This was a kitbash from two Italeri Ju 86 kits. The Manchukuo Airways Ju 86Z-2 had the elongated tail cone seen on the Z-1 with the radial engines of the E model. I’d picked up both versions of the Italeri kit so it was a case of chopping and gluing the two fuselages and switching the engines.
I also wanted to achieve perfectly flush fuselage windows, and the kit parts didn’t fit that well, so I cut out the whole window section and inserted a piece of clear plastic from a CD jewel-case (remember those?). With lots of CA glue, sanding and polishing and a final coat of Klear, it looked pretty smooth. It was then easy to just mask off the window shapes.
All of the raised panel lines were sanded off and rescribed. Other work involved boxing in and detailing the u/c bays and adding some cockpit detail.
Blue Rider issued a set of decals for this plane but the large code letters looked more like US Navy angled-style codes, whereas the photo showed them with rounded corners. I drew up new artwork and laser-printed them. There’s some conjecture around the actual colours of the engine nacelles and tail fins, it’s hard to tell from black and white period photos. But the blue cowlings and yellow fins add a splash of colour to an otherwise boring grey scheme.
