Mural

The Blytonian
Taking advantage of a recent sale where I picked up five other Hasegawa 1/32 kits, this popped up in an opportunity buy at a price impossible to resist. I'd wanted a 1/32 Zero and had had my eye on the ultimate Tamiya and Hasegawa kits, but will be waiting until they present at more favourable pricing.

Despite this mould being over fifty years old, looking at the instructions and reading the reviews, I came to the conclusion that it was still a reasonably good representation of a late Zero, albeit without the slide moulded finesse & fine detail possible today with things like gun barrels and almost resin mouded quality pilots. Sure it has noticeable flaws for an A6M5C (Hei) such as the incorrect right cowling gun trough as well as missing detail such as the upper aileron control rods and fairings, but all in all 95% of modelers won't even be aware nor will the lay observer notice.

Ultimately it'll present well on the shlf in its warpaint and be a great paint mule to practice 'perfection' when I do finally build my ultimate Zero kit should I live so long. Commenced building it this week a few days after receivign it. Other than drilling out the 20mm cannon barrels, marking the MG barrel cooling vents if I can, installing an oil cooler intake contrl slat and modifying the per instructions paint job to a more accurate Mitsubishi build of Tetsuzo Iwamoto's A6M5 Hei as of Feb '45, it'll be an OOTB build. Importantly, so far it's been a fun build.

The Blytonian
shipped 10/10/23