Douglas A-4 Skyhawk kits wrap-up

IPMS The Netherlands
Douglas A-4 Skyhawk (6)

Italeri kits: A-4E/F, A-4M

A-4E/F ‘Hotrod’

The Italeri kit has a number of common sprues with parts for several variants. The A-4E/F has an antenna on top of the fin (to be removed) and has no separate slats.
The forward section with the cockpit has the correct "smaller" canopy found on the earlier Skyhawks.

Otherwise the kits are quite nice and they come relatively cheap. The wheelbays are not bad and although is has raised panellines, they are fine. The stabilizer root chord is 1 mm too large, sand off and correct. The main wheels are slightly too large in diameter and you can also add the steering rod on the nose wheel undercarriage leg.

Very nice decals are provided, check out the book "U.S. Navy Airwings", Flamboyant markings, pg 63 of the author Rene Francillon.

I separated the slats on this kit.

A nice decal set is Microscale nr 72-430 with markings for a VMAT-102 Skyhawk with a red hawk.

Italeri A-4M

A-4M box sideflip
This kit shares some parts as of the Italeri A-4E with amongst others common aft fuselage and wings. The forward section with the cockpit is different with the correct "larger" canopy found on the A-4M Skyhawks.

paint instructions
decals provided in kit

the valuable spares box

The small cockpit was detailed and the seat can not do without the harness made from tape.

The last built Skyhawk can also be made as this was an A-4M. A nice model is seen below which was made out of the Italeri A-4M kit. Not the kit decals, but the Microscale nr 72-227 set was used and besides the standard marines scheme, markings are by Microscale provided for an Israeli demo plane, called the Skyhawk II. The decals with the flags are slightly too large as are the decals with " NAVY/MARINES" on the upper fairing. By some clever manipulation, they can be used however.

More information on Nr 2960 can be found here

To page (7) with a photo gallery...

Back to Skyhawk mainpage