1/72 A-6E Intruder

The spring of 2012, after a move and three deployments, marked my return to building (after unpacking and repairing models that had been boxed up since my move in autumn of 2008).  For my return, I chose the Italeri 1/72 A-6E Intruder.  I picked it because it had been given to me by a fellow modeller as 'payment' for some patches and zappers (stickers) from where I worked.  In exchange for a modest charge to my mess bill, I was given a Revell Intruder, the Italeri intruder, and a weapons set or two.  Needless to say, my friend drastically overpaid. 

Given such generosity, I figured it was only fitting I should build one of these kits first.  I had already done a Revell 1/72 Intruder, and while I wasn't opposed to doing that much work again, it didn't seem like a good way to knock the rust off after almost 4 years away from the workbench. And so, I set to work on the Italeri Intruder, the only aftermarket items added being a decal sheet from Hi-Decal.

The cockpit is pretty respectable, actually.  I didn't feel the need to add anything to it.  Simple painting, and dry-brushing to capture the raised detail, got it done. The seats were also pretty solid (and the details pop nicely after a dry-brushing) given the scale and the fact they're 'just' from the kit.  Yes, lap belts and lower ejection handles would be 'nice' (which is to say, technically accurate) but let's be honest - no one's going to see that once the seats are inside the cockpit tub and mounted inside the fuselage.

When you compare this cockpit to the one in the Revell offering, you can see why I chose to defer the latter until I had knocked a bit of rust off my modelling skills:

Before joining fuselage halves, you insert a 'plate' with the compressor faces into each intake.  It's not a terrible representation of the front end of a jet engine, certainly better than just blank plastic or nothing at all.  It's not perfect, and I suspect the contest crowd would opt for an intake cover or scratching some sort of intake duct wall.  At the other end of the motor, the two turbine faces are on a single part that I feel actually lends some alignment help and structural stability when the time comes to join the fuselage halves.

The fuselage halves fit quite nicely with very little filler needed - further validating my choice for first kit out of the blocks upon my return to the hobby. While I don't have a picture of it, the keel of the aircraft, the underside between the motors, fit quite nicely too.  In every other Prowler or Intruder model I've built, that had typically been a troublesome spot.  This fit nearly flawlessly. The radome isn't installed yet in this picture, but before adding it, I had to add weight.  I used a combination of Walther's weights, which are designed for model railroad cars and come with adhesive tape and in this case were installed between the cockpit floor and the 'roof' of the nosewheel well, and fishing weights secured inside the radome with blu-tac.

Another nice aspect of the Italeri fit is in the tailhook area.  Again, in other models, this has been a rough spot; in some projects it required some amount of scratch building to keep from having wide open spaces.  Forward of the tailhook is a void on the aircraft centerline (where the avionics bay is on the real thing) flanked on either side by the fuselage speedbrakes (which were bolted shut not far into the Intruder's career).  Considering the geometry of the three parts that all had to fit next to each other immediately forward of the tailhook, I was a little worried about fit, but needn't have been.  In this picture you can see the tailhook 'well' and the two fuselage speedbrakes mounted, before I installed the avionics bay panel.

With the fuselage taking shape, attention turned to the wings.  Italeri gives you the option to fold the wings, so wing assembly is broken down into outboard wings and inboard wings, which include the main landing gear wells and engine fairings. 

If you want to show your Intruder with the wings spread, then you just need to assemble the outboard wings and join them to the inboard ones.  For both artistic reasons and in consideration of shelf space, I chose to fold my wings.  In order to do that, you need to install 'end plates' between the upper and lower halves of both the inboard and outboard wing assemblies.  These plates represent the wingfold detail. 

As you can see, the joint between the inboard wing and the fuselage left the biggest gaps on the model.  To make filling and blending easier, I first shimmed the gap with sheet styrene that I trimmed to fit.  I then used liquid cement (the kind applied with a brush in the cap) to partially melt the sheet styrene, such that it became sort of a slurry.  That left less room to fill with putty, and therefore less chance the putty would shrink to the point of cracking as it dried.

While preparing the rest of the model for paint I also prepared the ordnance and pylons.  From experience, I knew these would be among the most vulnerable parts of the model the NEXT time I have to move, so I decided to beef up the mounting with some short lengths of copper wire. 

After masking the cockpit, intakes and landing gear wells with blu-tac, I started painting by pre-shading with Testors Aircraft Interior Black.  It was my first time attempting the technique and while I'm pretty pleased with my airbrush application for a first time, the black was probably pretty stark.  I think next time I might try gunship gray or something like that.

The rest of the painting, using Testors Model Master acrylics, was straightforward - and while it doesn't show it here so well, just enough of the preshading showed through to pull off the effect.

After a gloss-coat of Future floor polish, the aftermarket decals went down nicely...

After that, another gloss coat protected the decals and facilitated a wash to accent some of the panel lines...

 
Another new technique I tried was using artists oils for weathering.  I used raw sienna and burnt sienna to represent fluid leaks and exhaust staining:

 

 The oils were accentuated by using powdered pastels for soot on areas subject to engine exhaust...

 

And after adding the ordnance, landing gear, outboard wings, and other final details, my first project back was complete....

 

 

Kit: Italeri 

Scale: 1/72
Markings: VA-85
Date: June 2012
Aftermarket: Hi-Decal

Black Diamond is Building Again

After a bit of hiatus due to an interstate move in the fall of 2008, a 7 month deployment in 2009, a 6 month deployment then a wedding in 2010, and yet one more deployment in 2011, the built models you see here have been unpacked - with, happily enough, only minor damage, although evidently tap water in Fallon was a bad call for decals. With only the last two models to be repaired to go, work has officially begun on my first new project since the Marine Prowler below. Pictures soon!

1/72 EA-6B Prowler

Another Hasegawa Prowler. This time, I replaced the kit seats with resin examples from True Details. These are great seats, but they turn out to be a little wider than the space for them in the kit cockpit tub. Some judicious sanding of seats and tub was required to get them to fit, but the finished product doesn't really show it. I also used the Eduard photo-etch set to dress things up (especially the cockpit).

The decals were from the kit - I wanted to do a VMAQ-2 bird from the days when they were still the Playboys, before the political-correctness witch-hunts of the early 1990s. The white paint is Tamiya XF-2, the gray is from Gunze, and the tan and black are from Testors. I'm becoming an increasingly big fan of both Tamiya and Gunze acrylics.

It will be last one I get to do for a while, as soon I have to move.

Kit: Hasegawa
Scale: 1/72
Markings: VMAQ-2
Date: 2008
Aftermarket: True Details resin seats, Eduard photo-etch brass detail set

Caught Up

If there are any regular visitors, you've noticed a definite slow down in posting!

That's because the "gallery" (if you will) is caught up. I'm about halfway through the next project and will have an entry for it when I finish.

Thanks for checking it out!

1/72 F/A-18 Hornet

It's not often (read: almost never) that I think a kit is a total dog, and I sort of pride myself on the fact that I'll build damn near anything. But this one was pretty bad. It almost didn't get built.

Even after assembling it I have no idea as to it's pedigree. I saw no discernible manufacturer's name or emblem on the box or instructions. It was one of those last minute E-bay scores - finding something ending in the next few minutes that was only going for 99 cents. At least I wasn't out a lot of money.

The seat looked like something from the set of a bad 60s sci-fi show, and the side console detail was 3 raised rings on each side of the cockpit - as if the plane came equipped with 6 drink holders. I was not interested in scratchbuilding a cockpit, or cannibalizing another kit. But I decided I could use it as a "test bed" for a painted canopy.

Sometimes in this hobby, folks will recommend you try a new technique out on a "throw away" model first - well, I don't really have any throw away models. But I did have one that could only improve! I also decide to try making an inflight display, something else (along with the opaque canopy) I hadn't done before.

The canopy was painted blue from the inside after having been coated with Future. It was masked for the framing then installed (and the gaps around it filled with white craft glue - which dries clear, won't craze clear plastic, and can be shaped while wet with a damp Q-Tip, meaning no sanding marks on your canopy). The supports for the inflight display are 2 K&S aluminum tubes bent to shape and cemented into a wood base I grabbed at Wal-Mart.

To make it look somewhat interesting, I used Superscale decals for "Strike U", and made a TACTS pod out of a Sidewinder missile. Weathering was with pastels.

Kit: ???
Scale: 1/72
Markings: Naval Strike Warfare Center ("Strike U")
Date: 2008
Aftermarket: Superscale Decals, K&S aluminum tubing

1/48 EA-18G "Shocker"

No, I'm not calling a "Growler." That's a ridiculous name.

I started with the Italeri kit, as it's the only 1/48 -18G out there right now. It has it's shortcomings - aside from temperamental fit, the basic airframe itself represents an early block F and there are some changes to be made both to the basic airframe and to represent the electronic warfare gear that got added on. You could use a Revell F/A-18F, but you'd have to come up with the wingtip receiver pods, the ALQ-99 jamming pods, and even then you'd still have some of the add-ons to make yourself.

The cockpit is basic, and the panels/consoles are represented with decals. I replaced the aft instrument panel/coaming with a resin part from Steel Beach, which represents the ACS crewstation in the back of the G's.


Main assembly is pretty straightforward, but the engineering and parts breakdown does invite some fit issues, as you can probably see from all the green. There's also the issue of "early" Super Hornet features that need to be corrected, such as these square-shaped holes in the wingroot and the pieces that go in there.


Add-ons include a more or less conformal antenna on the spine (it's saddle shaped), wing fences, antenna blisters on the side of the nose and near the horizontal stabilizers, and in the case of the Italeri kit, the IFF interregator.

The kit's molded ECS exhausts (between the tails) are also incorrect and need to be replaced - Steel Beach also makes resin parts for these, and Darren Roberts was kind enough to send some along with the ACS instrument panel. Also, in the picture below, you can see the fairing at the 'dogtooth' in the wing leading edge, another unique feature of the EA-18G.


The external stores are 3 ALQ-99 jamming pods from Cutting Edge, 2 AGM-88 HARM from the kit (stripes from a Hasegawa weapons set decal sheet), 2 AIM-120 AMRAAM from the kit, and drop tanks from the kit. The last Italeri inaccuracy here was the pylons - they're inaccurate for any Super Hornet, and you'll need to rob a Revell kit - or have a generous friend willing to part with the pylons from one of HIS Revell kits. In my case it was the latter, thanks to the generosity of Brian Marbrey.

I went my own way for markings. Italeri gives you a choice between VAQ-129, the fleet replacement squadron, and VAQ-209, the reserve squadron. It's an open question as to whether or not VAQ-209 will make the transition to EA-18Gs or be disestablished when the Prowler is finally retired, so I wasn't too keen on that one. And I didn't really dig the conceptualized FRS markings in the kit. So while I used the kit's stencils, numbers and whatnot, I raided the decal stash for an old Superscale sheet for squadron markings, putting the bird in VAQ-137 colors (my former fleet squadron). The oversized air wing tailcode on the inside of the tails is not quite congruent with current "big Navy" dictates, but I'm sort of hoping the VAQ community will stand it's ground when it comes to more creative paint schemes. A guy can hope...





Kit: Italeri (and parts from Revell)
Scale: 1/48
Markings: VAQ-137
Date: 2007
Aftermarket: Steel Beach ACS cockpit and ECS exhaust, Cutting Edge ALQ-99 pods, Superscale decals

1/48 F-14D

This was the first project I've done intending to give to someone else (though truth be told, I haven't figured out the logistics of getting it to its recipient yet...).

The kit is Hasegawa's F-14D, with the addition of Eduard's "Big Ed" photo-etc set and TwoBobs decals.

Here's what Eduard's set buys you with the ejection seats:


And here's what it gets you in the cockpit:


Construction is relatively straightforward. Hasegawa's Tomcat is what some might call over-engineered - more parts than are really needed to make the kit work. While this admittedly complicates assembly, it also allows the company to put out different versions of a subject. To me, this flexibility makes it worth the added effort in assembly. Another manufacturer might label the box "F-14D" but to get an accurate portrayal you might have to do a lot of work to what is REALLY a model of an F-14A, for example.

It took me two tries to get the cans right, because I forgot that in the D you don't generally see the "one open, one closed" thing like you do with the A's. But it was easy enough to get right. They were painted with Alcad.


The friend for who I built the model flew F-14Ds in OIF, so I endeavored to arm it appropriately, using Hasegawa weapons sets. To create the ablative coating on the bombs, I worked one at a time, coating a bomb with ProWeld (Tenax or any other similar cement would work just as well - you could probably use lacquer thinner too), then dabbing at it with the coarsest sandpaper I had while it was still soft. I mounted them to the model using small lengths of wire.


Painting was fairly straightforward, using Testor's Model Master gull gray for most of the plane and Ford Engine Blue for the accents.


I used Two Bobs' decals for VF-213, the squadron my friend flew with.


The base is a Custom Dioramics section of carrier flight deck mounted in a picture frame. I elected to put it UNDER the glass for durability, given that I intend to part with this EVENTUALLY.

Now to hope I can get it to its intended owner before they find it online!!


Kit: Hasegawa
Scale: 1/48
Markings: VF-213
Date: 2007
Aftermarket: Eduard photo-etch, Hasegawa weapons, Two Bobs decals