Zoukei-Mura 1/32 A-1H Skyraider
Interesting kit from 2013 or something updated a few years back w/weapons (bombs, rockets, fuel tanks). Feels like one of the last, old, ZM kits. Molded in several colors (black, silver, grey, clear, etc.). Simple compared to He 219, and their current BF and FW-offerings. Easy to build, not that complex, decent details although very few rivet lines. There were several correction inserts that pointed out an incorrect paint number and incorrect instructions (neither is a game breaker). What makes or breaks this kit is if I can pull off all those bombs and rockets in a believable fashion. If I get the external stores correct/decent…the rest of the plane is a piece of cake.
The kit has four major build sections…engine, fuselage, wings, and external stores. You build each independent of the other. So far fit is good, some minor flash, old style connectors from sprue to part requires a bit of careful cutting (and sanding afterwards). Quick build so far. Fuselage took a few hours, cockpit is simple. There’s detailed radio and internal structures inside the fuselage that you will never see. If not planning on cutting an access door or something, there’s no need to build some of those components.
Steady work and breaking things like I usually do. Quinta Studio decals for the cockpit.
I lost one of the exhaust glare shields so fabricated one out of plastic card.
I broke the tab that held the bottom wing hinge in place (so it could rotate around it)...so I fabricated one out of brass wire and epoxied it in place where you see it.
If interested...removing the seam line is easy:
1) I use a new scalpel blade to scrape the line
2) Wet sand with some solid sheet sandpaper from 1500 up to 7000 grit (Lanhu Starcke Siliciumcarbid waterproof 991 A)
3) Use fine and finish compound from Tamiya applied with my fingers
4) Had to occasionally go back to 7000 grit to get missed areas and repeat the compounds
5) Tamiya wax puts on a nice shine.
Started working on the engine with my buddy Mitzy checking my work. That’s the SWS A-1H engine kit wiring harness...made by Eduard.
Should get the engine done over the weekend and maybe start primary painting. So far, it's an easy kit to build w/zero filler other than my mistakes on the leading edge wing joins (you can see I sanded them down and will primer it again in a bit). It fits together beautifully.
Worked on the engine and decided to try some plastic-card work on the wing hinge area. I used the eduard wiring harness and did a B+ job on it. Not all wires line up properly and there are some fit issues but it'll look good once cleaned up and mounted.
I do not like how ZM did the detail in the wing join. Trumpeter does a much better job here, so I grabbed a few screen shots of real Skyraiders, took some plastic-card and added a plausible (as long as you're two feet away when you look) amount of detail (I still have more work to do there like put in seals and cleaning up overspray).
Engine and cowl flaps glued in...real janky up there and somewhat fiddly but doable if patient and you dry fit a few thousand times. Still have a lot of painting to do (especially the cowlings and the silver on the leading edges/cowl/tail)...but I'm real close to decals and some light weathering. The landing gear and armaments are last up. BTW, it's real close in actual dimensions at 1/32 to the 1/24 Airfix Hellcat. You could fit a BF109 inside it...
More detail and paint...it's really just brute-force model building right now. I like that about ZM kits...you build each section and then slap them together at the end. Of course that always means "will it fit?" moments followed by "Is it straight and lined up?" followed by either a sigh of relief or the anguished cries of a defeated model maker wondering why he got into the hobby in the first place.
john padgham wrote:
All the "clicks" looking to have produced a fine model Wes, you must be doing something correct.
...you don't see the parts where i shave this off, add something over there, force two parts together trying to divorce themselves...
That said...this has been the easiest ZM kit I've done. Probably because it was one of their early kits, maybe because I've built four now (including this one) and I know their dirty little secret "gotcha's"...and I did not build ANYTHING on the inside you can't see that wasn't required for structural integrity...probably dumped a dozen or more parts. It's also, as I've said...a simple kit to paint, you just need a lot of paint.
Small stuff that takes a long time:
I needed to repaint 3/4 of the cowling ring as it didn't match the same colors as the side cowlings (I forgot to prime the side cowlings in black).
I had to re-glue parts of the fuselage where it joins the engine and because of it I also had to sand the glue/joint, I had to repaint that as well.
I drilled fastener holes in the cowling rings
I broke part of one of the cowling rings so I had to fix/paint that as well.
I over-sprayed the guns with silver so I had to paint them.
I removed the center seam line, masked, painted, and glossed the cockpit canopy
All of that required an entire Tamiya tape dispensers-worth of tape...
Decal time...these are old and thick and I'm having some trouble with them...especially the bee/hornet dude...but so far not too bad as long as you stay a foot or two away. I spent some time carefully wetting them with microsol multiple times plus used a new scalpel to cut the seam lines and tamped down the edges enough to get them decent. I should have also cut a lot of the clear parts out but with a high gloss finish I think I'll get away without any serious silvering.
I had to break the pylons off to paint the black weather stripping (at least that's what I'm calling it) around the bottom of each plus there are a good 48 decals to put on these 12. After breaking each one off I sanded the bottom of each pylon and the area on the wing where the pylon was attached, then drilled one matching hole in the wing and the pylon and used a brass wire to join them. I used brass because it's both pretty solid and a bit flexible so if my drilling was a tad off, I could bend the wire slightly to line up the pylon w/its place on the wing. You can also see where I initially drilled out the wrong holes for the pylons and had to go back and put two more in. So each wing attachment point has at least four and a few have five drilled holes in them...On top of that after i put the decals on you can see the parts have way too many extruded bits that are not there in the real deal, so the decal is having hard time sitting down. I may pull the decals up, shave off that protrusion and go for it...or just realize it'll be something NOBODY else will ever see...and not worry about it
Got her up on wheels (These are placeholder tires and wheels...resin ones inbound). After this it's build a bunch of bombs and gas tanks, weather and finish it.
Crashing on this to get it ready for the Northern Virginia IPMS show on Saturday the 13th...so much detailing to do in so little time considering I have to work too. Thinking I'll pull an all-nighter tonight (or close to it) to get it presentable and do final work Friday night after work.
To Do: Finish painting and weathering the landing bay doors, finish painting and weathering the centerline external fuel tank, finish detailing the one wing I'll have displayed folded, glue on the bombs, add all the antenna's and wires and lights, add the gunsight and canopies, make the HGW seat belt and get the pilots seat in, final semi-gloss or gloss coats (not sure what I'll do there).
Well...not going to make it in time. After I got the bombs glued on at 10PM EST...I still had the HGW seatbelts, the center fuel tank, detailing in the folding wing area, DIY canopy handles to build, landing bay doors weathering, propellor painting and weathering...and I kept breaking off those static dischargers on the wings and tail and need to build a few more to replace those. Plus detailed painting in some area's to cover up boo boo's...but this gives me time to fix a lot of stuff I screwed up in my headlong rush to finish to a clock rather than when it's done. Oh...and those bombs...I didn't put them on the correct bomb racks...so I need to do some surgery there too...
Well...three months later and still not done...but super close. In the interim I built the ICM B-26 Marauder for the ICM booth at the IPMS Nationals and took a month off to get a break from thinners and the like. My wife and I flew out to Madison Wisconsin on Tuesday, met Valeriia Buzine and helped her setup the booth, bought some stuff, saw some models that were AMAZING and we got the last plane out of Madison on Thursday before the great Windows/Crowdstrike debacle. Now that all that is over I started the final push on the Skyraider. I still have detail in the folding wing mechanism (ZM is lacking here...will be adding hoses and stuff) and I need to weather the centerline external fuel tank, add the seat/headrest/seatbelts, the tail mounted pitot tube and aerial wire...but almost there. A solid effort, didn't get bored, and a pretty easy build.
So while building this i was struck by how damned big it is for a single-engine attack aircraft so i ran a little experiment since my last 1/32 attack aircraft was the A-20G:
Started back in early spring, got interrupted by the ICM B-26 build for ICM's booth at IPMS Nationals and finishing up one of the Kotare Spitfires. I kinda finished up last week just in time for my monthly IPMS meeting. A funny story on the way to that meeting...I was finishing up the aerial wiring and some touch-ups with those new AK pens to get to my IPM meeting and realized the large tail-mounted red light was missing. It was about 3PM and I had to get driving to the meeting by 6ish so I wasn't worried because it was a large piece, and it had only been missing for an hour or so and the plane had not moved from the build table. So of course, I spent the next 90 minutes looking for it to include going through an entire trash bin and couldn't find it. My wife comes to help me, and she asks if I looked in a few area's she pointed out and of course I said "Yes, of course I looked in those area's"...and she leaves. After a few minutes I realize I had not looked in those areas and do so and damned if she wasn't right. I found it. I was elated! So happy, I brought that little piece upstairs to her in the kitchen, thanked her for telling me where to look "It was in the same area you asked me to look!" and then showed her the piece...then promptly dropped it and we lost it...again.
We looked for another hour sweeping up the floor and all...but never found it. I was late leaving for the meeting so took it as-is and of course since I live near Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum...a LOT of the guys in our club are restoration experts who work there and one of them had to ask..."Hey...where's the tail light?"
So when you see these pictures without that cool big light on the top of the tail, remember never take a tiny piece of your model upstairs to the kitchen to show your wife...glue it on first.
Base kit w/Quinta Studio 3D cockpit, some brass work for the pitot tube on the tail, all Tamiya paint except on a lark I used AK's Real Color pen "Rubber Black" for the wheels, weathering a mix of dark dirt from Flory and then Mr. Weathering Color and its companion thinner to add the post shading dirt/grime/rain streaks (you can really see how it works on the underside pic). The exhaust was just heavily thinned rubber black and some buff (99-1 paint to thinner ratio) sprayed at 12psi. Easy kit to do, fun build, readily available historical photo's and went together smoothly.
ColinAtkins wrote:
That is one superbly painted and weathered build of the Skyraider Wes, complete with a full load of ordinance she looks fantastic.
Thx...Zoukei-Mura re-released this kit with the ordinance package included, which made the purchase much more acceptable from a cost perspective. Not sure I would have bought it otherwise. Bonus is they give you so much of it, I have a plastic bag full of 1/32 bombs, rockets, and external tanks left over and much of that would work on WW2 aircraft.
