Hasegawa Morane-Saulnier MS-406C

I have actually finished a model recently, but it is liable to be the last completion prior to the LVAD cardiac surgery. It is by no means a great model, because it was snakebit from just about the first act of construction.

This is the Hasegawa MS-406. I found two Hasegawa kits and a Heller one in the box (I suspect I got this from a fellow IPMS-Seattle member). Over the course of the build, just about every dangly bit broke off. The antenna, the pitot, the tailwheel. One of the pugs got ahold of it during the painting process and swallowed one of those bits. The Hasegawa kit is well engineered and the fit is just fine.

Painting was a little tricky due to the number of colors in the camo. But at least it worked its way through the paint queue without major trauma. A bit of pebbling which required some careful buffing. The canopy masking took some time to remove; not sure if that was due to the number of months it was attached to the model, but that is certainly a possibility.

When I got to the decals, a Berna sheet, the adhesive was either too little or plain nonexistent. When I shot the matte topcoat, it actually blew some of the decals off and they floated to the floor. I was able to replace them with kit decals, which (thankfully) were pretty close in color to the Berna sheet. The markings are from GC 1/17, Escadrille 2 in the Vichy Air Force, based in Paris in 1940.

So, it’s…. finished. Not a great one, but the models get displayed on this blog however they turn out.

This is completed model #515 (13 aircraft, 1 ordnance, 3 vehicles this year), finished in September of 2019.