1/48 Monogram A-6E Intruder

Gallery Article by Fernan de Gannes on Aug 31 2010

Trinidad and Tobago National Day 2010

 

Monogram’s A-6 remains the only game in town in 1/48 scale.  I’ve had the kit for a while and when Verlinden released their super detail set, I decided to give it a go.

In addition to the cockpit tub, ejection seats, rear decking and a large photoetched fret, the Verlinden set includes parts that allow the modeler to replace the crew ladder area and door area.

High points: Nice seats and detailed rear decking, boarding ladder (intake area) overhead console.

Low points: Poor fit of tub (if attached to the rear deck as instructed), oversized photo etched parts, unbuildable ladder (for me at least).

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I started by scribing the panel lines and removing the inner wing fence and relocating it closer to the fuselage.  To get the cockpit to fit, I added a shim of plastic between the rear wall and the rear deck.  This lengthened the whole assembly and enabled it to fit properly.  If you’re using this set, please dry fit, check and dry fit again.  The instrument panel and shroud are from the kit. I added some extra detail to these.

After the cockpit was installed, some lead fishing weights were super glued into the nose before closing it up.  Assembly was fairly straight forward after this, some shimming was required at the wing roots to minimize use of filler.  The exhaust required some work though, to get a seamless cylindrical look.  I also reshaped the aft inlet located on top of the rear fuselage and drilled open the two prominent holes on the bottom of the forward fuselage.

I painted the model with Model Master enamels and shot lighter and darker “shades” of the base grays to capture the mottled, dirty look of these aircraft.  The walkways were masked and painted Dark Gull Gray and weathered with the lightened base colour and dirtied with pastels.  Decals were from Super Scale and portray VA-55’s Silver Foxes.  I was fortunate to find a couple of photos of this aircraft, so I tried to replicate it as best I could.  Hope you like it.

Fernan de Gannes

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Photos and text © by Fernan de Gannes