The Aircraft

The Mitsubishi Ki-46 Dinah was a reconnaissance platform for the Imperial Japanese Army. The crew of 2 were in separate cockpits, with the pilot and observer separated by a fuel tank (shudder!) The Ki-46II version was faster than any Japanese fighter in the 1940-41 time frame, and the IJAF thought it should be immune from interception. The advent of the P-38 in Pacific combat caused rethought of this idea.

The solution to the speed problem was more powerful, fuel injected Mitsubishi Ha-112 engines, which pushed the top speed to a respectable 391 mph. The nose was redesigned to be more aerodynamic, with no step for the canopy, but a full bubble instead. Also, fuel capacity was raised by putting another fuel tank in the nose in front of the pilot (shudder again!).

Building the Kit

This is a simple kit which has no interior as such. The front and rear crew areas are merely flat fuselage sections. I painted them metallic blue, along with the wheel well interiors. Someone will probably (hopefully?) come up with detail sets for these interiors.

Fit for the fuselage was very good, with no filler required. The wings fit well, with only a little filing required to clean up the leading and trailing edges. The wings and horizontal stabilizers fit cleanly to the fuselage, again requiring no filler. I left the engine nacelles, props, landing gear, and gear doors off until after painting and decals.

Painting

This was an unusual project for me. I brush painted the entire model, using Tamiya acrylics, except for the yellow wing leading edges, which were done with Floquil Railroad color. I painted the canopies with a fine brush, although my painting skills are somewhat lacking there. But I was able to clean up the canopy frames and overpaint using a toothpick, as the acrylics don’t stick as well as lacquers or enamels. Which meant I also had to touch up the bottom of the fuselage and the fuel tank when I set the model down and knocked some of the paint off.

The props were painted with Tamiya red-brown, the tires with Tamiya flat black, and the undercarriage legs with Testors Steel Metalizer.

I sprayed on the coat of Future, which took care of the paint chipping problem, and the plane was ready for decals.

Decals

I don’t know who made these decals, as all of the text is in Japanese, but they’re very good. The Hinomarus came off the paper just fine, the tail markings went on with no problem, and even the white stripe on the rear fuselage gave me few problems.

The instructions promise 4 different tail markings, but the decal sheet only delivers two, one for 165 with a red or yellow arrow-like marking and no others. Since the red one is shown on the boxart, I chose that one.

Another application of Future to seal the decals, then I used Testors Acrylic Flat on to flatten everything.

Final Assembly

I used Humbrol’s canopy cement for the front and rear crew sections, glued the nacelles on, and added the landing gear. Everything fit better than I usually get in this scale. I had to use gel-type CA on the gear doors, as there just isn’t much surface for the glue to hold on.

There’s also a revetment included on the sprues, which could add a lot to the display of this model

Overall Evaluation

Recommended. It’s a simple kit,, it’s incredibly cheap at 2 for $10, but everything fits. I built the Dinah strictly OOB, but if I were going to improve it, I’d replace the antenna and pitot tube with wire and figure out some sort of interior. Maybe on the second one in the box, to be built later.

Thanks to Dragon USA, Aoshima, Steve and IPMS/USA for a good small kit which went together nicely.