1/48 Hasegawa Mitsubishi F-2A

by Pierpaolo Maglio

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Even if it looks like an F-16, the Mitsubishi F-2 is a completely new fighter, longer and bigger than the F-16 from which it keeps the general shape, engine, landing gears, air intake door and the 20mm gun. Hasegawa made this beautiful kit from a new tool that has nothing in common with the old F-16 kit. Consequently we get movable flaps, more detailed landing gear door (the front one is also much deeper compared to the F-16 kit), a more detailed ejection seat, and parts that fit together much better and more easily. There are also some external stores: 2 AAM-3 heat seeker air-to air missiles, two 600 US gal fuel tank and two 300 US gal. center line fuel tank (even if you can only use only one of them in this kit the other will be handy in your next F-16 kit since it is more correct than the one you can find in the Falcon box) .

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I think this is one of the best kits ever made by Hasegawa, but since I wanted something really special, I added to it all the aftermarket parts I was able to find: Platz color PE set, Platz decals sheet, Fine Molds pitot tube and Hasegawa JASDF weapon set A.

As I said construction was quite easy, you only need to pay attention to the joint between the upper and lower fuselage, especially around the nose. The building of the air scoop is also tricky but once you understand how to make it you can only prize the Hasegawa ingenuity.

 

Painting was a major challenge for me, Hasegawa suggests you to use WWII US Navy colours to paint this modern fast jet! I thought that was simply impossible, so I chose to make my own shades of blue mixing my favourite Tamiya acrylic paints. To spray the paint I used scaled photocopies of the instruction sheet painting guide as canvas since all the F-2 have the same camouflage and you need to respect all the curves in it.

Hasegawa decals were a little in the dark side, especially the stencils (that are not enough since the smaller ones are missing) are printed in a shade of too dark gray, so the Platz decals were a nice (and expensive) addiction. By the way Platz decals (printed by Cartograph) even if perfectly printed with perfect colours are printed on a quite rigid clear support sheet, consequently it was hard to make all those stencils to conform to plastic and I needed to use several application of decal softeners and two weeks of work.

After the decals a coat of Future was sprayed to avoid any silvering, then went a final coat of Polly's flat.

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 Since the F-2 was conceived as an anti shipping fighter (you can't call it an attack plane in Japan) I choose to add weapons to it. Two of the AAM-3 missiles come from the kit box while the other two along the 4 ASM-2 come from the Hasegawa JASDF Weapons set A. With two 600 gal tank and 8 missiles the aircraft is very heavy (now you can understand why it had wings crack problems!) so I leaved off the center line tank as JASDF use to do when all the wings station are full. Brass casted pitot tube and the two small aerials (made by Fine Molds) to the sides of the nose were the last pieces I added to this kit.

I really enjoyed this project and can't wait to start building the F-2B that is waiting in the pending pile. Even if it is an odd type outside Japan and it will never become as famous as his smaller and older brother (the Falcon) the F-2 gave JASDF a great boost since it can carry a double missiles loads over a double range compared to the Mitsubishi F-1 it replaced, and the F-2 can even be air-refuelled.

Pierpaolo

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Photos and text © by Pierpaolo Maglio