web hosting short URLs photo sharing

Reviewer: James Garnett  (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted:  6 December 2002

Aircraft History:

The Mitsubishi Claude was the first naval aircraft for Japan developed as a low wing monoplane, and featured an open air cockpit for the single seat fighter version.  The same single seat airframe was used for the two seat trainer version designated with a -K after the type designation, with two cockpits crammed into the fuselage without any modifications made to the airframe, other than removing a bit of the spine behind the cockpit and of course the hole for the rear cockpit.  Guns were also removed from the trainer version of which around 150 were built and served with the Japanese Naval Aviation.

The Kit:

Molded in a shiny light grey the kit features 27 limited run technology soft plastic parts on two sprues and some 37 beautifully cast resin pieces, the latter which is mainly used in the cockpit and engine areas.  The parts are probably typical of Classic Airframes kits, with very little flash but are clearly from low pressure molds.  The surface detail is finely recessed and is of quite crisp detail and quality, the fabric areas also well done in my opinion.  Most of the parts benefit from a quick clean up and preparation process, which generally means running the hobby knife along edges, removing ejector pin marks on the inside of parts and sanding any mating surfaces before affixing parts together.  There are no locating pins or tabs meaning everything is effectively butt joined, and basically you can sum it up by saying it provides the attributes of any typical, reasonable quality, limited run kit.  

Classic Airframes also produce a single seat version of this aircraft, as shown in the boxart below.

Construction:

This begins in the cockpit which is catered for in both plastic and resin.  The floor and bulkheads are plastic, the seats, control sticks, instrument panels, rudder pedals and sidewall panels are all in resin, and are excellent in detail.  I tackled this in two parts, assembling the floor and bulkheads first and ensuring I had a perfect fit inside the fuselage halves before adding in the resin parts.  I used a panel line scriber to mark a line on the other fuselage half just under where the floor would be affixed, so I could be confident the resin sidewall panels would be fixed in the right place.  The main reason behind this process was that a lot of dry fitting and trimming is required to get the cockpit unit to fit inside the fuselage.  The resin parts are a bit oversized and require a fair bit of work to trim down, and there is no way any of the parts will fit and allow the fuselage halves to close if you simply go ahead and put them in.  Once this conquest was achieved, I painted the interior in a grey-green, almost khaki, color and picked out the various bits of detail with drybrushing.

Closing the fuselage halves was a fairly smooth process, with the mating surfaces sanded, particularly at the rear of the fuselage in line with instructions suggestion, for affixing the tail fin later.  However, as the halves have to be butt joined, it's important to line them up perfectly and clamp to dry accordingly.  The seams need a thorough clean up afterward before proceeding.

The engine is resin, which when assembled is very nicely rendered.  The instructions suggest adding some pushrods from styrene rod, and I decided to incorporate a little bit of stretched sprue here to enhance the look.  The fit of the engine into the cowling provides another big challenge for the modeller, and I'd suggest putting the cowls together first, then trimming the cylinder heads a little until they will slip into the cowling.  The small snips on the end of the cowling won't be noticed when looking into the cowling if you do it carefully. The tail fin was test fitted and I found it to be slightly narrower than its mating part on the rear fuselage so this needed blending in accordingly.  

The main wings went together quite well but provide a bit of a challenge when affixing them onto the fuselage, particularly getting the dihedral correct and you need to spend a bit of time getting this fixed.  The lower wing section to fuselage fit was a big challenge.  As with most of these types of kits, a bit of filler was needed in the wing roots to make the join line invisible.  Following on from this the tailplanes were affixed to the the rear fuselage with filler also needing to be applied at the root join.  As there are no positive locating pins to work with, everything is butt joined.  As a sidenote, aileron actuators are provided as resin parts and you will thus need to slice off the area of the kit accordingly, but I decided to remain with the kit parts.

Now comes the time where a few modifications were made to the kit parts to ensure a trainer version of Claude came out at the other end.  The rear tailhook fairing was cut off, resulting in a gap that needed filling and sanding, followed by all the removal of armament and associated fairings etc from the parts.  In this case filling in the wing shell ejector holes, and the holes for the guns on the cowling.  The instructions also provide information about adding some strakes to the rear fuselage for the trainer version.

The two vacform windscreens, of which spares are provided, were trimmed carefully and affixed in front of the two open cockpit areas.  The rear cockpit windscreen was particularly challenging but both will fit if you take your time accordingly.  The rear windscreen also has the roll bar feature that is best added after the part dries fully, and given there is no 'windows' to fog up I did carefully use hobby glue when affixing these.  

The landing gear is fixed which provides a good option for those who prefer in-flight models, they can display their Claude either static or zoom around through their bedroom air space!  Two styles of wheel spats are provided, the full version and one which has a thin spat line over the centre of the wheel.  I went with the full spat variety and sub assembled these with wheels before affixing to the wing undersides.  Sanding the various mating surfaces of the wheels and spat halves and subsequent test fitting definitely needs to be done to ensure your sub assembly has a good solid profile and halves aren't misaligned etc.  Then again sanding the surfaces of the spat strut and test fit to ensure the fixed landing gear is level when viewed straight on, and the aircraft thus sits on the ground properly.

As the final stages of assembly, some of which were completed after painting and decaling, the drop tank was added to the underfuselage pylon (although this was shown on the version without wheel spats), while the pitot tube and tailwheels were affixed into place.  The propeller has separate hub and blades, with the instructions suggesting you drill out small holes so the blades can be inserted into the hub.  I opted to to rub the ends on some sandpaper and butt join to the hub which is a fiddly little assembly.  Remembering the parts are of limited run quality a bit of time trimming, thinning parts and test fitting was still required here and the construction process was finished.

Color Schemes/Decals:

The kit provides markings for two trainer examples, one in overall light Japanese trainer orange, and information gleaned from other modellers suggest Polly Scale Railroad Utility Orange is a good close match to this color.  The other version has the same trainer orange undersides but the upper surface is dark green.  I elected to do the overall Orange version to add something a little different and colorful to the display cabinet.  The Microscale decals come on two small sheets and were applied after the model was given a coat of gloss to the surface, and these bedded down very well with the aid of Micro Set/Sol.  A semi gloss coat sealed the decals in and gave the surface the finish I was looking for.

Overall Recommendation:

For those experienced with limited run kits, you should find this project a fairly pleasant and quite achievable project.  Just be wary of the fit problems and some of the areas that need a bit of extra work and you should come through the process with a decent replica of the Claude.  This is certainly no weekend project and will take some time to build, but given you generally expect this from these types of kits, the result should be worthwhile in the end. Recommended for experienced limited-run builders.

SMAKR Home  |  What's New  |  Submissions  | Information Requests |  News  |  Links  |  Reference Corner  |  Site Info 
1/72 Reviews  |  1/48 Reviews  |  INBOX Reviews