I want to start off by announcing that as of yesterday I will officially be retiring from my 40 year career employment as a Quality Engineer at the end of the year. This will allow me to spend more time in creating more decal sets and doing more commission builds. The next build detailed below will be the last build of 2025. We are also looking to downsize our house so there will be a short time in early 2026 that I will be busy with the moving to a different house and moving my modeling room. This may cause some delays in shipping out decal sets. I will update everyone once the move has completed. Now on to the final build of 2025.
This next build is the Hasegawa 1/48 scale A-4M Skyhawk. I chose this particular build for a couple of reasons. I have already built a few aircraft related to the “Blacksheep” Squadron and since November 10th was the U.S. Marine Corp 250th Birthday I decided this would be a proper build. I will be using Eduard’s photo etch detail set and Cutting Edge Decals . The A-4M Skyhawks Part 2 set CED48194. The kit also comes with decals for VMA-214 but I had purchased the Cutting Edge set prior to buying this kit so the decals may end up being a mix of kit and aftermarket decals.
I spent the week working on assembling and detailing the cockpit area. I still need to detail the nose wheel bay and the rest of the inside of the fuselage and engine area before I can close up the fuselage. I am hoping to have the fuselage closed up by the end of the week.
You can see all the photos and details from the start in the build log at: 1/48 A-4M Skyhawk VMA-214