1/72 Hobbyboss Mitsubishi A5M2

Gallery Article by Greg Kerry on Feb 6 2019

 

      

Main reason for making this diorama was to use some of my old airfield equipment: in this case, Hasegawa's excellent little Toyota Starter Truck . The Hobbyboss Easy Assemble kit just happened to be on a shelf in my local model shop.

I may be one of the few older modellers who genuinely like these (somewhat) simplified kits: but they are basically sound, nicely moulded and, most importantly in an increasingly expensive world, cheap. When they portray open cockpit machines however, the simplification can be a bit much - an instrument panel and seat belts were necessary here though I added nothing else.

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Another slight problem with these kits (and, yes, I have made several of them so I can generalise fairly) is with the decals.  There are two options per kit but they often have the same faults as those in older kits used to have: either being out of register or with certain colours in dubious shades. With Hobbyboss's Japanese kits, the roundal red is often rather too bright. Actually, I ignored this here thinking that my weathering would compensate - which was partially true.

This model was brush-painted with Tamiya acrylics. washed and drybrushed with tubed acrylics. The truck, having been finished about four decades ago, was painted in good old Humbrol enamels.

Incidentally, the mule comes (I think) from an Italeri set of Italian Alpine Troops while the lone figure is actually from the Airfix WW1 Royal Horse Artillery set (with his puttees and rolled shirtsleeves he seems to look the part).

The base is just scrap, covered with PVA soaked tissue textured with some kind of tea.

Greg Kerry

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Photos and text © by Greg Kerry