Hoops

Great and detailed work so far, congratulations! Hoops

My local hobby store has the Fine Molds F-14As at 3600 yen, and I'd say that's a pretty average street price in Japan. Cheers, Hoops

I started providing references to Mark by sheet 72-006 and wound up either drawing the artwork for or providing the references for 44 subjects (just counted them up!) and another 60 that hadn't made it onto a sheet yet. We probably traded emails every couple of weeks, a very nice guy who will be missed by 1/72 scale builders. Hoops

I am familiar with the set, but in all honesty, I'd probably just as easily make do the conversion myself. I've got the Albatros Modelworks decals already, and getting resin set to the US or Japan would be about as much cost/effort as replicating those part myself. If I am going to buy a Special Hobby kit to begin with, I would prefer them to release their promised AZ version. Cheers, Hoops

When I saw there had been an update, it had gotten me excited that there may finally release the F1 AZ. Hopes dashed! Hoops

This morning's work, at least I'm satisfied with the wing panel lines: rect5001-1 by J Hooper, on Flickr Cheers, Hoops

The "F-16CJ Misawa Japan" has the parts for the small mouth intake in the box as well, just marked as not for use. Link at Hobby Search: 1/48 is not my scale, but this boxing of the Hasegawa kit should have all the parts that you need in it. It would not be as nice as the Tamiya kit, for sure, but you should still be able to build a nice representation. Cheers, Hoops

Thanks Rob, I'll see if maybe I can track some of those down. If all else fails, I'll just have to approximate them. Cheers, Hoops

That's actually the same artwork as what @cmatthewbacon posted, just rearranged. Thank you for the help though. I think that the two different sets of scale plans that I've found are also "heavily influenced" by the prototype. The Heller kit matches up with them, both include the leading edge landing lights and the dogtooth is further outboard. When you say that the wing profile is different, what is different about it? I'll probably only ever build one Alpha jet, so I'll try to get it right. This is from the other set I had found, but it has all the same errors: alpha_jet_011 by J Hooper, on Flickr

Thanks M, but that's one of the ones that I had already looked at. The dogtooth on the leading edge of the wing is way too far outboard, the panel lines on the top of the wing are not very accurate either. The other ones I have found from "Plastic Kits Revue" suffer from the same problems. I only got that far before deciding it might be better to look for another source. Cheers, Hoops

Good morning, I just picked up an old Heller Alpha Jet kit in 1/72 and I'd like to go about rescribing the panel lines. A good set of scale plans/line drawings would be very helpful for that. Those that I've scrounged up online are all significantly lacking, where can I find some good ones? Cheers and thanks! Hoops

The Hasegawa C/Ds have never been very prolific, this is a great opportunity to pick one up. I'll look for them to start showing up in the shops, count me in! Cheers, Hoops

@CT7567 and @Robert Thanks for the tips, I'll see if somebody has a few LAU-51s from the Meng kit in the spares box that I'll be able to trade for! I must admit that is one kit that I was completely unfamiliar with, as it didn't fall in my sphere of interests. Cheers, Hoops

Good morning, I'm going to be building a Luftwaffe Alpha Jet in 1/72 and would like to load it with a couple of rocket pods on each side. I haven't been able to find any LAU-51s in 1/72 scale though, have I missed something? or do they not exist? I tried my hand at modifying a couple of Hasegawa rocket pods, but was unable to keep my hand drill completely vertical and the spacing accurate for the rounded nose. Thanks! Hoops

Definitely not. Almost all of those in outdoor storage have been there since at least 2002 when I had the chance to get a close look at them. The older ones were already in pretty rough shape at that time. Hurricane Ivan also did a good amount of damage to a number of the outdoor aircraft in 2004. I think that the only ones that would theoretically have a chance would be those that landed and more or less immediately got towed into one of the buildings. The VX-23 EA-6B comes to mind.

Very timely! I've been doing a bunch of research and work on this aircraft the last couple of weeks. These images are very helpful, thank you very much Sven! Cheers, Hoops

I assume you're referring to the Caracal decals? If so, they are only correct for Phase I of the testing, which can be noted by the black radome. In Phase I the script on the tail logo had "USAF - NASA - USN." Phase II kept the canards, added the sensor shapes on the wing roots, and the text on the tail had "USAF - NASA - USN - U S ARMY." At some point in time during Phase II, the plane was upgraded with the ACES II ejection seat, the Air Force Systems Command logo was added on the tail and a few other small details. For a portion of Phase II, the right wing root had and sensor installed, which in shape looked exactly like front portion of the "Coronet Prince" pod Sven has posted photos of before. Eventually it reverted to being a dummy shape, however. The next iteration was for the CAS studies starting around 1988. This got rid of the canards for a normal NSI intake and the paint scheme was changed to closely resemble a standard USAF F-16 scheme. I forgot to mention, it got the larger horizontal stabs at this time as well. The markings on the tail changed again to get rid of the service names, but added "CAS" in red below. In some of the photos it looks like the left wing root pod had a IRST installed, and part of the time the "Falcon Eye" or the "Falcon Knight" nose mounted FLIRs were evaluated. Not exactly the same configuration, but here is photos of -750 with the "Falcon Eye" FLIR in flight with a SUU-20 under the wing: Click here! Of note, the "Falcon Eye" is the same sensor used on the CAS/BAI evaluation F-16B 75-752 in the Green European 1 Camouflage around the same time frame. Here is a photo with the "Falcon Knight" dual FLIR set up with tanks and Mavericks: Click here! Here is one after the nose mounted FLIRS are removed, but still with the "CAS" markings on the tail and HARMs: Click here! Cheers, Hoops

Great build of a very interesting aircraft. I've thought of doing the exact same thing with the Minicraft kit. I've been put off by the prices they're going for though. If I ever come across one for cheap, I'll probably pick it up for this project. Cheers and happy modelling! Hoops

I can honestly say that I've never held the plastic of the old Monogram A-10 kit, but just did a bit of looking online. There are a number of statements that it has the best shape overall out there, and looking at photos of the sprues, it does a number of things very nicely. A lot of the details look simplified, probably as a result if it's vintage. I think if you were to come across one cheaply, give it a shot. Or maybe use to kit bash some details with another kit? I think some of the other kits are probably better and much more readily available. Cheers, Hoops

Thanks guys! Cheers, Hoops

I don't know if they do it operationally, or it if was part of the testing program as this aircraft was depicted. Once testing gets involved, everything else probably goes out the window. Cheers and thanks! Hoops

@Creepy PeteHere is the result of my quick LBF2 scratch build: P1030553 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030554 by J Hooper, on Flickr I was messing around with trying to do the practice bombs as well, add a nice touch of blue. Trying to do the fins was driving me nuts and not worth it, so I decided to save myself the trouble and just leave the container empty. A couple of minor touch ups and the build will be complete. Cheers, Hoops

Work has continued on both of the aircraft, but a few other builds have taken priority. Those have wrapped up for the most part, so it's shifting back onto the F-15s. Aires Resin Exhausts were added, as I had a set available for this build. Attaching all those actuators was very fiddly! There were some minor changes to the antennas for the F-15D that I replicated with sheet styrene. -Addition of Radalt antennas on the bottom of the nose (two white squares) This necessitated moving one of the blade antennas further forward. -Addition of small blade antennas on the top of the nose in front of the windscreen, and one forward right of the SATCOM antenna behind the cockpit. Decals were a mix, and proved to be difficult to source right. The stencils are Hasegawa kit stencils from a normal white box F-15C. While not 100% correct for this aircraft, they went in the right direction, and created the right impression. I don't think that there are decals anywhere in 1/72 that match what's actually painted on this aircraft for stencils. The AGM-142 stencils are from the GWH F-15I kit they were sourced from. The Israeli unit markings, ejection triangles, and roundels are from a old Sky's decals sheet that I've had for probably close to 18 years. They proved to be a bit brittle and tricky, but with some special care I was able to make them work. The serials and nose art script were drawn in Inkscape and custom ALPS printed. Waiting for those to get printed and arrive put this build on the back burner for a while. The custom printed decals turned out really nice, I think are a great touch on this build. P1030562 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030566 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030564 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030559 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030567 by J Hooper, on Flickr I still need to do a few little touch ups, but this is very close to being complete. If I had some oil paints, I'd like to experiment with streaking and staining on the bottom of the aircraft, but I'm not quite there yet. Some more work has been done on the F-15SA as well, but I save that update for the next time. Cheers, Hoops

Good Evening, I always thought that heavy handed aesthetics of the VF-0 with the Ghost drone on the top looked pretty cool. Prior to this January, the last time this kit was released was 15 years ago, and I'd always had my eyes open to catch one. When I saw this released again I was sure to pick one up from the local hobby shop. I was planning to enter it into their semi annual contest once completed, but the Corona Virus lock down cancelled all of that. There was a good amount of detail added to the landing gear, gear wells, cockpit and various areas of the fuselage. I enjoyed the build, but have to say it is both big and heavy compared to the rest of my 1/72 kits. P1030540 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030536 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030533 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030531 by J Hooper, on Flickr P1030541 by J Hooper, on Flickr I have a few other Macross kits in long term storage. This is the first that I've completed, but I'm looking forward to build the others some day as well! Cheers, Hoops

I finally got around to taking some good photos of the finished aircraft. Please see a few photos here in this thread: Cheers! Hoops