Dominican A-37

[SoftScience]

In the 1990s, the Dominican Republic purchased a handful of surplus A-37s from the USAF. 

 

They extended the old SEA camo around the belly of these planes, and then added shark mouths because, why not?

 

Shortly afterwards, Academy released a pretty nice kit of the A-37, but it was plagued by Academy's craptastic decals.

 

Around 2012, Encore Models rereleased the Academy kit in a 2-pack, with a resin cockpit, resin weapons, and much nicer decals.

 

In May of 2019, I bought said kit.

 

And that brings us here.....

 

 

 

i haven't started building yet, but check out these details, yo! This is 1/72

 

 

[neil5208]

Nice resin

[Silenoz]

And aircraft too... Maybe for the upcoming Vietnam (1/48 then) build, but then I'll have to let go the refuel probe...

 

Enjoy this one

[SoftScience]

The first steps taken 

 

Fitting the resin cockpit tub is a little tricky, so here is some advice

 

1. Glue the forward 1/4th of the fuselage halves. Essentially the parts in front of the cockpit, and those parts only.

 

Let thr back parts dangle losely in the air

 

2. Once these are dry, stuff a bit of weight into the nose, 

 

3. Insert the resin tub through the cockpit opening by spreading the unglued rear parts of the fuselage.

Just let it sit loosely inside and then glue the rear parts of the fuselage together.

 

4. Add some CA to the sills that are inside the fuselage, beneath the tub. 

Center the tub on these. The resin part is narrower than the opening, so it's sides will not touch the fuselage side walls.

 

5. Position the tub so that the notches in the resin walls line up with the small square protrusions on the insides of the fuselage walls, just beneath the cockpit opening.

 

These protrusions won't reach the notches in the resin part, because once again, it is narrower than the fuselage.

 

This is the correct orientation and position for the tub.

 

Once your CA is dry, you can glue in some sheet styrene shims between the resin walls and fuselage walls. This will make your canopy sills seem wider, but I think this is better than an unsightly gap on either side of the cockpit walls which makes the flak curtains look like they're floating in mid air.

 

The photo below shows the cockpit with the shims. The instrument panel has been glued to the coaming and those are just dry-fitted to check positioning. It all looks like it lines up.

 

[Basilisk]

Nice choice and the resin cockpit does enhance the model a great deal.

Cheers, Peter

[Col.]

Nice start. Spotted this one lurking in the background of your other thread  

[jean]

The resin cockpit does look good! The final result should be fantastic.

Have fun!

JR

[exdraken]

Hi,

Nice choice and promising start!