Trumpeter A-4E VA-164 (19 June: Stickers)

[easixpedro]

There’s been a dearth of gray and white NavAir subjects lately… so time to level that playing field 🙂

 

 

Have had this sitting next in the proverbial stash/build pile for a few weeks. 
 

Am debating Mike Estocin’s MoH jet from 20 April 67. Dude dueled SAM sites during a strike on Haiphong. Got hit as everyone else was egressing and brought his burning Scooter back to the Tico. Might do the suspend it off it’s hook scene I’ve done before.

 

Or I might do a Scooter from VA-164 off the OBoat. Have 2 in mind, one of which is the ubiquitous Lady Jessie.

 

Here’s a great squadron pic circa 67. The really tall guy beneath the 4 in 405 is LT Cdr Denny Weichman. He flew the most missions of Vietnam - 630 IIRC. Started in the early 60s flying C-123s to drop South Vietnamese SoF types into the North. Flew to the bitter end, in charge of an A-7 squadron during the 70s.

More soon. Have started adding bits and generally dorking around as I try to make up my mind to which squadron and jet I wanna do.

-Peter

[Oldbaldguy]

You seem to have a thing for red, red/orange trimmed airplanes.  I just took stock and realized most of my built models carry the same colors.  Weird.

[Jim Barry]

Doing my part! Haha. Looking forward to a well researched model from you. Let’s go! 

Edited May 9 by Jim Barry

[Finn]

Peter, why not do this one:

 

 

Jari

[easixpedro]

13 hours ago, Oldbaldguy said:

You seem to have a thing for red, red/orange trimmed airplanes.  I just took stock and realized most of my built models carry the same colors.  Weird.

Guilty.

But I find it hard not to be enthralled with brightly colored aircraft that were flying in the most heavily defended skies the world has known. Huge cajones for sure. 

12 hours ago, Jim Barry said:

Doing my part! Haha. Looking forward to a well researched model from you. Let’s go! 

Yeah you are! As in making me wonder how to make an RA-5?! I’d figure out 3D printing, but am afraid where it’ll lead. I really want a SH-2 and SH-3 too. (I have issues…)

 

[Jim Barry]

Good issues. Love the Kaman helos. They were a client of mine but just on the group health Insurance side. A few examples in CT always a pleasure to see. 

[Oldbaldguy]

22 hours ago, Finn said:

Peter, why not do this one:

 

 

Jari

Wow.  That is one sturdy little airplane.  And the driver is just sitting there like, “What, me worried?  Nah.  If I can’t see it, it never happened.  Now, I’m pretty sure the boat is around here somewhere….”

[easixpedro]

Because Jari brought it up, here’s some more pics of Al Crebo in NP225. He was attacking an ammo dump near Haiphong in April of 67. An SA-2 did this…he got his bombs off and essentially coasted feet wet before the engine conked out. You better believe he was back on the flight sked the next day…

another view

 

if you want to know more about it, I highly recommend this book:

 

In other news, construction has commenced. Here’s the beginning of our intrepid aviator. Essentially parts from the spares bin.

 

The cockpit is stock, mostly because nothing can be seen with a figure in there. The Scooter cockpit was cramped…

 

 

and painted up

 

That brings us up to speed. Am spitballing ideas of how to display her. It’ll be in-flight. Undecided if I want to do a ground blur base and try making snake eyes being dropped, or perhaps just an in flight view with the hook down as if prior to landing. Decisions, decisions.

More as I figure out what squadron I wanna do so I can actually decide a scene. Or maybe make 2…?

-Peter

[Finn]

How about Zunis being fired off:

 

 

Jari

[easixpedro]

Hola Amigos

 

Have been in intake hell. These aren’t perfect, don’t look too closely…but they’ll do.

the intake lips actually have a bit of a lip which requires a bit of filler. Otherwise the fit isn’t that bad

 

I take that back…the rudder is a known issue. You have to cut the top off the fuselage halves, and add a bit to make it tall enough. Still need to fill out the bottom and add the actuator.

 

Here’s our intrepid aviator - he finally has a head.

 

 

Now that I look at his helmet, I realize I subconsciously painted it to be VA-164, so I guess that’s what we’re building!

Am debating how to display her. Maybe a small base with ground-blur similar to this?

 

Or maybe my standard plinths? Thoughts?

 

Was thinking of making it doing a low-level laydown of Snakeyes, but am now thinking of doing an Iron Hand jet - either Zunis and Shrike or all Shrike

 

 

More soon!

-Peter

[Greif8]

Looking very good Peter!  I like the hand painted helmet, you did a nice job on it and it adds a splash of color.

 

Ernest

[easixpedro]

Quick bit about the spoilers. They weren’t there on the earlier variants. Trumpeter has em for commonality between kits. If you don’t deal with it early, you’ll have an ugly seam.

 

To delay dealing with the clear bits, I shifted my attention to things that go boom. Gonna do an Iron Hand bird with Shrikes and Zunis. There’s no Zunis in the kit, but had some remnants of the Eduard AM bits. Cut some styrene tubing to the right length and the ends fit nicely. Not as detailed as the Eduard bits, but will do nicely for an inflight display. (Pro tip - without these, I would’ve just done the RF foil on the back end and a frangible nose cone and called it good)

Now about the Shrikes. There’s AGMs themselves are ok, but the LAU is a mess. Here’s some pics of the real deal courtesy the interwebz 

 

Here’s the kit offering and my measly efforts. Have plenty of work to do still, but a massive improvement already. The kit bits don’t include the fairings the sway braces attach to.

 

Till next time…

-Peter

[Oldbaldguy]

On 5/9/2025 at 11:29 AM, Finn said:

:

 

 

 

This is Memorial Day weekend in my country.  This guy is a prime example of why we remember:  Wings if gold; balls of steel.  Not ten percent of military age men walking around today would do what this guy did, not to mention his rolling out of the rack the next day to go do it again.  Probably wore the same flight suit.  Douglas made some truly great airplanes - I don’t think they ever made a dud.  The Scooter is a small airplane and this one is shot to shyte but someone forgot to tell it it was too hurt to fly so it just kept on keepin’ on.  To paraphrase a line from “The Bridges at Toko Ri”, where do we find such men and such airplanes?  Every model we build should be a tribute to them and their machines.

[easixpedro]

You know OBG is correct.

 

I was originally going to do this bird as Magic Stone 466 - flown by Lt Cdr Trent Powers on his Navy Cross mission in October 65. Short synopsis is that he led Air Force Thuds on an Iron Hand mission- 600NM through the goo, mountains and still hit the target to the exact second. Bombed an SA-2 site and got shot down immediately after bomb release. He survived the ejection, but was executed by a Chinese road working crew (was listed as MIA forever). 
 

I have a pretty good write up about it in Bloody Sixteen. It boggles my old aviator mind to think of flying 600 plus miles using old school dead-reckoning navigation (clock, chart, ground and all that). With an IMC decent in the mountains. And nailed it all. Legendary!

 

Here he is (on the left)earlier in 65, as the offload bags at the Cubi Point BOQ.

Memorial Day indeed.

-Peter

[easixpedro]

Faffing about with various display ideas. Not normally a fan of ground blur effects, but this actually looks pretty good to my eye. Thoughts?

-Peter