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Monogram 1/48 A-37 Dragonfly


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I would like to enter my little subject to this fine GB. Today I have Monograms A-37 Dragonfly

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I don't plan on making any modifications other than whats in the box, but that could and probably will change once I get into the meat of things.

One thing I definitely will do is I'm building this as a South Vietnamese A-37B from the 520th FS, Binh Thuy Air Base, Vietnam.

So let the fun begin! And as always any comments suggestions or cat calls are always welcome.:hobbyhorse:

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What a fantastic choice, the Dragonfly is a great aircraft and the Monogram kit is really good. I built one last year and thoroughly enjoyed it, raised panel lines and all! The only additions I made were resin seats with molded on belts ( very cheap and made a difference) and I used  some thin mesh to replace that provided on the kits FOD guards.

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Cool subject choice and as always it's great to see a less common operator represented :speak_cool: and, as the gang says, Monogram made some nice kits. All good.

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Well first off, Worked on some extra detail to the bang seats. I made ejection handles from thin strip bent over. Then cut a toothpick and used some thinner strip to add detail to the Seat guide.

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The belts I used some thin strip and augmented them with the last of my harness hardware. I'm going to have to start learning the fine art of making my own P/E to make more.

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I painted the black strips to the ejection handles and used some very thin silver jewelry wire for the seat cabling.

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the cockpit got a coat of light gray then a dark wash of thinned down acrylic art paint.

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Then I picked out detail with a toothpick dipped in paint.

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Did the same for the instrument panel. This didn't come out as well as a good portion of the raised lines didn't survive the moulding process.

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Added some colour to a few bits on the cockpit walls.

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Since this is a tricycle landing gear setup I took some kids modeling clay and added some bb's to give the nose some weight,

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There's not much room on either side of the nose gear well but enough for my purposes.

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And one of these days I'll perfect taking a close up without it going all blurry.

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I temp added the bang seats to see how the fit had progressed. I'll leave these out until I get the extrior painting done to make it easier on the masking.

There is a lot of raised detail That I would prefer not to obliterate. So After adding the wings, tail, and intakes I masked off only those areas that need the glazing compound.

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This will dry overnight then carefully begin sanding.

So there you have it for this edition of my A-37 build. Over all its coming together better than I expected. So thanks for stopping by and all comments, suggestions or general banter is always welcome. Until next time, stay  safe, say healthy, and model on!:pilot:

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Very nice work.

Your improvements to the seats are fantastic, far better than I could do which is why I cheated and bought resin replacements.

The cockpit has turned out really well, Monogram cockpits are a great base for detail painting..

And as quick as a flash you have a virtually complete airframe!

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Nice progress. Those fine details on the seat are particularly impressive but it's s shame the instrument panel doesn't have its details well molded.

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these are another one of my fav aircraft that I've never gotten around to building.

 

The revised panels lines was always the thing that made me hesitate. Trumpeter Have released one in 1/48th...unfortunately the word Trumpeter terrifies me as much as raised panel lines! :D

 

Will watch with great interest, good luck with the build.

 

There is a rumour that JetMADS will eventually be releasing their 1/18th full resin version, will have shelf ready for it! 

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After letting the filler dry overnight I began the messy part of sanding the  seams down and making everything nice and smooth.

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Then a light coat of aluminum over everything. This will allow me to chip some of the paint of later during the weathering phase.

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The aluminum brought out the places where more work was needed on the seams.

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Now time to shoot some colour. First pre-shading with some black on the panel lines

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Then the SEAC camo scheme starting with the gray underneath.

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Then the tri-colour tan, olive drab, dark green. I toned down the Camo with a light misting of white to give a faded effect.

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While I had the white out I painted the tail and the tip tanks after thy dried I painted them insignia blue. They'll need some touch up but nothing serious.

Next step will be to do some weathering and staining after a coat of clear gloss lacquer Followed by the landing gear then the ordinance.  We'll see how far I can get into that tomorrow. So until then stay safe, and stay healthy.

 

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6 hours ago, coneheadff said:

The camo looks great!

 

Which paints did you use?

Thanks I used the Ammo Mig SEAC set MIG-0206,-0226,-004,-0202.. I'm impressed with how well they worked. I may have found a new paint company now that Testors is no more.

 

5 hours ago, Col. said:

Great paintwork Loren :thumbsup:

Thanks Col.

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Well after a disastrous weathering session that required me stripping off all the paint and redoing I've come a step closer to completion. At our last update, after everything dried from several coats of glass lacquer I gave, I used some Testors weathering wash I've had for a while but hadn't tried. I thought . "Well this shouldn't be too bad, in fact should be better than my usual weathering techniques." WRONG! Not only did said acrylic wash become a pain to wipe off, it took everything including the lacquer off! That stuff has since been binned and I'll use my tried and true method. even with an alcohol base it won't damage lacquer. but enough crying da blues. Took another day to clean up and repaint and cure.  A little bit of Dr. Loren's magical mystical never fail or money uncheerfully not refunded patented weathering wash, Presto Diggo Chango! (channeling my inner Hogwart's here)A proper looking in service aircraft.

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While letting that all dry time to work on a few fiddly bits. I stole borrowed Modelling Minions redo of the FOD screens. Carefully using the dremel I drilled out the cent of the FOD frames then cut some fine brass screen to fillin.

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Then gave them a coat of paint.

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How I managed to not mess these frames up is beyond me, but I'll take it.

 

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