Introduction
Here's a real dog of a kit that has more Evergreen sheet than kit
plastic.
It is the old (and now thankfully) out-of-production
Monogram F-111A, corrected as best as my obviously limited talents
would allow about 20 years ago. Most of the major gaffs that carried
over when Monogram inherited these molds from Aurora involved the
nose, windscreen, and intakes plus the usual deficiencies in the
detail parts like the landing gear, cockpit, pylons, and ordnance.
Construction
I lengthened the nose with pieces of a scrap A-7B fuselage then
recontoured the whole assembly with multiple coats of CA gel,
shaping and sanding as I went. The new windscreen is several pieces
sectioned from two Monogram B-29 canopies, glued together to arrive
at a semi-correct form.
For the intakes, I removed the molded trunks, rebuilt the
fuselage behind them, then used the ducts from a second Aardvark kit
to approximate the Triple Plow configuration. Since I opted for a
closed-canopy model, cockpit detailing was held to a minimum with
only the most neccessary items added such as PE buckles for the
seat/lap belts, some knobs and handles, and a couple of MV lenses to
simulate the various CRTs and displays.
The vents over the wing box-beam area were addressed using some PE
model railroad grate, while static dischargers on the wings and
empennage were added using nylon bristles from an old hairbrush. All
exterior lights were replicated using colored Lexan, and when I
finally got this monster together, I rescribed the entire surface
detail. Hand-massaged hypo needles and straight pins became pitot
tubes, AOA transducers, and outside air temperature sensors.
I beefed up the landing gear with some extra detailing and replaced
the nose wheels with those from an F/A-18 Hornet kit. For the main
wheels, I sectioned the wheel hubs from a Revell A-10 into the kit's
outer wheel halves then sandwiched .060" styrene sheet between the
tire halves to increase the profile. The tailskid and its well were
scratch-built from square brass channel and some steel wire.
The wing pylons were corrected as per the Detail &Scale book, then I
scratch-built new ordnance consisting of the 600-gallon drop tanks
and a pair of B-61 "special stores", mated to the pylons with
scratch-built sway braces. The 20-mm gun was fabricated from #20
hypo needles and set into its fairing on the weapons bay door, then
I added the station 5 pylon on the fuselage between the engines and
hung a Hasegawa ALQ-119(V) from it.
Painting and Markings
This build only took a leetle longer than usual (about nine
years) and when I had everything dialed in as best as I could, the
model was painted with Testor's Model Master enamels and Spray 'n'
Plate aluminum for the un-painted metal areas on the leading edges
and afterburner fairing. The tailpipes were painted in flat black,
then burnished with powdered graphite.
Various
MicroScale, SuperScale, and ScaleMaster sheets were used to
replicate an F-111A from the 57th FWW at Nellis AFB, circa 1982.