This Year we will mark the 50th Annyversary of the escalation of Air and Ground war in Vietnam. One of the main protagonist of the early stages of the war was the A-4 Skyhawk. Being a fan of the USN and its planes I decided to commemorate this with the next project. The best kit of this plane in 1/48 scale is from Hasegawa. The only deficiency is with the decals, which will be replaced by AM decals from Aero Master.
The plane I have chosen to portrait is A-4C No147710 from VA-93 on board of USS Enterprise in early 1966. As far as I know this was the first combat deployment of a nuclear powered vessel ih history and VA-93s Skyhawks were the first planes operaing from a nuclear carrier in combat.
Another problem with the Hasegawa kit is the lack of any armament, which is a huge deficiency given how much payload the Skyhawks usualy carried into combat. I will be therefore using Hasegawas Weapon Set "A". Im however dissapointed with the quality of the bombs, espacially the Mk.82 which are only a bit better then the ones offered by Trumpeter, and are far worse then the ones from Tamiya.
I started the work Yesterday with the cockpit. This will be an out of the box build, with the exception of the Ejection Seat which I replaced with a Resin one from Pavla Models.

I spend some time painting the cockpit. I didnt want to do nothing special, because I plan to close the canopy.

Hard to believe it's been 50 years since the start of the Vietman war. Heck, I was a senior in high back then.

Certainly an excellent choice of Naval air power since the Scooter has always been one of my personal favorites. Just a mean lean fightin' machine.

Nice start to the cockpit. With the AM seat it looks great. IP really has been done well.

Excellent choice of markings will really add to the final presentation.

Naturally, I'll be following your build with a great deal of interest.

Joel

Hi Joel,thanks for the comment. I have a few other planes from VN in the stash in 1/48, Skyraider, Thud and also the Crusader, but the Skyhawk seemed like a natural choise since the first sorties in 1965 were flown mainly by these machines. I have assembled the fuselage Yesterday, so a few pictures will follow. Still havent decided about the payload. I would like to portrait a plane going on long range strike mission, with two fuel tanks on the wing pylons (C-version only had two wing pylon) and a couple of Mk.83s on the center MER. It seems that most sorties were flown with a single fuel tank under the fuselage and more bombs were carried under the wings, but I like the two-tanks cofiguration better.

Naseby,
Like I said, I'll be following right along, as this is going to be a really interesting build.
Joel

A few update pictures. The fuselage was put together. There are unfortunatelly a few areas, where putty will be needed, because the fit isnt 100 percent.

The cockpit looks great. Most impressive.

One question, the air intakes. They're white, so I'm assuming that you made them. I guess that just with the kit parts you can see past the sides of the intake fans.

Joel

Hi Joel. Thanks for the comments. As for the intakes, when the outer parts are in place, there will be barely something visible, thats why I opted for the contrasting dark fan and white tunnel wals.

Always liked the scooter. Very nice so far.

Could never wrap my head around the name though. Skyhawk? As opposed to landhawk?

Last two weeks I was bussy, so I didnt put up any pictures, but there was some progress on the Skyhawk. The basic assembly is done. I was expecting some issues with fitt of some of the parts, because of Hasegawas habit to include a lot of mold inserts. But in the end the fitt was worse then expected and im still strugling a bit with some of the parts.

Nasby,
The fit certainly may be less then you expected, but your putty work looks like it's taken care of all those issues. Looking forward to seeing your Scooter with a coat of primer on real soon.
Joel

hello.
A4C VMA 225 at CHU LAI
https://www.flickr.com/photos/44911068@N03/8555287949/in/photostream/

Wow what a great set of pictures, a lot of details and great inspiration. Thanks.

I feel so bad about not making any updates on this project, but I had recently three 1/35 armour things on the bench, a 1/350 destroyer and another 1/48 plane, so I had only little time to work on the Skyhawk. But in last coule of days I had at least put on a base camo and started to do the shading and fading...

Naseby,
Nice to see that the Scooter is still alive a well. Base paint and shading looks quite nice.
Joel

Well it has been over two months since the last update. Once I finished the camouflage I started to look at more and more pictures of the real thing and I realised that the grey colour is too dark. Well since the fix would include a total repaint with a new preshading and all I decided to put the project on hold for a few weeks and take a break from it. Now its time to get back to it. I have re-done the whole camouflage and continued with the handpainted red and blue parts. I also started to put on some decals and painted the wheel wells.

Naseby,
Once again, it's nice to see your A4 build back on track. The repaint looks great, but you could have opted to just overcoat the topside with a lighter gray wash, and achieved about the same results.

Joel

That's really a beautiful Scooter. Your work on the cockpit and wheel bays is really outstanding as well. I will be looking forward to more photos. What squadron is that, BTW?

Best wishes,

Ian

@Joel Thanks for the comment, I have watched Your build of the Skyhawk and You have done a very good job and in a very short time!

@Ian its the VA-93 Blue Blazers. I used AM decals from Aero Master. The machine is A-4C No147710 on board of USS Enterprise in early 1966. Heres the link to a picture of the actual machine im building :

http://a4skyhawk.org/content/147710-va-93-d-kasulka-1453

I will be making some changes however. I believe this picture was taken after a refit or before deployment since the plane is obviousely too clean. I will use plain white Fuel tanks because I dont think they would use these specially painted ones while deployed on Yankee Station.

Good pick for the markings! I can't wait to see the finished product. Lots of Scooters on Aeroscale....love it.

Best wishes,

Ian

Naseby,
I did the same on the wing tanks for my Scooter, even though I still haven't installed them. I would think that once on Station, gas tanks are brought up for fitting per mission without much thought given to which exact aircraft will be getting them. One would think that the crews have more then enough to do without trying to match up custom paint jobs.
Joel

Moving forward a bit, Here are some pictures of the Skyhawk after the decals were finished and the panel lines were highlighted with dark wash. The whole plane was coated in flat coat to protect the paint and decals. Since the whole project is already behind the schedule, I opted to exclude full stencils and only added the most obvious one from the original kit decals.

A very nice A-4, beautiful scheme and great details. Well done so far.

Beautiful work on the A-4. I love your choice of markings. The flashes on the fuselage look great too.

Best wishes,

Ian

Naseby,
You're certainly making slow but steady progress. Decaling really looks like it was painted, with no flash to be seen anywhere. Very nicely done. Just one question. Did you gloss coat over the decals, or go directly to a Matt coat? From what you wrote, it sounds like the later.

Joel