1/48 Hasegawa A-4E Skyhawk

by Charles "BlackCat" Sickels

--------------------

 

Greetings! Here is my Skyhawk finished in the colors of VMAT-102, a replacement training squadron circa Vietnam. She is the excellent Hasegawa A-4E kit, though it was re-boxed as a Promodeler kit in the Blue Angels boxing. I finished the kit in the gear up mode and fabricated a stand out of a cheap wooden plaque and clear acrylic rod.

Click on images below to see larger images

The kit went together without too much trouble. Those who have built this kit know that it has a lot of detail, but also a lot of "fiddly bits." I ended up not using most of the detail areas since I wanted to build it gear up. I used a spare pilot figure out of the Monogram F-105D, with his legs cut off and his rear end shaved down a bit. I did manage to position his hand on the control stick (something I feel compelled to achieve on all my models).

Usually I will build something into the tail pipe of the model that the acrylic rod will fit into to support it, but I found that the tail pipe of the kit was about 5/16", so the rod would fit in without modification. The acrylic rod was heated in an oven at 350 degrees F and bent by hand into the desired curved shape (barely visible in the pictures).

I used Zuni rocket pods, Mk82's and MER's from the Hasegawa weapon set for the armament. The bombs were painted intermediate blue to represent dummy training rounds. The drop tank is from the kit. 

The rest of the construction went as usual. It was painted with Tamiya flat white on the underside, Model Master Acryl gull gray on top. Gloss coat used was Future through an airbrush, unthinned. Decals were superscale, and went on without incident. Even the big red bird on the side was not too hard to apply. For shading and weathering, I used a sludge wash of black enamel/thinner and pastel dust. It may be a bit overdone, but I think it looks okay overall. Final flat coat was Pollyscale clear flat.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to the support on the ARC forums!

Charles

Click on images below to see larger images

Photos and text © by Charles Sickels