1/32 Hasegawa A-4 E Skyhawk

by Luc Janssen

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Building

As this is an older kit, I should have sanded the entire surfaces and scribe the panel lines, but I simply was too lazy to do this job, so I left the existing panel lines just as they were!
The overall fit of the kit is fairly correct, with just a bit of changes to get the Top Gun A-4E instead of the Vietnam A-4E.  The wing roots had to be changed, all antennas had to be sanded away and the flare dispenser covered.
The interior of the cockpit was super detailed, I used the Escapac IC Ejection seat from Cutting Edge, the wheel wells were also super detailed, both front as main landing gear, my good friend Luc Van den Ende made me the oleos for the landing gear and they give just the look of the real thing. The landing lights and the navigation lights were reworked, et voilà, that was all!
To add a bit of colour to the diorama, I scratch built ladders, fire extinguishers, wheels blocks, an ACMI pod with the specially adapted pylon and the pilots helmet!

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Painting

Painting was based on the TwoBobs “A-4E Top Gun Tinker Toys” set and checked with the different photographs in the superb publications “Navy Attack – Spads, Scooters & Whales and Superbase 8 Fallon”.
These Top Gun aircraft were well maintained and flew generally in perfect flying conditions, so the weathering had to be limited, even to the landing gear and the wheels.

First I gave an overall coat of the light Sand colour whereafter I sprayed the darker colour in the typical wavy pattern.  Then the bottom Light Gray was applied.
For the application of the decals, I gave the entire model a coat of gloss varnish. Once the decals were applied, I sprayed an overall coat of almost matt varnish, just like the aircraft on the mentioned photographs.
I used Testors – Model Master paints and the varnish was from Microscale.

Weathering

I weathered the aircraft with a very, very diluted wash, which was repeated several times on the places where the real thing shows weathering (hatches on fuselage, panels on the wings, etc) and I gave the wing walks and the spine of the aircraft the dirty traces from the maintenance crew. Finally I used different tones of pastel powder to simulate the airflow dirt traces.

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References 

  • Squadron/Signal Publications A-4 Skyhawk in Action
  • Aeroguide  McDonnell Douglas Skyhawk
  • Famous Airplanes of the World – Douglas A-4A/F Skyhawk
  • Superbase 8 – Fallon
  • Navy Attack – Spads, Scooters & Whales
  • Twobobs Aviation Graphics A-4E Top Gun Tinker Toys

Luc

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Photos and text © by Luc Janssen