Tamiya's 1/48 scale
Douglas A-1H Skyraider

by Jeroen Veen

Tamiya's 1/48 scale A-1H Skyraider is available online from Squadron

Here is Tamiya's kit of the 1/48 Douglas A-1H Skyraider.

This is a very nice kit of an even nicer plane. I did always like the image of the hornet on the tail of this plane, and although in the end I built another version, I think it was that hornet that made me buy this kit in the first place.

I remember being very excited when I bought this kit and I wanted to make something special out of it. My building experiences with aircraft models were limited at the time (some two years ago) and I decided not to scratchbuild everything myself but take a slightly easier route. So I went to the local hobbyshop and bought a cocpit update set and a folded wing set, both from Cutting Edge. And while I was at it, I bought two decal sets also; a Cutting Edge set with maintenance and national insigna (CED48099) and Areomaster set AMD48-530.

So after unpacking it all in the evening, going through the building instructions it didn't take to long to start building.

This was a kit that builds itself. Very good fit and although a bit scary in the beginning (sawing away big parts of the wings) getting the CE sets to fit proved not to be so very difficult. I remember a couple of evenings with a lot of test fitting; not so much because the CE sets were not ok. They were just fine! I was just very scared of spoiling it all with my own clumsiness. But all came out well.

I did build the kit in sub assemblees (no other way to do this, right?) and out came the airbrush. First a firm coating with primer, usually Humbrol.

After that came the black preshading. I do this with gloss paint all the time, because it gives me more control over the misting in the next step.

Matt paint seems to absorb more of the misting, but of course that's personal and probably just something in my head... Anyway. After this I misted the plane with gloss white and gloss Gull Gray, both paints from Xtracolor. Then I lighted the grey with some white and misted the Gull Grey areas again, but only those areas that would catch light from above.

Next came the decalling. There's no way I can remember how many decals went on (it isn't that important) but I do remember it took me quite some time and I felt like building a very accurately stencilled plane. Wether that is or true or not doesn't matter to me. I just had a lot of fun with those decals and they looked really nice, and that's what it's all about to me.

After the decalling came the Matt Varnish, and after that had dried I started with the ususal umber and black oil wash, mostly in and around the panel lines. Then I did something very strange: I took my airbrush and on certain spots painted on some brown. Up till this day I have no explanation why I did it. I wouldn't even be able to tell you what those spots represent. They are still on there as you see. The honest thing to say is: they don't disturb me, for me personally they add something, but I think I will never do it again. I painted all details, oil spill and so on.


 

After the washes I took a small, pointed brush and painted on little scratches. All small details were painted and all subassemblies were glued together. It is only then that I apply a last layer of Matt Varnish. This way it covers the glossy glue which I sometimes tend to spill in those last couple of steps.

The Skyraider is in my top list and I will definitely build another one.

There is one particular version covered with footsteps because as far as I understood it, this plane landed on the wrong carrier. Whatever the story, it is a nice subject which I would like to build. This kit gave me a lot of fine modeling hours.

I hope you like the pictures.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2005 by Jeroen Veen
Page Created 12 July, 2005
Last Updated 12 July, 2005

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