A-10 Thunderbolt II

by Steven St James

 Trumpeter's 1/32 scale A-10A (including a free Squadron book)
is available online from Squadron.com

Here is another American aircraft model. What's happening? This is my second non-Russian submission!

My only excuse is that I did the for the owner of CAM Decals. He's a friend of mine, okay?

This is the 1/32 scale Trumpeter kit: It is not bad looking and fit is pretty decent in most areas. The wings were a bit tough - especially the undersides. The tended not to lay flat against the upper wing, forcing me to heat the plastic with a hair dryer to lay the area flat.

The fuselage fits nicely but you have to make sure you put a LOT of weight in the nose area or you are guaranteed to have a tail sitter.

The gun assembly calls for some weight but I didn't use the assembly.

I went with Black Box's set for the cockpit. This is very beautifully rendered as is all of their stuff. I painted the cockpit with Gunze 308 light grey, then (A first) used Vallejo acrylics to do the cockpit detail. The results were wonderful.

The gun barrel was from Cutting Edge. Since I didn't use the whole assembly, I opted to use a large plastic rod to hold the new barrel in place.

Weapons were from CAM. Also great stuff.

The overall paint scheme commenced with a coat of Tamiya Flat Black as an overall primer. Then, Gunze paints for the actual colors. (Note: After I did the colors, I went over them again with lightened versions of the same color. I don't lighten with white, as the appearance then becomes chalky....I use lighter versions of the same colors. ie green gets lighter green, grey gets a lighter grey...etc).

Markings were from CAM and as usual, I love these decals

The wash is Mars Black oil paint with Turpenoid as a medium. Then to flat coat the whole thing, I use Xtra colors Matt Varnish. On this particular aircraft, I drybrushed all of the great raised detail with a yellow-ochre/titanium white oil.

 

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Model, Text and Images Copyright © 2002 by Steven St James
Page Created 27 January, 2002
Last Updated 04 June, 2007

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