I had an odd thought for a future model project last night.
Build a Hasegawa 1/72 scale Grumman X-29 kit and paint it in the Japanese WW2 Kyushu J7W Shinden experimental fighter plane colors and call it the “Shinden II”.
Now, I tend to mainly use Vallejo paints. I was thinking of the following:
71.310 IJN Deep Dark Green for upper surfaces of aircraft.
71.312 IJN Medium Gray for underside of aircraft.
71.135 IJA Chrome Yellow for leading edges of wings.
But what colors are the landing gear and the wheel wells painted?
Are the wheel wells painted that Aotake blue color or not? Vallejo does make a 71.419 Aotake Translucent Blue color. But my hobby store does not carry it. If I did need an Aotake color, what could I substitute?
The wells would indeed likely be Aotake. Or if doing a very late war prototype just bare aluminum as they eventually stopped priming much of anything.
Landing gear bare aluminum either way.
From what research I’ve tried to do on the Shinden last night and today, the landing gear struts look like they may be black or maybe a metallic black. At least that’s what I’m seeing from black and white photos.
I still can’t figure out the wheel well paint color. But it doesn’t appear to be that Aotake blue color. Some other models I’ve seen appear to suggest the wheel well color may be white or it may be the same IJN gray color as the rest of the underside of the aircraft.
And does anybody know what the cockpit color was?
At risk of sinning against the colour police, every Japanese aircraft I’ve done has been painted inside with Interior Green. In my defense, the instructions mention “Interior Green” plus its factory.
I really hate how the designers of the real Shinden did the main gear, raked instead of straight. They weren’t thinking on us modellers who knew it’d colapse over time.
I built one of these years ago, the Zouku Maru 1/48 kit. Then I almost bought another one after seeing one in action in Godzilla Minus One (IMO the best Japanese Godzilla movie ever made).
Nice idea! Super coincidental, but there’s an aircraft in the video game Ace Combat 7 called the Shinden II that also has a forward sweeping design just like the X-29!
One thing I’ve been thinking about for my retro painted X-29 is if I should add any armament to it. If it’s in a retro WW2 Shinden paint scheme, I doubt missiles would look very good.
Would bombs under the wings be better?
But on the flip side, a person on another forum was telling me the model would look better with clean wings. Meaning an aircraft sitting on the flight line or maybe in a display team.
What does everyone else think?
I’ve got a whole bunch of Hasegawa Ground Equipment and Weapon Loading sets. But I’m trying to save those for another special aircraft project for next year.
Hope to finish this model this weekend, but we’ll see.
Still have to finish the canopy, decals, landing gear doors, canards.
So why did I chose an X-29 in retro WW2 Shinden colors?
An idea came about in if the J7W Shinden had a modern aircraft equivalent, what would it be? The only thing I could think of was using a second X-29 kit I had at home. The Shinden never had forward swept wings. But both the Shinden and the X-29 are experimental prototype aircraft and they have canards on them. In short, I’m building and painting this model out of plain curiosity.
Due to black and white WW2 photos, or “colorized” black and white WW2 photos, as well as differing painting instructions from various Shinden model kits, it was hard to figure out what colors the J7W Shinden had and how I should paint the X-29. Finally, I just said screw it and went with the following: Vallejo #’s 71.310 IJN Deep Dark Green, 71.312 IJN Medium Grey, 71.321 IJA Light Grey Green (cockpit interior), and 71.073 Metallic Black for the landing gear. Some modelers who built Shinden model kits painted the wheel wells an Aotake metallic blue type color. I decided not to do this for the X-29 as I felt this would not look good on the model.
Well, it’s done. Excuse the crappiness of the pics as I have a crappy camera and even crappier photography skills.
This whole model was done just out of curiosity and fun. Nothing more. If there’s any mistakes, I’ll try to correct them later. This model is not meant to be contest worthy.
If the green in some of the pics looks a bit bright, it’s probably due to camera flash or other lighting sources.
Here’s a few extra pics of my X-29 “Shinden II” next to an earlier two-tone blue Japanese X-29 I did long ago.
I think I’m having too much fun with these X-29 kits. The Hasegawa kit is a small and relatively easy kit to put together with not many parts. Almost wish I had a few more of these kits as there’s a few other concepts I’d like to build.
