Great update, my friend @eb801!
About the sanded tires middle pattern, not to worry: it is how tires wear, so these are some nicely worn/used tires!
The Pucara model you shared is amazing!
Have a nice family vacation!
Looking forward to see you back here!

ALMOST BLEW IT!
Yeah, I screwed up and wasn't paying close attention to Kinetic's poorly written instructions. (Great excuse right?) Turns out you can build two versions of the Pucara - the A variant which was used in the Falklands or the 90's upgraded D variant represented here in Uruguayan Air Force livery. But this is not clearly spelled out in the kit instructions. Both are listed as A/D. So heads up!

Anyway liquid styrene to the rescue! My first time trying it and it works like a champ. I reversed all my mistakes and now I am ready to continue with the build. I guess you could say "good save"!

I am waiting for a set of RES-Kit wheels as they just showed up at Sprue Brothers and are a vast improvement over kit two piece wheels and I couldn't say no.

Meanwhile I have decided to model my Pucara based on the history and photos of A-532 whose flight time ended nose down and picked apart on the side of the base runway.

That's a good choice, @eb801.

TC: I think so. I will save the history of 532, thanks to Pablo Calcaterra, for when I reach the finish line and headline post it.

I HIT THE BRAKES
Due to my daughter’s emergency brain surgery (she lives in Central America with her Costa Rican husband, where my wife and I are now), all my modeling activities are on hold for the time being.

The good news is, our daughter is now on the long road to recovery after three hair raising weeks in the hospital - A total miracle!

Hi, my friend @eb801!
Your daughter's recovery is the best of news! Poor her that she faced such a thing...
This must have been three extremely difficult weeks for all of you. With a long recovery ahead, but with the absolute joy that she is with you, after her successful operation, I wish you all the best, be courageous and all will go well.
Take care, my friend!

Hi Eric, I am so happy to hear that the outcome for your daughter is promising after such frightening news. As a father of a teenage girl, I can't imagine anything that would affect me more. Godspeed your daughter on the road to full recovery.

Back on the Job[/]
It’s been awhile since I last worked on the Pucará or anything, so in order to prime myself back into modeling, I decided to jump ahead and construct the various external weapons that would be used on the under wing hard points. I made the Mk. 81 bombs and MER rack and the LAU-3 rocket launcher pods from Hasegawa’s boxings of various aircraft weapons: A & B. Constructing, painting and decaling all these parts required much assembly line work and took quite a few hours from start to finish, but well worth the trouble as the Kinetic kit has no external stores to speak of other than two sizes of gas tanks.

Now it’s back to the final paint shop and camouflage time.