1:48 A6M2-N Rufe

A Zero with floats added

When fighter cover was needed even where no airfield could be built, Nakajima took the carrier Zero, removed its landing gear and hung a massive central float under the fuselage complemented by two smaller ones under the wings. The machine lost some of its speed by it, but it could operate from every sheltered bay. It fought over the Aleutians and in the Solomon Islands and Allied airmen gave it the code name Rufe.

The smallest part in the box

In every kit there is one component that breaks most often, and it tends to be the dynamic pressure sensor on the wing. It is thin, it sticks out and it lies exactly where a hand reaches when the model is carried or settled on a stand. On a floatplane that is all the more sensitive, because a finished piece on a base is not held by the landing gear but precisely by the wings. A metal replacement weighs almost nothing and yet it can be bent and straightened back without cracking. It is an inconspicuous item in the contents, but of all the metal parts in the set it is the one a modeler appreciates first.

What is inside

• the cockpit glazing covered inside and outside
• one sheet of masks for the national marking
• a pair of weapon muzzles of 7.7 mm caliber
• cannons of twenty millimeters caliber and a dynamic pressure sensor

Neither the kit nor the float is part of the delivery; this is an accessory for a model obtained separately. Japanese national insignia have the property of being plain circles, and it is on a circle that the edge of a decal shows most, because the eye compares the whole circumference at once. A sprayed area has no rim around it, so on this subject a mask pays off more than with camouflage schemes with angular markings.