| Captivated
by the marvelously made A-6E Intruder by Kelly Quirk somewhere in 2001,
I decided to make one myself. It was very hard to buy a Revell Intruder,
but finally I found one. Luckily Aeromaster had some superb decals of
colorful A-6 Intruders. I decided to make the CAG bird of
the
famous VA-196 Main Battery, known by the books of Stephen Coonts (Flight
of the Intruder).
I
used some after market additions like the Black Box cockpit set, the
wing folding mechanism from Paragon Design, the steps, cockpit details
and airbrakes from Verlinden and bombs and MER’s from Hasegawa. |
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on image below to see larger image |
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First
I began etching the panellines. I did this by scratching lines with a very small
knife. Holding it against the raised panelline, I first pressed it a little,
scratching a small line, right near the raised panelline. I repeated this over
and over, pressing it a little harder every time. When the panelline was just
right, I removed the raised panelline with some waterproof sandpaper. It was a
good technique because I even succeeded in engraving curved panellines and
complex shapes.
The
fit of the kit was not as bad as I expected from an old kit. Only the air
intakes were hard to fit.
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Click on images below to
see larger images |
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I
met some trouble in cutting the windscreen from the sprue. Doing this, a big
crack appeared in the windscreen. I decided to write a letter to Revell and
after a month I received a new windscreen, free of charge!
| Kelly
suggested to reposition the nosegear, so I did. It looks marvelous.
Verlinden
has some nice airbrakes. The original Intruder has anti buffering
perforations in the airbrakes to let the wind come through. These air
brakes were soon eliminated or bolted shut in the latter airframes. I
cut the flange from the airbrakes of Verlinden and had them glued on the
airbrakes from the Revell kit. The result is very satisfying. |
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on image below to see larger image |
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After
all, I think this is one of my best projects. It is a nice model and it is a
pity that it is hard to buy.
John
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