"Horatio Hernández and Friendship Scale Models " Topic

"Back in May when I blogged the images of John Haas' superbly scratch-built Ki-77 I briefly mentioned the Friendship Scale Models 1/72 mixed media kit of that type. Friendship Scale Models was the brainchild of the late Horatio Hernández, perhaps one of the unsung pioneers of Japanese aviation modelling. Horatio was an enthusiastic modeller of Japanese aviation history of the Second World War and of the inter-war period. His own favorite scale was 1/72nd so that was the scale he chose for Friendship Scale Models. In the period from circa 1991 to 1995 he also distributed Model Art, Model Graphix and other Japanese publications within Mexico.

I had the privilege, all too briefly, of corresponding (old style) with Horatio at the turn of the century. It was about an aircraft of mutual interest – the Ki-44 – and I still have the working dossier copy that he had prepared and sent to me with meticulously catalogued examples of that machine and his carefully considered questions about their markings and colour schemes. In early 1992 Horatio conceived the idea of making resin kits of the rarer types of Japanese aircraft under the brand name Amigo Models and approached the Smooth-On distributors of silicon rubbers and urethane resins in Mexico as a potential source of resin. Smooth-On advised Horatio to make the larger parts of the bigger kits he planned to create by using the vacuum forming process…"
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