Republic P-43 Lancer

by Patrick Chung

Republic P-43 Lancer

HyperScale is proudly sponsored by Squadron.com

This is my newly finished Classic Airframe 1/48 Lancer in Chinese Air Force markings.

The kit is of this firm's normal standard features resin cockpit sidewalls, wheel wells, engines and other small parts; with photo-etch and film instrument panel and decals for one USAAF and one Chinese aircraft.

In addition to the routine work of rescribing panel lines and adding rivets, I thoroughly reworked the landing gear area and added brake lines to the gear legs. I found during construction that the P&W radial engine was somewhat too big in diameter and thus could not properly fitted into the nose. The inside of forward fuselage need to be considerably thinned with my motor tool. Also, the resin wheel well interfered with the wing parts, which also need to be thinned heavily from inside.

Due to poor packaging, a few small resin parts broke into bits by the time I got the kits, so I rebuilt the rudder pedals, tail wheel struts and control column.

The cockpit was finished with a scratchbuilt harness and the vacuum-formed canopy was cut into three parts to display the cockpit open. The fit of this part is very good indeed.

You have to make your own propeller shaft to permit the propeller to spin.

The kit decals are fairly difficult to work with, although they finally turned out okay.

Gunze Sangyo lacquer paints finished the model. At the end of my project, I think the Lancer model looks cool and correct.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model, Images and Article Copyright © 2002 by Patrick Chung
Page Created 15 February 2002
Last updated 04 June 2007

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