Feature article by Les Venus
- Materials: Injection Moulded Plastic, rubber and some etched brass
- Accessories: None
- Tools: Iwata HC1 Airbrush
Iwata Pro Jet Compressor
Hold and Fold Etch Brass Folding Tool
Tamiya Folding Tool - Glues: Tamiya Xtra Thin Cement
Rocket Medium Cyanoacrylate - Paints: Mr Color Metallic Paints (Steel, Aluminium, Dark Iron, Chrome)
Alclad Metallics -Various - Tamiya: As required
- Tamiya Masking Tape
- MDC: Sponge Sanders/Thin Sanding Sticks
- Post-it Notes
References/Inspiration…
- Bert Kinzey – Detail and Scale A 6 Intruder
- Wikipedia
- You Tube Videos
Background
I won’t say too much here as I gave you the reason why I picked up this kit in my Here Now Review in SMN. From that you will see that I was very excited about the prospect of building this kit. Moreover, given that I was at the time still waiting for the HKM B-17 when the A-6 arrived only a day after ordering I was quickly onto it.
This is not in any way a cheap kit at £150, especially in these days of austerity. As soon as I popped some teaser ‘pics’ onto FB the comments quickly came back saying how expensive it was, or words to that effect. My response at the time was that it needed very little added to it to make a respectable model right out of the box. Now that it’s is finished do I still hold that view? Well read on and find out. What I will say is that it’s a kit of many guises and caused a mix of emotions. In my experience, having built a number of Trumpeter kits, this goes with the job.
It’s very big though and you will need a lot of space on your bench to build it and be carefully organised too. I would say also that despite the lack of information in the instructions this kit needs a lot of nose weight. I had to insert a lot as an afterthought but you can plan in advance if you are reading this.
Finally and to my utter amazement there is not a pile of Reference material available. I had the old D&S book in my pile and to be honest it’s not that good. I used the Internet as my primary source of reference but do be sure to look up the right type, as the A and the E were different aircraft in lots of ways.
The Plan
My plan was quite simple, build it from the box. At £150 purchase price this is economically the best approach but interestingly even now there are still to my knowledge no aftermarket etch, resin or decals out or even pending. I guess that with such a high cost price for the model after-market manufacturers are thinking “how many will actually shell out for any extras?”
So for once my plan is simple but the order of construction I chose was off-piste. Trumpeter has supplied a lot of internal detail, which is normal in this scale but it comes with the option of open access panels to display it, which is not. I have always been a sucker for a jet engine in model form and here Trumpeter provide two beauties with the option of open bays so it’s here I will start. Thereafter it will be back to the instructions for the rest of the build.
I determined to have my A-6 with the engine bays open, avionics bay dropped down, canopy open but wings unfolded as I wanted to display the slats and flaps deployed option. Lastly I decided to have the radome open too but this changed during the build as I will explain later.
As to my preferred decal option? There are only two but I opted for VA-35 the Panthers but again once I finished I regretted this too.