Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien "Tony" by ccoyle - Halinski/Kartonowy Arsenal - 1/33 - CARD

[ccoyle]

Got the cockpit skinning all done. As you can see, there is a small gap along the bottom on the port side. Hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the butt! 😬

 

 

Next it was on to the fuselage cowling! Here are the two sides and top all prepped and assembled. These are some of the nicest machine gun channels I have yet built.

 

 

The three sub-assemblies have been glued together and are ready to go on the fuselage.

 

 

One thing you absolutely cannot do with a Halinski kit is simply throw the frames together and start skinning them. Every Halinski kit I have ever worked on (and, to be fair, this is true of many other kits as well) has required some fairing of the framing before skinning, and some Halinski kits have required a lot of fairing. This is one of those kits! So, it's a case of sand-fit-sand-fit-sand again-fit again-repeat. Finally, though, the job was done.

 

 

I noticed after I got this finished that one side is sanded down a little more than the other, but hopefully this will not be too noticeable on the finished model. And yes, all of my man-handling of the fuselage broke one of the frames where the wing will eventually slot in, but that will be easily repairable.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[ccoyle]

Lower cowling completed.

 

[amateur]

What do you use for sanding? Just plain Sandpaper, or something more ‘refined’?

 

Jan

[ccoyle]

3 hours ago, amateur said:

What do you use for sanding?

 

Whatever works -- sandpaper, files, but mostly emery boards.

[ccoyle]

Forward fuselage skins done.

 

[James H]

2 minutes ago, ccoyle said:

Forward fuselage skins done.

 

What wizardry is this?

[realworkingsailor]

2 hours ago, James H said:

What wizardry is this?

 

Say it like Boromir 😆

[ccoyle]

One more fuselage section added. The fit between the two sections was extremely tight -- too tight, in fact -- the result of not adequately beveling the aft-most cockpit frame. While wracking my brain about how to fix this, a 'new' idea popped into my head, except it's probably not new, since our Polish friends have likely thought of this already. It occurred to me that the frames are made of pulp board (duh), and pulp board can easily be deformed. So, using the flat end of a pair of tweezers, I simply burnished the offending parts of the cockpit section until the aft fuselage section fit properly. We're talking about only a tiny amount of deformation needed to do the job, and it worked a treat.

 

 

You may recall I was worried earlier about some possible registration errors between sections as a result of not getting the cockpit skin aligned 100% correctly on this port side, but I'm very happy with how well the two sections have gone together. Overall I am very pleased with how this kit has gone together so far.

 

The next part of the build takes us to the fuselage section that houses the tail wheel well, so there is a bit of framing and other structural work to be done.

 

Cheers!

[ccoyle]

Work has commenced on the fiddly tail wheel assembly.

 

 

I can foresee some stability issues with this structure once the wheel has to bear the weight of the finished model, so I plan to incorporate some judicious stiffening with CA. The interior portion of the wheel well will only be partially visible if the viewer were to turn the model over while viewing it -- which would of course subject the viewer to the very real possibility of physical harm at the hands of the model's irate builder!

[Keith Black]

1 hour ago, ccoyle said:

Work has commenced on the fiddly tail wheel assembly.

Chris, is there any part of building this kit that isn't fiddly? 

[ccoyle]

On 11/10/2025 at 9:33 AM, realworkingsailor said:

Greg did a great video about the Ki-61 a couple of years ago:

 

 

Andy

 

I was reviewing Page 1 of this log and was reminded of Andy's recommendation of the Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles YouTube channel. In the last year or so, the number of military history channels on YouTube has absolutely exploded. Most of the new channels are total el crappola grande -- poorly researched, AI-generated, text-to-voice narrated cash cows, and many times they are simply re-uploading someone else's content. One often has to know a lot about the subject already in order to properly judge whether the channel offers anything of substantive value. With that in mind, I thought I'd take a moment to recommend a few additional aviation channels whose research chops I trust and whose content is engaging. In no particular order, these are:

• Rex's Hangar (an Aussie lad who does a mix of both short and long videos; he also has videos consisting of shorter videos stitched together to make videos up to four hours long -- perfect for background audio during build sessions!)
• Military Aviation History (This channel is run by a German researcher, so he makes extensive use of original German source material.)
• Blue Paw Print (design and engineering deep-dives done in exquisite CGI renderings)

Hope you enjoy these!

[realworkingsailor]

2 hours ago, ccoyle said:

 

I was reviewing Page 1 of this log and was reminded of Andy's recommendation of the Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles YouTube channel. In the last year or so, the number of military history channels on YouTube has absolutely exploded. Most of the new channels are total el crappola grande -- poorly researched, AI-generated, text-to-voice narrated cash cows, and many times they are simply re-uploading someone else's content. One often has to know a lot about the subject already in order to properly judge whether the channel offers anything of substantive value. With that in mind, I thought I'd take a moment to recommend a few additional aviation channels whose research chops I trust and whose content is engaging. In no particular order, these are:

• Rex's Hangar (an Aussie lad who does a mix of both short and long videos; he also has videos consisting of shorter videos stitched together to make videos up to four hours long -- perfect for background audio during build sessions!)
• Military Aviation History (This channel is run by a German researcher, so he makes extensive use of original German source material.)
• Blue Paw Print (design and engineering deep-dives done in exquisite CGI renderings)

Hope you enjoy these!

I would add IHYLS (I Hope You Learned Something) to that list. Sometimes his pronunciations can be a bit jarring, but, he does inject a good deal of wit and humour in his videos. I think Rex has mentioned him in a couple episodes of his own.

 

But yes, wading through the tsunami of AI slop that is propagating through YouTube is getting to be a pain.

I wonder if it is worth creating a post on here where we can curate a list of reliable, accurate and non-AI military history channels that are worth watching? 
 

Andy

Edited Wednesday at 06:10 PM by realworkingsailor

[ccoyle]

47 minutes ago, realworkingsailor said:

I wonder if it is worth creating a post on here where we can curate a list of reliable, accurate and non-AI military history channels that are worth watching?

 

Probably not, at least in the long-term. It would have to go in Shore Leave, and it is not the sort of topic we would pin, so eventually it would be lost in the message traffic.

[ccoyle]

On 1/7/2026 at 10:35 AM, Keith Black said:

Chris, is there any part of building this kit that isn't fiddly?

 

Well, the fiddly tail wheel bits are done, so now I can move on to other fiddly bits! 😂

 

[Geordie Tyne]

Just all around fantastic work on this model. Thank you also for the channel recommendations.

 

Regards

[ccoyle]

Got the tail wheel section skinned and the vertical stabilizer completed (except for a few tiny parts that I'll add later). I forgot to snap a picture of the stabilizer framing, which in typical Halinski fashion was quite robust.

 

[druxey]

Great going - especially the 'fiddly bits'!