AOA Decals 72-005: Dogs of War, reviewed by Scott Van Aken

AOA Decals 72-005: Dogs of War

Units:	See review
Price	$15.00 (free US shipping)
Reviewer:	Scott Van Aken

AOA Decals has produced a great sheet and the first full sheet for this aircraft I've seen. This one is for the O-1A/E/G Bird Dog with various operators during the Vietnam war. There are 23 different markings options on the sheet for four different air arms.

Of course, most are for the US Army and there are ten total schemes covering the 21st Black Aces, 184th Nonstop, 199th Swamp Fox, 203rd Hawkeyes, 219th Headhunters, 220th Catkillers, and 221st Shotguns Reconnaissance Aviation/Airplane Companies (RAC). These aircraft are all painted overall olive drab, though some planes have white or yellow upper wings control surfaces, or da-glo patches or large white areas in the upper wing or combinations. The Army planes are all O-1Gs.

Most of us are familiar with the USAF planes from the kits and there are six schemes, all in overall 16473 ADC Grey. Most of these are O-1Es though there are a pair of O-1Gs in the mix. Some may have had white upper wings.

Cannot leave out the USMC and two of the red and white rudder VMO-6 planes are included. These are both in overall 34097 field green.

Then we get to five Vietnamese Air Force planes. Some are in a light grey and some in an olive green, but they are not the same greys and greens as the US planes are painted. The light grey is a very light grey that is almost white. The green is greener than Army OD, and darker than USMC field green. The Vietnamese planes have no stencils showing they were overpainted in local colors. Some of the Vietnamese insignia have overly long bars on them and some planes have insignia on the upper and lower surfaces of both wings.

The decals are superbly printed by Microscale and AOA has one of the best color and markings guides in the business. Each aircraft has detail information about it including the various antenna suites that they carried. A full stencil guide is provided for those planes that carried them. I recommend visiting the link below to get more information on the schemes uses. In this scale, the only kit of which I am aware is the venerable Airfix kit. Pavla makes a replacement interior for it that is highly recommended.

November 2015

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Thanks to AOA Decals for the review sheet. You can find this sheet and images of all the options at this link.

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