Doyusha 1/100 scale aircraft kits – I don’t know much about them, I assume they were once sold as “normal” kits. In this incarnation, marketed by Airfix, the parts are pre-painted and decalled on the sprues. There are three different kits sold with the same catalog number: in the markings for Hans Philip (sort of blue-grey colour), for Hans Joachim Marseille (desert brown) and for Werner Molders (grey-green splinter camouflage). The box end has a picture of the kit inside, so if you are alert you can rummage through the stock on the shelf and get one of each. I spoke to my local model shop man and he said that he just gets a mixture of the variants in a box from his wholesaler, so he cannot order in a specific model.

The kit comes in an end-opening box, there are two sprues in a bag, the canopy is inside its own little plastic bag, there is also a plastic display base, almost the full size of the box, also bagged. The paint is airbrushed on: overspray is visible on the sprues. The decals are very neatly applied they almost look painted on.

The minimal instructions on the back of the box refer to glueing the parts together, making no mention of scraping away paint from joins.

I did not simulate the “tear and bash” building style I would have used at age 8, which is the target audience as per the symbols on the box. I trimmed each part carefully from the sprue and checked the fit of parts before glueing. I was pleased to find that most of the construction was “snap-tite”. The propeller was a tight push fit, but did not pop the fuselage half joins, there is no collar provided to allow the propeller to spin. The only glue I needed to apply was to secure the stabilisers and the air intake. Ordinary plastic glue, with no need to scrape away the paint seemed to work ok. I used a small dot of pva glue to secure the canopy, rather than risk fogging it.

The box comments that the drop tank is optional, it also shows two air-intakes with no comment. I take it that the longer intake is only used for the desert version.

There were some areas where careful trimming was required to get a good fit: the joining surfaces for the upper and lower wing halves need to be smoothed. The undercarriage leg locating pins need to be trimmed down to fit, a slight tapering cut is required to get a good fit. I am not sure that a young child would have the skills to get this right, which could result in a bit of frustration, on the other hand if you leave the undercarriage off you have a flying model....

Unfortunately I don’t have access to a tame 8 year old to road test these kits properly.

 - not applicable – you just admire the completed kit.

I have no idea if these markings are “correct”. They look pretty enough, but the rather misty blue uppersurfaces strike me as being implausible.

You could touch up some places where the paint was removed in trimming the parts. The air-intake does have plastic showing through on the outside, however I left it as is.

I liked this kit and I will keep my eye open for others in the series (Spitfire V, P-51D, P-47D, A6M5 Zero, Fw-190A, I have noticed that they can be found at airshows, some internet model shops list them, but you would not know what markings you were going to get if you order in that way.

I have some reservations about their suitability for small children because they seem a bit dainty and one or two of the parts need a bit of trimming to fit with a sharp knife.

Jeff Simpson

March 2009