Hasegawa JASDF F86F Sabre 1/72 WIP

Nyutabaru Airbase, Kyushu, Japan, March 1961 – Radar reports unknown contacts approaching from the northwest. Flight Lt. Kamiko Tomoyuke is raring to get airborne…but what’s this?

A Russian plot - his plane is in pieces!  In fact it appears as if someone has yet to even build the cockpit or wheel wells.  Bakayaro!

This JASDF boxing of the Hasegawa F86F Sabre in 1/72 looks to be a pretty old kit.  Judging by the raised panel lines and rivet detail, minimal cockpit, and complete lack of wheel wells (merely indicated with more raised lines) the tooling might even go back as far as the 1960s.  What the hell, even though WWII Japanese planes are really my thing, I couldn’t resist getting a JASDF Sabre because it just looks so cool.  So one night a few months back I decided to build the thing…and upon coming to grips with the kit’s limitations, decided to go ahead and scratchbuild in some of the missing detail, undaunted by lack of experience.  I figure enough will be seen through the canopy to make it worthwhile as the Sabre canopy is mostly one big convex piece of glass with no framing to obscure all that effort. 

Back in the day, Hasegawa figured that an instrument panel decal (but nowhere really suitable to affix it) and a skinny floor/front & rear bulkhead part (mainly there to glue the pilot figure to) took care of any necessary cockpit detail.  Today we know we can do better.  First thing was to make a tracing of the instrument decal, transfer it to styrene sheet and make a mounting piece for the decal.  Then I built the floor out to the sides, added forward and aft bulkheads, and cobbled together a sort of “bench” on either side of the pilot as a base for the various consoles.

I decided I kind of liked the pilot figure in this kit so started painting it up right from the start.  As an experiment I used Tamiya acrylics as I’ve always read they don’t hand brush well, but they seemed to go on nicely here.  Maybe getting good coverage on larger, flatter surfaces is more problematic.  The uniform was XF-13 and the boots Testors Gloss Black, with Humbrol Matt Black for the ejector seat.  For the face I custom mixed what looked to me like a Japanese skin tone using craft acrylics, and it turned out OK.  The visor was done with Tamiya Smoke, then carefully coated with Future for a glossy shine.  Since these photos I’ve repainted the gloves with XF-14 and the oxygen apparatus the same X-2 as the helmet.

Meanwhile the wheel wells had to be routed out.  This would have been a little easier if I hadn’t already glued the wing halves together…funny how I always start out thinking this will be a quick build, then immediately start reinventing the wheel.

Matter of fact, I’ve been reexamining my obvious AMS* in light of the recent 1/144 Hamp build.  Much as I enjoy the torture of attempting to invent a method for transforming the tiniest bits of plastic imaginable into something resembling a radial engine, it was getting a tad bit frustrating.  By contrast, 1/72 seems refreshing…it’s easier to see what I’m doing, and I can actually hold the part I’m working on with my fingers instead of constantly using tweezers.  Sometimes you have to give yourself a break.  No doubt 1/48 and 1/32 modellers are shaking their heads, and I do have that 1/48 Tamiya Rufe I’d love to break out sometime… 

*Advanced Modeller’s Sydrome – a fairly acute condition that renders the well-intentioned modeller just about incapable of building a kit right out of the box without improving, upgrading, scratchbuilding, and generally re-engineering the thing.