A wrap-up of several
Douglas A-4 kits on 1/72 scale.

By Pat Beentjes       (Nederlandse tekst hier...)
 

Pat discovered a pile of Skyhawk kits under the loft and another pile of reference books encouraged to compare all those kits and to actually start building them....  This a personal account of what followed.... [ Nederlandse lezers: kijk hier ] I only made models in 1/72 scale, so in the end, this is a wrap-up of a lot of (different) 1/72 kits:  [click on the link to go to the desired page] 1: Airfix A4D-1  and  prototype 2: Matchbox A-4M 3: Frog/Hasegawa A-4E , TA-4 , OA-4M  (including two seaters) 4: ESCI A-4E , A-4F 5: Fujimi A-4C , A-4E/F, TA-4, OA-4M (including two seaters) 6: Italeri A-4E , A-4M  Obviously, I also made use of some different accessory sets and will look also at...     - references     - internet    - drawings     - paint schemes     - accessories and techniques     - decals  7:  photo gallery Douglas Skyhawk Designation: XA-4D-1 meaning the ' first experimental version of the fourth Douglas attack plane'. Later on the type designation was changed into the A-4A for this first Skyhawk type as both USNavy and USAF used a common designation system.  The Douglas types were for example...  A-1 Douglas Skyraider  A-2 Douglas Skyshark  A-3 Douglas Skywarrior  A-4 Douglas Skyhawk  As there are many good books and internet sources about the real plane available, I will not go into the historical aspects. So may I suggest to check out the below listed references...     References Members of  IPMS The Netherlands can check out the magazine "MIP jaargang 3" number 3/ August 1974 and "MIP jaargang 4" nr 3/ September 1975, with my struggling and final results with a Frog kit made to represent an Israeli A-4.  A very good book is Wings of Fame volume 4 (all USA versions are covered) and  volume 5 that covers all A-4 export variants. An interesting artist impression is an A-4 with Dutch markings as it was proposed to the ministry of Defence!.  The older Japanese Bunrin-Do Famous Airplane FAOW series also have lots of pictures and detail drawings.  Also the Warpaint series of Aviation Magazine has nice drawings in volume 13 nr 17, 11-24 January 1985. Very nice pictures can also be found in the Airpower volume 21 no 4 of  July 1991 and the magazine issues nos. 58, 59 en 60 of the French Air Fan.    Squadron signal from the USA obviously has also several nice books with details and drawings of  Skyhawks. Another nice one is from the Detail & scale series.  Squadron signal  Digging under the loft also got me some very oldies! I found a very old black and white profile, a 'Flying Review'  and an 'Air progress' dating from the nineteen fifties and early sixties. As these can not be found anymore, check out the provided linked pictures below... ...  profile   Dutch mip (IPMS The Netherlands)  FAOW Internet  [external links]  On the net, a very good site is to be found at the the 'A-4 Association' at www.skyhawk.org  Details of the Skyhawk can be found at the aircraft resource center with walk arounds.  Very nice colour pictures can be found of A-4 Aggressors here:  http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/campus. A fellow Dutch IPMS modeller, Meindert, also has some very nice building reports on Skyhawks in English on this site... "designer" website Drawings  A very old, not longer available cut away drawing may be useful to get an idea on what is  inside the A-4...  Paint schemes Skyhawks flew and still fly in all colours and schemes! Trainer and Aggressors training aircraft have very weird colours and may be very colourful in order to make your model look very different and attractive. The Skyhawk flew for many years in USN service, so lots of schemes and variants were to be seen.  Operational carrier A-4 aircraft are often however having the basic "standard US Navy scheme", although the location of markings saw a lot of changes in time. The US NAVY planes had the Federal Standard 595a 36440 semi-gloss Light Gull Grey colour on most of the upper surfaces and  FS 17875 Gloss Insignia White on most of the upper surfaces and with all movable surfaces painted white on their top as well as bottom while the vertical movable rudder is also white on both sides.  For the A-4 however, things are slightly different: the top of the flaps however is also light gull grey as the flaps were better able to withstand the flash of an atomic explosion, unlike the more fragile rudders.  For FS 36440 I suggest to use Humbrol HI 5 or HU6 from the older colour sets issued and Humbrol nr 147 of the current set. My favourite white colour is from  Revell SM301. Another option is to use Extracolor as Testor .  As always check pictures to see variations of the scheme.  Accessories and techniques First, in my local hobby shop I came across the resin set for the Escapac steats of  NeoMega The set contains two seats at a moderate price. Normally I am not very fond of using special sets as I prefer to make details the "old fashioned" way with plastic rod, strips and card.  Also, in the past the  Esoteric conversion set was obtained to convert an existing kit into an very first A-4A (with a short nose without radar).      .. Sometimes I can not resist to try a new technique, especially when my wife has bought some household bottle with cleaner, paint or nail polish! And so I came up with some typical suggestions...  To remove scratches, in Dutch stores you find the polishing fluid called "Staalfix":  First remove the biggest scratches using a cloth before using the Tamiya rubbing compound to get rid of the finest scratches.  Tamiya putty can be removed after the first applicationwith nail polish remover and saves you a lot of sanding work and keeps your panel line details.  Decals Lots and lots of decals can be bought for this small nice aircraft. The variation in colour schemes has motivated decals suppliers to make different attractive sets. There are really lots and lots of decals sets out there...  In this project,  Modeldecal set nr 21 has a very nice scheme with the  "Ladie Jessie" :  Very old sets need a first coat of Johnson Klear otherwise the decals will "break". If you use the internet search engine Google, lots of details of this particular plane can be found.  Several MicroScale (Superscale) sets are also very nice to use...  Also found was the older Scale master set which I will use for a colourful Hasegawa TA-4.  Export versions of the A-4 are covered in various sets that depict planes from Australia and Argentina. Recently Brasil acquired ex-Kuwaiti Skyhawks for use of their "newest" aircraft carrier, the modernized French "De Gaulle".  And what about a proposed Dutch AF A-4 scheme? KLu version ..  The shown artist impression is of the famous company artist of Douglas, R.G. Smith  .    The different 1/72 scale kits are described on the separate pages as listed above... or simply go on to next page... 1/32 Scale Although I do not build 1/32 scale models, I got hold of a  very nice Hasegawa drawing that comes with their A-4 kits...  Finally... The conclusion is that the best kits in 1/72 scale are the series of Fujimi, in all versions. The only big error in these kits are the sizes of the main wheels. The detailling is very nice and they are the only kits to have separate slats, that are actually really needed as most Skyhawks have their slats "dropped" in open position when planes are on the ground.  Costing half the Fujimi kit's price, the ESCI kits are also rather nice and the Italeri kits are not bad. On these kits, I suggest to do some work on the slats. The very old Airfix kit is only useful as it has the older style windscreen, whereas the remaining Frog/Hasegawa kits are a bit outdated now.  May I also suggest to take a look at the photo gallery... .  And now... lets start with an A-4 kit !  Have fun!  Pat Beentjes  Thanks to Meindert de Vreeze , webmaster , for website design and translation.  Note of the webmaster:  Pat is not among us anymore; He was a honorary member of IPMS The Netherlands and has build models over 50 years and being one of the founder member of the society. He also contributed regularly to the IPMS publications and organized at his house each year a special open house for all the IPMS. He was a member of the first hour and his enthusiasm was legendary. This article is a typical example for us all...

 

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