1/48 Hobbycraft A-4PTM

Gallery Article by Aidy Abdullah on Aug 31 2016

Malaysia National Day

 

      

The A-4PTM is probably one of the shortest serving variant of the venerable Skyhawk. Delivered in 1984 from Grumman-reworked A-4C/Ls, the A-4PTM served the Royal Malaysian Air Force until it was completely replaced by the BAe Hawk in 1999. In RMAF service, the Skyhawk served two squadrons, No. 6 Skuadron on the Malayan Peninsula and No. 9 Skuadron in Borneo. This model portrays a jet from No. 9 Skuadron probably in late 1980's or early 1990's. It still wears the delivery SEA scheme but is adorned with squadron insignia more commonly seen on later two-tone wraparound scheme aircraft. It is the perfect subject for me as I love the SEA scheme and I love the tail insignia.

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This model was built from the 1/48 Hobbycraft A-4C 'Vietnam' kit. The brake chute was replaced with Hasegawa parts. Small antennas on the tail and rudder are scratch built along with the small 'hump' on the spine. To cover the sparse cockpit, I put in a Hasegawa pilot. The unique gunsight was built using sheet styrene as were the windscreen wipers and the rear view mirrors on the canopy.

Painting was done using Gunze Mr Color exclusively. The three-tone upper camo was 304 olive drab, 309 green and 310 tan sprayed free hand while the bottom was 311 camo grey mixed with some light blue. Decals came from the VFA Production sheet with stencils from Hasegawa.

Happy Merdeka to my fellow Malaysians!

Aidy Abdullah

Photos and text © by Aidy Abdullah