I first built this Fujimi A-6E back around 1992, and it was one of my first airbrushed models.  Over the year it has suffered through several moves, being packed and unpacked over and over until it had shed so many parts that it had been given a permanent home in the Box of Forgotten Styrene.  Earlier this year I was in the mood to work on a model, but was much more interested about painting and finishing than the actual construction, so I decided on a restoration instead of a complete build.

For the past several years most of my modeling activity has been in that odd little subculture of "What-If?", so I originally thought I would refinish this as a Royal Navy Intruder S.2, but I really love the look of the Intruder in late USN/USMC colors, so this plan fell to the wayside and I decided to venture back to Real World modeling.

Since most of the landing gear had long since been lost/destroyed/cannibalized the first step of the restoration was to close up the gear doors and stow the flaps & slats.  This also made an in-flight display necessary, so while waiting for everything to dry I built a quickie stand from a $0.99 wooden plaque from a craft store and a length of brass tubing.  A small section of narrower tubing would be glued into the belly of the finished model so that it slots nicely into the stand.

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After starting the modifications to backdate the original Fujimi TRAM A-6E to a non-TRAM Royal Navy aircraft (meaning I chopped the turret off and plugged the hole) I decided to go back to a TRAM machine. Fortunately the turret from my Italeri A-6E kit fit well with just a bit of sanding. The decals from that kit were also used, making this machine from VMA-332 "The Moonlighters" in 1993. I also went with the kit SAM supression loadout of 2 X AGM-88 HARM and 8 X CBU-87s. The kit had no pilots, so for the inflight display I found a couple from a pair of Airfix kits. They aren't the best figures, but with desert tan flightsuits and red helmets for some color, they work OK in a closed pit.

I wanted a fairly heavily weathered appearance, so after painting, decaling, and flat overcoat I did some light sanding followed by an alcohol washdown, trying to reproduce a heavily weathered effect I discovered when I was sanding the old decals down.  It worked fairly well at giving that faded, uneven finish seen on real USN/USMC hardware, though it's not as pronounced as it was during the stripdown, but I had to compromise between getting the effect and leaving the decals and paint intact.

After the 'fading process' I did a thick sludge wash of black watercolor and soap. This darkened the finish a good bit, and I did some highlighting by removing more of the wash using an alcohol soaked cotton swab. Finally I outlined a few panels with a fine brush using the base color to simulate the spot painting seen in real life.

The colors are not an exact match, since I had Light Ghost Gray, but no Dark Ghost Gray. Since I've read on several ARCair features that the two colors blend together so well it's hard to notice the demarcation, I decided to do the lower surfaces in LGG and the uppers in LGG + a few drops of Gunship Gray. It may not be completely accurate, but given the variation seen in the real article depending on weathering and lighting I'm happy with it.

This restoration took about two days, and while not a perfect model by a long stretch it does show that sometimes the quick-build fix can be satisfied by digging through the Box of Forgotten Styrene that I'm sure we all have somewhere.

Nick