1/48 ESCI AD-4W Skyraider

by David Mielke   "VMFA314Knights"

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This is my first submission to ARC although I have been following the site for some years.  (Steve I don’t know where you find all the time to keep this site going but thank-you.  Thanks also to the wonderful inspiration from all the members, keep up the great work.)  I build 1/48th scale aircraft and am working towards more quantity than quality as my goal is to have models of many of the military aircraft that flew between 1939 and present.  As my collection grows towards 100 A/C maybe 1/48th wasn’t the best choice but there’s no turning back now! J    I thought I’d “get my feet wet” here with a “50’s” aircraft.  This is the (long OOP?) ESCI kit (8212) of the AD-4W which I bought in the early eighties and have constructed as 126840 of VMC-1.  This aircraft was credited with a “kill” near Seoul Korea in June of 1953.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

 

The ESCI kit is nothing to write home about and has some inaccuracies (that I did not correct…and I just realized I’m missing a part that I’ll have to go and add later. J) however if you wanted to model this version back then it was the only game in town.  Even at present if you want to go for this “Guppy” series you’d want to pick up Tamiya’s excellent kit and convert it, if you’re up for the challenge. J  If you want to see an example of this conversion done up right track down Bernhard Schrock’s AD-4W which is outstanding.  Keep on building!

David 

Photos and text © by David Mielke