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1/32 Trumpeter A-10C Hog- "Putting Lipstick on a Pig of a Kit"


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Belated Happy Birthday Chuck.

Beautiful Eagles. Awesome Pictures.....I was wondering...are you collecting references for a future F-15 build :whistle:/>/>/> ?

Best wishes from Malta

Alex

PS. I took your advice and bought myself the Rivet Master Beading tool from UMM. It is truly a great tool for riveting and guess what....the tools even fit in my MR Hobby Riveting tool, albeit rather longer that the ones supplied with the tool itself- However if used carefully, the twist action of the Mr Hobby Tool will not be hindered in any way by the extra length of the Rivet Master tools. The great advantage is the wider range of tools available with the Rivet Master set. Thanks again for your help.

Edited by ascomt
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Belated Happy Birthday Chuck.

Beautiful Eagles. Awesome Pictures.....I was wondering...are you collecting references for a future F-15 build :whistle:

Best wishes from Malta

Alex

PS. I took your advice and bought myself the Rivet Master Beading tool from UMM. It is truly a great tool for riveting and guess what....the tools even fit in my MR Hobby Riveting tool, albeit rather longer that the ones supplied with the tool itself- However if used carefully, the twist action of the Mr Hobby Tool will not be hindered in any way by the extra length of the Rivet Master tools. The great advantage is the wider range of tools available with the Rivet Master set. Thanks again for your help.

Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes.

Glad I could be of help Alex. I do have a couple of 1/32 Tamiya F-15's in the stash and some super rare Isradecal decals, so yes, one day I will make a desert scheme Eagle. Should be fun.

Nothing important to report, because I've done zero modelling for weeks. The only reason for this post is to confirm that I WILL finish this model and I will post all progress. Too many times I've watched with great interest some fantastic builds that are 10X better than anything I could come up with, and for some reason they fizzle and disappear. Very disappointing- and this won't be one of those. I look at this Hog almost every day and think it has the necessary attributes to be something special if I'm careful with the finishing touches. No need to rush it.

Today the wind is up and there's a distinct feel of fall in the air-already!!! This hog will be finished soon enough. ;)

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Forgot to mention how much I like your display case Chuck, this might work for displaying my 1/18th F-14B when she's finished. I might need one slightly deeper than 18" however but, I really like how simple it goes together and also NO open seams to allow dust in, thanks for sharing this.

Steve

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Chuck,

I still occasionally fish the NYC reservoirs just north of the city for Large and Smallmouth Bass. And I'm still amazed at the number of Eagles, and even Bald Eagles that we see flying overhead. We have the usual assortment of Deer, Black Bears, Foxes, Coyotes, and even the dreaded Black Water snakes. Of course yesterday it hit 90 plus, but today, it's nasty and cool. I'm home and will be spending some time at the bench doing what I like doing best.

Looking forward to your completion of the "The Pig", and then later the start of your P-38 build.

Joel

Edited by Joel_W
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I have to admit that I'm almost glad your summer is comming to an end! ( yeah I know, I feel guilty tho) I've been suffering without your updates, since I'm fallowing your build from the beginning!! glad to be sure you're finishing it, and We'll get to see how!

Happy belated birthday!!

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Well summer isn't quite over yet, but I did have a little time to finish the Mk 82 AIR (Air Inflatable Retarder) bombs and the LAU 131 rocket launcher. The bombs, which are excellent, are made by Harold of AMS Resin, who markets his products through Sprue Bros. His website is here:

AMS Resin

I chose these type of Mk 82 bombs because they seem to be the most commonly used on the A-10, since they have an actual parachute rather than just wind deflectors like the Snake Eye version, to allow them to be dropped at low altitude without fear of collateral damage of the aircraft. For more info on these bombs, there's a good pic of the parachute assembly here:

Mk 82 AIR 500 lb Bomb

Now the bombs. Looking at many pics of the Mk 82, I notice that sometimes the demarcation line of the front yellow band of the live bombs is sharp, but often it's a bit fuzzy, like the band was hand painted with a spray bomb. This is very evident in Jake's book on page 106. The bomb bodies themselves look a bit dull and dirty, but not as much as the inert ones, likely since they are mounted less often- and sometimes are actually used! Here's what I came up with...

AIRBomb1.jpg

I used Model Master Olive Drab enamel on the body and tail and loosely masked off the yellow front band to get a bit of a fuzzy demarcation line with Insignia Yellow. This was followed by a coat of Future for a few Mk 82 decals, which I got from the stash from the Academy Hornet kit. The white writing should be yellow, but white isn't necessarily wrong either and it's all that I could find in 1/32 scale. The bombs were then dull coated with Testors flat coat lacquer and Tamiya pastels.

AIRBomb2.jpg

The real deal has quite a few wires at the rear of the bomb that I painted silver and a long one all the way to the front of the fuze. Since you are unlikely to see any of this when mounted to the pylons, this may be a waste of time, so I didn't worry about the long wire either- at least for now.

AIRBomb3.jpg

The front plate is just flat where you cut it off the resin sprue, so I added some photo-etch circular plates with rivets for interest to the front, then attached the fuse...

AIRBomb4.jpg

I couldn't find any LAU 131 rocket launchers in 1/32 scale, but the LAU 68 ones from CMK are fairly close. I think Harold may be releasing LAU 131's soon.

Ordnance7.jpg

Unfortunately, the front and back of these launchers are not flush, with depressions around each rocket hole....

OrdnanceLAU68.jpg

So I filled the depressions with CA glue, added some small holes for rivet detail and then drilled out the front and back of the launchers to make them look more realistic. I was going to insert some rockets into the holes, but at this small scale, the dark holes may look more effective left as they are. I can still insert something later if I change my mind. The only decals I placed on it are a serial number on either side, although they often have a fairly large white label at the rear on both sides and on the top. In Jake's book, there's a launcher without these labels, so I went with "less is more" since I don't have the correct decals anyway.

LAU131-1.jpg

The rear of these launchers have some interesting little rods at the rear. I'm not sure what they are for, but in one reference it indicated that they were for "umbilical cords". Maybe our A-10 experts can fill us in.....

LAU131-3.jpg

LAU131connectors.jpg

At this tiny scale, finding something that would fit was a struggle, so I wound up using bits of #80 drill bits, the smallest I could find. I left them a little bit too long to compensate for the thickness of each rod. From a bit of a distance, they look better than this close-up pic, which is upside down compared to the pics above.

LAU131-2.jpg

That's it for now boys. I still have a few trips planned in the next month or two, so thanks for your patience.

Chuck

Edited by chuck540z3
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Chuck,

I had to join and say what a fantastic job your doing with this A-10. I am a previous 462 (weapons load crew member for those that don't know) on the 0A-10A at Osan Airbase South Korea 1993-1994. This is my all time favorite plane. I prefer the old style as I worked on them. I have the Trumpeter A-10 model also, slowly (over the past 10 years) I have been laying out the electrical for my build. I am placing electric motors in the engine cells and working lights on it. Thank god for LED's! I also say I have a couple scars on my fingers from those pins on the back of those rocket pods. They snap back when loading and you push them forward when your done loading the rockets. The wrap around fin rockets were the worst. They would spring open when you were trying to load them. Sometimes they would slice your hand open with a pretty nasty cut.

Dan

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Chuck,

I had to join and say what a fantastic job your doing with this A-10. I am a previous 462 (weapons load crew member for those that don't know) on the 0A-10A at Osan Airbase South Korea 1993-1994. This is my all time favorite plane. I prefer the old style as I worked on them. I have the Trumpeter A-10 model also, slowly (over the past 10 years) I have been laying out the electrical for my build. I am placing electric motors in the engine cells and working lights on it. Thank god for LED's! I also say I have a couple scars on my fingers from those pins on the back of those rocket pods. They snap back when loading and you push them forward when your done loading the rockets. The wrap around fin rockets were the worst. They would spring open when you were trying to load them. Sometimes they would slice your hand open with a pretty nasty cut.

Dan

Thanks Dan. What the heck are those pins for exactly?

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Chuck here are couple of LAU-131 rocket pods pics:

http://www.defense.gov/dodcmsshare/photoessay/2014-03/hires_140303-Z-YH452-099a.jpg

http://www.defense.gov/dodcmsshare/photoessay/2014-03/hires_140303-Z-YH452-111a.jpg

Those are M-257 illumination rockets being loaded. I'm not familiar with the LAU-131 pod but the rockets are fired electrically, various pods had different types of rocket fingers we called them which made contact with the rocket and when the pilot went to fire them, a small electrical impulse fired the rocket. The rocket fingers we had we had were shaped like a J.

Jari

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Hey Chuck been a long time since I last posted on your Hog, but forget the Hog, show us some more of that down right purty country.....hehehehe! Ur doing an awesome job on this beast, really love your Mk.82 bombs, very clean and crisp. Damn I wish I had an 1/1,000,000th your modeling ability. Cant wait to see more!

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