Hog's firepower display - A-10C - Rear Fuselage, engines and tails

[red Dog]

Thanks Derek

 

Most of the time I do commission work, I love it but it's not always 100% what I would do for my own.

With this one I am having a lot of fun

[A-10LOADER]

3 hours ago, red Dog said:

A question that intrigues me

 

When the airplane go into the big maintenance they are repainted and they are stripped down of all previous paint.
Some coming back from deployment sometimes shows these kind or wear:

 

I want to replicate that effect, especially under the Slat and the intakes

In your opinion, what's that colour under the grey? 

A dark metal? 

brown/grey

Green/black (I doubt it's the previous euro1 camouflage

 

My guess would be on a kind of dark metal but I'd love to get opinions or advices from the pro having worked on the aircraft

 

Many thanks

For these areas just use a black primer. It's definitely not a dark metal, brown or, green. Fun fact, the paint shop has to pay attention to how much paint gets applied to the jet because this plays into weight and balancing of the overall airframe.

Steve

[Finn]

Here are some A-10s, and F-16s doing an Elephant Walk in Korea, showing the wear on the leading edges:

 

 

Jari

[Shoggz]

A-10s are like Pugs and Bulldogs.. Intrinsically ugly, but strangely attractive at the same time! 

[red Dog]

I can't disagree with that

 

Quote

Here are some A-10s, and F-16s doing an Elephant Walk in Korea, showing the wear on the leading edges:

Thanks Jari

 

Seems to confirm Steve's suggestion to go with black. My initial thoughts was to go metal exhaust or dark steel. It's almost black as well, but with a lighter metallic hue

thanks for the picture

[JayW]

1 hour ago, Shoggz said:

A-10s are like Pugs and Bulldogs..

 

You are so right.  The aircraft's namesake (P-47) is equally ugly IMO, especially the razorback.  But these amazing aircraft have a beauty all their own and it relates to their functionality and sheer badassery, I think.  Both have those qualities in spades.  I am sure there are ground troops who think they are the most beautiful thing eyes can see.  

Edited February 23 by JayW

[A-10LOADER]

Your right about that Jay, anytime we deployed to where there were ARMY or MARINE troops, they would seek us out and, treated us like rock stars. They wanted us to show them the jet up close and told us many times how she saved their bacon numerous times.

Steve

[phasephantomphixer]

20 hours ago, A-10LOADER said:

Your right about that Jay, anytime we deployed to where there were ARMY or MARINE troops, they would seek us out and, treated us like rock stars. They wanted us to show them the jet up close and told us many times how she saved their bacon numerous times.

Steve

Except at Eielson AFB Alaska when the Army fellas showed up at the club and cut our evening short!

[red Dog]

I wanted to confirm that my support design was up to the task so I quickly made a test. 
The stick is 5mm carbon and pretty strong. It hardly bends and I have a backup plan with an even stronger 8mm carbon stick I can use if the 5mm is not up to it.

 

The front and rear fuselage are mated together and the stick was inserted in model. Obviously the weight is not there yet but this initial test is quite positive. I can add a lot of weight to the nose and the carbon stick holds perfectly. This gave me the confidence to pursue in that direction.

 

 

With a little bit of imagination, I can see the stick being the extension of the rear facing AN/AAR-47 sensor - it's about the same diameter.

 

There is a downwards sensor as well that needs to be created..
First the Trumpeter older AN/ALR-46 needs to be removed. It's the big bump under the tail cone. This was cut away and the hole in the tail cone was filled with putty after having inserted a styrene sheet inside the fuselage. 

Then a circular hole was drilled. The sensor will be made with 3 pieces, a styrene hollow cylinder, a transparent cylinder sliding inside the styrene one, and a cap made by first punching a small hole and then glued to the cylinders and only then cut and sanded to shape.

 

 

 

I will mate the sensor to the fuselage with 

 

The APU bits were first given a coat of paint - it's going to be impossible to paint them later and then glued inside the fuselage.

Once the rear fuselage was assembled, the rectangular hole was cut a bit larger (remember there was a pin in the way) and encased with plastic bits to give it more depth. Mesh will be glued from the inside. That part is normally provided by Cutting edge as well but somehow I lost that casting piece, especially sad since it's the casting with the 4 LASTE vertical tail sensors.

 

 

I used plastic strips inside the fuselage joints to try to help minimizing sanding. Not sure it was worth doing but at least it gave me a strong joint even without using glue. That's handy for dry fit tests.

 

Cutting Edge provides two rubber pad that have to be glued on the fuselage. They prevent the massive engine doors to bang on the fuselage when opened. 

Trumpeter has those implemented on the fuselage as well but a bit too shy and not correctly placed. They were removed and the resin bits was glued instead.

 

 

The APU exhaust has a resin cover provided by Cutting edge, this will be added at later stages.

That double rivet line screws up a lot of things but I'm not going to correct it. 

 

The Cutting Edge also provides new antenna for the aft fuselage underside but these are not suitable for a late A-10C. 
I will deal with that later and in the meantime the recessed areas for the antennas were filled with putty. 

 

 

So much for trying to avoid sanding too much 

 

More to follow soon.
I initially decided to finish the fuselage before doing the tails and the engine, but I need to add them earlier and only then working massively on adding rivets.

There's no point to add rivets on the fuselage now and destroy them when I have to sand flush the engine mounts or the tail under the fuselage.

Time to get on the engines

 

Thanks for looking

 

 

 

 

 

[Derek B]

Nice rivet work!

 

 

Derek

[red Dog]

Let's look at the engines again.

 

 

The initial plan was to use the kit's part for the intakes and fans and the cutting edge banana exhausts.

I calculated that the fans should be placed deeper into the intakes than what Trumpeter wants you to do. If you follow the instructions, they are 14mm inside the intakes. 

I want them at 22mm and that's easy to do by inserting the fans in part Q5 as shown below

  

 

If it's a valid solution to correct Trumpeter mistake using the kit parts that does not solve the ugly fan dome which is undersized and very visible.

So when a forum member offered to provide a SH full engine set I really couldn't say no.

I consider myself very lucky to get such a set and even more lucky to be part of this community where members help each other so much. Thank you.

 

 

 

There are dozen advantages of using this set:

- The intake fans are placed at the correct depth: 21mm (my initial research work wasn't that bad setting this at 22mm) instead of the 14mm 

- The fans are much better than the kit's ones. Much crisper and the dome is correctly sized and well detailed. The difference is indeed striking.
   

 

- The exhausts are riveted and they are double lipped which is a great detail the Cutting edge don't have.
   

 

- The exhaust will be easier to paint as you can dismantle them to paint the turbine parts separately

- The set provides better detailed fuel drains.

- I will use the cutting edge fairing for the fuel lines into the engines.

 

The fans were painted Titanium, then masked and the dome was sprayed with light grey (FS36375)
The intakes were painted in three colours: outer lips in light grey (FS36375) the front engine in white and the area around the fan in dark metal.

 

I had a little bit of fun with the exhaust. They were originally painted in and out with exhaust metal then received a coat of steel on the outside.
Some heat colour variation close to the engine with pale burnt metal and hot blue metal. 
The outer tip received a paint of the fuselage light grey and the whole thing was given a mist of exhaust soot. 

 

 

 

All it's needed now is a bit of drybrush to expose the rivets a bit more and a flat coat to protect all that.

 

Edited March 9 by red Dog

[red Dog]

Another issue that needs fixing is the huge gap inside the engine nacelles

 

 

It's not critical but it is visible when looking inside of the nacelles at the rear of the engine.

Fixing this is rather easy, I just cut some styrene to cover the gap. You may cover the whole inside of the nacelle but imho it's not worth it. 

 

 

With a bit of sanding the aft edge and dark paint, it will be barely visible

 

To be honest I don't know if once painted dark the hole remains very visible.

 

 

The doors will have to be closed and that's probably a lot of sanding to make them fit correctly.

 

[red Dog]

And finally I couldn't resist to weather the intake lips as often seen:

 

 

I painted the lip first with MRP exhaust metal and some mist of MRP steel. Then sprayed Mig scratch effect and painted MRP FS 36375 (MRP-38)

After a few moment I wiped the intake lips with water and scratched with a jeweller sponge wearing the paint and letting the undercoat appear

 

 

 

[A-10LOADER]

Nice work on the intakes and the edges, they look awesome !!

Steve

[ROM]

Amazing work so far