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Monogram A-6E TRAM 1/48


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Thanks for posting guys...........it does help to encourage me as sometimes It's difficult to get back on the bench if I've been away from it for a while!

Check Six......Agree, any update is better than no update at all......just wish I had more to show. BTW, thought you were gonna be in town last year?????

E.

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That's amazing work to gut the seats like that. Don't forget the ribbed seats weren't seen in the fleet. You'll need to fill in the ribs on those cushions. ;)/>.

Can't wait for more!

Hello Brian, Thanks for your post. Can you elaborate on the use of ribbed seat cushions/time frame? Every major reference source I own (Detail & Scale, Walk-around, Verlinden Lock-On)for the A-6 have pics inside that show the ribbed seats and I have to assume at least some of those aircraft were fleet jets. The one thing I have noticed is there doesn't seem to be a common configuration for all A-6 seats with respect to seat cushions. In many cases, an individual seat will have a combination of ribbed/non-ribbed cushions with some being either completely ribbed or solid cushion type. Also, I have pics that show the same jet with two differently configured seats but I guess that's to be expected as availability/configuration changes dictate what is used.

Thanks

Elmo

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  • 3 months later...

It's that time of the decade again for a small update. Although It's not a big update, it is a step closer to the finish line. Except for a few other items and paint, the instrument coaming is finally complete. To date, the coaming and the instrument panel were by far the most troublesome pieces for me to fit into the model correctly. It is the Wolfpack coaming which didn't fit my model to begin with, along with the Kinetic instrument panel......all of course, on the Monogram kit. Since neither of those two parts are meant for my kit, fit was obviously a challenge. As both pieces make up the assembly, It's important to fit the instrument panel to the coaming correctly and then work to fit the assembly into the cockpit; needless to say, I used Tamiya Light Curing Putty extensively to get the best fit possible. I also shimmed certain areas to level out the assembly. The coaming itself was stripped of all the original detail and replaced with styrene. The Wolfpack coaming is actually pretty nice; It's probably the nicest of the aftermarket ones available in 48th scale. I decided to re-do it all due to the fact I had to sand so much of the detail away just to make it fit. Ultimately, the end result is a little more accurate so I'm good with it.

First, a few pics of the coaming taken at the Yanks Air Museum. As you can see, there is a lot of detail there. From what I've seen, the one item that every kit and aftermarket kit manufacturer has got wrong is the orientation of the big vent placed at the center of the coaming. It's a rectangle shape with the long sides in a side to side orientation as opposed to forward/aft as molded in every kit coaming I've seen to date.

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Here's a few pics of the coaming with a heavy coat of primer prior to adding all the surface detail. The bomb sight housing was completely re-done and has actually been refined a bit from what's shown in these pics. It's not completely accurate due to limitations caused by the general shape of the coaming which I couldn't do anything about. The bulbous edges were done with .020 styrene rod shaved down to a half round profile.

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These next pics show how I made the straps shown on the real thing. Although five thousands styrene is very thin, It's actually too thick to use as the straps would have to conform over bends and curves and once glued, want to separate at stress points. To fix this problem, I shaved the styrene down with a razor blade to about two thousands of an inch, thereby eliminating the stiffness in the straps. This would make the styrene straps a lot more flexible and easier to work with. I first used Tamiya tape to locate where the straps would be located and then I sprayed the area over with flat black. Once I removed the tape I had perfect location indicators and proceeded by drilling small holes along the location path every so often at key stress points. I located the straps with white glue, being careful not to get white glue in the vicinity of the holes and then followed with super glue from underneath over the holes. I was careful not to get white glue in the vicinity of the holes as the glue creates a thin layer between the coaming and bottom of the straps and when super gluing from underneath, the super glue will stick to the white glue layer instead of the strap. I super glued from underneath for two main reasons, 1) To avoid using super glue when gluing the straps down initially from the top and getting unwanted glue everywhere and 2)The straps are pieces I don't ever want lifting up over time as fixing them would be almost impossible once the windscreen is in place; that said,super glue has to be used in certain areas to guarantee they will never lift up.

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More to come tomorrow!

Wardog

Edited by wardog
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AMAZING! MORE! MORE! MORE!

You could post the most mundane of work pictures or a thousand slightly different detail shots and we'd all eat it up. This has to be one of the greatest modeling projects I've ever seen. Would love to see it in person sometime. And (shameless plug) I would be most cool to see Fightertown Decals on it...

Keep them coming. No update is too small here.

-brian

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Thanks to all that have replied.....glad you like the work. Here is the rest of what I meant to upload last night before it got too late. These pics show the coaming about 98% complete; only thing missing now is the three spring looking things on top of the bomb sight housing and the little tabs they attach to....and paint.

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This pic shows where I decided to use Tamiya tape to make the curved portion of the straps as making them out of styrene would have been challenging to get an even width along the length.

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Few more

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Hopefully the follow-on primer coat will not reveal too many unwanted gaps. Thanks for looking.

Elmo

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Hi Wardog,

Tell me, please, how on Earth do you manage to scale down the real things? ;)

I went through your thread thoroughly once again and I just was blown away.

Absolutely amazing!

You really have gold in your hands!

Cheers and happy modeling!

Alexander

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Thanks again to all for looking and the great comments; really appreciate it. I know progress is slow but time is always hard to come by, especially for a hobby.

Alexander......Thank you as well; you have to appreciate it when people devote their time to review your WIP in full. Not sure if your question regarding scaling down is a real question or a kind gesture, that said, I'll answer just in case. One of the main reasons I take so long to build, aside from not having enough time is that I spend a great deal of time looking at reference pics. I spent more time looking at reference pics of the I.P and Coaming than most people spend building the average model. As I study the pictures, I'm looking for and establishing reference points from one detail to another; in other words, how is this part located in relationship to another, and so on. The other part to making things look decent is taking your time to make the stuff....I'll admit, this part does take a little skill but even more patience. In the case of the straps for the coaming, they were so thin it was really hard to handle them without inadvertently screwing them up.....not to mention drilling holes in them to create the little slots. But even with all the time spent looking at reference pics, and now that the coaming is almost done, I can still see areas where I made mistakes in judgement. The bulbous edges were made with .020 styrene rod.....in comparison to the pics of the real thing, I probably should have used a smaller diameter. On the last pic on post 380, you can see there is a small section of coaming to the right of the bombardiers section that is raised higher....I didn't get that right either. I think what you see in my pics is really not that big of a deal and can be done by most semi-experienced modelers if they chose to spend countless hours on building almost nothing....LOL.

Thanks again for looking

Elmo

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Hi Wardog,

Tell me, please, how on Earth do you manage to scale down the real things?

I too have long wondered how Wardog achieves such fineness. It's as if he possesses some kind of shrinking technology.

It turns out that's his secret. Thanks to the tabloid journals, I can reveal this rare photograph of "Wardog" (which is just one of his many nom-de-guerres, as you'll see)...

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pWdKf3MneyI/maxresdefault.jpg

Sorry to blow your cover dude, but the bounty was irresistible!

Seriously, some of the finest work I've ever seen Elmo...can't wait for the next installment.

Rich (allthumbs)

Edited by RichB63
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Thanks again to all that have replied.

Rich.......you got me.......guess the secret is out now. Gotta give you credit, that was funny. Thank you as well for your comments.

11bee......Thanks for looking and your suggestion. Once I finish my Intruder I plan on taking a break from model building and concentrating on making some things for the aftermarket. I don't know anything about casting but I'll learn soon enough.

Elmo

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Hello Elmo! Thought I would stop by and see your progress since I am happily back online again. Fantastic as always! I certainly can appreciate the "lack of time" for building. I too suffer from that from time to time and I have to remind myself that my pace is just that, "my pace." What I admire the most from your work is that you seem to effortlessly detail/scratch build with a plan of how you will assemble said detail without, seemingly, any "Ooops" to it. Something I lack terribly! Haha.

-Mark

Edited by taggor
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Hello Elmo! Thought I would stop by and see your progress since I am happily back online again. Fantastic as always! I certainly can appreciate the "lack of time" for building. I too suffer from that from time to time and I have to remind myself that my pace is just that, "my pace." What I admire the most from your work is that you seem to effortlessly detail/scratch build with a plan of how you will assemble said detail without, seemingly, any "Ooops" to it. Something I lack terribly! Haha.

-Mark

taggor,

Thanks for posting. Although I try and do my due-diligence with planning a build, the truth is I still have my fair share of "Ooops" all the time. Fact of the matter is this hobby has sneaky surprises waiting for you all the time. I make a ton of corrections for my mistakes but they're not always evident from the pics I post because they are post-repair pics. As an example, I recently applied a coat of primer to the coaming and once dry, clearly visible were all the white glue swirl marks I failed to clean up properly. The fix is simple but It's another step I wasn't counting on having to deal with. I often use white glue as a filler if a gap is small enough but I obviously failed to do a thorough clean-up job this time; note to self......make sure to clean up all white glue residue and if used, spray a very light coat of primer to start just in case I have to fix any issues.

Thanks again for looking

Elmo

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  • 1 month later...

Amazing work - can I ask what you have used as references for the details you have added?

Hello crobinsonh,

Thanks for your comments; really appreciate it. As far as reference material goes, I have the basics available on the market for the A-6...Detail and Scale, Verlinden Lock-On, Walk-Around, Aeroguide and Warbird Tech. I've also been fortunate to have been given reference photos from some of the members from this site and even got some pics sent to me from the Pensacola Naval Air Museum. However, the majority of detail reference material has come by way of pics I have taken myself. As this model became a science project, I needed better pics to help with the detailing I was planning. I live in Southern California and luckily for me, there are a few A-6's in the area. The Yanks Air Museum at the Chino Airport has two in their yard and also have a complete nose section with cockpit within the museum. For an extra fee, they'll let you in the yard and walk around all day if you like. They even provided me a ladder to get on top of both the A-6's there. Palm Springs has a very nice and complete example sitting outside the air museum and the USS Midway in San Diego has one sitting on the deck. There are also a few others closer to the San Fransisco area but I have not seen those.

Thanks

Elmo

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