By Earl Hosmer

The Hasegawa A-4E/F Skyhawk kit is the best overall model I have ever built, and my lifetime kit total probably exceeds 700. It still has a few minor problems, but these pale in comparison to the good points. I wanted a contest-quality A-4F, and with this kit I was well on my way…

The Hasegawa cockpit is real good, but I have never seen a kit cockpit that can match a top-quality aftermarket cockpit. I decided to use the Aires A-4E/F cockpit set, which is a real gem, and includes a PE fret containing canopy sills, seatbelts, rudder pedals, instrument panel, and gunsight framing. The detail on the Aires cockpit is breathtaking, but fitting it into the Hasegawa fuselage gave me my first real problems. An A-4 cockpit is a very small, tight-fitting item, and the kit reflects that. Aires has you remove the kit’s sidewall detail, which Aires has done up in thin resin. So far, so good.

The major problems crept up when I had to remove the Hasegawa nosewheel well from the kit cockpit floor. The roof of the nosewheel well and the cockpit floor are one in the same on the real aircraft, but I now had the Hasegawa nosewheel well and the Aires cockpit floor to join together, but they are too deep together to fit! Much grinding, sanding, and cursing later, I got the whole assembly to fit in the fuselage, but I was real worried for a while. I have read that the Cutting Edge resin set uses the kit’s sidewalls, so it may fit better than the Aires. On my next Skyhawk I may just detail out the kit cockpit, with a resin seat and some PE thrown in. It just might prove easier.

The intakes and exhaust pipe were done in Step 3. Both are beautiful, but the mating of the compressor/intake (Part D12) with the intakes themselves (Parts J3-J6) would be my second major problem. More on that later. I drilled out all the appropriate holes (don’t forget this step! All holes are flashed over so they can make a clean Blue Angels/Aggressor someday, I guess) and glued the fuselage together, after adding some lead to the nose. Fit was near flawless except for some more grinding on the Aires cockpit so it would fit. Ah, the price we pay for superdetailing!

Pay close attention to the instructions so you can be sure to get the right parts together for either the E model or F, depending on which you choose. In Step 5 I built the avionics "hump" for the A-4F. The bleed air exhaust duct (Part D20) was nice but needed some plastic sheet "walls" added to the inside of the hump to blank it off. The fit of Part A7 to the underside of the fuselage was a little off, and required a little sanding to flush it up with the fuselage sides.

As I mentioned above, the fit of the intakes wasn’t quite right. When you fit the intakes (Parts J3-J6, assembled) there is a noticeable "step" between the inner faces of J6 and J5 and their mating surface on D12. The only way I could see to fix this without having to try to repaint D12 from the outside after sanding the step down (Lord, what a pain that would be to try) was to add a piece of .010 sheet to the inner face of J5 and J6, with a slight spacer between J5/J6 and the sheet in the middle 1/3 to match the contour of D12. This fix worked better than I dared hope, and the very small mismatch is almost unnoticeable. Oddly, I have not read any build-up review of this kit that mentions this. Did I make a mistake somewhere? I don’t think so, but it is possible

Step 6 takes us to the wings. Hasegawa has molded the slat rails into the upper wing halves, and they are very nice, but FRAGILE! I broke two off during assembly and cleaning for paint. Wing assembly is a breeze, and fit is perfect. I was not real happy with the way the two fuselage "plugs" were included in the wing lower half, or the fit between these and the nosewheel well, but the problems here were likely due to the Aires cockpit/nosewheel well fit. Flaps may be posed full up or full down, with a pin on the flap to ensure a strong attachment. If you build an A-4F, which has spoilers opposite the flaps on the upper wing (A-4Es had no spoiler) you need to scribe out the outline of the spoilers on the upper wing, unless you want to pose the spoilers open as I did, then you need to cut them out. When open, the spoilers deployed to the same angle as the flaps, so if you pose them open, make a template to match the flap angle so you can get them the same.

Steps 7 and 8 are straightforward, but leave off the horizontal stabilizers until after painting and decaling to save some unnecessary masking. At this point we are ready for painting. Assemble the drop tanks at this point if you are using them. The kit tanks are made so you can choose between the "finned" and "unfinned" variety, which is nice but it gives you a seam to clean up in an awkward place (at least on the finned version). I would rather have seen one of each as separate parts or just the finned version, which seem to have been the more common of the two. Leave off all the myriad antennas, pylons, and such until after painting, as they are easily damaged. Add clear parts M1 and M2 to the wingtips after painting the recess silver, then sand and polish them flush. M1 and M2 actually represent two lenses on each tip, one clear, one red (or green on right tip) so check references for masking pattern.

My A-4F was finished as a U.S. Navy A-4F from VA-22 during the 1969 cruise of the U.S.S Bon Homme Richard (Bonny Dick), using an aftermarket decal sheet from Third Group Decals, which came out in 1996 for the Monogram kit. I used Poly-Scale acrylic White and Light Gull Gray paints, starting with the White. Light washes with oil-based paints gave my Skyhawk that well-used look so prevalent on Gull Gray over White naval aircraft in SE Asia. After testing some of the Hasegawa decals on a pre-painted and glossed test model, I found them to be a BIG improvement on previous Hasegawa decals, so much so that I might have actually used them! I did use many of the maintenance stencils.

Put on all the leftover parts, and there we have it, a beautiful Skyhawk. Pick up one or more of the Hasegawa 1/48^th weapon sets and load her up. An Attack bird like the Skyhawk looks bare without air-to-mud stuff hanging on it. Mine sports a centerline MER (Multiple Ejector Rack) loaded with 6 500lb Snakeyes, with a 4-shot Zuni pod on each outer pylon. An almost trouble-free buildup ensures that this won’t be the last Hasegawa Skyhawk I build. Have fun with this one.

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