I
purchased this A-10 kit back in 2003 and built it about 4 years ago. I got
the kit after I had purchased some decals for an A-10 involved in the 1991 Gulf
War called “Live and Let Die” which was also marked up with a ‘score
board” on the aircraft’s right side to compliment the left-side artwork. The
Monogram kit is decent enough, although I do recall using a lot more test
fitting, adjustments, filler & sanding than I had anticipated. Just
about every seam had to get some attention… engine fit, wing gap, center
bottom seam etc… Not one of Monogram’s better jobs for fit.
Keeping the nose of this Warthog kit on the ground requires some weight so
appropriately I added some shot from a 12 gauge shell to give this gun-fighter
some punch!
Click on
images below to see larger images
Unfortunately
my construction troubles continued with this kit into the finishing stage, as
once I had painted up the kit using my airbrush in its standard
36081/34092/34102 charcoal lizard coat, added the future gloss coat and done all
the decaling, I applied the final dull coat… and to my shock the finish went
chalk white across much of the model…. Yikes! (and that was putting it
mildly).
I
tried several remedies to recover the paint job however none of them worked well
enough for me to move on, so I was forced to repaint… around the decals. (The
decals were out of production by that time.) Deciding a hand paint job was
the only viable route I patiently went about the process, which thankfully gives
the aircraft a bit of a ‘worn’ look. Wanting to leave this little
project behind me I left it at that and decided a ‘clean
configuration’ would work just fine.
The
A-10 now sits beside my AH-64A Apache helicopter as part of my “Gulf War Tank
Killer” collection. It’s my second A-10, as I built Revel’s version
many years ago in the late 70’s “JAWS” scheme.
Keep
building.
David Mielke - "VMFA314Knights"
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