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Monogram A-6E TRAM 1/48


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Thanks for looking and the props guys. You hit the nail on the head VA-115EFR, well kind of. Never built Intruders but i do work for Northrop now. Funny as it might seem though, getting information on the A-6, even with my clearance, is practically impossible due to the aircraft's age and the fact that most of the information is not available by computer. Most of the information I've used has come from museum aircraft and readily available modeling reference material.

On another note, been working on the cockpit a bit and recently hit the jackpot on cockpit stuff that i was missing badly. If I can eventually get more than a half hour here and there to build this thing i might actually finish but reality is kids take up 95% of all available time so It's not looking too good right now.

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  • 1 month later...

Finally started working on the cockpit, "Rear Deck" in this case, which i had been postponing until i was certain Aires wouldn't release something better than what was already available. As I'm not a big fan of resin pieces with components molded on top of each other without the proper separation between them, as is usually the case, and also due to the fact that I'm not great at painting such pieces, i decided to just hollow out the deck and just scratch build the components separately. It took a bit of time and research but in the end i think it was worth it.

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Here are a few more pics showing the rear deck coming along. I have a lot more pics of this area as i was building it up but these should be enough to give an idea of how it went together. I'm still not quite finished as I still have to add the large cylinder that opens and closes the canopy which is located centrally on the rear deck. Unfortunately, the cylinder is so large that it will somewhat obscure a lot of the detail beneath it.

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Thanks to all of you that have looked and for the positive remarks. As i stated earlier, the rear deck is almost complete except for the canopy actuating cylinder and associated piping which I'm scratch building now and then start on the canopy slide rails. Aside from that, a few other minor additions should complete the deck.

I'm not quite sure what I'll start next. For some reason, the cockpit tub I have fits terribly as i have about a 1/16th gap on either side of the consoles where they meet the sides of the fuselage. For this reason, the tub has been hard to locate as it wants to float around. Of course my only option is to shim the gaps but this brings about a host of other issues including having to make new consoles entirely amongst other things and precisely the reason I'm avoiding the rest of the cockpit.

Coneheadff.......................as far as the connectors are concerned, I'm not exactly sure what picture you're referring to but most of the connector type pieces were made from small diameter stainless steel tubing from the local hobby shop. I have .020, .024, and .026 O.D. tubing that i have used throughout.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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Finally got some time to work on the items i needed to complete the rear deck. What was left was scratch building the canopy actuating cylinder, two small cylinders towards the aft end of the deck, some more tubing/pipes and a few other structure items. The picture above shows the black box cylinder slightly modified. The cylinder was warped from the factory from about mid way to the aft end. I cut the bad section out and made a new piece from round styrene. I chucked the piece into my Dremel and used it as a makeshift lathe while i cut grooves into it by holding my pin vise with a needle next to it as well as a razor blade. Unfortunately, the cylinder was too large overall and was riding on top of some of the other components i had built so i could not use it and a new one would have to be scratch built.

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The next few pictures show the new cylinder which is made from plastic on the fwd end and some other plastic elements as well as metallic tape from Michael's. The aft end is the straight shank from a small twist drill. The cylinder on the left was my first attempt and it came out too small in diameter. The one on the right is the one i eventually used. The rest of the pictures are also of the cylinder i actually used. The small blue hex shaped elements are made from hex shaped styrene of various sizes. As you can see, i elected to install the associated tubing prior to installing the cylinder as trying to do this later would have been practically impossible. Drilling holes thru the center of those hex shaped pieces was brain racking enough and my patience has been running thin lately so no need to make life harder than it has to be.

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Edited by wardog
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The next few pictures show the rear deck practically complete. There are some structural elements that i hacked off at the very fwd end of the deck due to the fact the resin was really rough and pitted in this area and i could not sand it smooth with those pieces in the way. The pieces would be located right behind the ejection seats and i plan to build that area back up once i glue the deck to the cockpit. If i do it now, there is a chance those pieces will not be centered directly behind each ejection seat and I'll have to break them off and relocate them later................not a good idea. The rear deck has taken months of research and a lot of build time to get everything to fit right with many parts having to be made a second time due to riding conditions. Although the macro lens does not give the viewer a good representation of the actual working area, the opening in the deck where all those details are stuffed into is less than 3/4 of an inch wide and just slightly over half an inch long. This is the main reason It's all taken so long, not to mention everything in there was scratch built. Sure glad this portion of the build is practically complete.

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Amazing details wardog :thumbsup: 3/4" X 1/2" Really? Just awesome :o

/Jesse

Thanks JesniF-16, now if only i can get the TPS paint scheme to come out as good as yours is on your cat I'll be in business. Thanks for looking.

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How do you do it? This is just amazing! I am astounded at the level of detail! Are you going to the nationals with this?

Thanks gonzalo. I started this build December of 08 and the plan was to take it to the 2011 nationals but as you can see, that didn't happen. At the rate I'm building the 2020 nationals is probably more realistic. I have a bad tendency to get a little carried away at times. I had purposely been putting this build on hold after the 07 nationals due to the fact that i knew it was going to be labor intensive. After the nationals i wanted to build something cool and easy so i chose the Classic Airframes TA-4J but realized a few months into it that it was junk so i scrapped it, took some time off from modeling and eventually gave in to the Intruder. I'm hoping the build moves along much faster once the cockpit is done and the fuselage halves are glued.

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