Aircraft Month - it's on!

A discussion with Paul over on his Plastic Warriors blog set the challenge of finishing some aircraft models this month.  Paul, together with Al at 20th Century Wargames will be starting off with 1/72 scale kits of the Mania (later Hasegawa) Mitsubishi Ki-51 'Sonia' assault plane.  By chance I have recently acquired another set of F-Toys 1/144 scale aircraft (from HLJ in Japan) which included three Sonias.

After spending a jolly morning digging Sara's car out of it's snowdrift - including a fair bit of time digging my way into the car, I took a bit of time this afternoon to do some toy-related 'work'. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the F-Toys range (and indeed the similar offerings from Wing Club and Cafe Reo), these are pre-painted kits which require some assembly and application of decals.  The photo above shows a completed Ki-51 wearing the markings of the 44th Sentai. 
Here is the same Sonia as it came out of the box:

Because most of these models require relatively little work, it is possible to finish several in one session.
Here are the other two Sonias in flight over my wargames table.  They bear the markings of the 67th Sentai and 49th Independent Squadron respectively.  The blue colour scheme is unexpected on an Army aircraft!

 The set also contained Ki-27 'Nate' fighters (stay tuned), so I feel a trip to 1930s China or Manchuria coming on.