Fujimi 1/72 A-6A Intruder

While this is not the only 1/72 A-6 (both Hasegawa and Italeri do one and there may be others), for many modelers, this one is the one to get.

This is probably only the second or third A-6 I have built with the others being a Hasegawa EA-6B and in 1/48 Fujimi's really old A-6A, and the newer Revell A-6E. I have heard a lot of good things about this one and since there is a hole in my collection at the moment, it seemed like a good opportunity to give one of these a go.

First thing I did was to paint the interior bits with FS 362341 dark gull grey, the standard color for US planes for decades and it still is today. I also assembled the bang seats. These are fairly well done, but quite fiddly and they do not fit together all that well. These were set aside once they were painted. The kit has raised instrument detail, but also supplies decals so I used the decals atop the detailing.

Other bits assembled were the drop tanks and the exhaust bits. The latter items were painted with Vallejo tinny tin. The intake sections that hold the compressor faces were first painted white (actually, I painted a LOT of bits white while they were still on the sprue), and then the aluminum painted faces were glued on the back. These are handed and while they are rather open, there is a reason for it as they fit into some pretty tight spaces.

With the cockpit bits glued together, I installed them into the right fuselage half. The next bits I glued were the exterior exhaust nozzles. Then the exhaust trunking was glued in place. There is no positive locator for this and while there is an indentation on one side, the instructions are moot as to where it fits. Eventually they were glued in so they aimed down as I figured that was where the engine was and not higher in the fuselage. You have to wiggle it around quite a bit to be sure it lines up with the exterior exhaust nozzle piece. The front compressor section was glued in as well and before it dried, I installed the nose gear well. You can see how all this fits in the image. It is not pretty, but does work.

The same was done to the other fuselage half and before it all dried, I cemented the fuselage halves together. I was glad I did not let it all set solidly as I'd have had some real fit issues if I had. With the glue still pliable, I was able to get all the pieces in place.

I then glued on the intakes after assembling the halves, and then inserted the forward lower center section. It is important to fit this lower piece before the intakes dry all the way or there may well be a step to deal with and the need to do trimming that isn't necessary. Generally, the fit is not all that good as the intakes and exhaust sections, for example, had some rather large gaps. Nothing that filler cannot handle, but be advised they are there. I should mention that the scheme I am going to use does not have the perforated dive brakes so I did not have to open up the hinge areas and simply glued the optional plates in place.

I then installed the rear bits to the fuselage, followed by the usual filler. I overdid the sanding on one of the ending exhaust areas so had to install a small section of card to take care of the gap. I also put 7 grams of weight in the nose and attached the nose cone. Meanwhile, the wings had the halves assembled after drilling out the holes in the lower wing for the pylons. The forward mating join is right in the middle of all the slat actuating arms. One wing was fine and some scraping took care of the seam, but the other needed filling. This was not fun. These were then attached and as usual, there were gaps on the top seam.

With the wings in place, I then added the landing gear. The forward hole for the nose gear needed to be drilled out. The retraction struts for the main gear are a rather unusual fit and were difficult to get into place. I also took the time to add some antennas and scoops. The fin tip was painted green and the intake splitter plates painted red and then masked off. I also painted the underside of the slats and the slat are in red as well. This was all masked. The seats were installed, the clear bits were masked off and glued in place.  

USN planes of this era was light gull grey over white with white upper control surfaces. So I painted everything on the underside in white along with the rudder and the flaps and ailerons. This included the radome, gear doors, wheels and a number of other bits. When dry for a few days, this was all masked off, a rather long job. Then the fin was painted black. I used Tamiya gloss white and black for these. The rest of the airframe was painted light gull grey using Testors Model Master paints. I then masked off the leading edges of the tailplanes and wings and painted those a light tan color. I used Model Master sand for this and perhaps a darker shade would be easier to see. As you can see, even a 'simple' scheme requires a lot of masking to look good.

When that was done, I painted the edges of the gear doors with a red Sharpie and started slowly attaching gear doors. The aft main gear door rear stub has to be cut off to allow the door to properly fit. All the other doors were a pain to attach as they are butt joins. Meanwhile, I used the Fujimi nose antiglare  and wing walk decals as the Microscale sheet I was using did not provide those. The Fujimi decals took an age to come loose from the backing and the antiglare one was a bit too large and required some trimming to fit.

For the remainder of the markings, I chose Microscale sheet 72-128 that has four sets of markings for the A-6. Typical of their very early sheets, this one includes no national insignia, those markings to come from another sheet of insignia. I chose to do an A-6A of VA-115 'Chargers' as I saw these planes on the ramp or in the hangar where I worked when with VQ-1 in the early 1970s. Despite this or a similar scheme being offered in the ancient Hasegawa A-6A kit and that fact that I did my Revell 1/48 A-6E in their later low viz markings, I've always liked the ones I saw in my youth.

I used Microscale sheet 72-084 for the insignia, and despite their age, they worked just fine. I had to cut the one on the upper wing because of a wing fence. I also discovered that this sheet, designed for the ancient Hasegawa kit had markings that were a tad large for the Fujimi kit. This was apparent with the tail markings which barely fit. I was quite pleased that, despite their age, the decals performed as expected. I left off most of the data markings as those old Microscale sheets were pretty weak on placement info.

Once all the markings were in place, there was the usual plethora of bits to attach. All the pylons were attached and a good dozen bombs were cleaned up, painted and glued onto the MERs. The various small antennas and lights were then attached. I reattached the refueling probe probably four times as it is so easy to knock off. The tail hook was painted and installed. I had to sand off a small tab on the bottom of the outer pylons in order to install the MER. The masking was removed from the clear bits and that was it.

Until something else comes along in this scale, the Fujimi kit is pretty much the best one around. Not to say the old Hasegawa kit is bad, nor is the Italiari version, but many prefer this one. The kit is quite fiddly to build, thanks to the way the kit is engineered and I probably made most of the mistakes one can make when building this one. I like jets, but I don't like all that stuff you have to put under the wings to make it look right. Sort of hard to not do that with a plane like the A-6 or any other attack type as carrying stuff was what they did. These kits are still out there and not all that difficult to locate, so if you want one, a bit of searching will locate one to add to your collection. 

Grumman Aircraft since 1929 by Rene J Francillon

June 2013

Review kit courtesy of me and my wallet!