1/72 Italeri A10 Thunderbolt II
I don’t want to go inte details about this plane, from many reasons, one of that it is that this machine was in fight against my country in 1999. In fact, althought it was very succesful during Gulf war, war in Afghanistan… it has almost none of the results during bombardment of Yugoslavia. JNA (Yugoslav National Army) successfully camouflaged armor vehicles and tanks. Anti Air units didn’t use any radars and complicate weapons against A10s, we used Strela 2M and with very high rate of succes. Many of mine friends and cousins witnessed more than a few A10s got shot during that conflict. Main problem was that they were lured to dive, and shot from the shoulders of Anti Air units with Strela 2M. Neverthless it is very robust and reliable plane which can withstand many hits and survive to land on the friendly airfield.
I took A10 from 1/72 family made by Italeri. I can say that the only one worse model to work with was Ca 310 made by Azur. Fit of this model is simply terrible! Instructions are shameful. Every single position of the canopy made by manual is wrong. Instructions suggest to put 30g of lead into the nose to avoid falling of the model on the back wheels. Nose was complete mass to be done. Awful fit, bottom part is simply on one side bigger, and on the other is smaller. Wheel bay is smaller than wheel console… Real Nightmare, real nightmare… Plastic couldn’t be well melted with thin glue… Lack of panels on some parts… I spend nearly 10 hours just sanding and removing flash from parts… Although I really like A10 I decided not to buy any of addons because the model is so bad that it doesn’t deserve any upgrade sets to be built in this model…
I primed model with mr. Surfacer 1200, and sanded it again and rescribed surface… I didn’t make any rivets, again, this model doesn’t deserve it. I made it completely OOB. A used, recommended by friend, Akan set for Vietnam era and for A10. Paints are very, very good! I used 0.15, 0.2 and 0.4 needles without ANY clogging on the tip of the needle… They are little bit fragile, but after 24 hours they are dried very tough.
I used AK Interactive panel liners and Abteilung 502 oils for weathering. Decals, they were very good, but time took it’s toll, some decals sipmle fell of the model, why, I don’t know… I used MikroSol, Mikroset, gx super clear, but, some decals were simply bad, althought they are made by Cartograf…
So, this is completed nightmare… pardon, model Feel free to coment, cheers
Looks great, Lots of ordnance and a wrap around camo, what’s not to like?
The plane which is wrong one to stare at 🙂 In fact, I see this plane as a extremely bad lookinh, but that bad look rasie love towards it 🙂
Great presentation/build, sir...nice work.
Thank You Craig, cheers 🙂
Very nice, especially with what you had to work with. I recently went through a similar experience with a Mach2 Savage I'm just finishing up... my table was covered in shaved flash and styrene dust! Oh well - price we pay sometimes - makes you appreciate well-made kits.
Thank You Greg! Well, the wort mentioning is 'I'm not rich to buy cheap things'. This was so bad kit that it ruined my pleasure of modelling. But, never give up 🙂
Today is 01-16-2020> I just looked at your October post of the A-10 that was first on "iModeler." To solve the problem with old decals breaking apart is:
I was told in 1985 to spray on ordinary Future Floor Wax, (f.f.w.) onto of the entire decal sheet, then cut around each decal with a sharp #11 X-acto knife blade and then cut out each decal and put it in clean water. Next, remove the excess decal film.
In '85 I was also told to mix a new full bottle of MicroSol in a larger bottle with a full bottle of MicroSet, then refill both of the bottles.
Next, Use a pointed brush and dip it into one of the bottles, then put the mix on the decal while it's still on the paper, and put some on the model where the decal goes with some water too. Slide on the decal and align it in place, then suck off the excess fluid with some clean tissue like Kleanix or Toilet paper. Experiment!. RJW!