Trumpeter Raduga AS-6 Kingfish

I wanted to get this second completion posted before I head off to surgery tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn (well, the crack of 6.15am, which might as well be dawn to a retired person). This is the first part of a long-term project I am working on. You may have noticed that I never hang any underwing stores on to a model that I do. As I've mentioned before, this is because I want to spotlight the lines of the aircraft itself, and not a real or imagined warload that the plane may or may not have carried. But sometime during last year, I conceived the idea of a separate display of purely ordnance types. It's not an original idea; I've seen a couple of collections on the net that are rather interesting.

In the old days, you would only have been able to get these items with kits, but now many manufacturers are producing ordnance-only sets. Hasegawa is probably the most famous, with their - what, nine? - sets of bombs, missiles, and nationally oriented weapons sets. But ICM has produced Russian sets, AModel has released lots of the large airborne missiles (with nice little transport racks to stow them on) and aftermarket producers like Eduard and diving into this market as well. The result is nice little things to either hang on to existing models or display by themselves.

This first completion is not like that. With finances being what they are at the moment (I feel like if I walk into a hobby store with cash, hidden representatives from one of the hospitals will spring from the bushes and snatch it to pay down our outstanding balances) I have had to rummage through kits to find something interesting.

So while going through a box with a mostly completed Trumpeter Tu-16 on the Shelf of Shame, I ran across a sprue of a pretty large missile. A bit of Google research led me to believe it was a Raduga AS-6 Kingfish, a fairly standard load on a Tu-16. It wasn't long til I found some pictures to give me clues on the paint scheme, which was good since the Trumpeter instructions neither identified the model nor gave any hint as to the colors. A bit of construction and a bit of painting and here we are.

I'm not 100% satisfied with the shade of green, but it will have to do. I also built a little stand to hold the Kingfish up. Though decals are provided for the AModel version, that wasn't what I started with, so I just did the red stripe and the two yellow placards from stock solid colored decal material. 

This is completed ordnance #1 (#2 of the year), completed in January of 2016.

I am likely to be offline for a few days while I recover from the surgery. I was in a sling for 3 weeks last time to prevent the leads from disconnecting, and expect to do the same this time. I'm also not allowed to drive, so I can now in good conscience get the rest of the family to do all of my errands! Prayers and good wishes gratefully accepted of course. See you on the other side!