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Hi all! I have at home Tamiya's 1/48th offering of the A-10A, kit 61028. With the release of Italeri's offering, and the alledged problems with the Tamiya kit, would it be worth letting this one go and picking up the Italeri kit? I was thinking of doing one with the European 1 scheme as I think it looks awesome, but I'm not sure if they carried MER's with triple Mavericks, the 12 Mk 82's, the single GBU-10, GBU-8 and a pair of Rockeyes, all included in this kit. I hear the Italeri one offers some LAU-117's with Mavericks and a DRA with a pair of Sidewinders, which among other things, would make a more realistic load. What do you all think?

TIA!

Hello. In my days on the A-10 as a weapons loader, I can tell you that the units I was in, the 18th TFS at Eielson and the 78th/91st at RAF Woodbridge, we never used MER's or GBU's. At Eielson we carried the LAU-88 with three mavericks, LAU-68 with the 2.75" FFAR (WP) rockets, and single Mk-82's or Mk-20's. At the Twin bases, we used the LAU-117, LAU-105 for the AIM-9's and single stores as far as the MK-82, BSU-49, Mk-20, CBU-87 and -89. We did train loading heavies on TER-9/a's, but rarely ever used them in actual sorties. We also used the ALQ-131 ECM pod versus the -119 pod.