Tamiya 1/72nd Aichi M6A1 “Seiran”
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Background
The Aichi M6A1 "Seiran" was designed as a submarine aircraft. Its wings and tail surfaces were constructed to fold up and to fit inside a submarine. Its role was twofold. First, it was to be used in reconnaissance and second as torpedo-armed attack plane. One such mission was to be an attack on the Panama Canal though the Japanese surrender came before that particular plan could be carried out.
In the Box
This
is no longer a brand new kit but it is Tamiya's latest and best technology.
The box contains two sprues of finely molded, flash-free grey plastic
parts, a separately packaged sprue of clear parts, and a small set of
decals for a single version of this aeroplane (K6-01). Everything is up
to the standard that I have come to expect from Tamiya. The decal sheet
includes an instrument panel and seat belts: the latter are not my favorite
representation of such but with the canopy closed, they are fine, at least
as far as I am concerned. The instruction sheet is clear and easy to follow.
All this cost me $6 at a local model convention in Fairfax, Virginia,
which is a little less than half of what you can expect to pay from a
mail order vendor: in sum, an excellent and inexpensive kit. I added the
E-Z Mask canopy mask to assist me with the clear part.
This kit has all the ingredients you need to make a really great, error-free kit that is a competition winner, none of which prevented me from turning what should have been an easy straightforward build into a major production.
Cockpit and Fuselage
The
cockpit interior is where things began. Everything was straightforward
though the painting instructions call for grey and that does not match
with my reference (Januszewski), which shows the interior various shades
of dark and medium green. I initially painted the control stick black
but remedied that later. I used Future to prepare the instrument panel
and seats for the instrument decal and seat belt decals. This is a tail
sitter, so Tamiya recommends a 12gm weight in the nose. I used fishing
weights from a little bag of them I had purchased at the local sports
mega store. These weights can be cut into smaller pieces so they can be
conveniently stuffed into fairly small apertures. I do not have a scale
- there's the bathroom scales but they were no help - so I crammed as
many of these weights as would fit into the nose and fixed them into position
with super-glue. I glued the fuselage halves and everything went together
easily enough. However, when it had dried, I could hear something moving
around when I lifted it up: presumably one of the weights had come loose.
This in itself did not turn out to be a big problem but it turned out
to be a portent of things to come.
Wings and Things
The wing parts were easy to assemble: again the fit was perfect. I added
the radiator pieces and other underside bits except the bomb mounts, which
I left until later. The tail parts went on easily 
and
I took the opportunity at this point to glue the bomb halves together.
The floats require careful gluing: the components fit well but seam filling
was needed. I then puttied up all the seams on the fuselage, wings, floats
and the bomb. There was nothing major but it still had to be done. Once
the filler had dried and was sanded, I re-scribed a few lost panel lines
and gave the components a coat of Mr. Surfacer 1000 primer.
Painting
Note that I painted the kit before I glued the floats in place. I began
by spraying the leading edges of the wing yellow. I let it dry for a day
then masked it off: I prefer painting these to the kit's decals because
it looks better and is easier than trying to get the decals to conform
to complex curves. I sprayed the underside with Model Masters' light gull
grey. I followed that by shading the panel lines with a slightly darkened
version of grey and the centers of the panels with a lightened version.
I gave the entire surface a light spray of the original grey to blend
things in. Once that had dried, I masked 
off
the grey and sprayed the upper surfaces with my own concoction of Imperial
Japanese Navy Air Force green. My apologies but I cannot recall the exact
recipe, although I recall adding blue to a fairly dark green bottle of
paint. At this point, I used the E-Z Mask set to mask off the canopy.
The canopy has about twenty-five separate panels, so the E-Z Mask has
the potential to save a lot of time. Unfortunately, I failed to burnish
down the masking pieces properly, so the result was less than ideal. Again,
I used the panel shading process with the green though I overdid the final
blending-in stage and the effect hardly shows up on the finished model.
The kit comes with a nice dolly on which to sit the model. I have seen that some folks had some problems putting this together but I found this completely straightforward. I painted it various shades of brown as directed in the kit's instructions.
Once
everything had dried, I glued the floats into place and I gave the entire
model a coat of Testors clear gloss, in preparation for decaling.
Decals
Here's where my troubles started. I had it in my head that Tamiya decals
are overly thick. This may appear so but in reality, they do eventually
suck down into place and are decent. However, when I glued the first hinomaru
decals onto the underside of the wing, one of them didn't look quite nice
enough: it didn't quite lay down exactly right. I could have persevered
with it but decided to replace both decals with spares from a very old
MPM Seiran kit. I then found these decals unsatisfactory so I decided
to take them off but in doing so, I had to scrub one of them so hard that
the finish was ruined and there was a noticeable set of indentations where
the paint and primer had come off. I then located the decals from a Tamiya
Nanzan kit that had gone bad, glued on the decal but the indentations
still looked terrible and showed through the decal! There was nothing
left to do but take off the offending decal - fill, sand, re-scribe and
re-paint the area. This 
took
a while. Fortunately, I have an MPM "Glen" kit that I'll never
build, whose decals I robbed and these finally worked. I used the Tamiya
decals for everything else, all except the drift estimation lines on the
tail, which I also somehow managed to mess up. Again, the "Glen"
decals came to the rescue though they have somewhat wider lines and each
line is a separate decal. My decal problems weren't over: as I was fitting
the model into the dolly, I scraped off a couple of the white float markings,
which I replaced with pieces of white decal paper. Once all this was done,
I gave the model a coat of Testors clear flat to prepare the surfaces
for the oil wash.
Finishing Touches
I gave the model several coats of oil wash - burnt umber and then glued on the canopy. Either I had sanded the fuselage a bit too much or the fit was poor, but I had to sand down the rear of the canopy to get it to fit. Even then, I had to use Elmers White Glue to fill the gaps. I also had to do a few touch-ups on the canopy frame and then added some clear flat and oil wash to it, in order for it to match the rest of the model. I added the radio mast and a length of 0.005-inch diameter wire to complete the model.
In
summary, this is an excellent kit that could be made into an absolute
great contest winner. It is easy to build, inexpensive and looks great
on the shelf. Highly recommended.