Air Modelling Weathering Master Series

Shuichi Hayashi should be no stranger to fans of weathered aviation models. His highly expressive aircraft models have been seen all over social media for a number of years, have been a constant feature of the Japanese bimonthly, Scale Aviation, and were the focus of a 3-book series, the Air Modelling Weathering Master series in his home country of Japan.

Voume 1, published in 2018, features a few short photo galleries of his aircraft builds before diving into comprehensive step-by-step/gallery articles on a 1/32 F-14D Tomcat and a 1/32 F4U-1D Corsair. The majority of the important content is presented in both Japanese and English, though it should be noted the English translation is not as refined when compared to books 2 and 3.

Volume 2 moves down a scale into 1/48. opening with short features on an F-4B Phantom and AH-64D Saraf, before going deep into his TA-7C Corsair and Su-27UB Flanker C projects. Again, captions are presented in both Japanese and English.

Volume 3 locks on to one of Hayashi san’s favourite aircraft, the F/A-18 Hornet, and in doing so, delivers almost a dozen different builds, albeit in a somewhat different format. With less step-by-step content in favour of more studio and naturally-lit photography galleries, think of this volume more  as rich visual summary of the techniques presented in his first 2 books. As with book s1 and 2, English captions are featured throughout.