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Nichimo
Being a pilot myself (general aviation),
I 'am always on the look out for general aviation model kits. I have
a whole bunch of them… Cessna's, Pipers, Beechcraft, most of
them in 1/72 or 1/48 scale. Of course I had to have them all but unfortunately,
at that time they where way to expensive for me. I now have both the Cessna and the Fuji
and as soon as I have finished up on the 3 kits I'm still working
on (Mig21UM, Hornet and my big Me 262) I will start working on them.
The airplane The Fuji was the first, all Japanese, general
aviation airplane and was manufactured by Fuji Heavy industries (Former
Nakajima Company). Of all-metal construction, the FA-200 prototype
was flown for the first time on 12 August 1965, and subsequently went
into production at Fuji's Utsunomiya factory. The kit This kit was first released somewhere in the late seventies, early eighties. I tried to look up the exact year but could not find it. There is little to be found on the net about these neat kits and I never came across a built one. Too bad, because these kits are really nice and build into a great static model. I bet a lot of people still have one of these in their attic. A message to them: GET THEM OUT AND BUILD THEM Enough about this…But first of all, let's have a look in the box.
There are 7 frames. Each section of the
airplane has its own color. The fuselage parts are molded in white,
the interior parts are red and black, and the engine parts are grey.
There are also a couple of figures included, but those are not too
realistic. Apart from the plastic parts, there are also metal and
rubber parts, springs for the full functioning landing gear and even
two light bulbs for the landing light. (There is a possibility to
install an electric motor as well, but that motor was not included
in the kit.)
Fuselage parts and wing parts The fuselage comes in 5 parts. The panel
lines are recessed and look a bit too deep and wide, but this can
be fixed. Also the fuselage and wings are covered with rivets (as
is the real thing) but they are a bit overdone. Again, nothing that
can't be fixed with a piece of wet and dry sandpaper.
Interior parts
Engine parts
Here you see the end result (picture scanned from manual)
Conclusion A very nice and large kit of an unusual
subject. As I said, this kit will build into a great looking model.
© Flip Hendrickx 2003 |
The
manual is a 12 page booklet and contains text, pictures and detailed
drawings. Very nice! There is a large decal sheet, but it's old and
yellowed. I decided not to use it when I'm going to build this kit.
Instead I will make new decals on my ALPS printer. 
The
interior is very detailed, but some of the parts are a little crude.
The seatbelts for instance are way to thick and have to be replaced
with new ones made of lead foil or tape. The instrument panel is very
nice. Each instrument is supplied as a decal. Seats and carpets in
red
Other
interior parts in black (not the set of plastic tires, nice case you
don't want to use the rubber ones)
The
engine is one of the highlights of this kit. It is an extremely well
done rendition of the Lycoming horizontal opposed 4 stroke engine
that is used in a lot of general aviation airplanes. Plastic, rubber
and metal parts are used for the engine.Each cylinder assembly has
16 metal radiator fins that have to be stacked together