Hobbyboss 1/72 A-7K Corsair II

Another one of the reported faults with this kit concerns the shape of the jet pipe and although I was’nt going to bother with it, once I really looked and compared it to pictures of the real aircraft it was starting to bug me.

The kit jet pipe has an oval shape, it should be round.

I tried clamping the fuselage to squeeze it together and heat it up in hot water but that didn’t really work as well as it did with the air intake. I read online of a possible fix that included cutting a triangular section out of the top and bottom of the jet pipe which I tried but I just couldn’t get the fuselage together.

A more radical solution was to cut the rear end off all together at the panel line;

As I had already cut a ‘V’ shape top and bottom, the edges were sanded to match them all up, the two halves glued together and left to set after taping the assembly to the handle of a round modelling knife;

Today I took the tape off, cleaned up the assembly and it looks a lot better shape compared to what I started with;

There is a bit of a step between the assembly and the rest of the fuselage but with some pressure and superglue it should be OK, failing that I’ll make an insert for it.

Published by andyk21

I've been a modelmaker for a verrry long time and still show no signs of growing out of it after 50 plus years. I mainly build tanks, aircraft and paint figures but generally do whatever takes my fancy whether it's historical, Science-fiction, a 'what-if' or because it has pretty colours and looks nice. I'm hoping that you find my blog interesting and useful, particularly if building a model that I have built and documented here. View more posts