Soviet Air Force MiG-25 "Foxbat" 'Red 31'/Lt. Viktor Belenko, Hakodate Airport, Japan 1976 1/144 Revell

Right after Soviet Air Force Lt. Belenko defected to Japan in 1976 there were MiG-25 scale model kits available too, and I recall I built one in 1/72nd scale at the end of 1970's. Later I thought it might be fun to have a Revell Foxbat model again, so picked up this in 1/144 scale this time. The kit is quite simple but captures the brutal style of MiG-25 very well. The motion-blur runway background is an A3-sized color print I made after real Hakodate runway dimensions and it should be at least roughly in 1/144 scale too.

Real Asahi Shimbun pictures of Belenko's MiG-25 at Hakodate

The Wind Rises I: IJN Mitsubishi A5M4 'Claude' 1/72 Nichimo

Jiro Horikoshi (Wikipedia)

The Wind Rises (Japanese: 風立ちぬ Hepburn: Kaze Tachinu) is a 2013 Japanese animated historical drama film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli. The Wind Rises is a fictionalized biopic of Jiro Horikoshi (1903–1982), designer of the Mitsubishi A5M fighter aircraft and its successor, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, used by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The film is adapted from Miyazaki's manga of the same name, which was in turn loosely based on the 1937 short story The Wind Has Risen by Tatsuo Hori. (Wikipedia).

This Nichimo vintage (Copyright 1964 Nihonmokei Co., Ltd) Claude model was built out-of-the-box with original decals, using just the box art as a reference because the 2nd hand kit had no instruction leaflet. I have serious doubts about the historical accuracy of my model but still like the results of this Japanese anime-inspired old-school project very much. There are Nichimo Raiden 'Jack' and Tamiya Zero 'Zeke' kits already in the stash for further planes designed by Jiro Horikoshi.

There's a nice Nichimo 1/72 Claude in Harrow Modelling Society's Japanese Gallery by Jonathan Burns, which I think is more like museum-quality and periodically correct.