1/32 Trumpeter A-7E converted to Hellenic A-7H (1 Viewer)

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zaxos345

Senior Airman
372
108
Jul 20, 2009
Ilion, Attiki
Good morning guys, i have been coping with this project for over a year now...

You all know the kit, it is the trumpeter's A-7E, there are some things that have to be changed in order to become a -H model but also a lot of things that have to be corrected as the model has a lot of mistakes.

I have all the zacto goodies (you cannot build an accurate A-7 without these), eduard and Aires ones as well as some other stuff, that you will see during the build.

I think that it is now the time to thank Harold (aka AMS resin) for his help with the A-7 wheels he produced as well as Barry who helped Harold with his scratch work and of course John Wolstenholme (who, IMHO, has built the best A-7 in 1/32 scale) for his help and advice as well as a fellow Greek modeler and a good friend of mine, Vaggelis who has provided me with a lot of pics and measurements of specific parts of the real plane.

Here you can see the things i have to correct, sand down, rescribe, scratchbuild etc.

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I started by trying to correct some bad molding issues and trying to sand down the refueling prob detail, as the -H ones had this item removed

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I closed the gap and scratch built the cover that was put there

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I opened the air condition inlet and modified it

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I sanded down the antennas from the vertical stabilizer and corrected them in terms of shape and position

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In order to make the exhaust section of the air condition more correct i produced a stencil as i could mot find one at these dimensions and rescribed the new one

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I sanded down and rescribed the LORAN antenna...

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Opened the holes underneath (the one was the exhaust section for the starter)

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opened, narrowed, shortened and moved the grilles of the right electronics bay door

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I started to deal with the M-61 Vulcan area where a lot of thing are going to be visible and had to be corrected.

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Next the gun fairing area...
The kit....

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The real one

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Joe (aka crackerjazz) , a very good guy, modeler and friend in another forum worked on the same area and he really did a superb job and he was very kind to provide me with some vac of his mods. I used it to modify the kits part cause the vac was very thin. So i followed his steps like a hound dog!!!

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And this is what i made, i have not modify all the area yet.

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Next thing was the ladder which was totally out of scale!!!

The real one

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And mine in 1/32

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I built the ladder but i was not pleased with the look of the place where it stored as well as with the access panel, so i tried to fix them, first with the store place..

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Here an image with the access door pre build and with the ladder...Due to the right proportionals the angle of the ladder with the fuselage is almost perfect.

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Next, time for the access door. I sanded all the detail, which was wrong, and sanded more in order to bring it to scale thickness. I also added a small PE from Eduard...

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And here everything dryfitted...i have added a couple of photos of the original

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It is and it's going to be a long project, so be patient. Right now I am working on upgrading - changing Aires cockpit and ejection seat in order to represent a -7H plane.
Hope you like it so far!

John
 
Last edited:
Thank you very much guys for the nice comments. Those small fiddly bits, most of them, are not glued yet.
It is a big project and i try to put as much detail as i can, after all, it was the plane i used to fly with, my first ''love''.

John
 
Good morning guys, another small update. This time i started with the Aires escapac 1G-2 seat...Mmmm not so...1G-2 thing!!! Aires does not even gives the canopy breakers!! Also the survival kit is wrong...so....

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And i started, using a piece of resin, to scratch built the survival kit...

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Next step the cushion of the survival kit. After 2 unfortunate attempts i finally came with something like that..

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At the same time i tried to correct the parachute with milliput... and i added some major details that Aires did not provide...

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And i though i had come to the end...until i saw the ''office''. A lot off mistakes, even for a -E model! I had to remove and add some things in order to correct it for -H model!
So before...

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And i started to remove and build...

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...Some interior missing details or improvements...

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I added some Archer rivet (one by one with future!)

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Next with the dashboard...

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...and i tried to give a third dimension on the I.P.

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And finally...the oxygen regulator

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So far so good lads, i know, it is a big post!!! Hope you like it

John
 

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