Locust Roast (Area 88)

The finished model:

The scene:

It’s just another day on the battlefield in the Middle East.  Shin and Mickey, having just returned from a sortie, stop to admire the Asran Government’s latest plane, an F-15A Eagle and then proceed to gently tease Morris over his stubborn refusal to upgrade his ride from the ancient T-6 Texan to a more modern jet fighter.  The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a swarm of desert locusts blown in by storms over the Mediterranean.

What would usually just be a nuisance turns into a catastrophe as the anti-government rebel forces choose that moment to launch a nuclear missile strike, wiping  sister-base Area 81 off the map.  Fearing the same fate, the pilots of Area 88 scramble to get airborne for an intercept, but panic sets in when the swarm of locusts prove too much for the modern jet engines.

Luckily, Morris and his trusty Texan, with its much small air intake, is able to take off and ignite a gasoline fire that clears the runway.  Although he eventually crashes and burns, Morris’ sacrifice is not in vain, as Shin is able to use the F-15A to take out an incoming missile.

Check out the original manga scene from Chapter 004 “The Old Soldier’s Fire” here:

The story:

This is another one of the early one-off stories, much like the one featuring Boris, that introduce a mercenary pilot just for the sake of dramatically killing him off in the same chapter.

Despite only having a few panels of “screen time”, it’s pretty easy to empathize with the slightly dumpy Morris and his quaint refusal to get rid of a plane that was old before WWII, let alone 1979.  In fact, the self-contained aspect of the chapter actually makes it more attractive as a build project, because you can sort of capture the essence of it all at once (or at least you can try).

It also doesn’t hurt that it gives me an opportunity to build a propellor plane as part of my 1/144 Area 88 project .

The kit:

• JASDF T-6 Texan (by Platz)

The build:

Since my Area 88 1/144  builds are meant to “capture a moment of action” from the manga, I really wanted to come up with a good way to show more than just a static propellor.  There are lots of methods, and I tried a few of them using clear plastic discs, paint and/or decals.  However, in the end, I realized the wisdom that you’ll find on the ”How to Do It” page at Bjørn Jacobsen‘s awesome Dioramas and Models website.  Basically, the only thing that looks like a spinning propellor is… a spinning propellor.

Luckily enough, I was able to get my hands on some really tiny 4x8mm DC motors off eBay and decided to try an experiment.  Since the T-6 Texan was such a simple kit, there wasn’t much to say about the construction itself.  The only really tricky bit was making sure there was enough room for the motor.  In hindsight I think I should’ve included the motor at an earlier stage, but oh, well, live and learn.

I actually had more of a challenge with the base.  After all, how do you represent a 1/144 scale swarm of locusts?  I stumbled across a synthetic sponge that I thought might do the trick, so after giving it a hair cut and some paint I think it’s a reasonable likeness.  The “fire” light LED in the centre was a bit of a cop-out, but I liked how the glow shines through the sponge, so I left it as is.  I just covered the side with a bit of cotton over a wire skeleton and then stiffened it up with some hairspray and painted it to look like a cloud of smoke.

All in all, I pretty satisfied with the result, but feel free to tell me what you think.