1/32 A-1H Skyraider U.S. Navy from Zoukei-mura

[Thomas_M]

Having lost this thread on the previous forum I am going to restore it here. Will take some time to get all information I had already posted back online here again, so let´s start at the very beginning...

I felt the need to get some "fresh" plastic on my desk and with the awareness that I won´t live forever there is not really a reason to keep my most precious kits in the stash only to build them "later"...

Enough of the intro, this is what´s about:

[Thomas_M]

I see that people are divided about ZM´s approach on how they design their kits. A very lot of parts and details are given to be build into the wings and the fuselage, only to be invisible later.

But I love this, I like to learn what´s inside, where it was placed and how it works. Of course I am not going to spend precious time to paint all those inside parts, well, a few of them. Just for I like to do. For the fun I experience building this kit.

To this kit I also got ZM´s (Eduard) pre-painted interior or cockpit set. I did some first bends on a few photo etched (PE) parts just to get into this new build.



The cube to the left is to be applied in front and below the pilot´s seat, only I doubt there is the space to do so. Will see later.
The rails to the right belong to a drawer by which the pilot could pull a map table out of the instrument panel! I am curious if I will be able to get this working...

[Thomas_M]

The IP as it is given in clear and in grey plastic in the kit. All the raised details is about to go, being replaced by the pre-painted PE parts later.



I made a crappy cut into the IP for the map table given on the PE set.



The gunsight will later be replaced by the one offered by AIMS Resin. A friend of mine just placed an order for me.

[Thomas_M]

Some more parts in no particular order. Indeed this kit has such a large parts count that I have a lot of fun just building, building, building...



The black part is the main fuselage fuel tank just behind the cockpit. See the part in the middle of the picture? There are many and subtle details on this and almost any parts in this kit no matter if they will be seen later or not. ZM apparently just has the same fun getting all those details on everywhere as I have discovering them during the build! Wait until you have a coat of primer or paint on those grey parts: the details will pop out after a coat of paint! Awesome!





Here I have applied some masks where parts are about to be glued later.

[Thomas_M]

The left and right console. Despite all raised detail has already been sanded of you still see it in the plastic! Phantom detail...
A small piece had to be cut out of the console to the right. Here some PE parts and levers will be applied later.



The part from the lower side. I made a bracket of scrap plastic to hold an axis to which some PE levers will be applied later. There was a bracket given as a PE part but we also have carpet monsters here in Germany...

[Thomas_M]

Some more parts I prepared and cleaned from the sprue gates. There is almost no flash at all on the parts of this kit, the moulding quality and the details are well worth every penny IMHO!


The main fuselage fuel tank and the bracket is will be attached to later.


Some fuselage stringers, making the fuselage rather sturdy later.


The radio equipment, being applied to into the fuselage behind the main fuel tank. If someone ever asked "Hey, where did a Skyraider have all those radios?", well, build a Zoukei-mura kit and you are the one to know!

[Thomas_M]

The two part engine mount to mount this monster P&W radial engine to. The part to the right is, according to the instructions, the carburetor and generator.


The propeller, moulded as one piece, so no guessing about the propeller blades having the correct angle or not. ZM did a great job to sculpt this distinctive part of the Skyraider. Just get their Concept Note book to see how much work they invested to get this parts shape as perfect as humanly possible.

Sorry for some pictures shown here being crappy, I was too lazy to get my big camera out and just did some quick shots here and there...

[Thomas_M]

The Skyraider was known to be able to lift a huge amount of ordnance. Sadly the kit itself has none given, except the two large drop tanks. I also got ZM´s "U.S. Aircraft Weapons" set #1 for my build to add some "iron" to the wings.





I am not known to be very patient on repetitive work so I did all those bombs first to have building them out of the way before working on the aircraft kit itself. I thought about having HVAR´s on the wing pylons, but the ones given in the set mentioned above did not satisfy me due to being rather simplified. There are resin and PE ones available from CMK, but at a price considering I would have needed three of those CMK sets...

[Thomas_M]

The main fuselage halves of this kit are given in two parts respectively. I could not wait to have them assembled so here we go!






Some filling and sanding will be needed later, but I guess this is necessary for my own laziness only. I always have a coat of primer on first before getting the filler out. It is much easier to judge a seam with some primer on. This kit will be painted by acrylics from Gunze, so I will prime the parts anyway.

[Thomas_M]

Some interior parts as the large water injection tank have been glued on. I also assembled some parts of the tail wheel parts. Those are not glued here.


A wonderful experience to see this aircraft kit get larger and larger! I like that!


I found a very faint warp on the rudder, so I clamped it to the base plate of my Hold&Fold tool while the glue set.


The kit´s main wheels are separate from the rims, making painting those parts much easier. After glueing the main wheel halves together I cut some disks from scrap plastic sheet. These have been "glued" to the wheels with Maskol. Later, when dry, the plastic rod at the right side was glued to the plastic disks to serve as a handle when airbrushing.