Short History

The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk is a ground attack aircraft designed for the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The delta winged, single-engine A-4 was designed and produced by Douglas Aircraft Company’s chief designer Ed Heinemann. The aircraft was later produced by McDonnell Douglas. The A-4 was originally designated the A4D under the Navy’s pre-1962 designation system. The A-4 was in response to a call by the US Navy for a jet-powered attack aircraft to replace the older Douglas Skyraider. Ed Heinemann opted for a design that would minimize size, weight and systems complexity. The little Skyhawk quickly began to be called by other nicknames such as “Scooter”, “Kiddiecar”, “Bantam Bomber”, “Tinker Toy Bomber”, and one of its more famous of nicknames, “Heinemann’s Hot Rod”.

The AN/APG-66 radar system was developed by Westinghouse (now Northrop Grumman) in the 1970’s for use in the General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) F-16 Fighting Falcon, and entered service in 1979. The radar was utilized in both the A and B versions of the F-16, and was later replaced by the AN/APG-68 system. The AN/APG-66 weighed in at 362 pounds and was a multi-role, x-band unit with a range of 160 nautical miles. In addition to the F-16 A and B, variants of the radar was also installed on the F-4EJ (Japanese export version of the Phantom II), British Hawk 200, US Navy T-39N, and New Zealand A-4 aircraft. The modes of operation were range-while-scan, track-while-scan, velocity search, and gun director.

How cool is this? A teeny-tiny 9-piece German half-track in 1/100 scale – sweet! Now, I’m not an armor guy, but I do enjoy a good armor kit every now and then, and I sure do appreciate those life-like pieces of work that show up every month at club meetings and at contests. Frankly, they intimidate this aircraft modeler to some degree.

This little guy, however, is quite a different story. When I saw this was a snap kit and might be good for kids, I jumped at the chance to do this review with my 5-year old modeling “Mini Me,” Camden. As fate would have it, the night we planned to build it at a clubmate’s house, Camden and his junior clubmate buddy opted to assemble integrated air strike packages of plastic and diecast model planes, wreaking havoc on Lego ground forces, leaving my buddy Anthony and I to putz in the shop.