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Charles L. Lipkin
Naperville, Illinois
Except for the ordnance, Charles built a Hasegawa 1/72 scale A-1H Skyraider mostly out of the box. “I substituted CBU-24s from my spares box for the two kit-supplied wing drop tanks and added eight Mk.81 bombs from my spares box to fill otherwise empty wing hardpoints, in addition to the four kit-supplied six-tube rocket launchers,” he says. “I substituted a [shortened] straight pin for the molded-in tail air-data probe and added a radio antenna wire made from 0.004-inch diameter gray invisible quilting thread.” He airbrushed the model with Testors Model Master enamels and weathered with a sludge wash and pastels. “This was a very well-engineered and molded kit that went together quickly and easily, needing only a touch of filler at the seam between the lower wing trailing edge and the fuselage underside; a pleasure to build!” he says.