The second week of the A-10C I was able to get the forward fuselage together. I also added a couple of lead weights so the aircraft will sit on the landing gear correctly. Part of the forward fuselage is the lower panel and the upper panel behind the cockpit. Both of these panels have flashing red lights. The kit does not provide clear parts for the light lenses. I trimmed off the plastic of the lenses and used .75mm fiber optic lines to make the lenses. I then made an optical driver for these. This allows both lights to flash in sync.
While the optical driver was drying I looked at the tails. These have two navigation lights. Reviewing reference photos the lights do not shine outward but rather upward to shine across the outside surface of the tails. Instead of using fiber optics I cut odd the molded lights and drilled thru the tail. This allowed me to use PICO LED’s and aim them upward. The light housing was then made out of acrylic gel. With this section painted black and then a top coat of dark ghost grey so the LED only shines upward. The final effect matches the reference photo.
Moving back to the forward fuselage the optical driver for the flashing lights was then mounted inside and the panels were mounted onto the forward fuselage. One of the nice things about this kit is the aft fuselage. It is one piece which makes routing wires easier. I routed all the wires from the front to the open section that the engines will mount to later on.
The next step was to add the wing tip lights. This was the second challenge. The wing tips curve down on the aircraft. Due to angles I could not use fiber optics to illuminate the wingtip lights. Just like the tail lights I cut out the molded lights and installed the red and green wingtip lights into the wingtip and again used acrylic gel to make the lenses. A small channel was filed to route the wires into the wing. I then applied a thin coat of putty to the backside and sanded it flush making the LED and wiring hidden from the inside view. The wiring was routed along the inside of the wing. I then added the power lines through the main gear bays. These wires will look like the hydraulic lines down the landing gear struts and go into the wheels and come out the bottom of the tires which will go to the battery inside the display base later on. I then assembled the wings and added the photo etch details for the CHAFF blocks.
Finally I cut off the aft navigation light and used a .75mm fiber optic line to create the lens. I then used a small diameter styrene tube to make the optical driver and house a PICO LED. I am now working on assembling the wings onto the fuselage and get all the wires routed to one location under the engines. I need to then detail and install the main landing gear and then finish up the wiring then I can start adding the finer details to the aircraft fuselage.
You can see all the photos and details from the start in the build log at: https://davidsscalemodels.com/build-log/1-48-a-10c-75th-flying-tigers/
8 attached images. Click to enlarge.
