Released in 1987, the 1/32 scale Hasegawa OA-4M is a limited edition "Hi-Grade" kit.  I spotted one on Ebay and thought it might be a fun kit to try out, so I bid an obscene amount of money and was fortunate enough to win it.  Being an older kit, it has a few shortcomings, but with a little work, the final results are quite pleasing.

The kit is basically a reissue of Hasegawa's TA-4J kit, and includes new sprues to convert it to the OA-4M version.  In addition, there are some very nice photo etched parts, as well as some white metal pieces for the landing gear, various lumps and bumps on the fuselage, and the gun barrels.  Rubber tires are also included. 

Since most of the model uses the old TA-4J sprues, it has raised panel lines over 90% of the kit.  I therefore decided to rescribe everything.  This was my first attempt at this, and it was the most time consuming part of the build.  However, I'm pleased with the results, as it makes using a black wash so much more effective.

The cockpit, although upgraded by the photo etched pieces, still needs a little bit more "help", but for obvious reasons, there were not a lot of aftermarket products for this kit.  I ended up using Cutting Edge Escapac seats without seat belts, and added belts made from lead strips and buckles supplied from the photo etched pieces.  I didn't have many reference photos for the cockpit, so I used a little poetic license and added a few items here and there to jazz it up a bit.

The fit of the pieces is very good, and production progressed at a reasonable clip.  The plane was painted in the appropriate three tone grey camouflage using Model Masters Enamels.  After drying, Future was applied as the gloss coat.  The supplied decals are very thick and had yellowed with age, and they were printed in various shades of grey that are not accurate at all.  In order to correct this, I photo copied the kit decals onto a sheet of pressure sensitive label stock.  Using a sharp knife, I then created painting masks for the U.S. insignias as well as the tail letters and numbers by carefully cutting out their images from the photo copied sheet.  Before final painting, I sprayed the correct color of grey on the appropriate areas.  After drying, I applied the painting masks and over sprayed the final paint.  When the masks are removed, their shapes remain in the correct shade of grey.  It seemed to work very well.  The "Marines" decal on the tail is from a Two Bob's F/A-18 decal sheet.  It was a little too light, so I over sprayed it with a thin coat of Dark Ghost Grey to blend it in better.  I did the same with the remaining kit decals in order to get them to match as closely as possible.