Close Air Support in the Andes

Academy make a great little A-37B Dragonfly in 1/72nd scale; it comes with 4 LAU-3 rocket pods, 4 Mk. 82 Bombs, 4 external fuel tanks and two sub-munitions dispensers. Decal options include markings for either the United States Air Force or Republic of Korea Air Force (South Korea). A word of warning though, I don’t know if it was just my kit or most Academy kits but the decals were very fragile and next to useless.

When I purchased this kit I had wanted to build either an Ecuadorian or Peruvian example from the Cenepa War. Unfortunately finding decals for either country at the time proved difficult so I settled on the Chilean Air Force and chose an attractive green and black camouflage scheme. I entered this kit into a campaign build on Aeroscale called Close Air Support but I didn’t make the deadline. I later entered the partially finished model into another campaign called Hanger Queen and was awarded a ribbon for finishing it.

I painted the cockpit with a mixture of Revell and Vallejo paints, my two preferred brands as they’re both easy to brush by hand.

When it came to joining the fuselage I knew I would need to add weight to the nose as the Dragonfly has a large tail. My plan from the get-go had been to stack several 1 cent coins in the nosecone.

The Dragonfly was one step ahead of my; however, and presented a nosecone smaller than the coin. As I didn’t have any fishing weights nor any alternatives at the time I turned to the PVA glue.

I took some fine gravel left over from an old armour project and mixed it in with the PVA glue until the concoction was nice and thick. Then I packed it all into the nosecone, filling it completely. Initially I thought it had worked as the it felt pretty heavy but as it dried overnight it started getting lighter. By the time the tail and undercarriage had been added the kit began tipping backwards. I went out and bought a bag of fishing weights after that experience but it was to late to save the Dragonfly. Thankfully when I added the under-wing ordinance to the kit it tipped the scales forward slightly and up-righted the A-37.

The Dragonfly is a very attractive little jet and kit is very nice also although not without little problems. When I assembled the kit I realised the engine intakes had a small cross shaped gap inside them letting light through; you can actually look down the intake chute and out the exhaust on the other side. Also, be very careful after you add the refueling boom to the front of the aircraft as it is easy to break; I believe I broke it twice resulting in it being shortened. After canopies my biggest foe on an aircraft is definitely the refueling boom.

In the picture above you can just about see the weapons I chose to fit to the aircraft. These include two Mk. 82 Bombs, an LAU-3 rocket pod and an external fuel tank; the same will be replicated on the opposite wing. If you check out the Resources section of the blog you can see a loadout chart for the A-37 which can carry quite a lot of gear.

Retired in 2009 the Chilean Air Force operated about 44 A-37’s at one time. They sported different camouflage schemes depending on which area of the country they served in. In this case I chose an overall green scheme with black ribbon camouflage. I undercoated the kit in Humbrol Matt White from a rattle can and then preceded to paint, by hand, the kit in Vallejo Reflective Green.

I realise that airbrushing is the standard nowadays when it comes to painting models but for those of us with limited cash and limited space an airbrush-compressor setup is difficult. I believe that if approached appropriately and slowly that hand-brushing a model can produce great results. Rushing on the other hand will produce not so great results as I’m currently experiencing with a BAe Hawk…

Following the Reflective Green came a bottle of Vallejo Black and a new experience, painting camouflage by hand. I made the mistake of taking a small round brush to paint in the edges of the camouflage which actually produces thick, lumpy borders. It’s much better to use your regular brush, in my case a #4 square brush, and paint in the camouflage normally making sure no ridges are forming at the edge. It may help drawing in the camouflage borders with a light pencil first.

When the paint coat had fully dried I started another experiment of sorts. Johnsons Klear is a staple product for many modellers who use it for gloss coating. In Eire and in the U.K the formula was changed a few years back and old formula disappeared fast into the locked closets of modellers, safe from wives, children and the occasional raider. I picked up a bottle of the new formula to try it out and I hated it. I hated the woozy smell, I didn’t like the satin finish it gave and I didn’t like the smoky effect it left on the tail. My experiences with the new formula persuaded me into buying Vallejo Gloss Varnish which I’ve used ever since.

The Chilean Air Force decals, from the picture above, came from a set called Vivacious Vipers #2 made by the Mexican company Zotz. It’s a very nice decal set which provides markings for F-16’s in service with about 7 different countries. I ordered the set online with the aim of using roundels for various different projects.

I also bought Vallejo Decal Fix and Decal Set to help with the project and they worked a treat. Decaling can be a very satisfying process as it brings your kit to life and it’s even better when the decal conforms to the panel lines and really looks the part. The Zotz decals offered up no problems whatsoever although I did clumsily tear a point off of one of the tail stars.

I did make one small error in the painting though, the tail rudder should be painted a shade of blue. I had conflicting resources but it looks like many Chilean Air Force planes are painted this way. I realised this after I had added the decals and I wouldn’t risk painting around them.

Attaching the weapons to the pylons in this kit is a lesson in patience; each weapon comes with a shallow indentation on it and the pylon has a narrow protrusion, as you can imagine this becomes very fiddly very fast. I found it so fiddly; in fact, that I used fast drying super glue to hold them in place. Unfortunately this had made the connection very brittle so I have to be careful moving the kit about or it’ll drop a bomb. Besides the poor connectors I’m very happy with the ordinance, I think it’s a great job that Academy thinks to add them to the kit. An A-37 Dragonfly would look awfully bare without something on those pylons.

The last stage of the build on this kit was attaching the canopy and this is where disaster struck. I knew that regular glue would fog up the glass if I wasn’t careful so I first used PVA glue instead as it dries nice and clear. It turned out to be of poor quality though and flaked off. Then I had the crazy idea of using super glue very cautiously. Of course super glue being super glue it quickly stuck to my fingers which stuck to the canopy and marked it in several places permanently. To make matters worse the fit of the canopy was terrible for whatever reason. I was gutted to say the least but best to chuck it up to a learning experience. I’ve since bought a special glue from Revell designed for attacking canopies and it works pretty well.

So there it is, an A-37B Dragonfly of the Chilean Air Force. It probably has the shortest refueling boom of any Dragonfly today but at least it’s unique, right? All in all the Academy kit builds up into a nice model and I may get another sometime in the future.