Fox_Two

Looking up some references now part of me wants to do a "modern day" paint job. Everyone builds up the corsair in the blue scheme but I have never seen this: Would be really cool to paint it up like this...but...after doing several modern day builds im kind of tired of all the gray! I do have some spare 1/48 modern roundals too....

The builds keep on rolling during quarantine. After building two modern day aircraft I'm switching it up to a WWII era bird. I've heard great things about Tamiya kits and, embarrassingly enough, this is my first Tamiya build! This one was tooled in the early 90's so it may not have the modern day engineering I hear so many good things about but we will see. Initial impression: The kit is extremely detailed. Lots of rivets and sunken panel lines. Everything is crisp too. The plastic is solid and not the soft plastic you find in modern Airfix kits. For 1/48 it's a pretty simple kit as it only has three sprues plus one clear part sprue. There was some minor damage to one sprue which caused the engine cowling to be ripped from its attachment point. Not a huge deal as there doesn't seem to be any major damage to it. Decals look nice even including seat belts. I think I'll make my own from tamiya tape or milliput. Can't wait to build it!

They have a squadron in the Michigan ANG. They fly over my area all the time.

This is actually Kim Campbell's A-10. Academy included her specific plane. Made famous for being shot to hell in Iraq and still making it back. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Campbell_(pilot)

Funny enough it was the easiest decal to apply and sucked down the thinnest so it doesn't have much decal film or silvering visible.

Here's a finished build of the Academy A-10A "Operation Iraqi Freedom" special edition. This can be found dirt cheap in the US at Hobby Lobby. This was a quick build and was completed in about 2 weeks time. No aftermarket used - all out of the box. You can check the work in progress thread here So on to the final images

COMPLETED! This quick build was done in about 2 weeks spending a few hours a day or every other day on it. I'll be posting a link here shortly to the finished builds section. Some final thoughts: Weapons As I stated in the initial impressions post at the top this kit comes with a plethora of weapons - as per usual with most Academy kits. All can fit on the rails and pylons at the same time. The issue is quality - they're garbage. All the bombs have NASTY ejector pin marks on them and they're deep. You could spend weeks - im serious it would take weeks - to fill and sand them all and hope it still retains is rounded shape. Not worth it for this quick build. So if anyone wants to really take their time on this kit - don't waste it on the weapons. Pick up something like the Hasegawa or other brand dedicated weapon kit. Weathering I didn't really go over this or spend time on pictures. You'll see it in the final images. I used some reference images for weathering and added a few oil streaks to the top side of the wings. I added some white and burnt umber shading the panel lines on the fuselage as well as some oil sponging on the bottom of the plane. Nothing crazy but wanted to give it something other than a squeaky clean look. That's pretty much it. It was a decent kit but I think I would recommend the Italeri or Revell (rebox of Italeri) in 1/72 for more serious builds. Again this was a cheapo $10ish kit so feel free to pick it up and experiment.

When it rains...it pours. As things go sometimes, things went from bad to worse fast with this kit. So let's start from the top. 1) It all started with the final satin varnish I applied after weathering. While it worked great throughout the model, the wings had some serious orange peel. Queue hours of sanding polishing, sanding and polishing. It still doesn't look great but you can only really see it in the proper sunlight. Below is a pic of what it looked like after the first round of sanding 2) I finally attached the gear struts. They didn't fit quite right so I had to hand drill out the fitting holes to make them a bit larger. Well I flip it over and of COURSE it's a TAIL SITTER. Son of a $%$#. If you scroll to the top you'll see I added a metric TON of lead weight to cockpit. Way more than I thought was needed. So the fact that it's sitting on it's tail really pisses me off. So now I faced a new challenge. The only real solutions are to open the cockpit and fill it or fill up the gear bay. With the canopy secured and filled with putty it would surely shatter or crack on removal. So I used some deluxe materials liquid gravity and filled the gear bay. It for sure won't be winning any awards now but at least no one is looking directly under the gear bay. This also led to a serious fit issue with the front gear bay door. So now it's on a bit awkwardly. Oh well at this point I guess. (Liquid Gravity) (Gear door fitting) 3) Lastly, is the canopy. While the masking ended up being fantastic - despite no raised detail to guide the masking - It seems paint/varnish or just dust seeped into the inside of the canopy. As I described earlier, there's no way to really remove it without cracking it. I *might* be able to remove the front windscreen to get at the main canopy but that could screw up things even more. We'll see how it turns out in the photobooth but you can see it's not quite fogged but it's more dusty/speckled. %$#%$#^&^% <-- lots of curse words.

Gloss coat has been added. My go to is Alclad Aqua Gloss. Great product - you can go super heavy, hit it with a hair dryer, and it dries smooth as glass. I like to polish it a bit though before adding the wash. Usually like 2500 - 4000 grit and just lightly go over the model. Here is the wash applied. I use a custom oil wash with Dark Sienna mixed with Black. I put it in a old tamiya paint bottle and I'm good to go. The pigments settle quickly though so you need to give it a good stir with your brush after a few applications. Once it's somewhat dry i just take a dry shop towel and wipe in a circular pattern. It will slightly tint the color but most will be picked up on the towel leaving the rest in the panel lines.

Final paint touch ups are complete including the indicator lights (clear blue/clear red). These pieces always add an extra bit a flare to your model so I highly suggest doing them and not skipping it. Decals have also been applied. Academy decals are always a mixed bag and should almost always be tossed for aftermarket. Some of their nicer kits like the F-8J Crusader have VERY nice cartograf decals, but these older bargain bin kits have the korean decals. All of the decals went down smoothly and could be adjusted without issue. Even the shark mouth decals went down very well. The "mixed bag" part was that almost all the decals with clear film had silvering. That's just the nature of bad decals. The ones that were painted throughout, like the shark mouth, showed little to no silvering. You'll see it clearly in the images and on the tail fins. The decals also are not very high resolution. A lot of smaller details are just specs of black ink and you can't really make them out. This is common on bargain bin kits. I've had cartograf decals in 1/72 where you can clearly make out all the words/letters/numbers on even the smallest decals. This kit does not have that. If I were to take my time with this build (remember this was supposed to be a quick build) I would've gone with aftermarket decals. About decals... First, I do not gloss anymore before decaling. The old old school thought that it needs a smooth surface is just plain wrong. Decals will silver if they're bad decals and with the appropriate decal solutions good decals should never silver. There's a good image circulating of someone putting down a decal on SANDPAPER and it laying down smooth with no silvering. As long as you test your decal solutions on a paint mule first, to ensure it won't react with the paint, you'll be fine. The paint I use, Mission Models, dried hard and smooth and won't react to decal solutions. Second, I don't like to gloss first because you have the potential of losing details. The less clear coats you put on before weathering the more you'll get small details and panel lines to pop. With that said, I'm hoping a nice gloss coat AFTER the decal application will tone down the silvering - but I doubt it. We will see. So I suggest you all throw your future and gloss coats aside and try applying directly to the paint! Anyway, here's what we're working with now.

I wasn't satisfied with the camo. As in the previous post the colors blended together too much. So I decided to add some white to the light ghost grey. Because it was another cost of paint I lost most of the marbling on the wings and upper fuselage. We can fix that with some oils to fade it in the weathering stage. Check out the difference below! I think it's much better.

I ended up trying another marble coat layer. I thought a neutral gray would look good but it ended up being too light compared to the Light/Dark Ghost gray that will be the blend coat. It caused some bright spots on the final blend coat that I don't like. Next time I'll use a darker color or just leave it with the German Field Grey. Good practice though to see what works and what doesn't. Here is that second marble coat: So the blend coats went on nicely. I used Mission Models Light and Dark Ghost Grey. I like MM paints for the blend coat because even when flooding the model with paint it's still pretty translucent. So you can build up the blend coat in layers without loosing the marble coat underneath. If I were to use Vallejo Air I would need to really thin it down and it would get spidery/splotchy. Overall I think it looks good. The shades of the two colors are so damn close it's hard to see the demarcation for the camo on the wings and engines. In reference photos I've seen the camo either super prominent or barely noticeable. See here you can barely tell - but it's there: f ....and here it's super prominent: It's the same way that these hogs are either really dirty or really clean weathering wise. Here's the final product: Again, you can barely tell. It's also hard to see in photos as opposed to looking at it directly. I did a quick n dirty masking job which could be part of the problem. So what do you all think? Should I remask and make the camo more prominent or leave it as is?

Primed up and mottle coat applied - as you'll see below. The primer coat showed off a few blemishes and a few mis-scribed panel lines but nothing worth the time fixing. They're very minor and would only show on really close photos or detailed inspection. Not worth it for a $15 or so kit. For painting I obviously went with a black primer coat. I then went over the whole craft with a marble coat of German Field Grey by Vallejo. When using marble coats you always want to go Dark >>> Light. So it's not a good idea to use a white or light gray for a marble coat when the final blend coat is also a light gray. The Field Gray is excellent as it it a darker shade but also has a greenish hue to it. I tested it out on a paint mule and it looks great! Also, color of the mottle coat does not matter - at all. It gets lost when you do your blend coat. So don't waste your time highlighting panels with various shades of browns and yellow, etc. It won't matter. Do those AFTER the blend coat goes down. I might add a second marble coat of another gray color but I'm not sure yet. It's more about adding pattern variety rather than coverage. Using a lighter shade will brighten up areas when the blend coat goes on.

Things are picking up fast now as we move towards painting. Canopy has been fully masked. Unfortunately, at this scale, Academy only included the outline of the canopy. There is no raised edge. This makes masking extremely difficult. If this were a better, more expensive kit, I would just opt for pre cut masks. Instead, I cut thin strips of tape and just had to guess that they were aligned right since the outline is also on the inside of the canopy. This means you get a bit of distortion when looking through the clear plastic. I can already tell it might look funky once painted and the masks are removed. Using craft (white) glue I attached the canopy to the frame. It fits well but the canopy and front windscreen dont sit 100% flush against each other so there is a small gap. Should any fogging or weirdness occur after painting it wouldn't be the end of the world to remove the canopy, clean it up, and reattach, since I did only use craft glue. I didn't add any putty or anything that would seal the canopy. At this point I also masked off the engine exhaust and intakes. So now we're ready for primer!

Some work on the engine. It's an OK fit but will need some seam line clean up. Overall the plastic is either warped or has flash or both. You'll see more below. Remember, this is a 1980's kit. The molds are old and engineering is old and it shows. I suspect you'll find a better engineered kit with Italeri's 1990s 1/72 offering. After some cleanup and rescribing: The nozzles have a weird shape. I'm not sure if it's a mold issue or flash. I tried sanding in there and using a scalpel but its too much of a headache. I'm going to leave it as is. Also is an issue with the thinning plastic around the nozzel leaving a small gap or seam line. Tried a little bit of cleanup but it may be more trouble than it's worth.

Still having a lot of issues sanding some seams and gaps on the rear underside of the hog. These antennas molded with the kit keep getting in the way. So we'll hack em off and then reattach. ....and after Much better and definitely worth it to get some extra breathing room when sanding. Just be sure to cut them flush with your nipper tool then use CA or TET to reattach them.

Yes, the center tank is at an angle. Thought it was a defect at first too but reference photos confirmed it.

So some more sanding and filling. I've also attached the wings, nose cone, and tail planes. The rudder planes actually fit ok so i might leave them off until the build is finished to make it easier to paint. There's a small raised ridge her from the wing root. I'm going to leave it since sanding would be too difficult. I filled the gap with putty and feathered it out smooth. I'm not sure that the fit is flush here on the real thing anyway. The nose doesn't fit properly so it's going to need some light sanding as to avoid losing it's shape. I want to avoid filling it too as I want there to be a panel line where it attaches. Here's the underside puttied and sanded smooth. Hopefully those seamlines won't show when the primer goes on.

First, images are fixed. I went back to Imgur. So you should be able to see the decals now. One option is an Iraq war specific bird (with named pilot) while the other is a generic 81st FS based USAF bird. Secondly, this is a great suggestion and I'm kicking myself because I have an assortment set of evergreen and just forgot about it. Would've been much better to use shims here. The good news is that the wings and engines have poor fit as well (when attaching to the fuselage) so it I will be a good use of the styrene sheet for those pieces.

This. I used imgur in my A-6 thread but those die if no one loads the images for a year. I'm trying to find a free one that keeps the images indefinitely. I'll fix the links when I get the chance.

Part II - Cheap kits are cheap for a reason...fitting issues edition So, as expected this kit has numerous fit issue around the fuselage. The gear bay - that attaches the cockpit - had significant fit issues. Also some areas alone the fuselage didn't fit well either. It's going to need a lot of putty and sanding but it isn't the worst i've ever seen. Here are some images after putty has been applied. After sanding and more putty we'll rescribe some panel lines and then work on the wings and engines. When those attach we'll have to repeat the putty and sanding all over again.

Part I - Cheap kits are cheap for a reason...molding details edition Here's the cockpit prior to assembly: Basic seat detail and no cockpit detail whatsoever. Unfortunately, what detail IS there for the seat will be hidden due to the side consoles. I also flung the control stick to no mans land so I had to make one from stretched sprue. You'll never tell the difference. So here's the bad boy all painted up. Just basic dark gull gray with some olive green drab for the cushion and a little white paint and green oils to give it a little texture and variance. You'll never see it though with the canopy closed. No need to waste time. If you really want to show this model off and have unlimited money just get a photo etch or resin cockpit for this kit. It is a must at that point. But I still think PE is only viable at 1/48 where you might actually see it. So for this kit I just added the decals and called it a day. I added weight (lead balls) to the cockpit per instructions and dropped the cockpit and instrument panel and glued the fuselage together. That will be in my next post.

After a long build of the Italeri KA-6 I'm switching gears to simpler quick build. That would be the Academy A-10A which can be found for dirt cheap at Hobby Lobby in the US. Exterior detail and panel lines are very nice for this kit. However interior details are nonexistent. The instrument panel is bare piece of plastic and requires a decal. There's also no side panel details. The seat is also very basic. We can spruce it up a bit, but for a quick build it might not be worth it. The canopy also comes closed only. So not a lot of options but again - quick build for cheap. What is impressive - as with all recent(ish) Academy kits - is the armament. This bad boy comes with 4x AGM-65 mavericks, 2x GBU-24 LGBs, 12x Mk. 82 bombs (500 lbs), 2 Mk. 84 bombs (2k lbs)! Of course they can all be mounted at the same time too. I can't speak to whether that would be a realistic load out or not (probably not) but it makes for a hell of a display! On the downside, The cannon is VERY lackluster. This is essentially what MAKES and A-10. BRRRRRRRRRRRRT. There's aftermarket brass for this for about $10-20 USD. But this is a 1/72 scale. I could justify it at 1/48 but the scale is so small that we might have to make do. You can see the cannon pieces in Sprue "D" towards the middle left of the sprue (4th picture from the top). So let's dive right in to the box contents. Box Art Decals - This is specially designed for an Iraqi Freedom build. And now a shot of the sprues:

I'm really digging that baby blue color scheme. You did a great job on it!

and drumroll........................................................................................................ We're Done! Come see the RFI thread HERE Some final thoughts... Didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. First, I airbrushed a bit too uniformly which led to me over weathering in post. I needed to show a little bit more mottle but I ended up blending it too much. I also am not happy with the canopy painting or the fit. I did some touch ups best I could but fit is fit. It's an older kit so you can only expect so much. Another way to save a headache in the future would be to attach the wings rather than pose them closed. Overall though I liked the kit. It was a decent build with more modern tooling. It has some fit issues but if you power through them you can build out a nice bird. Also don't do what I did and fall into the over weathering trap. I should've weathered more during the paint session and then just hit it with a wash and call it a day. But I'm still working on technique and it didn't turn out too bad. My grade for myself on this kit would be a B- It's not going to win any awards but it will look nice on the shelf. Feel free to check out some more of my work on Scalemates HERE.