Mitsubishi A6M5a Rei-sen by ccoyle - Halinski/Kartonowy Arsenal - 1/33 - CARD

[ccoyle]

A Tale of Two Zeros (and a Falco)

 

Welcome to my next not-a-ship build! I'll introduce the subject of this log by way of a story. I had long been considering building one of Pawel Mistewicz's WW2 subjects published by Kartonowa Kolekcja. I have built many of Pawel's WW1 and interwar subjects, but only one WW2 subject (Brewster F2A Buffalo). His A6M2 Zero (kit #2, published in 2007) is the oldest such subject in my stash, so I was leaning toward building that kit.

 

That is, until I learned last year that Model Hobby was publishing a brand-new kit of the Reggiane Re.2000 Falco. I leapt at the opportunity to purchase the new kit and be among the first builders to complete one.

 

But it was not to be. It took four months for the Re.2000 kit to arrive. 😑 By then I had already seen a finished example online, so the possibility of being the first to finish one had vanished. Oh, well!

 

So it was back to building the Zero. Back when I ordered the Reggiane, I decided to also acquire some 3D-printed after-market parts for the Zero build, namely a Sakae radial engine and a cockpit details set.

 

Included among the parts were fourteen individual exhaust pipes, which I did not know came with the engine when I ordered it. While looking through the KK kit instructions to see where the various parts would be used, something hit me: the A6M2 did not have individual, separated exhaust pipes. Instead, the A6M2 vented its exhaust downward through a pair of pipes on either side of the fuselage. The separated pipes were introduced on the A6M5 for the purpose of giving the aircraft a little extra forward thrust by venting the exhaust gases rearward (it only marginally improved performance). The individual pipes passed through cutouts in the cowling flaps. This distinctive feature is an easy way to distinguish the A6M5 from earlier variants.

 

                       A6M2 (no cutouts)                                                                A6M5 (cutouts)

  

(Left: By Marc Grossman - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15575787 ; Right: By unlisted - 1. Historic Wings [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1631577)

 

Well, it seemed a shame to have such nice after-market parts and not use them, so I did the only sensible thing: I bit the bullet and ordered an A6M5a kit from Halinski (from their Cardboard Arsenal series), along with its after-market frames, canopy, wheels, and brass gun barrels.

 

 

 

 

So that's how I ended up at this particular build subject, and it's a bit of an ambitious one. The finished model will depict the mount of Lt. (j.g.) Sadaaki Akamatsu. I'm excited to see how this one comes together, and I hope you will enjoy following along. Look for first cuts soon!