1/72 Hasegawa Douglas AD-6 Skyraider

by Phil Hastie

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This model was built straight out of the box. The reason for this was that I wanted to see what problems there were with the kit before I built the other two in my collection and I got this one cheap.

The Hasegawa Skyraider has been around for a while and is typical of the company's later releases with very good detail, except for the cockpit, and nice crisp panel lines.  This version is for one of the late Korean War aircraft and the colour scheme is something different from the normal VA-165 Bumblebee scheme you see on most US Navy Skyraiders.

There are four sprues of light grey plastic and one of clear parts. There is also a small  sprue of plastic grommets for attaching the propeller.  In this case I did not use the two underwing tanks or the four munitions dispensers, as I want to build it as per the box top with just the centre line tank added. The only thing missing from these 1/72nd scale kits is the option for the different USAF wheel hubs.

Click on images below to see larger images

The kit went together very well except for a minor problem where the trailing edge of the wing meets the underside of the fuselage and I had to apply a small amount of filler and rescribe the panel lines after joining them. Next time I will insert a small plastic tab into the fuselage to act as a stop so that the wing trailing edge has something to rest on and doesn't want to push through into the fuselage.

Whilst I was fitting all the underwing pylons I discovered I had lost the pitot probe, lucky I have two other kits in the store so that I was able to use one of them in it's place.
With this version you have to remove some of the aerials that are positioned along the centre line of the fuselage.  Look at your references before doing so, as Hasegawa are sometimes very wrong about their aerial placements.

I originally painted this with Testor's MM FS 35042 Non-Specular Sea Blue and whilst this is the right colour it went on with a really matt surface that kept soaking up the gloss coats and not even Future could shine it up.

I then gave up and resprayed it with the Gunze H55 Midnight Blue as per the instruction sheet and this actually went on with a fairly decent gloss that came up quite nicely under a coat of Future.

The decals are quite thin and not like normal Hasegawa decals and I paid for the difference when I applied them and used Micro - Sol to settle them down they went all soft and partially tore.  I was used to using heaps of Micro - Sol on Hasegawa's thick decals but these were very thin.  This has led to some touch up work on the decals to fill in some small holes.  I was impressed with the decals and it was my hamfistedness that caused the problems, these are some of Hasegawa's best and I look forward to the next two Skyraiders.

This is a nice kit that I would recommend to anyone regardless of your experience as it just about falls together and there are some great colour schemes available for the "Able Dog".

My kits cost US$10.00 for this one and US$19.00 each for the other two.
Phil

Photos and text © by Phil Hastie