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Blue Impulse Sabre

history

The Blue Impulse or 11 Squadron, is an aerobatic demonstration team of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. The demonstration team was originally founded in 1960 as a team of six F-86 Sabres. Through the years the team switched to the Mitsubishi T-2 in 1980 and then to the Kawasaki T-4 in 1995.

The first unofficial Japanese aerobatic team was formed in 1958 at Hamamatsu airbase. The team used F-86F Sabre jets that did not have a special color scheme. After four demonstrations, the team was disbanded.

In 1960 a new demonstration team was formed that again flew the F-86F and had a specially designed paint scheme. The first demonstration of the new team "Tenryu" (named after a river near the air base), was on March 4, 1960 in Hamamatsu. However this name was hard to pronounce in western languages, so the team was renamed Blue Impulse.

Construction

The Hasegawa F-86F-40 Blue Impulse kit was pretty much an out of the box build, except for the PE seat belts I added to the ejection seat. Overall, construction for the kit is straight forward just following the instructions, which are very good—the illustrations are excellent. The parts fit for the kit was excellent, not much seam filling and sanding was required.

Painting

Painting the model was quite easy, the entire model is painted white. Hasegawa was very considerate in producing all of the parts in white plastic. A single coat of MM Flat White did the job nicely.

Decals

Decals for the F-86F Blue Impulse were excellent. The were easily applied and adhered well to the model. The kit provided markings for only one unknown Blue Impulse paint scheme, it was never used on the demonstration team's aircraft. Hasegawa decals are a bit thick which is a good thing as the decals for this model are large and required a lot of maneuvering on the model surface to get the decals in the correct position; they did not tear. To make it easier to place the large decals, I cut them in half.

conclusion

To sum up, this kit was a very enjoyable build. Hasegawa has done a great job with this kit. The external detail is good, the parts fit is excellent, and the decals were excellent. I recommend this kit to any modeler.