Beany's Revell 1/72 A1-E Skyraider

[beany]

I'd been keenly following this GB, and in particular Toby's Airfix Skyraider, when I remembered that only a few weeks back I acquired a Revell 1/72 Skyraider from Tom at Farnborough, and being in need of a quick build to get my mojo back, thought I'd throw it together here, and make a few comparisons with the Airfix stalwart. Toby's thread is here, where you can see in his the first picture that the Airfix kit has a lot more parts compared to the Revell offering shown below in my picture. You get no bombs whatsoever from Revell and the pylons are moulded as part of the lower wing - rather disappointing I feel.
http://www.uamf.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=253&t=7801;

There are three decal options for the Revell kit, an AD-5 of US Navy, NAS Alameda, California, 1956 (all over dark blue), an A-1E US Navy of NAS Lemoore, California, @1968 (FS36440 Gull Grey over White), and then the version I shall do, an A-1E of USAF, Hurlburt Field, Florida, @1966 in Vietnam camo (dark green/green/tan/grey) as depicted very nicely on the box art.





I began on Wednesday night and put the basic body together and then added the wings. Fit is not brilliant it has to be said.



I was disappointed also that you only get one crew figure fromRevell, but I will do my build wheels up as is usual for me. I have a nice old FROG Skybase that I will use with this kit.
I have been through my current stash of prop blurs but only have 2 and 3 bladed examples at the moment, so will have to print off some 4 bladed ones.
There is no option with this kit to do it wheels up, so I had to bodge it by cutting the legs to fit and just glued them and the attached wheels to the inner wing, and then glued the door covers in place after a bit of re-profiling.


Out with the airbrush tonight. I have all the colours I need for this inthe Hannants Xtracolor range but to be honest, as I want a quick fix here, I'll probably use the nearest Tamiya Acrylic equivalents, the drying times will be so much quicker, and I intend to do some weathering as well.

Here I attached the central drop tank to see where I could open up a hole for the stand. the Skybases have a pivoting head, so it can be posed in several different attitudes. I'll decide on a final one once it is completed.


I forgot to mention that I chose this one because I had a go at the Matchbox 1/48th offering a few years back when I was just coming back to modelling, long before I starting using an airbrush. Here are a couple of pictures of that build.




Cheers
Al.

[ShaunW]

Hey Al, welcome aboard with this one. Although there are one or two perhaps disappointing aspects to this kit, this is, IMHO, an interesting variant of the Skyraider and I'm glad to see it being built. This will look good on the multi-pose stand with a prop blur and as far as colours are concerned, I'm going to be using Humbrol equivalents on mine which may, or may not, fully match up to "authentic" shades. Hey, with some weathering no one will be any the wiser! You'll still probably finish well before me!

[Dirkpitt289]

Nice looking build. I like it/

[thomastmcc]

cool ...

[jssel]

Nice one, Al. What a beastie.

[TobyC]

Great to see another Skyraider being built. Looking forward to seeing yours.

[splash]

Nice one Beany.

Would this kit make a good bases for a Royal Naval Skyraider?

Regards Splash

[beany]

Hi Splash.

Would this kit make a good bases for a Royal Naval Skyraider?

Absolutely no idea was my initial thought, so I went and took a look at Royal Navy Skyraiders on Google/Wikipedia etc. I can't actually tell the difference between the AD-4W and the AEW.1 varients, but what I can see is that both appear to be single seat versions whereas this kit only comes with the 4 seat tandem cab pit, so I'd suggest a single-seater like the Airfix kit might be a better starting point, or just find one of the old AMT or ESCI kits of the RN planes.

Cheers
Al.

[splash]

Cheers Beany.

I only had a quick glance at your box artwork and missed the point that it was a twin seat a/c the hump back looked like the RN version but I can now see the RN version is a lot thinner .



Regards Splash

[beany]

Now you've made me aware of the RN versions Splash, I shall have to keep an eye out at the 2nd hand kit dealers at Telford and see if I can get one - the ESCI 1/48 jobby would suit my personal preference of scale, but a 1/72 would be good as well.

Cheers
Al.

[TomW]

For the Royal Navy versions the only options in 1/72 are an Aeroclub conversion for the airfix kit or a long oop RVHP resin kit. That was why I bought this kit originally as I too thought it was the right version for an RN machine.

Great to see you building it Al :-)

Regards

Tom

[beany]

It's gonna be a "close, but no cigar" yet again from me I'm afraid. I really need 6 weeks for a GB, not a month - it's just the way I am!
Here is the progress last night (I may get a bit more done before midnight tonight).



Under the masking is the Tan shade. Here is the lighter green, and when that is dry I'll add more masking and apply the darker green. The canopy has been sprayed clear green, which is a shame because then I read the instructions and looked on Google Images to confirm it should be clear blue (insert face-palm emoticon here). Most of the canopy framing is the Tan colour which I will carefully hand paint (because I haven't got the patience to do more masking).

I have printed the 4 bladed props onto acetate sheet so just need to cut one out, drill the centre, cut the blades from the kit spinner hub then glue on the acetate etc. etc.

However, I'll have to leave it until after Telford now.
Congrats to all those who finished their builds on time.

Cheers
Al.

[ShaunW]

6 weeks? I need nearer 12 for some of these builds Al Good effort and it's a shame you're not closer as I don't want to extend this GB too much and then really only to participants who are just about finished. Spearjig for example is very nearly done so he can finish tomorrow by way of a short extension. Mine will end up either in the Get It Done GB which hopefully will follow hot on the heels of this one or on my Workbench Window thread.