This is the piece I remembered I specifically picked-up a few days after Christmas with money from cash alms, well my mother will always desuade me from using cash gifts from occasions like X’mas and birthdays for buying what for her are things that I will get tired off sooner or later (females …they will never understand toys and Boys phenomenon), encourging me to save them since I’m only a few years to high school by the time. Well I did manage to slip this one whilest on a commercial center for our family’s pre-New year’s eve shopping, makes me squirm while I’m writing this entry whenever it struck me that this happened long-long-long time ago.
The Kit is a 1/72 scale Machbox “ A-7 Corsair II ” , I’ve always wanted to get this kit but although it’s the same scale as my earlier Machbox models, the A7 is a bigger plane than most single seat fighter in scaled form and actuality, it has more parts and a bigger box, therefore it cost more, about ten pesos more than the small box kit of the same scale. The biggest box usually have bigesst planes like the heavy bombers will cost much more. Now for a child of that time, ten pesos is only un-sacrificingly affordable during the holiday seasons, with more to spare for piggy bank offering.
In my child's point of view, the more the missiles a warplane have the more likely it will defeat an adversary in dogfights and the “box art” of this kit clearly shows it carries vast amount of such ordinance. It was a few years later when I learned that what I though as missiles were actually bombs, nevertheless it became my favorite kit in my old un-painted 1/72 scale collection. The Piece is in very bad condition when I examine it for blog imaging, parts are broken, decals are peeled off, dust stains, and it seemed as an infant modeler I tend to over-glue my kits, this model is unpainted; Machbox kits comes in three differently colored parts stem.
One of the encouraging factor for posting this kit is most of the missing parts are of minor significance and can easily be substituted or scratch-built; in fact, I've considered completey re-assembling and fully painting this kit with total respect to the principles of replica building, but it can probably wait or I'll just include it in my imaginary list of "Things to do if I will live to be One-Hundred" to build this Warplane again; a "more credible replica version" from a completely brand new kit. I did some minor painting on small portion of the model not to replicate but to emphasize some of the aircraft’s features. For now, it will stay more or less as I have build it as an eight year old.
The A7–Corsair II is a Carrier base capable subsonic single engine jet aircraft meant to carry more payload than it’s predecessors in the “ground attack” category, On its initial intro into service A-7’s prime role was the neutralization of enemy radars, ground troop support , and anti-armor. Like all ground attack specialist fighters the A-7 is not meant for “aerial dogfight” however special weapon rack are built-in on the sides of the fuselage each specifically to mount “air-to-air missiles” usually an “AIM-9 Sidewinder” so it could fight back enemy interceptors if necessary. Upon the introduction of supersonic multi-role fighter-attack aircrafts the Corsair II was still used for mopping attack of disabled targets.
Built by “Vought” aircraft Industries the name “Corsair” was in honor of a successful World War II fighter; the Vought "F4U Corsair". The A-7 Corsair II first appeared on the battlefields during the mid 1960’s, Corsair IIs saw sensationalized action in Vietnam and did sorties in “Operation Desert shield” and the subsequent “Operation Desert Storm”. Although officially retired by United states Armed forces in 1993, most recent Yahoo-search inquiry came up with Thailand, and the Hellenic (Greece) air forces as countries which still have the A-7 in their inventory of operational combat air assets.
"One of the encouraging factor for posting this kit is most of the missing parts are of minor significance and can easily be substituted or scratch-built;"
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