tempestfan

I seem to recall reading the same re USAAF. In case the battle stations were easy to reach and man in flight there would be little point in everyone being at it - the ball turret gunner in particular would neither want to be in there for 7 or 8 hours, nor for the take-off, as that turret would be a deathtrap in case of a mishap. As no day fighters would be encountered for a large part of the journey, there would be no need for having turrets manned. RAF may be somewhat different, as the risk of a night fighter or an intruder on the prowl near the bases or at least in English airspace would be much higher. I am a bit puzzled by that quote above - how would the guns of the MID UPPER turret be able to foul the ground when depressing themselves? Or should that actually read "lower"?

@Troy Smith, tried to send you a PM, but your mailbox may be full.

There was an article on the X in Modell Magazin in the early 80, may have been by Heinz Mankau. Would have to dig to see if it has any information considered useful today - most was guesswork.

And a rather clear view of my particular little obsession, the small blister in front of the outboard case chute, which according to Richard Dann is not shown on Grumman drawings (I had a short conversation with him on HS in the Stone Age about it), and hence not represented on any drawings apart from those by Jumpei Temma.

I'm pretty sure one of the early Luftfahrt International issues from ca. 1974 had the ducted spinner one as cover art, so there may have been an article inside covering it. Drawings would be factory GAs, if included. I hope I think about having a look over the weekend.

This is F-4C #5, if I'm not mistaken. Andrade is not particularly clear here - IIRC all the B's lent to the AF did retain their BuAer #, and it is my understanding only actual C's received AF serials. What a pity, as if this was actually a lent B, it would demonstrate this one at least was (re-)wired for the Bullpup. And also IIRC, the original Hase F-4"J" from the stone age included Bullpups, but then the kit wasn't particularly accurate in other areas either.

No, it doesn't say Braunviolett, it says "Farbton 81" BTW, there are also some 82 areas prescribed on the fuselage. As the sections near the tail would probably count as Flugzeugunterseite, it would seem plausible that "bleibt ohne Sichtschutzanstrich" extends to them.

No, it had a yellow wing bird and two-grey with the option of dotted and dotless stars - instructions here. Weren't some used up on the Great Lakes training carriers? Perhaps googling for something like Wolverine would give results, in one or the other direction.

Or do it like 50 years ago and get a Frog boxing. Of course 2nd hand and you ruled that out, but that would be something a bit special, and possibly even what you built 50 years ago.

That's a tough one. I would have assumed it featured in AvNews, and possibly in the Aeromodeller range - I have a very dim recollection of an Argus ad featuring it. The very first modelling mag I ever obtained had a review of the Astra Arrow, and I clearly recall some sections of it were paper thin. The Tutor may not be quite as problematic, but from what I recall of my Idea kit, it certainly does NOT suffer from thin parts...

Hobbycraft has moving glove vanes, not sure if that was a feature of the Esci kit? I'd suspect it to be a clone of the original Hase kit. --- My cheapest Airfix was 1€, and my list says five of mine cost less than 5 € - but times may have changed.

You obviously have misunderstood me Giorgio - thirdWORST means third from the bottom. Only the Monogram which really is a kit of the mock-up and the MB are generally considered even less worthy to build. All I wrote was under the proviso the Airfix kit may (still) be bought cheap. If it's the same price or even more expensive than more modern kits, there's little point in going for it.

Just had a look in my kit list - I have managed to accumulate 13 of the Airfix kits (I wonder how hat could happen - but most of them were cheap) in Type 5, 6, 8 Palitoy and 8 Humbrol boxes. Those above may be either one of the latter. In fact, my sealed Palitoy version would have bought 5 or 6 of the others, as the cheapest was a mere Euro. And it took me a long time to find one, as it's relatively scarce. Re decals - there is no hard & fast rule regarding yellowing. Some of the Palitoy era decals came with a deep cream film when new, but definitely not all. If you buy one of the early boxings as shown by David, they may or may not be yellowed (or only very slightly so), and they may or may not work. But if you manage to get one for say a tenner incl. s&h, there may be some change left for a sheet of AM decals.

Why not stay true to form and revisit the Airfix, possibly in a 90s boxing (which may or may not have decent and unyellowed decals)? The kit is not bad (at all), though only for very early airframes. As people tend to rate it third-worst, you should be able to get one quite cheap (though I admit my ebay days are long gone, and prices may have changed). Back in he day, you'd be a fool to pay anything approaching 10 €, at least for the first two boxings. Type 6 and 8 are another matter.

There was a fairly in-depth build article in SMI, I guess 1987, which may prove helpful (would have to dig the copy out - it was one of my first SMI's as a boy). Not sure how helpful they may be, but the Airfix AC-47 also had some Miniguns added, and the kit ***may*** be around fairly cheap as the kit has been superseded by a number of others (Esci also had an AC-4, but that may be scarce). Stop boasting, André I have at least a half-dozen Airfix AC-47s, including the rather scarce bilingual Type 5 boxing (but only one Ac-119, I think).