Type 2 Ka-Mi – Part 1: Construction

By miniarmour on April 2, 2012 • ( 1 Comment )

(UPDATED on April 3, 2012 – added some more corrections)

Here comes another recent inspiration of mine.

Having seen this model built by two of my friends (and both very nice models) I decided to give it a try as well. I had planned to build some Japanese armor for some time now, and this kit is perhaps the best to start with.

As was already said few times, this kit might be the best Dragon’s kit yet. It is really lovely. No complicated construction, low parts count, amazing fit of the parts, beautiful details and quality of moulding, you name it. There is decent interior provided for the turret, so it would be a shame to have all the hatches closed.

As usual with the Dragon’s models, you will have to bite through the instructions, which are typical Dragon’s quality (or rather lack of it). To name just a few corrections:

– Sprocket wheels: Use A18 (A19) for outer part and A16 (A17) for inner part. The wheel hub fits to the outer ones as above, not as marked in the instruction.

– Rear wheel mounts: Parts are marked incorrectly in the instructions – D25 (D26) should be A25(A26) and D23 (D24) should be A23(A24), D11 should be A11

– Do not attach A11 to A23(A24) as per the instructions. The fit of A11 into A23(A24) is determined by the positioning of parts A23(A24) – they have to fit into the molding on the lower hull tub. Attach A23(A24) to the lower hull tub first and then insert A11 into the slot in the middle of A23(A24)

– Gun mount: There is a part C46, which goes into C45 and is not marked in the instructions.

The construction is otherwise straightforward. Since there is no real hull interior provided I strongly recommend to paint it black inside before gluing upper and lower hull together, so that even when you leave the turret hatch open, details of the turret will remain visible, but not the empty hull (in the review on the armorama site author recommended to paint it white, but I don’t think that this would make sense, unless you want everybody to see empty hull).

The turret interior is of course best to be painted in white and gun in khaki (based on the information by Steve Zaloga – for more details I strongly recommend to read his build article in Military Modeling magazine – September 2011 issue).

So far I really love this model, i’s one of the best I have ever built. So having almost finished construction in about three evenings, I am looking forward to the painting phase.