A few things modelers should be aware of with this kit is that the dive brakes - while molded separately in the kit - were almost never open on the ground, and certainly the underside dive brake was never open on the ground. Additionally, the flaps were almost never in the lowered position when the airplane was parked on the ground, even if it does in fact look nice as a model to place them in that position. It's up to you, but if you are going for realism, close up the dive brakes and raise the flaps.

I also used the resin boot cover over the canopy actuator mechanism that comes in the KMC set, since Tamiya elected to do the kit with this uncovered, which it almost never was in reality.

The first thing I did was apply a fairly heavy "pre-shading" of flat black over the panel lines. I then painted the wheel wells gloss white, since they were unchanged in Air Force service from the way they had been in the Navy.

I painted the underside with Tamiya dark grey. The aircraft were delivered operationally with the light grey underside color of standard SEA camouflage, but after they had been on operations for awhile many were painted the darker shade of grey that allowed them to be used on operations by day or night.

The upper camouflage was painted with Gunze-Sanyo paints and free-handed with my Paasche Model H airbrush. I also put on two additional coats of each color with a successive addition of white to lighten them, to go for the faded look so many Spads had in Southeast Asia after a few years' service in those conditions. As with any sun-faded paint job, you want the upper region of the fuselage, and the upper surfaces of wings and stabilizer to be the lightest, with the colors getting darker as you work your way down the side, and with very little sun-fading directly under the stabilizers.

I went to the Skyraider Organization Website (www.skyraider.org) and looked at the many color photographs there of Spads with underwing ordnance loads to get the right color for the rocket pods, mini-gun pods, and bomblet dispensers.

Decals:

Anyone old enough to have been to Vietnam (as I have) is old enough to remember Harvey Kurtzman's sexy cartoon character "Little Annie Fannie" who appeared in Playboy throughout the era. In many ways, she was the first "underground comics" character. I knew I was going to do that airplane the first time I saw the noseart on the Aeromaster 48-377 "Airwar Over Vietnam Part 9" decal sheet. I also used the stencilling from a Third Group decal sheet for Skyraiders I had in my collection.

Final Assembly:

Once the model had been finished in Dullcote and the landing gear attached, it was time for some serious weathering. While I am generally a believer in the "less is more" school of weathering, with the Skyraider the truth of the matter is that "too much is likely not enough" when it comes to exhaust stains and oil smears. The R-3350 was a dirty engine, and Skyraider pilots have been known to refuse to fly an airplane on the grounds it was "too clean" and therefore likely unsafe.

I applied exhaust staining with Tamiya "Smoke," finishing it by dripping thinned "Smoke" with a brush with the airplane on its gear, allowing the paint to flow from the force of gravity to simulate the oil smears one can see on any Skyraider. I also dirtied up the underside of the airplane and "dripped oil" on the centerline tank. Even with all this, a former Skyraider pilot I know took a look at the model and said "that's a pretty clean airplane, you know?" Oh, well.

The underwing ordnance was attached, the various antennas were put in position, the canopy was set in the open position, the propeller was attached and....

Voila! "Little Annie Fannie," the GI's friend.

I would recommend a modeler who wants to do the Air Force "Spad" nowadays buy the correct Tamiya kit for this version, since the underwing ordnance selection is very good. You really do need to get a resin Yankee seat, though.