Zoukei-Mura Mitsubishi J2M3 Raiden 1:32 – kit review

Price: around £51.00 GBP plus P&P (Apr 2014)
Review build by Dave Coward

Our thanks to Zoukei-Mura for supplying our review sample – get this impressive kit here now

A note from Geoff…
It’s always nice when we get sufficiently ahead of ourselves to be able to include a couple of photos of our completed builds right up front so you can see what we’re aiming for. Here are two from Dave’s completed Gallery.

Background

Rather than go into the background of the aircraft here I’ll leave you with the following link which takes you to a full Zoukei-Mura in-box review along with a brief history of the aircraft.

References used

I’ve got to say I didn’t have a great deal of reading material of my own on Japanese aircraft so I was pretty much reliant on the internet, SMN’s Photo Reference Library walkaround and the instruction booklet; that said between these three sources I had more than enough material.

Aftermarket Extras

Airscale placards (very few)

Construction

From the outside the instruction book comes in the form of an `antiqued` set of pilot’s notes but on opening it up that’s where the similarity ends. This is more than just a set of instructions; it’s a comprehensive booklet that gives an in-depth history of the subject combined with 3D drawings covering each step of construction and backed up with colour photos of the actual model. It does look quite complicated on first inspection but lucky I was forced to delay the start of this build so I had a time to fully digest and understand the instructions – well worth doing in this case and I must do this more often as I does stop a lot of those little cock ups but not all, but more of that later.

The instruction booklet is dual Japanese/English but this isn’t a problem. It starts with a page on aircraft specifications and then has a double-page cut away of the real aircraft with descriptions of each of the major areas. A paint reference chart is on the next page with references to Vallejo and Model Color paints but helpfully the colours are also referred to by their names i.e. Mitsubishi Dark Green and IJN Grey.

Read the full finished build review of the Zoukei-Mura Mitsubishi J2M3 Raiden 1:32…