Don, I have seen your posts decoding some Japanese words and phrases. They are very accurate and truly amazing.
To me, being appreciated for speaking Japanese is like being thanked for inhaling some air and exhaling it from two different places. (Bad joke, sorry) I was born and raised in Japan and that's it. It is nothing, compared to your effort and achievement for understanding Japanese airplanes.
I didn't know anything about the WWII Japanese airplanes two years ago. And I'm still a novice modeler. I have a lot to learn in this forum.
Also, I don't think that the information about Japanese airplanes written in Japanese is always more credible than the sources in English. When WWII ended, Japan destroyed most of the military records. The U.S. tested some of the Japanese airplanes during and after the war and still keeps their very accurate performance data that Japan doesn't have. Another strength that U.S. has and Japan doesn't is the presence of the communities that restore WWII airplanes and keep them in flying/museum conditions. There are no such communities in Japan. Do you know what happened to the sole surviving Ki-84 Hayate after it was restored in the U.S. and returned to Japan?
Sorry, I tend to digress from the subject. Let's talk about the landing gear.
Heres the diagrams that came with the model.
As you can see, the landing gear assembly is completely obscured by the door. There is no separate diagram for the landing gear either.
The green line represents the 0.5 mm wire. It is just a straight line from the wing to the center of the wheel. That is okay, as long as the landing gear is a straight pipe all the way from top to bottom. But it's not!
Here is the picture of the Ki-61's landing gear.
It is not straight. My question is, obviously, how am I going to build it?
It seems as if the diagram suggests that you attach the 0.5 mm wire to the landing gear door, attach the wheel and strut to the wire and let the wire and the door support the weight of the airplane, just like this:
That would be awkward because the straight wire between the strut and the door would be visible. Is this what the designer intended? Is this common in Marek 1:50 models?
I'm tempted to bend the wire along the strut and bend it 90 degree at the bottom to form an axle of the wheel. But it is against my 'out-of-the-box' policy. Mmm...what should I do...
Thanks,
Shinji