I’ve long been fascinated by the Arii kits of the 70s, perhaps the first outing for engraved surface detail as we know it today, which only began to replace raised detail in the late 80s-90s period. These were sturdy, buildable kits with good outline, and while their details are few and soft by today’s standards, they can still look good on the shelf with some elbow-grease.
The object with this one was to make a proverbial silk purse from a sow’s ear, by drafting in as many aftermarket parts and features as possible. True Details wheels, Quickboost propeller, seat, joystick and gunsight, Eduard harness, brass cowl guns, Third Group decals (48-042)... I could have (and should have) added a few more, such as Quickboost pitot tube and Squadron canopy. There are Hasegawa parts here too: the SC250 bomb and it’s rack (this is the G-6/R-1 subtype), plus the supercharger intake, were unused parts from a Hasegawa sprue, and helped nicely. Certainly, even with the project officially done, there are still some parts I’ll change when I can.
This is my first ever winter camo scheme—an unidentified aircraft of 2nd Staffel, JG 51 on the Russian front, spring, 1944. The idea was to evoke a field-applied whitewash, so I prepainted in black for a see-through look in the colour coat. Overall, it came out grimy enough to look like a recently-applied but already weathering field finish.
The basic build was straight forward, with relatively few parts. Swapping the cockpit details was easy enough, and I added the G-6’s distinctive yellow fuel pipe on the cockpit starboard wall from bent plastic rod. The biggest modification was to fit the propeller, which required the whole nose bulkhead to be cut away into a circular opening which would accept the cast stub of the new prop (which does not turn). The QB unit looks great when painted and weathered (my first time using a silver pencil for bare metal chipping on the leading edges of the blades), and was the last subassembly to be fitted. The wheels were more hassle than they should have been, rather refusing to accept the kit axles, so in the end superglue and patience were the order of the day.
The kit canopy was very poor, in both fit and clarity. Perhaps the plastic is simply too old (I’m not sure of the manufacture vintage of this example), but the one-piece clear part is a bit smoky and as a result the dark grey interior is almost invisible—very frustrating after the work that went into it. Squadron make a vacform canopy set for the Arii kit, but it’s the later Erla Haube, which is incorrect for the individual aircraft I wanted to model. The Arii kit has very specific seating dimensions too, so a canopy made for other kits will probably fit poorly all the same—and the kit part fit where it touched!
Same with the masks—an Eduard set for Hasegawa did not really match up, and was adjusted with custom-cut tape, which more or less did the job. We mask canopies because we don’t trust ourselves to freehand the struts with a brush (of course we don’t!) but the masks in this instance left such a hit-and-miss job that I ended up correcting them...freehand with a brush. It makes you wonder why you bother, sometimes. A sharpened matchstick was used to scrape away excess paint, and Tamiya polishing compound was applied with a Q-tip to clean up the plastic—not that it worked very well.
The Third Group decals were printed by Superscale so their application and finish are guaranteed quantities, and they went on very nicely over a paintjob of Tamiya Acrylics and Microscale clearcoats. Of course, it was only when I was nearly finished that a few tiny details occurred to me, like drilling out the exhaust stubs for an open look, which I should have done back at the beginning, (I got the Quickboost exhausts, too, but could see no way to engineer them into the model, so ended up not bothering.)
Arii tooled the main gear with the shock struts fully extended, as if the plane is in the air, a shortcoming of many kits for some reason. There are replacement white metal struts by SAC but the degree of compression designed into them is so small you could blink and miss it. The difference is only a couple of millimetres, so I let that one slide.
At the end of the day, there are nagging issues—I measured the yellow areas under the wingtips incorrectly, so the underside insignia are each about 5mm too close to the centreline. The flank insignia are slightly too large for the subject. The RDF loop antenna is way overscale and out of shape, and I’ll source a replacement if I can find one, or scratch build it, perhaps shaping detailing wire around a brush handle. The kit part is attached with thick whiteglue, which has only slightly more sticking power than spit, so it’ll pop off easily when the time comes. Same with the kit pitot (push fit only), which will get changed out for a QB part in due course.
I meant to rig an antenna wire from Ezy-Line, but the radio mast fits so poorly into the canopy that I’m afraid the pull of the line will just drag it free, so there’s a simplification...
Was it worth the work, time and the cost of all the accessories? Compared to the price of, say, the new tool Tamiya G-6, I’m probably still into pocket but in fairness the result is nowhere near what I would expect from the new kit. There’s much said about the challenge being the important part, that shake-n-bake kits do not make for real modelling skill, and this is true—but after the time, money and effort, I’m not super-impressed with my own result. I have another Arii G-6 in my stash, and I might repeat the process, knowing what I do, and using up the duplicate parts from the AM sets—but I don’t think I’d actually buy another. One experiment was enough!
Merry Christmas,
Mike Adamson
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