The kit is from Monogram. While the overall shape is right, and fit is decent, there's some work to be done to make this actually represent a Prowler. Monogram basically took their Intruder and gave it an extra cockpit and the "football" on the tail. Unfortunately, that doesn't quite cover all the differences in the airframes. Oh, and kit has raised panel lines too.
The first thing I corrected was removing the armor plating on the underside. The Intruder had extra armor on the outside of the engine compartments - the Prowler does not. Apologies for the bad picture quality - but hopefully you can make out that on the left is a fuselage half which has already had the armor plating removed (I used a coarse sanding drum in a rotor tool to start out, then cleaned it up a bit with sandpaper). On the right is a fuselage half with the armor plating still present, but marked for removal (a big "x" from a Sharpie).
Below is one of the fuselage halves just before joining. You can also see where I cut away the HF antenna on the spine and an inlet scope on the intake trunk, both of which were replaced with resin parts from the Cutting Edge set (now just recently out of production with Meteor Productions' closing). I did most of my rescribing here, where it was a bit easier to manage. I used both a scribing tool and a needle chucked in a pin vise. Truth be told, I think I prefer the latter. You can also see the Black Box cockpit and ejection seats just about ready to install.
Here is the cockpit installed. Next time I do this project, I will remove more excess resin from the sides of the cockpit tub - as you can see here, the aftermarket part proved a little wide and there was a lot of filling to be done at the joint between the fuselage halves.
As molded by Monogram, the kit gives you the option to lower the left boarding ladder, but gives you no choice for the right side (or for the platforms that give access to the front cockpit). I cut away the kit plastic on the right side and used sheet styrene to make my own boarding ladder for the right side before attaching the front portion of the intake. I also carefully bored out just enough plastic to show the boarding platforms up front in their open position.
The kit part for the tailhook and expendables dispenser included another A-6 feature not seen on the Prowler - a bulge for a doppler radar used in terrain following. This feature was big enough that grinding and sanding if off left a hole that I had to patch with sheet styrene and putty.
Next came the wings. I used Paragon resin wing folds, which require you to cut the wings in half and remove a bit of plastic on either side of the cut. On the outboard half of each wing, there's also a section of flaperon to remove, as it will be replaced by a resin piece to show the characteristic "droop" seen when the wings are folded. In this picture, I've cut the left wing in half and installed the inboard half of the wingfold. The left flaperon is marked for removing. Next time I do this, if I use Paragon's set again, I will do some more sanding on the upper and lower wing pieces to try and thin the cross section a bit - as it happened, the kit wings wound up being much thicker than the Paragon parts which led to quite a bit of work to blend everything together.
In the picture below, the left wing is basically all assembled and I'm in the process of blending everything together. The right wing is all cut and ready to be assembled.
Now I could start painting. I did the white gear wells (and, while the airbrush was loaded, ladder wells and other white parts ) first, before attaching the inboard wings which would have really complicated things. I also painted the exhaust pipe, half of which is on the fuselage and half on the wings. There's some removing of kit plastic to do on the underside of the wings too, and some resin to add if you're fortunate enough to have gotten your hands on the cutting edge set. In this picture, I've still got to blend some of these parts a bit before spraying the first coat of gray.
I masked the gear wells, ladder wells, and cockpit, then sprayed the first coat of gray on the fuselage as part primer, part checking-my-work. You can see here there was a bit more touch-up sanding to do. I also shot the rudder white now, before doing much more with the gray.
Here we are with the three shades of gray sprayed -
Here's with the a gloss coat (Future floor polish) and speedbrakes painted white (yep, I had forgotten) as well as red brush-painted on the boarding platform wells... the undersides of the flaperons would also get red.
Here's with the decals applied, ready for a flat coat and some more assembly.
At this stage I started doing some more detail work - stuff I figured would fall off during the painting and decalling stage. I made the USQ-113 antenna out of laminated styrene sheet cut to match photos. I also used fine styrene rod to make the V-shaped deflector on the underside (it helps keep leaking engine oil - it's a Grumman plane, you know - from being blown by the slipstream back into the avionics bay, where there's also liquid oxygen).
Having carved the right ladder well out of the kit, I had to make the right ladder from scratch. I pieced it together from sheet styrene to match the left one. Forward of the right ladder is a cover for the AOA probe - on the real thing, the cover is spring-loaded and pops out and forward when the ladder is opened. I carved out the recess where the cover sits when the ladder is closed and shaped the cover itself from scrap styrene, painting it red. Behind the aft cockpit, there is a dome-shaped GPS antenna I shaped from CA adhesive. Finally, I laminated sheet styrene to make the front boarding platforms. After that, it was just attaching the rest of the blade antennae, underwing stores, outer wings, and canopies.
You can read the more in-depth article about this project here.
Kit: Monogram
Scale: 1/48
Markings: USN, VAQ-137
Date: 2007
Aftermarket: Cutting Edge correction set, Black Box cockpit/ejection seats, Paragon wingfolds, Aeromaster decals
