Giorgio N

3-tone TPS

Very sorry to read this Simon, hope all goes for the best and your condition is cured.

I can't remember any official name for postwar schemes. Some were sometime known as the type of aircraft they were supposed to be applied to, for example the short range fighter scheme. May well be that these names are more used by us modellers than the relevant authorities though. The Dark Green /Dark Sea Grey scheme first appeared with PRU Blue undersides for use on "Day fighters - Long range and day intruders" sometime in 1951 and then spread to other cathegories with different underside colours

Very sorry to hear this, I was a big fan of Space 1999 and I'll never forget Commander Koenig. Looking at the series today I can see that it wasn't that good as I thought when I was a kid, but Landau's acting is sure not to blame for this. He also starred in some very good films and got an Oscar for Ed Wood while also being nominated for his role in Crimes and Misdemeanors. RIP

Humbrol 126 in my charts has always been listed as a match for FS 36270, with 127 and 128 as the two ghost greys used on the Tomcat and other modern US aircrafts. In my experience these two are quite good matches, don't know what the current quality of Humbrol colours is like though Small bit of trivia: we have to be careful as in the FS catalogues there have been instances where the gloss and flat colour with the same last 3 figures were not simply a gloss and flat version of the same colour but were different colours. All these should have been corrected in the latest issues of the catalogue but better check each case In this case the correct colours to use are the flat ones, the reason why Humbrol listed 127 and 128 as semigloss is simply that these paints are indeed semigloss, together with a number of other paints that Humbrol introduced for modern aircrafts. This is not a problem for the modeller as a gloss coat would have to be applied for the decals and a final coat of matt varnish sorts everything if this finish is preferred. I have to say that the level of sheen of these paints is (or used to be, my tins are pretty old) very realistic anyway

Pioneering days inevitably see higher casualty rates and in a sense we owe a lot to those who lost their lives in those days as the safety measures we have today are also a consequence of those losses. If the aeroplane was invented today we'd likely see things done very differently, as the culture of safety regulations has changed so much that someone like the Wright brothers would have big problems in trying to get the relevant authorities to accept their idea of flying over public land with something nobody had tried before (although the Wrights were very throrough in their work before getting the first aeroplane in the air). We can see it in the way aircrafts are developed today, even before a prototype is ready there are tons of results from models, analyses and calculations and nothing is accepted in service without having proven a whole lot of performance parameters. Back in the days you built something, get it to fly and then every problem would have been sorted (or not) at a later date. Certain types would never be given a permission to fly if they were built today Not sure road accidents can be compared to early flying or even military flying in general, the UK saw almost 1800 people killed in road accidents last year but at the same time there are more than 30 milion vehicles on UK roads. Certain military aircraft types in the 50s and 60s suffered accident rates that resulted in the loss of 20-30% of the whole production. Flying from carriers is even more dangerous: the FAA lost 51 Sea VIxen crews during 12 years of operation on the type, I don't know how many passed through Sea Vixen units over that period but I'm sure not too many. The chances of getting killed for a Sea Vixen pilot or radar operator were much higher than those we have today when driving a car. Of course the thrills were also infinitely higher and I'm sure very few of us would hesitate if offered a flight in one.

No, I don't want to start a thread on the often discussed question "is scale modelling a form of art" or discuss the artistic approach to weathering and so on. What I want to show here is some different contamination between art and scale modelling: This is a work by Italian artist Alighiero Boetti, one of the biggest names in Italian contemporary arts between the '60s and the '80s. Boetti is better known for his embroideries but for a while he used magazine covers for his works and the one above is exhibited at the LAC museum in Lugano, Switzerland. Boetti's works are very valuable today, withsome of his embroideries selling for over £500,000. Don't know the value of this work, but maybe some collector will want to buy it for that P-40 and find out if it was from the Monogram kit...

Well, some here for a reason or the other are happier if they buy something that represents the real thing. If I buy an F-102 kit I want an F-102, not a mix between and F-102 and an F-106 (closest comparison to the FAL/SLR that came to my mind). If you're happy with something approximate not a problem, your call. But if I'm not happy with something that I have to pay for (even if this resin bits are cheap I still have to open my wallet for them), I can't see why I should accept something not up to my expectations.

Very, very nice !

The USAAF alone lost more than 13thousand men in accidents within the continental USA and statistics are pretty clear on this. However the problem is to determine how many were during training and how many during other missions (transfers, patrol and so on). The number of casualties I've seen listed for trainers alone are around 3500 fatalities, with more than half of these occurring in advanced trainers. Heavy bombers were the most affected, with accidents in B-24s alone provoking around 2800 casualties, fighters also had their good share of accidents but wih a much lower number of casualties. Sure a number of missions involving front-line types would have been related to training, only knowing this aspect it would be possible to understand how many casualties occurred during training. The breakdown of casualties by type is very interesting as goes to show how some types were indeed more likely to suffer fatal accidents. The P-51s for example seem to have been way less "dangerous" than the P-47, with casualties on the Mustang less than 1/3 of those on the Jug

Really we have accounts of young people today doing even more unbelievable things so I'd say that quite a few young men would have no problem jumping into an aircraft after two have crashed... Fortunately statistics were a bit different as shown in the link above, in any case military flying has been for many years much more dangerous than many other jobs and in all cases there was never any lack of volunteers. The uncle of a girlfriend of mine is a retired Air Force general and a former F-104 pilot and she told me how her grandma would only go to sleep when she had heard he was back from any mission as she had seen him go to too many funerals of fellow pilots. And that was in peacetime. Yet every year the Air Force Academy received more than 100 requests of admission for every place available and this even with a set of very strict admission requirements. Accident rates for early jets in particular were very high, a Metor or Vampire pilot may have had a great job but it was a dangerous one. Still I'm sure we'd have all loved trying it. Honestly I'd do it at my age today, I'd have been even more eager when I was young. Things have fortunately changed though, and today the human life, at least in parts of the world, is given a higher value. Looking back at WW1, those who fought were sure brave, particularly because at the same time were seen as disposable material by their commanders. Of course that was the mindset of the days and the attitude of every individual to life and death was different from today's. Those who fight today are IMHO no less brave as they put their life at stake anyway. However the "system" around them try to increase the chances of survival while at the same time trying to decrease the chances of the enemy. Not a bad thing I'd say

Most likely no IFF wires by 1943 The cockpit should have differed with no gunsight and the presence of the camera control box. I'll see if I can find any picture of the PR.IV arrangement, I wouldn't be surprised to find it's the same as later marks though

US Navy aircrafts were for a time painted in gloss finishes, and it may be interesting from a modeller's point of view to make this noticeable. At the same time there are two things to consider: 1) the original finish may have been gloss but these aircrafts weathered quite a lot when at sea, with the original gloss finish becoming much less so. 2) most important, a really gloss finish on a model can look very unrealistic. Call it scale effect or whatever, but it's a fact that a Crusader painte in gloss paint ends up being a bit like a toy. My personal choice is to tone down the effect using a semimatt coat that I generally prepare myself adding some drops of gloss to my usual vallejo satin varnish. By adding more or less drops of gloss I can achieve different finishes. When I want to have a matt finish I just spray the satin varnish from the bottle, as this is really more of a matt finish with a hint of sheen (IMHO more realistic than a dead matt finish) rather than a proper semimatt varnish

IIRC numbers were changed on aircrafts during the filming, however these are some of the correspondances that were seen 160665 was 114 of VF-1, crewed by Maverick and Goose 160681 was 104 of VF-213, crewed by Iceman and Slider 160694 was 114 of VF-1, crewed by Maverick and Merlin 160685 was 110 and later 203 of VF-213, crewed by Cougar and Merlin

Ok, so now I'm confused... is this made from Firestorm or Callsign ? In any case I agree with rickshaw, the rifle I see is not as good as hoped for. No flash hider, front sight is L1A1, handguards at least have 2 slots, cocking handle is FN (actually this was also initially non reciprocating, the Israeli FALs had a reciprocating one), buttstock shows a mix of features. I also don't like the magazine, the way it's moulded makes it look weird. I always support the efforts of the smaller companies working in resin and other media, but I'm not sure I like what I see here. FAL prototypes: there may be a case of having to agree on nomenclature behind the reason why the curator at Shrivenham denies any link with the 7.92 Kurz. The first prototype of the rifle was indeed made in this caliber but by then it was not known as FAL. When the .280 prototypes were built for the British, the rifle received the name with which it's still known today. The original 7.92 gun predates the work on the .280 rifles by a year. Some also consider the .280 as the first FALs to go into production, albeit limited. As this "production" was probably around a dozen guns, It would be more correct to call them all prototypes. So in a sense it's both correct and incorrect at the same time to say that the FAL started in .280 It should be mentioned that FN also built an experimental variant chambered for the US .30 Carbine round, but this had several mechanical differences so should probably be considered a more distant relative. UNIT weapons: I tried to look for pictures of these rifles to understand what they actually are, some of the features are clearly L1A1 but others are FN. I've yet to find a clear picture showing the right side of the receiver, that would sort the matter. Being weapons used for movies, there's of course always the possibility that they are replicas of some kind made from whatever pattern the manufacturer decided to follow. There's also the possibility that they are guns coming from the civilian market, this is very common for companies supplying firearms to movie productions.