I chose to light this puppy up with LEDs to make it more interesting. The 9V rechargeable is available from Amazon. Note the black cable running from the battery is a UDB Micro extension cable so I can recharge it later on from the bottom of the fuselage. There’s a crap ton of wiring, so please mind the mess…
With the wiring laid out, time to seal the hog. All of the remaining wiring will be handled at the open port where the engine nacelles mate with the fuselage.
The wings use the 3mm Blinking LEDs which had to be filed down to make it fit. Maybe MicroLEDs would have been more suitable for this, but I didn’t want to order any more LEDS!
The wings came on well with little issues - but the sea line running across the fuselage will take a while to clean up and rescribe. This is where the newer Academy and Meng kits shine - they have taken the playbook from Tamiya and Zoukei-Moura and either slide molded the fuselage, or have a cap that flows with the actual seam lines.
This was the reproduction of it. Pretty accurate, but it didn’t “pop” out like I had hopes. After a vote from the family, I decided to strip this off and start with a different set of shading. D’Oh! ?
Repaint changed out the darker green - I lightened that original color by mixing it with 1 part blue to 3 parts deep green. I also added some post shading with a diluted green/gray mix, but had to tone it back down later to make it more subtle.
good news - This kit comes with a embarrassing amount of munitions
not-so-good news - yellow decals for the cluster munitions was too short…. ?
Time to mask and airbrush that part
Looking at photos of the Mk 82 bombs mounted on the MERs, one can see wires hooked up to the fuses - I guess it pulls and arms them when they are dropped. I recreated this by gluing on a silver wire to the MER and attaching them to the Mk 82s
Please note that this is a tail sitter - so you have to add quite a bit of ballast to the front node and area behind the cockpit. I didn’t add enough ballast, so had to remove the panel behind the cockpit to add in 5+ Pennie’s to make it sit properly….
My plan was to also add some glow-in-the-dark slime lights. I picked out Spacebeam’s green fluorescent for the job. Using my paint mule, I realized that spray painting this acrylic paint isn’t going to be practical (right) - the pigments are too thick, and it doesn’t thin well.
Boeing-epic-fail moment - the paint doesn’t mask well, it forms a uniform layer of rubbery texture on top of both the kit and the tape - so it is important to remove the tape BEFORE it dries
I considered hopping onto Amazon for some glow-in-the-dark tapes, but figured I could just as easily cut some Temiya tapes to length and paint it on myself…
The slime lights aren’t flush to the fuselage - that’s the trade-off I will need to live with. It’s not going to win any awards, but it’s good enough for me.
Quite a cat-astrophe…. Landing gears suck when they break, but i was fortunate enough with this - the struts are thick enough for me to hallow out each end and pin them together with superglue and a needle…
Technically 100% accurate on the load outs. The BLU-27 did not come with the kit, but is carried on that station. I didn’t want a puny Mk.82 there, so I went for the next biggest firecracker there is.
CaptGPF LOL! Yes indeed! It would not do this bird justice with anything less! 😜
1 August, 23:33
Album info
Title of this album is tongue-in-cheek reference to an older James Bond Title: From Russia with Love.
Please note that the title is NOT meant to be inflammatory. Like everyone else on this forum, I don't have anything against Russians - just the regime that forced this senseless killing between two brothers.
This kit was modeled after the 80's Euro-Lizard scheme that came before slime lights were more prominent on the A-10s - so if you are looking for the familiar slime lights on the wing-tips and tail fins, it's not going to be there. ?
I found the actual camo to be a bit… drab, so I took some creative license with changing the color tones a bit.
I liked this kit a lot, but it is definitely showing it's age compared to the Academy or Meng releases. Some lines will need to be rescribed around the corners, and the decalling instructions leave a LOT of stuff out - so make sure you reference the Hasegawa or Meng manuals to figure out where the extra decals belong.
CaptGPF
