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Dennis_C

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Everything posted by Dennis_C

  1. Not harsh comments. Just want to explain why it is what it is. It's definitely not the first model kit with some missing panel lines. It's much worse when there is total mess of phantasy rivetting. Hope that these scribing templates shall be easy enough to deliver to more remote parts of the globe to save some precious modelling time. Just a thought how the issue could have been avoided - at cost of more complicated buildability though - left and right fuselage sides, bottom side insert, top side together with upper sides of the wings, separate dorsal spine.
  2. Do those vinyl engraving masks suggest that ALL panel lines are missing on the fuselage sides? If yes - I think that unfortunately comes from how they decided to split the fuselage. I do not really remember much examples where similar aircraft would be split that way. And that probably made it impossible to make any horizontal engravings.
  3. Nice style of mechanics' shorts in extradark sea grey I guess - that's on 2:30! And jokes aside - clearly shows grey cockpit and intermediate AMI bangseat. AMI (Aircraft Mechanics, Inc.) seats for AMI (Aeuronautica Militare Italiana) Thunderflashes!
  4. By the way French Streaks in the Suez Crisis seem to have small tail fairing. I wonder does that mean short tail too?
  5. Got it. And I think batches for Streak and Flash belong to separate series of blocks so that RF-84F block 31 is not necessarily older than F-84F block 51. Moreover as I see French Streaks were made by General Motors. I wonder whether that impacted how they were painted and equipped.
  6. Hi @Wez, As I'm continuing research I agree French Streaks on period photoes clearly have a seat with deflector. Colours are unclear but are probably darker than what medium grey could look like. So also agree it's likely green. On contrary Italian Flashes clearly have red headrests and seat sides are definitely grey. So seems it's intermediate seats with grey cockpits. The only question remains open for me - French Streaks have serials like 28xxx or 29xxx. Italian Flashes are 27xxx. Does that mean Italian Flashes are actually produced earlier than French Streaks but with 'uplifted' cockpit layout?
  7. I wonder how different is modern Erickson upgrade of S-64 to the Vietnam War CH-54. If I ever build one - I'd probably make one of those joyful orange civil hardworkers rather than a dull olive drab Vietnam War equipment retriever. And BTW it seems the 2024 (okay CH-54 is 2025) becomes a year of helicopters. Airfix does Chinook, Italeri brings back long missing H-19, ICM promises Skycrane, I think LF models plans Westland Scout. Not at all bad already.
  8. NF.30 being first is interesting! But I would say XVI could do fine either as Airfix released TT.35 in fact
  9. I hope someday Italeri refreshes the complete line up of Italian trainer jets. Modern quality 326, 339 and 346 are all could be best sellers in 1/72 likewise their AMX. I'd buy Italeri's M-346 and Zvezda's Yak-130 and will make a totally what-if dogfight battle between the two in Polish and Belarusian markings. Okay no armed battles - let it be a what-if airshow exhibition dogfight battle. Belarusian airforce used to participate in airshows in Poland and hopefully these days come back...
  10. Perfect help! So looks like p/e bit is definitely not going inside the canopy. At the same time seems that full piece of metal outside of canopy is not the greatest representation of the feature either as metal ring is only narrow thing with screws inside the circle. Reinforcement plexiglass ring around is probably best done by just spraying one layer of off-white colour together with full reinforcement web. Probably best option is just spraying the ring onto the cabin in two colours without photoetch and decal.
  11. I've counted and seems there are three Sword's Flashes already in the build including mine. I'll be looking after your build with an interest as I feel a lot of improvements could be done to what Sword gave us on the box.
  12. One of the biggest fun things in our hobby is that you learn a lot about each airplane you build. Much more than you could ever learn while just reading books and articles. A surprise discovery number 1 for me was that round shape on the right rear side of the F-84G canopy. As I understand that is an access door to the equipment located in the rear of the cabin that was moving together with the canopy and probably could not be accessed otherwise. A question that I have - Aires offers a round piece of photoetch to represent the feature. And they offer to stick it from inside the canopy. As I understand it should be from outside as this framing was probably not hidden behind the plexiglass and instead represented a round metal plate outside the canopy. Who's correct here? Any thoughts? P.S. I think Tamiya just offers a decal for this feature.
  13. I'll make more shots later to compare resin and plastic bits. From the first glance some parts are almost the same - for example kit's cockpit tub frankly speaking is fine as is. Some resin parts - injection seat first of all - needs cleanup from flesh. Not sure how this would work given how brittle this yellow resin is. However some areas in kit are completely bare - the worst here is the front gear bay. Tamiya gives just zero details there. So resin part would be a super huge improvement. Wing bays are also much more delicate in resin.
  14. @RidgeRunner those Fs with open canopies look very tempting. I think I should maybe do my Special Hobby Streak with an open canopy. And maybe Tamiya's G too!
  15. Here are the contents of that Aires resin box: I think it's quite an old release from them. More modern boxes I think were using dark grey resin and the boxes themselves were made from clear plastic. Here the yellow resin is used which frankly speaking I like more because it does not seem to shrink in size after molding. I find Aires grey resin to be usually undersized which is mostly seen with exhaust cones and canopy tub length. Another photo of goodies. Cockpit tub seems to be identical in dimentions to the plastic part so hopefully fitting resin bits will not consume all the three months of GB timing! Also seems Aires packager noted that fragile front gear leg strut got broken and threw in another one. Nice touch.
  16. My second entry from my three-build challenge is going to be a very well-known Tamiya kit that I plan to do as a Yugoslavian aircraft. Here is what I have: Not huge amount of aftermarket bits. However that box of resin is really full of goodies - I'll show its content later in this thread. Decal provides markings for a very non-standard Yugoslavian camouflage scheme of grey aircraft with dark green spots. I do not really like it to be honest. My intention is to make a natural metal bird with red arctic tail and tanks - I have references to at least two such aircraft with Yugoslavian serials 10600 and 10620 which had the same large size roundels (normally F-84G at that period had smaller sized roundels). I'll need to source serials and large nose numbers which I do not think should be a problem because at early stage of F-84G career with RV i PVO they were of typical USAF font. Eduard masks hopefully will save me an hour or so for masking the canopy.
  17. More impressive that all those old Soviet jets such as Su-24 somehow find themselves able to fly, fire missiles and somehow escape modern antiaircraft and radioelectronic countermeasures being actively used on both sides. And another shockwave - super-mega-modern Israeli F-16I turns 20 years old this year. Imagine a 20 years old plane in the WWII or in Vietnam War (okay in the latter something like Skyraider was in fact 20 years old)
  18. Yes - that's I saw myself already. Very nice rendition for split plate from Sword!!! I'll come up with Yugoslav Jet and 'Israeli' Streak. More topics to come!
  19. Hi @Wez, Thank you for both good advise and some hints on the seats. Let this tread be for RF-84F and I'll create two more later. Probably should be easier to self-navigate too I agree French Fs seem to have green cockpit and early seat. Same for my Yugoslavian (spoiler) G. Definitely green cockpit as seen on many photoes of abandoned Gs. Italian RF-84F seems to be the trickiest one. Any chances Italy used MB seat or have they never refitted their F-84 with those? Could be logical as they used MB seats on G.91 and I think at some point replaced Lockheed seats on F-104. P.S. As I'm looking on the photoes - seems grey cockpit and intermediate seat for Italian Flash are the right choices.
  20. As noted above Flash is going to be Italian. Looks like it's going to be out of the box project. Not much aftermarket for Sword kit there. Maybe I'll try to live up the undercarriage niches. Cockpit looks fine. Resin seat will receive belts from spare boxes (but I need to figure out what seat to use!). As always Sword did a single-piece front gear. Engine face is not bad given no one will ever see it. Exhaust face is very basic. Here are some shots: Decal is very good and Techmod quality is usually excellent. The only problem is that 27394 had 3-44 squadron number. So two extra numbers '4' are needed. https://www.thunderstreaks.com/rf-84f/italian-air-force/#prettyPhoto
  21. As I'm looking into the boxes - there is the very first question - what bang seats to use? As I understand there were three types of ejection seats in F-84 family: - the very early simplistic chair - used on most F-84 - updated AMI chair similar to the one used in F-105. As I understand this was used only in some later production Streaks. - some European Streaks and Flashes were refitted with MB chairs later in their careers. So G would be ok with the early chair. For the French F Special Hobby suggests early chair as well. However there are all the three chairs in the box. What should be used in Italian Flash (yes I think to build an Italian one)? Sword gives only AMI and MB chairs - no early chair in the box. Any thoughts very much appreciated!!!
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