Yes, other than the meatball, just aircraft colours, which I prefer - JN grey looks better on a carrier than JN green imo.
Kaga, I am really digging this build. Unfortunately my Japanese Navy kits are across the Pacific in California and I can’t dig thru them now. I’m hoping you put planes on the deck and post a photo. Great stuff. Thanks, Paul V Thailand/California
and out pops a Junyo.
Want a Junyo? You get a Junyo. Except it came before Kaga.
Love that flightdeck. How did you do that?
How did you replicate the ocean?
LMAO!
A hastily built air group is now added. I did achieve one objective - was able to trial some aircraft marking (serial on the vertical stabaliser) decals that I printed from a normal office laser printer a while ago at somewhere around 0.6 sized font. 4 squad leaders received this added ‘treatment’. The decal turned out to be usable with reasonable resolution and now I have the full serials for the midway operation!
Just keeps getting better.
Incredible work…all my refs indicate though that the Vals and Kates had green camo on them at the outbreak of war w/ the US…any dope on this?
Camo was not applied to Vals until some time between PearlHarbor and Midway. Here is a shot of some on the morning of December 7th
On the Kates it was in the process of being applied at the time of the attack
I never understood why they used green camo on their carrier a/c…
Much of their operational use was over green land terrain, so it would blend in well there. Some were camoed early on in green and brown mottling, but this seems to have disappeared after Midway. Or as later with the Zeroes operating out of tropical land bases to blend with the surrounding foliage while on the ground. Darker greens with a bluish hue can blend reasonably well with the ocean at times.
Is that a guess or can you reference it?..the Americans used their a/c over land as well but stuck w/ the blue schemes…
I have read about the green and that reasoning being put on the fighters during the Solomons campaign. No official references to fall back upon. Mainly what I have read of the subject in Osprey books and such. I have also read about the green and green/brown on level bombers being added for better concealment over China, which was their combat area of operations at that time, prior to Pearl Harbor. I have never read of anything about an ocean concealment camo or related experiments for the IJNAF such as the US or Royal Navy used. While USN aircraft camo evolved during the war from golden wings to neutrality gray, to blue gray uppers, to tri color and finally overall blue, IJN aircraft camo hardly did. Light gray or laquered NMF overall followed by land camo uppers and from there is stagnated.
I’m not sure about camouflage being the reason. It’s simply the painting standardised for all IJNs after '42. At pearl aircraft top surface were all over the place including green mottle over JN grey, brown over green, green or even special colours for leader aircrafts.
At Midway, the fighters were still in JN grey however the dive bombers and torpedo bombers were re painted I think before the dutch east indies campaign, and by solomons all were JN green over grey underside. In any case IJA aircraft follows different painting guidelines and you see more brown/green, typical tropical scheme throughout the war, since they operate from land bases camouflage makes sense. For navy aircraft however, similar to the USN, the emphisis was more on distinguish from enemy aircrafts (due to intense AA and hence friendly fire), camouflage is probably low on the priority list since, if the camouflage actually comes to be of use, you are in real big trouble (planes seen parked on carrier deck by enemy, at that visual distance is pretty much a death sentence).
Ocean concealment isn’t useful given naval attack aircraft fly high until spotting their enemy, relying on the surprise factor - the chance of enemy combat air patrol flying even higher to see the top surface is remote. All JN and USN has grey undersurface for concealment when looking upward which is the typical visual angle.
Lastly on topic of Kaga, structurally there appears to be a difference between Midway/Pearl afterall - some sources suggest Kaga after the grounding accident had 6 supports under fore section of flightdeck instead of 4 - and the new Fujimi kit might give the option to build both.
A blurry picture is here:
http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q1034365900
Beautiful build! Inspirational!
I love the IJN ships too…After seeing your post I am adding one of the 1/350 Jap carriers to my to-do list (after Nagato and Mikasa…so we’ll prolly lay the keel by about 2014 
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Very very nice work…I wish I could paint like that. Thx for posting such good photos potchip!