History

The Hasegawa 1/72 Ki-61 dates back to the early 1970s and is still a nice kit, but basic. CMK has come out with some detail sets to spice up these old kits.

What You Get

11 nicely molded pieces make up this set. You are given two gun bays, ammo chutes, receivers’ and doors for the wing guns. Also included are wing tanks which are much better detailed than the ones provided in the kit. The instructions are on a 9 X 3.5 folded sheet of paper.

Construction

The instructions are pretty much just drawings of the parts and their respective numbers being pointed to where they need to be placed. The problem with this is that in my sample, there were no numbers on the parts. This is a small problem as most of the parts are made to go on the left or right wing. Construction begins with some minor surgery to the upper wing halves and thinning the area of the gun bay on the lower halves. I found, after some on-line research and by accident, that CMK got part of this wrong as they would have you remove all the plastic over the gun bay and ammo chute. In reality there was spar that separated the two. I had to fix this area as I found out after cutting…..sigh. The external tanks were easy to attach but I recommend pinning them as the contact area is a bit small. I used a #78 bit and some fine wire, and all is good.

Conclusion

Overall this is a very nice set and I recommend it to modelers with some experience with resin.

I would like to thank Special Hobby and CMK for providing this and the IPMS Review Corps for letting me build it.