Flamenco Flight (Area 88)

The finished model:

The scene:

One of the most tense flight scenes in the manga.  After the Anti-Government Forces destroy an Asranian oil refinery, Saki has no choice but to authorize an extremely risky mission to capture one of the A.G.F.’s main fuel depots.  Given the natural defence provided by a long crevasse, it has been safe from attack from ground forces, so it has been able to fortify and focus only on its air defence.  However, Major Roundel devises a plan to lead the Area 88 squad through the crevasse itself!  250 metres down below the surface there is a “box” roughly 25 metres wide that will allow the planes to pass.  One wrong move though and the “Flamenco Flight” because a dance of certain death.

Check out the original manga scene from Chapter 60 “Flamenco Survivor” here:

The story:

There’s not really much to say about this one, it’s really a bit of a no-brainer.  Major Roundel is one of the main supporting cast members who joins the team at roughly the mid-point of the story, and this amazing, death-defying flight, is arguably his finest hour.  So there’s really no way it COULDN’T be part of my 1/144 Area 88 project.

The kit:

• Buccaneer S.Mk II by CafeReo

The build:

The real question was WHERE to get a 1/144 scale Buccaneer?  They don’t exactly grow on trees.  Given that they’re not exactly a niche subject, it’s a bit surprising that there aren’t more kits on offer, but perhaps it’s due to the fact that they’re primarily British-only.

Regardless, even though there is now a very intriguing resin cast kit on offer from 144th.co.uk, it wasn’t available when I first started looking around for options.  There is, of course, also a vacu-formed kit available from welshmodels.co.uk, but I wasn’t sure if I was up to tackling a vacu-formed kit – at least not for one of the “central” builds I have planned.

So, instead, I opted for… and Area 88 1/144 Buccaneer from CafeReo.  Strange as it might be, I decided it was the easiest/most cost efficient option.  As a gashapon trading “figure”, the kit is mostly pre-painted and pre-built, but the thick paint and gaps give it a certain toy-like quality and I thought I could do better.

It was hard to tear off the nice little Buccaneer crest decal, since I knew I wouldn’t be able to re-create it, so I tried to salvage it – but no dice.  After that it was a lot of work to cut through the thick paint job and scrub it down to bare plastic.  Perhaps not totally necessary, but I like the idea of starting as close to scratch as possible.

The first hurdle was scratchbuilding a new bomb bay door cover.  I don’t know why, but the gashapon comes with a flexible nylon cover for the bomb bay.  It’s noticeably different plastic from the rest of the kit, and made for an awkward fit. Luckily I had some styrene tubing of roughly the correct dimensions, so a few cuts and I was in business.

The next bit of business was the air intakes.  The gashapon kit had huge thick walls, so I needed to thin them down considerably.  I managed to destroy one of the fans in the process, but a quick rummage through the spares box netted me some wheels from a MiG-21 that did the trick.

It was pretty smooth sailing after that, although, as expected, the decal for Roundel’s Buccaneer crest was a real challenge.  Homemade decals with clear backing somewhat disappear against a dark paint job, and the white backing paper is difficult to crop properly.  At 1/144 scale… you take what you can get.

It is what it is, but I’m pretty satisfied with the result, but feel free to tell me what you think.