MODEL OTAKU: Tamiya N1K2 George

I do actually build aircraft from time to time. This is the Tamiya N1K2 George in 1/72 scale. I added the Eduard photoetch set which added a lot I thought.

The cockpit in particular was very nice. The kit comes with a single piece canopy. It would have been a sin to cover up all that beautiful Czechoslovakian metal so I cut the canopy hood out and set the front and back pieces and placed the center section of Falcon vacuform canopy in the open position. The two canopies didn’t fit very well, but it accomplished what I was going for which was to show off the instrument panel and all the other details.

The kit went together nicely and was very straight forward. I painted it with Tamiya IJN Green and post shaded with heavily thinned base color heavily tinted with Desert Yellow.

I chipped the paint around the traffic areas on the wing, leading edges and around access panels with a silver artist’s pencil.

I used black oil mixed with burnt umber thinned with turpentine took care of recessed and panel lines. After giving it a few days to dry thoroughly I used pastel pigments on the highlights.
The decals were set with liberal amounts of Mirco Set and Micro Sol followed up with a coat of Testors Dullcote.

Model Otaku (ﾌﾟﾗﾓｵﾀｸ) - Japanese for "Model Geek"

This is my modeling site. I’ve been building models for as long as I can remember. The first kits I can remember actually building myself and not having my Dad help me with were those quarter scale Aurora tank kits from the late 1960’s that came with the vacuform battlefield display stands. The detail and fit were horrible but the box art was cool and they were just the thing to get a kid hooked. I remember well riding my bike past Willow Grove Naval Air Station on countless trips to the strip mall with the Allied Hobbies shop. I spent my lawn mowing money practically before I earned it. Like many guys from my generation I took a hiatus from the hobby to go to college, start a family and approach near middle age. When my son got old enough to give models a try I started to remember what I had been missing. I finally got back into the hobby at the level I was at as a kid while I was deployed to Iraq. I didn’t have a lot of time or space to build while I was there but I was able to put a few kits together and partake of the astounding generosity of the modelers back on the home front who donated kits and supplies for the troops. Now it’s my cheap form of psychotherapy. Nothing seems to purge the demons quite like fiddling with small pieces of plastic, resin and photoetch brass! Usually on the rare occasions when I complete a project I have it put in the local hobby shop case for a while, then take it home and put it on the shelves in my basement workshop. It always seemed a shame to me to have them where no one but me could enjoy them. I hope you’ll enjoy viewing my feeble efforts.

MODEL OTAKU

Tamiya N1K2 George

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