Academy 1/72 A-10A

Academy Kit Number 12402 1/72 A-10A "Operation Iraqi Freedom"
Reviewed By Jim Pearsall, #2209

MSRP: $12.00 USD Last month our chapter had a “build a Warthog” contest. My “Air/Sea Rescue” OA-10B didn’t win, but I had fun building it. Oh, yes, it’s a ”fun” contest. The entries will be the basis for the Craig Hewett Chapter entry at the 2004 Nationals.

So now I get to do a “serious” A-10. It’s a quick build, so it’s not quite contest quality, but then I’m not quite either. When I opened the box, I was taken with a vague feeling that I’d seen this kit before. "The part configurations and assembly looked familiar to me, so I dug out my Hasegawa A-10 and, lo and behold, the parts look almost interchangeable. Good news/bad news, fellow modelers; while both may suffer from the same challenges in construction and accurization, the Academy kit at $11 mail order is a buy compared to the Hasegawa kit at almost $15 from the same source". The icing on the cake. This is NOT a part-for part copy. The Hasegawa A-10 has raised panel lines, the Academy kit has engraved panel lines. So on to the build. I followed the kit instructions, at least at first. The kit builds up as a series of sub assemblies, the fuselage, the wing, the engines, and the tail. I put together ALL the weapons and the landing gear as separate assemblies, to be added after painting.

The sub assemblies went together with minimum fuss. I am really proud that I managed to get the wings to mate with the fuselage with NO putty needed along the upper wing/fuselage joint.

There were small ejector pin marks on the back doors for the main gear. The big ones, however were saved for the armament. The Mk83 bombs and AGM 65s are one piece, and (I guess) in order to kick them out of the mold machine, they needed heavy duty ejectors. The marks were large and fairly deep. These pictures show both before and after on the filling project.

After painting the aircraft, dark & light Ghost Gray, with the fake canopy on the bottom, I put on the 2 coats of Future, then attacked the decals. I have heard some bad things about Korean decals, but the OIF decals were quite good. They wanted to stay exactly where I put them, so there was some problem with the first couple until I added a tiny drop of white glue and Micro Sol to the place I was putting the decal. This allowed me a couple of minutes to get things positioned. I never realized there are so many “No Step” and “lift point” stencils on a modern fighter. With the “slime lights”, the unit and national markings, the safety and informational stencils, decal placement took two evenings. I then put on the flat coat. The decals look marvelous, darlings. I then installed the landing gear, the weapons, the “towel bar” antenna, the pitot tube, and the canopy/windscreen. The last thing I put on was the crew boarding ladder. It was the one part which did not fit first try. I had to file the top of the ladder where it inserts into the hole in the fuselage to make it fit.

OVERALL ASSESSMENT: A darned good kit. There are some details left off, particularly the sensor bumps on the nose, but the shape is right, and it goes together well. Academy doesn’t give a “skill level” requirement for this kit, but I’m sure a beginner can get a fairly nicely finished A-10 with very little hassle. The decent decals are also a plus for the novice. The engraved panel lines should enamor the advanced builder, who will also want to add those few small missing details. The ejector pin marks on the weapons were the low point of the build, but I’ve seen a bunch of A-10s with no ordnance aboard. I have not seen an Italeri/Revell Germany A-10 to compare, but Academy’s A-10 kit is definitely worth the money. Italeri’s is about twice as expensive at Squadron. The weapons load is impressive. To quote from MASH (the movie) “I’d dearly love to see it angry.” The A-10 with a full-up ordnance load is a single-ship fire power demonstration. How about adding a couple of pods of 2.75 inch rockets and put a FAC in the ‘cockpit. That way the OA-10 can be both FAC and strike package at the same time. No waiting for someone to scramble the alert birds. What I’m going to add to this model: It does need an ALQ-131 ECM pod. I’ve got the Hasegawa weapons set, and I’ll put one on. Promise.
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