Hasegawa Nakajima B5N2 Kate - 1:48

The Nakajima Sakae 11 engine is ready, detailed with 0.3 and 0.5 lead wires. 

Little will be visible from all the detail. Regardless, the bombardier now received a small 3mm big picture of his girlfriend - a genuine 1940s portrait (I wish I had a printer with higher resolution)  

It starts to like like an airplane. Thanks to the Hasegawa engineering, no filling required, just some minor sanding. 

Adding the rivet lines. 

Primed with Mr Surfacer 1500 black. 

The rivets turned out better than I hoped. 

Pre-shading 

Spraying the silver base layer. 

Brown mottling, as the original aircraft had barely visible brown patches in the green colour. 

Masking the underside to spray the green top side. 

Masking the ribs of the fabric control surfaces, to spray the fabric in a lighter colour. 

Turned put quite OK, I think. 

I cut-plotted a full set of markings on my Silhouette Portrait 3.  

The 22 turned out great - a promising start for the new plotter ? 

Spraying the top wing roundels. 

...and the tail code.  

To take a break from masking roundels and all the small stuff, I masked and sprayed the black nose. 

With the cowling the Kate already looks like a proper airplane. 

Masking to create the fabric effect on the control surfaces undersides. 

As the fuselage Hinomaru turned out much brighter than the tailcode and overwing roundels, I re-masked them and sprayed another layer of Hinomaru Red, this time with one drop of pure red. 

Calling all the masking work done 🙂 

So far, on the outside not a single brush stroke or decal - 100% airbrush. 

Adding the Eduard PE to the tail gunners machine gun. 

The final airbrush masks to be used. 

Finally Kate can stand on her own feet.
You might note that I deviated from the instructions, which call for the landing gear to be all silver. But some photos on the internet suggest the lower part was black. 

Landing gear and prop are on. The torpedo is primed, the proper colours should arrive tomorrow. 

Chipping is on. Not really sure about it though. 

Creating glass with Micro Kristal Klear. 

Let's let it dry a couple of hours. 

Major milestone today - the masks are off 🙂
Work left: position lights, polish the canopy and most importantly the torpedo 

The wooden stabiliser cage for the torpedo. 

A nice shiny torpedo. 

The torpedo is on. Pitty the nice wooden cage did not fit :/ 

98% done. 

I added a blob of Kirstal Klear to resemble the upper wing position lights. 

All the small things - happy the small portrait of the navigator's girl turned out quite nicely ?  

I messed up the kit exhaust pipes, trying to drill them open. So I will replace them with a pair of pipes cut from an ear bud. Also ready is the brass pitot tube, made from 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 mm pipes. 

Calling it done 🙂