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A-10A JAWS


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The A-10 is easily my favorite plane, I as a kid I often saw aircraft from the first squadron flying around Myrtle Beach, SC and later when out working near Ft Bragg I often witnessed A-10s doing gun runs with their 30mm GAU-8 gatling gun and it's bizarre, ear tickling sound (Pope AFB at Ft Bragg had the Flying Tigers based there for a spell).

 

I used the 1977 Tamiya kit for this aircraft as it was based on the early preproduction aircraft and thus lacked many features such as chaff/flare launchers and other bumps that featured on production aircraft. It's a pretty good kit considering it came out in so long ago, I added a lot of rivets and quite a few items from the Monogram kit to get the skin right and a lot of things listed below from the stash.

 

Lots of aftermarket was used, Quinta Studio combined with Black Box cockpit parts, Aires wheel sponsons, an ESCAPAC seat (used on the early aircraft-ACES later), Monogram vertical, horizontal tails and landing gear struts, Printscale decals, Model Master paints, Master brass gun muzzle (awesome) and pitot, Eduard etch and somebody's weighted wheels.

 

The Joint Attack Weapons System (JAWS) was an exercise in 1977 at Nellis that tested tactics with US Army attack and scout helicopters. The idea was to integrate the firepower and overall effect of artillery, battlefield helicopters and A-10s. The A-10s flew low and used the terrain as cover. Finding the original gray schemes were far too visible to ground defenders and aircraft, several mottled camouflage schemes were tested and altered during the various exercises (which also took place in Germany).

 

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Lots of added rivets

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The gun

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Bigger than it's counterpart

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Some of the JAWS schemes

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Outstanding indeed! In various ways!!

:thumbsup:

100 points awarded for ingenious kit mix and match and advanced application if aftermarket parts :)

 

 

 All un all: :partytime:

 

ps: the Su-25  next to it us really dwarfed.... wow!

 

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So nice to see an A-10 with a realistic load on it for starters, but you have nailed the scheme brilliantly too.

The Tamiya kit gets some grief, but I found it a really nice build too, if requiring some extras as with yours and the result speaks for itself here.

Really, really well done. Inspiring me to grab another one 🙂

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21 hours ago, Steve Coombs said:

I had the old Revell kit over 40 years ago, and it was a fool's errand to build the JAWS scheme without benefit of an airbrush. You live and learn.

I did the same, not ever knowing how the box top builder did it so smoothly.  Still, that box top had a lot to do with inspiring this build.

 

In fact, as soon as the realistic JAWS load out photos were taken I put on those black and white pods that feature in the Revell photo. The Tamiya kit had them too, I only learned during this build that they are AN/ALE-37A chaff/flare dispensing pods, I had assumed they were some ECM pods (even the Tamiya instructions refer to it as ALE-37 ECM).

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16 hours ago, Billy400 said:

Such a cleverly designed aircraft.

I've got a lot of old A-10 books I've been reading during the build and it's design is pretty sophisticated considering how the fighter mafia and the AF were always considering such an unsophisticated aircraft. The engineering of the aircraft's survival features is just plain impressive, all designed to bring a pilot back and repair the aircraft on site (which was fully proven in Iraq).  The Air Force was so enamored with its new F-16 wonder jets they constantly pushed to have it replace the A-10 in the CAS role (remember the lizard green F-16s) and the  A-10 had to have a fly off with it and with the A-7 earlier on, both times winning due to it's high loiter time, large load outs, low maneuverability and survivability.

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Dang, that camo looks so tasty I almost wanna take a bite from it.. 😜 I always wondered why the JAWS pattern wasn't fully implemented; besides of its camouflaging  properties it looked cool as well!
Great redition of the pattern btw 🙂👍

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3 hours ago, Luka said:

I always wondered why the JAWS pattern wasn't fully implemented

From what I've read it was considered difficult to maintain, too big of a dash ten for that scheme I guess. The exercises also found the mottling blended in to a single color from a distance.

 

5 hours ago, Marcello Rosa said:

Did you have a diagram showing where all the spots went, or did you work from various photos?

I worked from a bunch of photos and did try to put spots and lozenges accurately when I could, I had a bunch of printed photos for each area of paint and took it color by color starting with the brown (FS30118). I never found any accurate diagrams; these aircraft received a lot of over and respraying and its hard to find a consistent pattern on the same aircraft - which was a bit frustrating at first but later I thought great as it gave a little more latitude to the freehand painting. 

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  • 1 month later...

That is amazing work. Very impressed!

 

A Tamiya A-10 is next up on my build list, and I was interested by what you said below.

 

On 3/25/2022 at 6:46 PM, paulsbrown said:

and quite a few items from the Monogram kit to get the skin right

 

I have read before that the Monogram kit is still believed to have the most accurate shape of all A-10 kits in this scale to date. But what about the skin made you use the Monogram tail parts in place of Tamiya's but still retain the rest of Tamiya's kit?

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3 hours ago, JJMcCoy said:

Excellent job, can I ask you what tan paint did you use on this beast.

FS 30118, I used Model Master acrylic. The Spots were Model Master and AK Real enamels, for me easier to spray and also make small clean ups without ruining the tan base.

2 hours ago, Filler said:

I have read before that the Monogram kit is still believed to have the most accurate shape of all A-10 kits in this scale to date. But what about the skin made you use the Monogram tail parts in place of Tamiya's but still retain the rest of Tamiya's kit?

I love the old Monogram but the Tamiya seemed the better choice for this period; it's pretty accurate and the main issue I believe were the wheel sponson shape which I knew I'd replace. It has other benefits like no chaff/flare dispensers and some fuselage details accurate to the preproduction aircraft.

 

The answer to the skin issue is raised rivets! The Tamiya has none on the rear fuselage and tails and I had already riveted the fuselage with them so using the Monogram saved a lot of time. Fitting wasn't too difficult.

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