The Blue Lotus (Ki-10 "Perry")
The Cover of Le Petit Vingtième (May 16, 1933) which inspired this project
The box, of course!
The sprues.
Well that cockpit is cute... but I think we can do better.
Got ride of the side wall details and opened up room for a second seat.
Yep. Now it's a two-seater...
Hmmm... that "vent" also has to go.
Ok. Now the interior looks a bit better.
Whew! It all still fits!
Some seat backs, etc.
We have paint!
luckily the cockpit still seems to come together... hopefully I can still squeeze in some extra bits...
Front vent boxed in
Fuselage buttoned up and seams filled.
First coat of Tamiya XF-14 acrylic paint.
Front vent done and wings... attached. Or more like mangled into place....ish.
Red dots!
Rising sun tail.
A new box...
After the Great Shelf Disaster of 2023, I decided this one didn't need to be salvaged, it needed to be redone. These sprues seem familiar...
It might be cheating, but I re-used most of the interior bits to save time.
Checking the motor for fit...
Of course, it WAS in place... and then the wire connection broke, so I had to dig it back out and reconnect it again. Oh, well... more putty I guess.
Not a great fit for the engine cowling, but I've dealt with worse... right?
As expected, the flimsy plastic struts needed to be replaced by a bit of wire.
I did manage to salvage a few pieces from the old build. I might've done a better paint job on the tail, but this somehow feels like the best option.
All hoooked up and the propellor spins! Yah!
Red dot decals applied, pilots on board... we're looking done.
Comments
42 29 October 2017, 07:07
Martin OostromI say this one doesn't count. It's just an oob build with different paint 😉
29 October 2017, 07:19
Greg BakerPerhaps I don't know how to assemble bi-planes. I though I was smart, I drilled out the holes for the wings and struts. But as soon as there was paint involved it all started sliding around and I ended up screwing my my paint job something fierce. 🙁
At least the front air vent worked more or less as I envisioned it.
26 November 2017, 06:15
Martin OostromBiplanes should be assembled first and painted later. Otherwise you end up with your lesson learned 😉
A bracket can be useful as well.
Keep it up Master of the Tintin build 👍
26 November 2017, 10:52
Greg BakerI have to admit, I was regretting my mistake and came very close to just smashing the whole thing in frustration. Anyway, I got it glued together... and I didn't even look at it today. When the dust settles, I'll make a closer inspection and see what needs to be (or can be) fixed. I should've just waited for Uwe to do this one first so I could just copy his lead. Bi-planes (and TIE fighters) are his safety zone.
26 November 2017, 15:34
Greg BakerI'm glad I didn't throw it out during a bout of despair. The glue catastrophe was mostly repaired and the paint has more or less recovered. Getting red dots and the rising sun tail on it has boosted my morale considerably for some reason.
8 December 2017, 13:58
Greg BakerOk. She's done.
I used some steel wire for the rigging as I was really just too lazy to try anything else - especially after I burned myself trying something tricky with some monofilament line and ended up with a blob of plastic napalm on my thumb. It would just about be perfect for 1/48 scale though... if I was in to that sort of thing...😉
12 December 2017, 07:57
Greg BakerThis victim of my shelf disaster was beyond salvation… so let's declare a do-over! Obviously took a dose of inspiration from Daniel's project, but I had plans to re-do this one already, so let's see what happens!
19 April 2023, 05:13
Greg BakerThis one got shuffled off the work bench for a bit... but it's back on board now. I kind of lost my mojo after the DC motor wire connection broke and I had to rip apart the already suspect fit of the engine cowling. I couldn't bring myself to get it put back together right away and then it drifted away from me for a bit. However, the bare dust spot on my Tintin shelf spurred me to dig it out and get back to work. 🙂
31 October 2023, 15:35
Greg BakerI'd forgotten just how bad the fit is with the wings/struts. I ended up fighting with them for a while, breaking both of them, and finally deciding that a bit of wire was the way to go instead. It's a partially fictional plane, so I don't feel too bad about changing it up a bit.
7 November 2023, 14:56
Greg BakerSo, it's not cheating if you re-use parts from a project you already built, right? Despite getting smashed in the Great Shelf Disaster of 2023, the painted tail section and the landing gear was 100% salvageable. So why re-invent the wheel, right? Last time around I painted the red dots, but I'm considering just using the decals this time. Does anyone want to try and talk me out of it?
11 November 2023, 17:07
Greg BakerAnd that's pretty much it. I certainly didn't put as much effort into this build the second time around, but I think the difference between my skill level then/now has offset a bit of my lack of effort. At least it's not a ghost plane anymore... and the propellor spins!
16 November 2023, 15:15
Greg BakerAnd here's the final pics (and video) of my (re) done Kawasaki Ki-10 Perry... Tintin style!
3 March, 20:34
Album info
Part of my ongoing Tintin build project. Although the Ki-10 "Perry" doesn't really appear in the Tintin album "The Blue Lotus" (except in tiny silhouette), it does appear on the cover of the May 16, 1933 edition of le petit vingtième (n° 20) as a trio of planes that are searching the Chinese countryside for Tintin.
Although not "authentic", the planes on the cover are depicted as two-seaters, so a second cockpit was cut out and the entire interior was rebuilt from scratch to accommodate.
