A-7 Corsair II retirement build

[K5083]

This is a Heller (Airfix) A-7E that I'm doing to mark the retirement by Greece last months of the last A-7s in front line service.

It's this boxing:


Which gave me pause on the color scheme since to my surprise, it includes a set of Greek decals. That seemed appropriate given the inspiration for my build, but the A-7's broad surfaces are such a good canvas for the colorful 1960s U.S. Navy markings that I think I'll stick with my original intention to do such a bird. The Greek decals can wait till I do a TA-7 some day.

The Airfix cockpit is very sparse. The seat sits on the intake trunk and there is no boxed-in cockpit, seat, rudder pedals, or any sidewall detail except some shelves (top surface only). I added a bulkhead and deck behind the seat, extended the shelves to the latter, added sidewalls to the shelves, then detailed the shelf surfaces. The kit has a fairly good decal for the main instrument panel but none for the shelves and since the printed decal would clash with the 3D details I had added to the shelves, I ditched the decal and did a 3D panel. Added rudder panels, floor detail, seat cushion ribbing, straps and miscellaneous detail to the seat. Altogether too much work. But it now looks adequately busy.







I might still add a few bits, but I'll be relieved when I get this thing sealed up.

August

[Zee28]

Excellent work on that cockpit!

Zee28

[Dirkpitt289]

very sharp work so far

[Stuart]

Nice work on that pit!

[Eric Mc]

Is the Heller kit related to the Airfix kit?

[feanor]

Ayup 5083...

Great work on the pit so far.

[K5083]

Fuselage together. As expected, the fit is somewhat indifferent but not impossible. Now to see if the wings can go together without gaps.



August

[T-21]

Some nice reference photographs here http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v ... ober-2014/; Thank you to Global Aviation.

[K5083]

Some great shots there. I like the speaking podium made from an old canopy. The weathering on most of those birds would be well beyond me (if I saw it on a model I'd say it was unrealistically overdone!), but someday I might model the TA-7 that was cleaned up and repainted for the event.

August

[K5083]

Most assembly completed, and the light gull gray is on. I started with the gray because it is matte and can double as a primer for the gloss white undersurfaces.



I decided to build this one clean, which meant cutting off the 8-bomb racks which are molded integrally with the hard points.

August

[K5083]

After several problems with the paint job, the A-7 is sitting on its gear. To my surprise, it didn't tail sit despite my adding no nose weight.



August

[Old_Tonto]

Looking very sharp August.

The A7 is a truly ugly looking aircraft.

[feanor]

Ayup August...

Thats a Lovely Corsair there mate. Nicely done.

[iggie]

That's coming on nicely!

Mine (Same Heller kit) was fine until I put a full weapon load-out on it.....then it sat on it's a**e at every opportunity! Building it clean is the difference I suspect!

PS Are you quite sure you didn't spill some glue on the wheels?

[K5083]

Decal time on this model has been stressful, as I knew it would be from the outset. I wanted to use an old set of Superscale Carrier Air Wing 19 Commander Air Group decals that I bought years ago to do a Bearcat. Never thought I would do the A-7 on the sheet but it has a nice big pretty tail decal so I decided to go ahead. Probably it would have been much smarter of Superscale to have the modeler paint the tail blue and have decals for the other markings, but instead they went with the dreaded cover-the-whole-tail decal. Worse, for me, was that the decal was intended for an A-7A kit, probably the old Hasegawa. Which disagreed with Airfix about the shape and size of the tail fin.

Luckily the decal sheet contains a few other markings in the same tone of blue for a Skyraider that I'll never build, so the plan was to align the tail fin decal as best I could and then cut bits of the Skyraider decals to patch any areas not covered. If this doesn't work, I'm prepared to strip the decal and mark the model as some other aircraft.

So here's step one. The ancient decal came off the sheet readily and didn't break up, but it did tend to peel off the model, as you can see at the top of the fin here. I'm patiently gluing down the stubborn areas with Klear/Pledge/Future a little at a time. When pieces break off (and they do), I'm carefully reserving them to reapply later.

I'll be pleased if this works, but I've never spent a week just decaling a tail fin before.

August