Continuing the Ohka theme, Dan Salamone has very kindly shared his in-box review of the newly released Brengun kit (BRP48005) of the two-seat trainer Ohka MXY7-K1 Kai in 1/48 scale. In Dan's own words then:
"I was excited when Brengun announced a 1/48 two seat Ohka trainer in the fall of 2019, and my copy of the model, and optional detail parts arrived this week. The model comes in a sturdy, end opening cardboard box, and contains 3 sprues of injection molded parts, a small decal sheet, and a resin tailwheel. Simple instructions come on a two-sided sheet. The panel lines are recessed, and are very similar to recent Airfix kits, the detail on the fuselage and wings being very acceptable.
"The weakest aspect of the parts is the overly thick (injection moulded) seats. This issue is addressed on the optional photo etched sheet, which also contains clear acetate instrument panels to complement the metal parts. These parts are superb and will add a great deal of depth to the detail. In addition Brengun offers vacform canopies (you receive 2 full sets of front and rear canopies), and a masking set that can be used on either the kit's standard injection molded canopies, or the vacform set. You'll want to open the vac form canopies, to reveal all the detail of the twin cockpits.
"Brengun will have you paint the model dark green over grey-green. There are not many images of the 2 airframes that were completed, and the surviving example is painted in two blue shades, which were applied post war. That said, in some recent images of the airframe, you can see what appears to be IJN trainer orange under the blue paint. When I build mine, I will probably opt for the orange over grey-green and pale blue scheme of the single seat Ohka trainer.
"This kit comes highly recommended, and will look wonderful sitting next to it's single seat sibling from Fine Molds. I bought mine from HLJ, since nobody seems to distribute Brengun products in the U.S."
With special thanks to Dan for this in-box review. Fine Molds offers 1/48 kits of the single-seat Ohka in both powered and unpowered versions, whilst Brengun also offers a 1/48 kit of the Ohka Model 22 and similar Ohka family kits in 1/72 scale.
Brengun Ohka Model 22
Image credit: All photographs © 2020 Dan Salamone; Box art, instructions, kit sprues and optional sets as shown © 2020 Brengun
2 comments:
Thanks for the excellent review, Dan. Sounds like you're thinking about building one - hope so!
Brengun's products really cover the waterfront now. Their line of photoetch for 1/144 kits includes frets for Sweet's Zero variants (and Rufe), Platz's N1K2 George, and Fujimi's J2M Jack and Ki-44 Shoki models. All of these have lovely cockpit parts that will dress up other models in the scale. (The latter two really need the extra help!) Most of these include landing gear parts which really improve the scale appearance. And their 1/72 efforts make several good kits great ones. One of my late friend Mike Quan's final models was the Brengun Bachem Natter perched on the top of its launch tower, the latter beautifully rendered in photoetched metal. He reported that, with some care, it all went together nicely. Jan offers masterful work!
Thanks for taking time & the effort for the review & sharing, Dan.
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