1/72 Revell A-6E TRAM |
Gallery Article by Dave DeLang
on
Nov 10 2003
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USMC
228th Birthday!!! Semper Fi
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There's a long story
associated with this one. I used to work for a company who's major cash cow was
refurbishing A-6 wing pylons. One of our QA guys built a Revell 1/72 A-6 in
honor of that. He built it with more enthusiasm than skill. It was kind of
slapped together, gaping seams, hand-daubed coat of gunship gray and white for
paint. The bombs were black with red tips just like the instructions said. He
made a little stand out of a coat hanger and had it proudly stuck up on the top
of an equipment rack. He went on vacation one week and I took it down and
brought it home. I bought the same kit and assembled it as a facsimile of his
kit complete with hand-daubing of gunship gray. Except...I used Elmer's white
glue to put it together and only the absolute minimum amount of dots of glue to
allow it to barely hold together against the force of gravity. I brought it to
work and put my fake up in his model's spot on the rack. Our victim returned
from his vacation and suspected nothing amiss. I waited for my chance and
plotted with co-conspirators. A few days later we had a new employee come in to
work and as was done from time to time we took the model down to show the newbie
what exactly these things we worked on were. I set the fake down on our victim's
desk and after a bit he went off for a smoke or something. He was kind of well
known for extended smoke breaks and the manager was kind of an A-hole about it
so it wasn't suspicious for the manager to be waiting for our victim when he got
back and not at all out of character for Mr. manager to start hammering on our
unsuspecting victim as soon as he returned. Mr. manager is hollering at our
victim and as he does he picks up the fake A-6 by the wingtip and smacks it
against the desk for emphasis (he's in on the joke) and only being held together
by tiny drops of white glue, it shatters! Victim sees this and his eyes bug out,
he can't yell at or punch the manager over a stupid plastic model so he storms
off in frustration. A little while later he comes back and sees his model back
up on the rack all in one piece as if nothing had happened. I told him what we'd
done and for some reason he didn't think it was funny. Years later he still
didn't think it was funny.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Anyway, I had gathered up the
pieces of my decoy and brought them home. Eventually I decided I might as well
glue it together for real and finish it up. I used it as kind of a test bed for
new techniques (several of which were learned of here on ARC). I figured it was
a good candidate for experimentation as it wouldn't be much of a loss if I
screwed it up. I smoothed and filled the canopy/fuselage seam so I had to polish
the canopy afterward. I had to fill the seam down the middle of the two piece
canopy as well. I used epoxy to make the frame down the middle. I added a little
bit of detail to the cockpit: piping, ejection seat handles, decal consoles. I
used liquid glue and an old toothbrush to add the "thermal coating"
texture to the MK-82s after working a little bit on them to correct their shape
and thin the fins. I scribed a groove around the bombs where the bomb body meets
the tail section to act as a barrier to the liquid cement and brushed on a
couple of coats to soften the plastic. Then I tapped the bristles of the
toothbrush until it picked out peaks in the softened plastic. Then another coat
of liquid cement to smooth it down a little. Tips are squared off and a bit of
rod used to make the fuse. The rods were about an inch long at first and served
as handles while I did the rest of the work on them. The stripes are hand
painted and I dry-brushed with a lightened olive drab to highlight the texture
and to dull down the strips. Pictures show that the yellow strips are often
pretty rough. The MERs in the kit are horrible. I didn't have anything in the
spares box so I worked on the kit pieces. I used rectangles of plastic card for
the shoulder station ejector racks and putty to build up the nose fairing. Thin
solder represents the ejection gun firing cables. I added tiny bits of strip for
the sway braces. Brass wire was inserted in holes in the racks and eventually
the bombs were glued to the wires by way of matching holes in the bomb bodies.
This allows the bombs to be aligned after they're glued on the MERs as well as
being an easy way to make a firm connection.