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The Context
When my friend, Charlie Metz, took me to Al's Hobby Shop in Elmhurst,
Illinois a couple of years ago, little did I realize that the impulse purchase
of Revell-Monogram's A-10 kit would in short order blossom into a full-blown
case of Acute Modeler's Syndrome (AMS). Two short (?!) years later, I have
finally completed that A-10 -- my first model since about the 7th grade.
The Construction
I decided early on that this model would be my testbed to learn basic
modeling skills. Therefore, I decided to do the following modifications:
1. drop the flaps
2. close the split spoilerons
3. rescribe the raised panel lines
4. replace the kit cockpit with the Black Box cockpit
5. scratchbuild a better HUD
6. replace the pitot tube with nested hypodermic needles
7. use the "SnowHog" camo scheme
8. create the practice bombs from Hasegawa Mk.82 bombs.
9. drill out the holes in the cooling shroud surrounding the gun barrels
and add gun barrels
Work began with the cockpit where I quickly learned that resin is in fact
brittle. I can't remember how many times the ejection seat pitot tubes
were broken off and superglued back. The painting of the cockpit was done
completely with a brush as I did not yet own an airbrush at this point.
Rescribing the panel lines worked out quite well using Dymo tape as an
edge guide and a ground-down dental pick as a scriber. Unfortunately, in
the process of sanding I lost most of the beautiful raised rivet detail on the
rear half of the aircraft. In the future I will always take the time
to cover the rivets with masking tape for protection. At least I was able
to save the rivets on the vertical stabilizers.
This kit is well-known for some of
its fit problems. Good learning opportunities here. Especially in
the regions of the engine intakes and the underside of the the wing to fuselage
joint. Lots of Tamiya putty and Zap-a-Gap were sacrificed to the sanding
gods at this point.
The Paint and Markings
| The paint scheme
which caught my eye both in "Walk Around A-10 Warthog" and in
"The Grat Book of Modern Warplanes" was what looked like a
black and white scheme. |
After I asked
about this online, Dana Bell responded saying that this was in
fact one of two aircraft flown during winter exercises from Eilson
AFB, Alaska, in 1982.
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Click
on image below to see larger image |
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| These aircraft
were painted in the conventional Euro I scheme with the lighter
green overpainted with a temporary white latex as an
experimental arctic scheme. Mr. Bell had been working at
the USAF Central Still Photo Depository when the photos of
"cool snow hog" came in and had drawn up 4-view
drawings of the scheme, which he kindly emailed to me and which
I have included here. In addition, he mentioned that some
of the photos had depicted a weapons load consisting of a small
number of 500 lb. practice bombs. |
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I used the standard stencils from
the "Peanut and Flipper"
sheet from Two Bob Aviation Graphics
and
made the specific aircraft identification markings using a drawing program and
my laser printer with Experts-Choice Decal film, made by Bare-Metal Foil Co.
Incidentally, the trick to getting the toner to adhere was to buff the decal
film slightly with a extra-fine sanding stick to give it some "tooth"
for the toner to grab. I've included a pdf
file of these markings for those interested in using this paint scheme.
As this was my first attempt at using an airbrush, a couple of iterations of
painting attempts were necessary with Strip-A-Kit enabling me to start over
after my first try gave me a sandpaper-like, pebbly finish. Finally,
through trial and error (lots of the latter), I discovered that a slight
modification of the "raised mask" method described by Paul Boyer in
FineScale Modeler worked well. Instead of using cardstock raised a quarter
inch, I found that raising the edge of Tamiya masking tape with sewing thread
placed 1/8 - 1/4 of an inch in from the edge allowed me to get the tightly
feathered edge I was looking for while enabling me to follow the tight contours
of the underwing pylons better than cardstock allowed.
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see larger images |
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Weathering was done using
tempura paint diluted 1:1 with liquid dish soap as a panel-line wash in the
non-white regions. Finely ground chalk pastels were used to tone down the
harsh white and for general weathering overall. The canopy was dipped in
future and masked with Bare-Metal foil before painting.
The End Result
Overall, this was a great project on which to learn basic modeling skills.
While the results would not win any awards at contests, the combination of the
unique camo with the nice blue of the practice bombs makes for a very attractive
model, in my opinion. The question now is which of the models accumulating
in my stash will I work on next? ;-)
The
Postscript (Postmortem?)
As Murphy's Law dictates, just as I finished the model and was picking it
up, it slipped out of my hands and hit the desk nose-first. Ouch. The gun
absorbed most of the shock and effectively shattered. :-( I was able
to salvage it with superglue, although you can still see some residual
distortion in the photos. Luckily, nothing else, including the landing
gear seem to have suffered from the crash.
Scott
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