Saturday 18 August 2012

Indonesian Yokosuka K5Y "Akatonbo" (Willow) by Sinang Aribowo

Today we have the pleasure to introduce the exquisite "Akatonbo" in Indonesian markings of our friend Sinang Aribowo in 1/72.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...


Mr Sinang Aribowo has made a very good looking Tjureng(Curen) the old LS/Arii kit! A few questions from me, did you use decals or are all the markings hand-painted? As Arawasi Magazine once pointed out-the majority (?) of the Willows was still orange/yellow on the undersurfaces.This one isn't- as the one in the Satria Mandala museum. Any thoughts on that?

regards,
Jacob

Anonymous said...

Thank You Mr Jacob!
Yes, this is an old ARII kit. I built this model around year 2008.
I have made 2 modification base on Satria Mandala Churen. First is the blades as you see the kit's blade is too simple. And second is the rudder because I feel that the rudder in the kit is too small. I don't know if it is correct or not.
And for the marking I used my self made decal.
I painted the model all over the body with only one color because I think that this plane at that time intended for war not for training purpose so it would be not painted in high visibility color. There are photos of churen with two tone color but the insignia were square not round.
And now this model is exhibited at Dirgantara Mandala Museum, Yogyakarta along with other models: http://issuu.com/sinangaribowo/docs/flyer_catalogue_en
Maybe you can make special report for the model kits there George...:)

regards,
sinang

Harold K said...

VERY well done Sinang.
Your model looks just like the photos I have seen of the museum aircraft.
One question: why did you choose to leave the rudder dark green and not red/white?

Anonymous said...

Thanks Harold!
There are some old photos that I saw, a churen with dark color rudder not red/white.
Actually I'm not too worried about the color of the rudder. What I really want to ask you gentlemen here is about the rudder shape. Because I think the rudder shape of the museum churen is different with various drawings that I have seen. Why is that?

Anonymous said...


Mr Sinang's question was a good one. The answer is- if I see fit- in F.A.O.W #44 of 1994.
If you take a good look at the profiles you'll see the different rudder. The one of the K5Y2 seaplane has a different shape than the land version. This rudder looks like the one of Mr Sinang's land based version. I think it was enlarged for better control of the seaplane.

Jacob.

Anonymous said...


My apologies for a not that good answer on Sinangs question-I suppose that on the later models of the K5Y1 the same rudder was used as on the K5Y2 seaplane.

Jacob

Anonymous said...

Well, thanks Mr Jacob....
So if it is a later model it means the big rudder wasn't an addition or unprecedented restoration before it went to museum.
For the next churen project I want to make a churen with square marking.
I've seen few pictures posted in a forum that the churen were 2 toned color. And I wonder what was the underside color?

sinang

Anonymous said...


Hi Sinang,

Arawasi Magazine #2 of october 2005 has in the article on the Indonesian K5Y1 Akatonbo 5 wonderful color profiles by Jan Hajicek. Among them Willow #24 with the Garuda bird!
Maybe the editor is wiling to show some of them on the blog. Today in the 2nd part on the K5Y1 he explained his view on this matter. My advise-ask him.

regards,
Jacob.

Harold K said...

You know, there is another thing to consider with museum aircraft. Do we (or can we?) know that the museum's churen was dark green overall in, say, 1946?
Or was the green thought to be a suitable color when the aircraft was restored for display?