For the first installment of my In Scale series of scale model aircraft builds, I’m pleased to present my just-completed 1/48 scale Hasegawa A-4F Skyhawk, wearing the colorful test livery of BuNo 154175, assigned to the Naval Air Test Center at NAS Patuxent River, circa July 1969 (reference photo).
Build Overview
The venerable Hasegawa A-4 tooling has been around for nearly a quarter century, first debuting in 2000 and re-released, in Hasegawa’s inimitable way, with new parts and decals over forty times since. This build comes from the A-4E Skyhawk “Top Gun” Limited Edition (2023), which contains parts for both the E and F variants of the Scooter. The kit’s various foibles have been well documented over the years, the most notable being the step in the front slat wells on the leading edges; the real aircraft has a continuous slope from the well to where the wing resumes. I chose not to fix the error, as my scratch repair job would have been far more noticeable than a subtle geometry error that one has to know to look for.
The build itself posed few tricky situations, with more-than-acceptable parts fit in keeping with the “TamiGawa” reputation from Japan’s two major kit makers for effortless builds. I did have some difficulty with three specific areas.
The engine exhaust piece failed to fit snugly once the fuselage was sealed, possibly owing to an imprecise seating of the exhaust trunking, necessitating a fair bit of filler (and, eventually, an aftermarket exhaust cover) before I was satisfied.
The engine intakes, with their red banding and white interiors, turned into a mini-model of their own, needing to be painted, assembled, and masked before they were faired into the fuselage. I removed the molded stiffening plates, in keeping with my prototype, which made matters easier, as the plate, split between the intake piece and the fuselage piece, wasn’t going to match up no matter my sanding or a (mostly) judicious application of force. I added aftermarket intake covers, but mostly for visual interest; rest assured that the intakes are a paragon of precision painting…
It’s long been a modeling adage that if a part can be posed open, the kit manufacturer expects that’s how it will be built, with the “closed” option often an afterthought. Any manufacturer that includes a bespoke closed part wins major points in my book (and wallet). With the Hasegawa A-4, the rear fuselage speed brakes most definitely want to be built open, and getting the pieces to conform to the fuselage contours required no little effort, mostly spent sanding the parts into some semblance of pleasant harmony.
Otherwise, the Hasegawa A-4F proved a pleasant build. The one piece wing bottom obviates the need for much seam filling down there, and the arresting hook happily covers most of the remainder of the bottom seam.
I went with a closed canopy for this build, though I imagine the piece could be posed open without too much fuss. Clear parts fit was very good, and the cockpit detailing, though sparse by today’s standards, more than suffices given that the Skyhawk’s cramped office can scarcely be seen even with the canopy open.
Aftermarket
As ever, this build involved a fair deal of aftermarket detail parts. The previously mentioned exhaust plug came from Phase Hangar Resin, as part of their 3D-printed A-4 Intake and Exhaust Cover Set, and it fit exactly, not friction-tight but just snug enough to stay in place without being difficult to remove. I had less success with the intake covers from that set, the thin printed-on grab handles snapping when I removed them from the supports, but I bought the set for the exhaust cover, having previously acquired a set of Quickboost resin A-4 FOD covers, which are the covers in use here. They have a tendency to fall out when looked at sternly, but they fit well enough (and long enough) for a photo shoot.
I splurged on a replacement crew ladder from LP Models, and it painted up wonderfully, but I just couldn’t get it to work with the ladder receptacle on the port side of the fuselage, which I drilled out before picking up the part. I attribute the issue to user error rather than any flaw with the part. The pictures with a ladder in the raised position are of the kit supplied part; the ladder on the ground is the LP Models part.
The most notable aftermarket comes in the form of the pair of 3D-printed Aero 1D 300-gallon drop tanks, via Flying Leatherneck. The kit drop tanks are frightfully basic, lacking any detail whatsoever. These tanks have detail to spare, particularly with the characteristic fuel-filler cap towards the left front of the tanks. I fumbled a bit with the tank assembly, thinking the joins where the nose and fin attach were meant to have a visible seam; they were most decidedly not, and much filling, sanding, and swearing ensued, but the final result isn’t too bad. They required a bit of surgery to fit on the kit pylons, but nothing too radical, and they don’t affect the center of gravity sufficiently to turn a properly-weighted Hasegawa A-4 into a tail-sitter. (I did manage to drop one and snap off the fin, alas, after painting, so the starboard tank has a slightly cracked fin.)
Rounding out the aftermarket, I used a pre-made display base from Zoukei-Mura, which remains the best $20 I’ve ever spent in the hobby; and I added some figures painted for an earlier build for visual interest. They come from the very nice ICM US Pilots and Ground Personnel (Vietnam War) set.
Decals, Paint, Weathering
The inspiration for this build derives from Caracal Models’ recent A-4E/F Skyhawk sheet, which features two liveries for 154175 while serving at Pax River. My reference photo differs from both included schemes on the sheet, but the necessary decals for the chosen look were all present. Printed by Cartograf, the Caracal decals behaved superbly, bedding down nicely over a gloss surface with no silvering whatsoever. The sheet includes most stenciling as well, so I didn’t use any of the kit decals at all.
The only iffy decal issue arose when it came time to place the US insignia over the wing vortex generators on the port wing, the bane of any US Navy or Marine Skyhawk build. I erred on the side of caution and hoped that prodigious applications of MicroSol would get the decal to conform, but I needed to have been more aggressive with actually pressing down on the decal during the initial application, I think, as it’s not a “painted on” look, with slight contours visible between the strakes. To their credit, the Cartograf/Caracal decals held up to the MicroSol, only tearing when I tried to force the issue (literally). A tiny piece of white decal from a spare on the sheet covered most of my sins, but it’s the one weak point with the decals on the build, all due to the user.
Ordinarily I would paint the wing walkways, but the protruding fuselage promised to make masking tricky, so I opted for decals instead. Neither the Caracal sheet nor the kit decals came with solid black walkways, so I sourced them from an A-4 sheet via MilSpec Decals. They seemed just slightly too long to me, but a quick trim got them in place with no issues.
I’m an inveterate lacquer airbrusher, and I laid down an initial primer coat of Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500, black for the main body and pink for the nose, wings tips, tail, and drop tanks that would be in orange/red/white. I find that pink primer is perfect for colors that need a bit of pop.
For the warning orange, I used Mr. Paint International Orange (MRP 232), my first time spraying the brand, and it behaved nicely, needing only thin coats to provide good coverage. I started out with Mr. Paint Insignia White (MRP099) for the drop tanks but found that the primer cast a faint pink tone through the white, no matter how many coats I sprayed down, so I overcoated the tanks with Mr. Color Off White (C069). Oddly, the outboard flaps, which were also primed in pink and painted with MRP099, show no such bleed through. For the red on the slat wells and intakes, I used Mr. Color Insignia Red (C327), which proved to be a near match for the Caracal intake warning decals as well.
I employed a black basing technique for the main gull grey and white colors, spraying a thinned-down mottle coat through a stencil to create a semi-random pattern before covering it with an overall blend coat, allowing a faint trace of the black primer to bleed through irregularly, in hopes of providing a bit of color depth. For the uppers I used Real Colors Light Gull Grey (RC220) as the mottle coat; it appears slightly darker than Mr. Color Grey FS16440 (C315), which I used as the blend coat, providing a bit more contrast. For the bottom color, I deviated from the traditional glossy insignia white, opting instead for Mr. Color Off White (C069) as the mottle and blend colors, resulting in a fairly worn look.
Indeed, I pursued a heavy weathering approach with this build, both in the choice of a more muted, dulled-down white and in the fairly aggressive weathering with oils, done with a warm grey oil paint variously thinned into a wash and then applied somewhat more heavily in areas like the wing walkways. Though I’m sure no crew chief would let his or her aircraft out of the hangar quite so scuffed up, I’m envisioning the end of a series of grueling test flights in the frankly oppressive summer humidity of southern Maryland, as well as a bit of artistic license. This particular airframe went through so many changes of scheme that I wager it was repainted as often as it was scrubbed down…
Tamiya weathering powders around the exhaust round out the weathering details for the build. A final dull coat of Winsor and Newton Galeria Matt Varnish went down at the end to seal everything in.
On the Shelf
On the whole, an enjoyable build, and one that really stretched my skills. Though the weathering might be a bit overdone, I was shooting for a uniformity of tone and finish, and while it might not be the glossy Skyhawk one expects, I’m pleased to add this 1/48 Hasegawa A-4F to my shelf.
The orange pop of the NATC test livery stands out amidst a sea of otherwise monotone military grey. And on to the next build…