Arma’s 1/72 Ki-43 II Hayabusa
By Chris Banyai-Riepl
The Starting Point
When Arma announced their new 1/72 Nakajima Ki-43, I knew I would be building several in the coming months & years. The Ki-43 operated throughout the Second World War and had no shortage of interesting markings, so a new-tool kit opens up a bunch of opportunities. Out of the box, though, the kit came with one of the schemes I wanted to do, that being a natural metal plane with the white bands around the wings and fuselage denoting a home defense unit. Since I’m going to build more than one of these, doing the first out of the box will give me a good sense of what to pay attention to, so with a scheme selected, let’s jump into building it up.
The Build
Like most aircraft builds, this one starts with the cockpit, and Arma’s engineering of this has that start with the wings. This is because the cockpit floor is molded into the upper wing piece, so right off you need to decide if you want early or late drop tanks (or none), then glue the wings together. The seat & bulkhead framing are separate and fit into the wing/cockpit floor, as do the two separate side control levers, the control column, and the rudder pedals. All of this gets painted interior green with aluminum details here and there. The end result is a complete cockpit outside of the fuselage, making detail painting and weathering very easy.
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The rest of the cockpit assembly goes on the fuselage sides, plus the instrument panel. Both sides get separate sidewall details added, with the right side having radio pieces and the left side having the throttle quadrant. Both of these separate parts also get decals to further add to their detailing. With those in place, you can glue the fuselage together and then add the instrument panel. The instrument panel has a separate gunsight piece and four decals, making it a pretty decent final panel. All together, once painted and detailed, this whole cockpit looks very good for an out of the box cockpit.
With the cockpit done and the fuselage together, the next step is the front fuselage bits. The Ki-43 had some variations in the cowling area, and this kit addresses those. There are two types of inserts for the area right behind the exhausts, and the cowl flap area has cutouts marked for exhausts on some versions (including the one I’m doing). There are also two styles of exhausts, so paying attention to the instructions and photos of the plane you’re doing is essential. Some carving, some gluing, and in no time I was gluing the lower wing in place and turning to the engine.
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The engine assembly is nice, and those who have built Arma radial-engined kits before, the breakdown will be very familiar. Each cylinder bank is a separate piece, and the rods on the front are split into two halves. A separate crankcase housing completes the assembly, and all those different parts results in a pretty good looking engine, especially given the tightly fitting cowling. Speaking of which, the cowl is built up from five pieces, and the instructions give an assembly order. I missed that on this one and tried to just wing it, and that resulted in gaps. Next build I’ll definitely follow that assembly order. I did drill out the gun openings in the top cowl piece, though, for some added realism.
Next up are the other small details. These include the landing gear, canopy, and drop tanks. The landing gear is simple yet detailed, with a really solid positive locating pin, so that went together quickly. The propeller has a separate 3-blade piece and a two-part hub, so some cleanup will be needed, but it’s all painted the same color so that’s a simple part to finish. The canopy fits perfectly, and the kit comes with masks, so with that in place and masks on, the main airframe can be painted up.
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The decal option I went for was a Ki-43 II from the Hiko Dai 71st Sentai at Hofu Airfield in Japan in late 1944, which was overall unpainted aluminum, so that’s where I started. As I was planning on doing some weathering later on, I decided to just give it a base coat of Vallejo Metal Color chrome, then masked the fabric control surfaces and painted those a duller aluminum. Once that had fully dried, the white bands and black antiglare panel came next, followed by a gloss coat for the decaling.
Arma’s decals are a joy to use, going to easy, responding well to setting solutions, and featuring nice dense color, so I was looking forward to this part. Sadly, this part didn’t last long as there’s not many decals to apply. Six roundels, two tail markings, six stencils, and the yellow wing leading edges made up from a few pieces each side is it. The whole process took a relaxing evening to get done, so a clear coat came next, then some weathering. The weathering was kept to a general panel line wash and filter, to tone things down and just give the plane an overall well used appearance.
The final details included the drop tanks, landing gear, antenna, canopy, and rigging. The drop tanks I chose were the late-style, painted in a yellowish green. The pylons are interesting in that they include the sway braces and have you twist those 90 degrees to align with the tanks. The landing gear went on quickly, with their positive locating pegs keeping things lined up well. Some rigging, masks removed, and this one was done.
Conclusion
This is another winner from Arma, an accurate, well detailed, and easy to build kit that has a ton of marking potential. I will definitely be building a few more of these, and hope to see Arma come out with a Type I and a Type III variant of the Ki-43 as well. My thanks to Arma Hobby for the review kit. Check out their website & blog for all the latest Arma news and information.
