VA-196 Main Battery

Catched by the marvellous made A-6E Intruder by Kelly Quirk somewhere in 2001, I decided to make one myself. I was very hard to buy a Revell Intruder but finally I found one. Lucky Aeromaster had some superb decals of colorful A-6 Intruders. I decided to make the CAG bird of
the famous VA-196 Main Battery, known by the books of Stephen Coonts (Flight of the Intruder).

I used some after market additionals like the Black Box cockpitset, the wing folding mechanism from Paragon Design, the steps, cockpit details and airbrakes from Verlinden and bombs and MER’s from Hasegawa.

First I began etching the panellines. I did this by scratching lines with a very small dagger. Holding it against the raised panelline, I first pressed it a little, scratching a small line, right near the raised panelline. I repeated this over and over, pressing it a little harder every time. When the panelline was just right, I removed the raised panelline with some waterproof sandpaper. It was a good manner because I even succeeded in engraving bent panellines and complex figures.

The fitting of the kit was not so bad as I expected from an old kit. Only the air intakes were hard to fit.

I met some trouble in cutting the windscreen from the sprue. Doing this, a big crack appeared in the windscreen. I decided to write a letter to Revell and after a month I received a new windscreen, free of charge!

The fitting of the Paragon Design wind folding mechanism was something completely different. It looked like Paragon had used another Intruder to make their resin parts. It cost me lot of sanding and priming to fit those parts.

Kelly suggested to reposition the nosegear so I did. It looks marvellous.

Verlinden has some nice airbrakes. The original Intruder has anti buffering perforations in the airbrakes to let the wind come through. These air brakes were soon eliminated or bolted shut in the latter airframes. I cut the flange from the airbrakes of Verlinden and had them glued on the airbrakes of Revell. The result is very satisfying.

After all, I think this is one of my best projects. It is a nice model and it is a pity that it is hard to buy.

John Kettenis