Thanks my friends @eb801, @holzhamer, pb_legend and @coling!

Yep, the A-20/P-70 was for sure on of AMT's better offerings. It has good general shape, well detailed cockpit OOB (les detailed gunners area, admittedly), MLG legs with brake lines molded etc. Not bad for a 90's era kit! It is regularly reboxed by Italeri (once Revell reboxed the A-20, as well), with better styrene quality (though I found the AMT styrene just as nice, despite the moaning I've read...). Quite a bit of AM exists, too.

Well, about my current running builds, I just cannot stay out of yet another GB, there are such nice GBs here! And the people who run them, but also the members, are wonderful guys; how can I refrain from joining? 🙂 Since I have something like 8-10 ongoing builds, I try to focus at the "GB" ones, posting even a tiny step for each one of them relatively frequently. I admit I was scared to have many ongoing projects runnung simultaneously, but it is manageble, and the feedback from our friends here is uterly rewarding.

Andrew, I also have an A-20 kit, looking forward to put it together. So, after clearing some bench space (famous last words...), we might join forces and build them. Our friend @lgardner might join, as well, so as to finish his half finished one!

Colin, regrettably :-), I admit that, whenever possible, in my builds (such as in this one), I assemble the plane and paint the cockpit, ummmm, after exterior painting... So, yes, the P-7) is glued together! After external painting, I will brush paint the crew areas with their basic interior green, then detail paint IP(s), consoles, levers etc black/red/yellow/white, with my 10/0 brush, apply a light black wash and some drybrushing. I will finally install the seat and stick, followed by the canopy, that I will have already brush painted. I will fair the resulting gaps with white glue. I know this approach is not very puristic: I might prepare/paint the full cockpit before installing to the model, then mask it etc. I might also install/fair the canopies before painting, mask them and then paint the model...oh, well! 🙂

Hey. Spiros. As I said about the cockpit painting technique, just curious. You do some really attractive models and whatever works for you is 100% legit. Since I got the fuselage halves together on my P-61 and SuE without glue for various technical reasons, I thought you might be doing the same thing. For what its worth, your P-70/A-20 build got me thinking about certain advantages in painting a pit after fuselage assembly and even after painting the exterior. One of the things I learned from over at Hyperscale was pre-painting an entire cockpit flat black, then misting on the pit color over that downward over the sidewalls and other components. The idea was to create shadows that you could get best by leaving a pre-shade under each rib and detail (this was something I first saw Brett Green do when finishing his CA Westland Whirlwind, years ago). I tend to use this technique routinely now, especially with US Chromate Green cockpits. The thing is, the full effect is most visible when the pit is closed up as a kind of visual illusion of depth that accents or enhances real shadows. You could achieve the same thing (and speed up cockpit painting) by brush painting the pit all black first, then using your airbrush for the main color. The shadows would fall all in the right places because the structure of the pit would block the spray just like real fittings and ribbing block light. The instrument panel and black consoles could be masked off as black or painted black again after the green overspray. All external paintwork would be easy to mask in the process, the pit having a boxy opening. Anyway, I am sure brush painting would look fine anyway, especially under the closed perspex with attention on the seat. I just thought this technique might be of interest and save you time, while creating a rather attractive effect. Once again, not my idea but something cool I picked up from a fellow modeler. 🙂 Incidentally, I have a couple of AMT A-20 Havocs in suspended production - one to do a D-Day aircraft (Havocs look great in D-Day stripes) and another to do an Pacific Theater Air Apaches Havoc with rockets and a shark mouth. I think the AMT A-20s are great kits that can be turned in to gems with patience. Watching your work with great interest, as always.

Thanks my friend @coling! This shading technique sounds great! I must give it a try!

Regarding my brush painting, it more has to do with easiness and also with the fact I am used to it. By all means, my cockpit results are definitely A LOT lesser than great jobs, like yours (your Buffalo cockpit just spread into my mind - oh, my! this is a masterpiece!).

It is just that I usually close my canopies, so the lesser job is not so easilly justified 🙂

The AMT Havocs are super cool kits. I have another one unbuilt, planning to finish it as a Russian bird (OD over gray, with light green patches on top, a cool slogan at one side, no Russian stars on top of the wings, how cooler can it get?)... So, since our firiends Erik @eb801 and Louis @lgardner have already expressed kind of interest for doing/finishing their A-20s "at some time", am I seeing a bulding wish thread here? 🙂 In case of a "go" decision, count me in, Gentlemen!

Commenting on the sanding of the nose of your AMT P-70. Spiros what you've done so far . . . when looking at the photo you posted of the real aircraft, you could paint a lighter color of Black/Gray, mask off the painted transparency's and paint a darker shade with several paint layers leaving a out line of the metal bracing. That should be effective in representing the nose.

Well I strapped in next to Erik, dozed off, woke up and Spiros has his P-70 almost darn ready for paint. As mentioned pretty much by everyone here, I also have this kit and one other

A-20 Havoc. And I have seen a few built and done very well. This one as well will be a nice model once finished. You know everyone has their own techniques and styles in building. Some borrowed to great success. But the end result is what matters. As one has certain preferences which works for them and that is all that matters. The passion is there regardless. So far Spiros looking good. Looking forward to the next installment.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure: (mostly recovering actions) update...

The statement that beautiful, detailed boxarts are always correct is, of course, wrong...
Having read somewhere-somehow that AMT P-70 cowlings are wrong, I assumed that the different looking boxart (very detailed) ones would be right. This belief was even more amplified by the (wrong) exhausts depiction at my (original) AMT painting diagrams...

The fact that Italeri reissued this kit in 2013 with a dramatic boxart, depicting "Dusty" with the kit supplied cowlings did not seem to affect me (it should, though...).
So, as you might have read at my boring thread above, I removed the exhaust protrusions (wrong!) and flattened a tad the two bilateral air exit protrusions (not that wrong: they are merely noticeable in reality).
In order to restore the small exhaust fairings that I had removed, I first downloaded the recent very nice Italeri instructions, that contain a head-on parts diagram. I isolated the section that contains the cowlings... As you can see there are 7 protrusions at the starboard and 6 at the port one. I enlarged the image sufficiently, placed the cowlings at my laptop screen... ...and copied the fairings locations... ...I then shaved some round sprue rods... ...cut them in small parts... ...and attached them in place... Upon curing, they will be faired to look like in reality.
Some better news is that the nose framing did not disappear...
The underbelly gondola had its gun holes drilled out and attached into place, as well...
Thanks for stopping by (and I hope this will be my last unnecessary loop, at least for this build... 🙂 ).

Spiros, @fiveten
Man you are moving at light speed on this build ! One day I notice the build thread was started, and the next time I check in you are almost ready to spray on some color...

It's looking magnificent !

You just might be able to talk me into finishing up my A-20... and as I mentioned earlier, I have some more of these AMT 1/48 scale A-20's and 2 of the P-70's still left in the stash. I'll try to get a good picture of the kits tomorrow and I'll post them here.

They do build up rather quickly, but I was seriously thinking about adding some details to the cockpit and rear gunner position, along with some details in the wheel wells and bomb bays on one of these. That would eat up some precious time... something I currently don't have too much extra to spare at the moment.

With some extra work, these kits can be turned into show stoppers.

Thanks for posting these updates.

Looking good my friend. Did I ever tell you that the school bus driver we had in Middle school was a pilot who flew A-20's in WW2 ? His name was Mr. Gridley. I never knew anything else about him, such as what unit or where he served. Too bad as he was a fine gentleman.

@fiveten - yeah, @lgardner is right - you are building this thing at warp speed. You alllllllmost have me convinced to go out and hunt one down.