Hi : To clarify : I don’t usually build too many Planes . I am a shipbuilder . Now , The question is germain to you who have successfully built this kit O.O.B. This is the way I wish to do this … Now , they have build steps in the instructions and lots , yes , lots of very nice parts .The problem .Step one and two are color callouts and minor assemblies . Step three is the assembly , parts for the building of the rest .Step five has you putting the cockpit in the airframe. Now in step fifteen the step has you adding the formerly ALREADY installed instrument panel with the instrument cowling ! Hey what gives ? I thought once you built the panel and installed it , that was it . There is another panel in the kit ( obviously for a different version) . Now my Question is how do I do this simply and therefore elegantly .It has a beautiful office and being O.O.B. I want it to be as beautiful as possible without extras except my painting and assembly skills .This aircraft is intended to be a gift for a former A-6-E pilot ! HELP ! ! ! A floaty thingy builder
P.S. Again forgive the obvious lack of spacing and such .This is NOT the way it was written !
I’ve tried to tackle that kit. It is a nightmare of confusion. There are no locator pins to properly place the cockpit. Just get it to a point where it looks right and then hope the glue holds. I had to abandon most of the instructions and just apply some modelling common sense to the build approach. Needless to say I will not buy another Kinetic A-6. I did leave the cowling and IP off until later in the build. Getting that to fit correctly is an effort in and of itself.
That kit is a well know abomination. Fortunately, Hobby Boss seems to have a winner…but that doesn’t help with your problems…unless your willing to put down more $$$
Glad I read this thread as I was thinking of getting it over the HB one.
Yeah. Go with Hobby Boss. It’s getting killer marks. The Kinetic kit looks good when you can build it…but it has notorious fit issues.
Doogs is building one of the Hobby Boss kits it’s seriously nice.
dflu
Thanks for the link, quite an impressive build. Wasn’t Doogs AT a member here? I don’t see his posts any more.
Thank You !
I thought that Alzheimers had finally struck ! Well , that’s a big help .I thought about doing it that way ,B ut because of the $$$ amount , I felt I better ask first . T.B.
Hi !
Surprisingly , My LHS hadn’t heard anything about the build difficulties . Believe it or not I found another set of instructions quite helpful .Hmmm , Hasegawa’s / Tamiya’s 1/72 version ! !
The people trying to sell you the kit didn’t tell you about the problems with it? Shocking!! 
Complaints about instructions are certainly not unheard of in these forums. Maybe model kit manufacturing is not a major, big buck industry, but still I do not understand the lack of care put into instructions. Number one gripe of course is the poor translation from language of mfg to the English instructions, but there are certainly enough other problems.
However, when I think about it, the problem is not just in model kits. My current and previous TVs had miserable instructions, DVD player is bad too. I have heard folks say, “well, no one reads manuals and instructions anyway.” I think this is just an easy excuse! We need to stop buying brands of anything that have poor instructions and manuals! Maybe lack of sales will wake folks up.
Well the poor instructions are just part of the equasion with the Kinetic A-6 kit. I think some kits can make up for poor instructions by having a quality kit. Some of you may remember the early Accurate Miniatures instructions that were nightmarish to read, but the quality of the kits were top-notch. In this case not only are Kinetic’s instructions convoluted and missing key details, the overall fit of the kit was iffy and fights you at every stage. For example: In order to get the cockpit to fit correctly into the fuselage the turbine faces had to be left out and I had to scrape out about 1/4" of plastic on each side of the intake to get the halves to close. The result is now I had to go get intake covers. Just a painful kit all around.
Agree 100% about Accurate Min. instructions. I absolutely hate them. I don’t want to have to READ the instructions. I wan’t good diagrams with paint call-outs. There is a website somewhere dedicated to corrections for Dragon armor instructions…so at least Kinetic isn’t at the bottom of the ladder on that one.
Oh yes, the dreaded Dragon puzzles they provide as instruction sheets. I have gotten kind of used to them.
not right brother, just not right… when you buy your kits,does the seller know everything about them??? just sayin…
Well ;
I will not take the bait here . My local Hobby Shop couldn’t know about this problem if I was the first ever customer to buy this particular kit now , could he ? He went numerous places on line when I told him and discovered very little if anything about this kit , period ! His jobber hadn’t heard any disparaging info either ! It just slipped through the cracks I guess . Remember , I don’t build many things with wings anyway !
I’m not suggesting you were intentionally ripped off or that the seller knew the kit had problems and tried to sell it to you anyway. I’m just saying in a broad sense it wouldn’t make much sense for a hobby shop owner to point out a bad kit to someone who looks to be about to buy it. It would be a little different if it were a shop you were well know at and had built a relationship with the owner…which seems to be the case here.
However, the issues with that kit are no secret. I was going to buy the Prowler (mostly the same parts) myself and after 5 minutes with Google I changed my mind. There are numerous forums out there and I could link you to a dozen threads on that kits issue in a matter of minutes.
The Internet is a wonderful thing. I never buy a kit without reading through a WIP. I like to know how a kit will go together and I can generally get a sense of what kits to avoid.
Yeah :
This was one of those spur of the moment things for me .If it floats I gotta have it .If it flies , well , it’s gotta be on my favorite " Ugly " airplanes list for one , or be something someone I know or knew flew .
No worries. It’s not unbuildable. I’ve seen some amazing results with it. Just more frustrating than I’d care for. And by no means do I mean to suggest that you were wrong for buying it.
I look forward to seeing it 
Amen! This is something that I try to do just to know if the kit is worth building or to avoid it. For example, a quick google search on the current Revell 1/48 eagle will tell you that it’s a re pop of the Pro Modeler one from a few years back but you are better off getting the Pro Modeler because it brings a ton of weapons that Revell opted to leave out, and I mean TONS of mud moving equipment! Or that the Pro Modeler 1/48 F-4E is a re box of the expensive Hasegawa one, saving you $. Lots of great info on the internet.