A-10 Thunderbolt II

Here’s another project I finished a little while back. This is an A-10 Warthog in 1/72 scale. The kit is by Academy with some extra details added in. The ordinance was somewhat lacking in fine detail on this kit, so I did some upgrades with Hasegawa AIM-9 missles on a kitbashed launcher (shown on the right) and rocket launchers from the Testors/Italieri NATO aircraft weapons set. There are also some cluster bombs from the Hasegawa set, which are not shown on this angle. If you look closely, you can see that I modified the Maverick missles by scratchbuilding a clear seeker head made from clear sprue. This was done by sanding down the tip of the missle to where the seeker head begins, gluing on clear sprue and sanding it down to the proper shape and size with finer and finer grade sandpaper. The final grade was wet sanded to get a nice finish, then dipped in Future to remove any scratches. The same technique was used on the Pave Penny system mounted on the right hand side of the fuselage beside the cockpit.
I also added aftermarket photoetch cockpit details from Eduard. The HUD even has a clear piece of acetate over it. I was very satisfied with the final look of the cockpit. Another nice thing about this kit was the decals. There were lots of technical markings that added a lot to the kit. All of the decals were included with the kit, no aftermarkets were necessary. This was also my first kit to use MicroSol and MicroSet decal setting solutions, and I have to say that I am sold on these products. Even the lightning bolt decal with the blue background on the vertical stabilizers laid down nicely with this stuff. It took a couple of coats, but ended up looking painted on, with no wrinkles.
These figures are from the Italieri Nato Pilots and Ground Crew set. On this go ‘round I used acrylic base coats with a darker wash and slightly lighter drybrush, then finished with an oil wash of burnt umber to bring out shadows. I also did not paint eyes on this group, and I think they came out looking pretty good. The burnt umber oil wash in the eye sockets left enough of a shadow to look like eyes, even on a fairly close inspection.

You also get a rear end view of some of the ordinance. The Maverick missiles included in the kit also did not have the exhaust detail, so I drilled this out with a pin vise. On the far right of the wing understores is an ECM jamming pod, also from an aftermarket weapons set. The chucks under the wheels are scratchbuilt from sprue and twine.