6MMRPC Week Twelve: Throw-back to the year 2000

This week I was sitting at my desk, trying to break through the hobby coma that recently hit me.  I wanted desperately to pull some Flames of War models out and put paint to pewter, but I didn't have a clue what to do.  Sam's Great War British need all of their mold lines cleaned up before I can put any paint on them, and the first basecoat will be from my airbrush once all of them are ready.  My next event will be in January but I'm still uncertain what I want to bring.  Without an army in mind, I find it very difficult to get anything accomplished.  I sat there, befuddled, until my eye caught a stack of cardboard boxes collecting dust on the top of my bookshelf...

This.  This would be my next project, the first model airplane I've worked on in fifteen years.  I bought this a few years back from the consignment pile at Viking Hobbies when I still lived near Sacramento, CA.  It's not even a subject I really like!  I got an idea in my head back then about building aircraft from the Battle of Midway and went in to shop around, but they didn't have a single subject I wanted.  I settled on this because, hey, it's Japanese, and in the right scale. (1/72)  This Kawasaki Ki-45 kai 'Toyru' would be perfect to practice some different techniques and might just break me out of my funk.

Plastic airplanes were my gateway drug, man!  Way back in about 1987 or so I bought my first model kit and that led into miniature wargaming fifteen years later.  Things are coming full circle, as I think the skills I've developed through building and painting Flames of War minis will translate back to models.  Multi-media with resin and metal?  Check.  Airbrush work?  Done it.  Weathering and detailing?  Yep. Additionally, now that so many Flames of War minis are going plastic, practicing on this makes sense.   I won't be afraid of 'messing up' this one, as I have no plans for it after I'm done.  Maybe I'll hang it from my kids' ceiling, like I used to do.  

Eight sprues of grey and clear plastic.  Hasegawa makes some of the nicer kits in this scale, if I remember correctly.

Sub-assemblies before airbrushing the interior.  

I'll need to wait on a paint order before I do much else, the interior color is a strange one.  I hope this little project holds me over until I can finalize a list for Shifting Sands in January.  Once I have that nailed down, I can start building it once I finish the commission projct of Sam's.