a locally fitted rear vision mirror taken from a car
and I drilled some round sprue to make gun barrels for the wing guns.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Tamyia
included a set of canopy masks that were fun to apply but certainly did
make masking the canopy and underside window easier. Nice touch
Tamiya.
The kit was painted with Tamyia and Gunze Acrylics. I like Tamiya's Flat
Earth (XF 52) for RAF Dark Earth. I used Tamiya Sky (XF21) for the sky 1/2
of the underside. I'm still to sure this is the right colour for RAF sky
as it looks to green. But I've used it before, mainly because it seems to
closely match the Sky fuselage band decals that many kit and decal
manufacturers use. I also painted the fuselage band instead using the
decal. I find you get a better result that way. Tamyia Flat black was used
for the underside black. This sprays really well. For the RAF dark green I
prefer Gunze H309. It just looks right to me.
The kit was then
sealed with Pledge One Go and decals applied. They went down beautifully with no
silvering. This has been the easiest decaling job I've done to date. I noticed
in Mike's review he mentioned the dragon was only of the left side. I mentioned
this on a
NZ Aviation
Forum
I frequent and was told there is some evidence that it was on both
side. It's a nice looking piece of art so I decided to put them on both sides.
Once decals had set,
another coat of One go was put down and then an oil wash was applied. For the
upper surfaces I used a mixture of raw Umber and some other browns. For the
underside I used a grey wash, particularly to give a little bit of contrast on
the black wing.
A coat of Gunze Flat clear was applied then a some pastel chalks for exhaust and
gun stains along with the silver pencil for some scratches.
Good things about this kit are the decal options, the mask and it's ease of
assembly. The figures are a nice bonus, unfortunately I didn't really do him
justice. My only disappointment is the one piece canopy. It really could do with
a 2 piece canopy so you could see in the cockpit.
Thanks, and enjoy the pictures. More of my models are
HERE
Calum
Click on
images below to see larger images
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