Frank Tiano’s Ki-43 “Oscar”
Award-winning Nakajima warbird with its sights on Top Gun!
Some warbirds just look like they would fly great but, for some reason, are seldom modeled. With plenty of wing area and favorable nose and tail moments, one such aircraft is the Nakajima Ki43 “Oscar.” This World War II Japanese fighter meets these requirements, and if you were to throw in a mean-sounding radial gas engine, you couldn’t help but end up with a winner. Well, Top Gun Scale Invitational promoter Frank Tiano debuted his giant-scale Ki-43 Oscar at his recent 12 O’Clock High event in Lakeland, Florida, and is also planning on flying it at the upcoming 2018 Top Gun event. There aren’t too many Oscars out there on the scale flying circuit, and that’s probably why Frank chose it for his newest warbird.
A traditional all-wood balsa and plywood build, Frank’s Oscar was constructed from a Zapata Warbirds laser-cut kit (zapatawarbirds.com) and is finished with fiberglass cloth and Z-Poxy Finishing Resin followed by gray PPG K36 Auto Primer. The color finish is entirely Klass Kote epoxy paints. The fiberglass cowl and formed canopy are also from designer
Arturo Zapata. To finish off the build, Frank used retractable landing gear and wheels from Sierra Giant Scale. The WW II fighter is powered by a Moki 180cc 5-cylinder engine, which looks and sounds incredible. And it looks as if Frank is off to a good start with his South Pacific warbird as he won the Best Military award for his efforts at the 12 O’Clock High event. Along with Arturo Zapata and Sean Curry, Frank really put the 110-inchspan warbird through its paces.
Perhaps the most unusual—and most important—thing about the
Oscar kit is that the entire airplane is “jig built,” meaning every part and piece of every assembly easily clicks into place, so a set of plans really aren’t needed. You can use them for reference, but there’s no need to build the airframe over them. As far as performance goes, the Oscar is a real cruiser. It is smooth, precise, and well mannered, as its shape and layout would suggest. When contributor and ace photographer Rich Uravitch saw it fly, he commented that it is kind of like a scale pattern ship!