I saw this plane come through MCAS Cherry Point in 1994, piloted by Maj Steve "French" Fry; he was a former VMA-142 "Flying Gator" when they had Skyhawks at NAS Cecil Field.  The Gators transitioned to Hornets in 1990 and apparently Maj Fry went to Willow Grove to continue with the A-4M.

I started my career in military aviation working on Skyhawks (VMAT-102, MCAS Yuma) and have always tried to kitbash an -M model; somewhere in my stash is the front end of the Monogram OA-4M grafted to the Monogram -E, cut in half to receive the back of the OA-4M.  Hasegawa finally made it simple to build one off the shelf!

I added the Cutting Edge one piece intakes, avionics hump and ECM "hot dog" on top of the tail; the decals are also by Cutting Edge.

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I lost the tail mounted pitot (I found an extra with the A-4B kit so I'm not out of luck!) and the top antennas didn't line up because the kit hump has holes where the resin one doesn't (my bad!).  I decided to forego underwing stores but next time I might add the ordnance used out in Yuma during one of their last deployments prior to 160024 becoming a stationary target for bird poo in Havelock NC. 

I find it odd that she came to rest in NC and Willow Grove's museum has a different bird (158182) painted in a similar (but not exact) scheme.

The decals went on with a bit of Micro Sol (this helped immensely with the Insignia that goes over the vortex generators on the left wing) and I had to nab an anti glare from another sheet when the Hasegawa one failed me.  I painted with Model Master Gull Gray and White and sealed with Future.  An oil wash completed the weathering.

Hasegawa has done an excellent job on the M series Skyhawks as you can build a fairly accurate model of the early, mid and late (Super Mike) versions; all we need now is a TA-4F/J so we can complete the series!

Max