Silverkite

you welcome. pretty sure there are better experts than me as Hornets are not my territory, it ticks me off that I can't track those discussions and also the WIP were the builder brought up those faults and the fixes. For a more later and upgraded Hornet you also have to check wing pylons as there are some A/M options for Austrialian or Canada users, plus everything else which escapes me (cockpit IP, antennas, tip rails etc) Luigi

Struts angle is 90° ish degree on the kit, it should be less or more than it (sorry I'm not a degree person lol) but unfortunately I can't find the discussion on ARC forums, might be as well elsewhere or lost inside my bookmark hell Samples are there, sadly I no longer own any Legacy Hornet from Hasegawa also I forgot to say that Academy MLG wheel wells are not shallow enough https://imgur.com/a/1l325E5 Luigi

Short answer Academy Before Academy it was Hasegawa plus Italeri MLG wells For the Academy kit you need/have to replace MLG struts with Italeri F-18E struts or something else for cheap or fix their error also have to do something for intake trunking and dropped flap/slats thing that no manufacture got it right Fujimi spine proportions are off but it comes with earlier drop tanks and full (?) intake trunking Italeri kit is just too basic and Hasegawa fuselage breakout is kinda problematic especially now that molds are getting old with warping and flash taking over Luigi

Bilek did release a resin? C/D conversion in the past, probably some boxes had it but good luck finding the right one especially if the seller keeps it for him and removes extra instruction parts, also Revell C/D got the wheels wrong, I think you can downgrade it to an A as Italeri needs to be rescribed Luigi

Right now A-7 Corsair, trying to figure out which got it right or not I'm aware that Academy Crusader it's not issue free but since I'm planning to make it configured like Area88 2004 anime fuselage shape and Sidewinder pylon angles do not bother me that much Luigi

Are there any differences between Vought scale drawings and D&S ones? Luigi

the F-15 comparison is kinda interesting, too bad I can't read chinese and I never understood how baidu board works... Luigi

A and C aircrafts had different panel lines, outside Tamiya and maybe Kinetic (I'm ignoring that disaster of the Academy kit) every other company is offering you the A fuselage with C/D/E/F/I decals and parts, this is valid for all 1/72 options Luigi

Will Tamiya realize that they are (once again) sitting in a gold mine and release all other G versions or they will just completely ignore it like they did for the F-16 variants? Luigi

FOD covers sometimes are open with a mesh pattern this will kinda allow you to maybe have a engine running at low revs with a cover Hot refuel with engine running I don't think it's permitted for training ops and may only be done during wartime and if the ground refueling probe sits behind engine inlets, on Tornado it sits above or next the right MLG well so maybe it can be done. But if you meant ground engine tests with aircraft chained down to the ground with dismantled panel lines then maybe you can have the probe up Luigi

I just researched the 1/72 kits I wanted to buy when I was living in Viareggio but never had the courage to do so because the EA-6B and the A-10 verily wee weed me off Luigi

Ok so most Hobbycraft kits were Idea knockoffs of other kits. I just scavenged codes and kit pics through picclick and spanish markets, did a pic comparison and sprue horrors from Hobbycraft do match Idea box pictures. Correcting what I said about the F/A-18 as it was a clone of Italeri kit because Italeri early F/A-18A and RF-18 boxes always had bombs and camera fairings on the sprue tree, Idea just omitted the camera fairing and drop tank's dent, also drop tanks look more slim and a tad longer Then when SHTF and their released the War on Terror boxes they started to switch tools and use Kitech knock offs, and as I said the decals on the F-14 and also on the Venezuelan F-16 were good enough to justify the purchase especially when everyone else was ignoring or starting to ignore the 1/72 scale market. Luigi

Giorgio are sure about those kits rebrands? In 1/72: The Tomcat boxing with VF-143 and VF-51 birds on the cover was a poor copy of the earlier Hasegawa F-14, the latter rebox with VF-213 bird on the cover was the Kitech/Zengdfuwhatever kit which was an Italeri copy with recessed panel lines, the only good thing about it were the decals as you could used them together with Twobobs VF-213 sheet The EA-6B was once a messed up copy of the Hasegawa tooling, had less parts, wing panel lines were raised, crew access ladder was blanked off with a blob of polystyrene and the decals were a mess The A-10A was quite something, basically a copy of Monogram A-10 tooling and they didn't get anything right, you could get better results by baking a birthday cake and shape it like an A-10 The F-15 once again I think it was a copy of earlier Hasegawa F-15 Jaguar didn't look like Hasegawaish at all Hornet was something shaped like it Luigi

I know AaCee, the problem with all of this for me is that as long none comes up, close and personal to the any real life sample of the major variants one can only speculate the differences between them.The spine, rudder and brake chute and also the canopy are the major distinctive traits of the J-7 then it's in the sticks for everything else. I do have a magazine with a J-7 article but outside some generic pics of three variants and a possible drawing of a Pakistani aircraft it doesn't say anything other than what's already written on Wikipedia. Gonna wait for "that" conversion Luigi

The Mig-21F kit comes with two cannons but you need the F13 kit to build the J-7 this if Chengdu didn't further modifiy the fuselage Luigi

thank you again, by any chance are these VOR antennas? Luigi

Thanks Pete, it appears Hasegawa completely forgot about its existence on all 1/72 boxes but the 00787 as it's marked on the added pamphlet but not present in any kind of box. Kinda curious now if Esci box comes with that but I doubt. Does the book reports its dimensions? Luigi

a wild u escaped while I pressed the enter button, sorry Here is another picture taken from wiki, it's the aerial on the middle of the left fairing covering what used to be the Sparrow well on the fighter version

I was generally searching for RF-4C pictures with AN/ALE dispensers on pylons and found a couple of pictures with ROKAF Recce Phantoms sporting them, I also noticed the present of this small fairing so the most simple question of all is...what is it? Luigi

I know, but sometimes I hate myself for buying through online stores while leaving LHS dry, ten years ago Hasegawa started their crazy price hike, guy from LHS in Viareggio was going crazy as most people refused to pay the price he was asking for and five years later he closed the store. While leaving in Viareggio I was so used to purchase from the two hobby shops we had there, heck I was even going to Lucca and Pisa from time to time and purchase leftovers, but now price is kinda an overkill. I really don't like Revell decision of cutting down the stencil supply, could care less about options but since they are releasing mostly special colors I have decided to scavenge ebay and online 2nd hand markets to fetch their older kits.Italeri it's an hit and two misses and they should just open a decal shop and sell their kits with basic decals Luigi

Thanks Geoff Luigi

Judging the amount of stencils and price of current Revell kits I would rather buy Hobbyboss boxes from China and deal with the decal problem later instead of paying 30€+ for a 1/72 F-16 with no decal options and 15 or plus euro for a decal sheet Luigi

Is this the Royal Navy version? How much different it is from the RAF version? Luigi

On ARC Forums a user was asking to backdating a C to an A in any case I do have posted a list of visual differences and I'm not an Eagle guru so take this with a grain of salt as things before Desert Storm and also shortly after may differ You either need Detail & Scale 14 Verlinden Lock On cause both have a 1/72 scaled drawing and some pictures taken on critical areas, and also I don't know what you get inside Tamiya 1/48 box so my explanation is going to be messy: Cockpit was a little different, after MSIP mods and later upgrades it also changed Later MSIP had a newer instrument panel cover, maybe HUD and a rifle scope for visual identification Ejection seat may be different Trunk behind cockpit due ECM equipment had a different layout and more added stuff Trunk cover on MSIP airframes sometimes seems to be different but I can't find clear shots around the web and I'm too lazy to buy a book just for that Canopy should be ok Nose area in the middle between radome and wind screen on MSIP airframe comes with ALQ 135 bumps and possibly a newer squarish panel, there are two bumps one in the upper and one at the bottom Forward bottom fuselage blade aerials and bumps are different Forward fuselage sides I think C version has two extra aerials there Nose wheel, both rim and tire may differ Main landing gear rims and tires are different between A and C, not sure if they beefed up the struts or changed layout of whatever is contained inside the wells Middle bottom fuselage on MSIP airframe you have some extra chaff and flare dispensers ECS (?) exhaust no grid cover on MSIP airframe Rear bottom fuselage saber drains installed under engines were at one point removed due security hazards For the tailhook area somewhere I read that A version had a different fairing and possibly shape than C version, then on the MSIP airframe the fairing is no longer there and tailhook was changed once again? Fuselage sides MSIP airframe has a different formation light layout, not sure if they also changed something around Sparrow mountings Something something about a vent on the right fuselage side where the canopy ends, most airframes have it so ignore this, but if Tamiya kit doesn't come with it you will have to scribe it Upper fuselage at the intakes MSIP airframe does have a missing or blanked off panel, it's kinda next to the in flight fuel receptacle on both sides GPS antenna at the right side of the airbrake Where the airbrake ends and where fuselage skin starts the reinforcement plates are different between A and C models, also later MSIP airframes got the E style airbrake ditto for horizontal stabs Feathers removed from engine nozzles Chisel shaped antenna at the base of the right vertical stab, then after MSIP upgrades its shape was changed, should be missing on A models Left vertical stab ofc comes with the ECM fairing More or less those are all the differences I caught raiding the web for high resolution pictures and the leftovers from my (now sold) reference books, I know that pictures speak more than mere words but I kinda suck with photo editing and my picture archive is kinda messy Luigi

I was checking Hasegawa F-16 AM/BM boxing, sprue Z comes with BAF bumps installed at the end of the extended tail housing and at the bottom of the intake, also by checking some pictures and doing a quick comparison it appears that sprue L comes with a extra aerial installed between bottom fuselage fins but it's sadly missing the left exhaust opening between landing gear bays (Revell comes kit comes with it but they completely ignored those extra antennas except for the one between the fins). There are still other intakes/exhausts amiss on both kits but it appears Hasegawa had Belgian Air Force F-16 planned but they decided to skip them,. Pretty much the same thing they did for USAF F-15 with MSIP mods cause the newer aerial sprue included in their updated F-15E box comes with ALQ 135 bumps EDIT Forgot to mention one thing, the only AM/BM kits with the Z sprue are just the F-16 Diana and the AM/BM Tiger Meet 2010 combo, the BM JSF Test Support only comes with fuselage reinforcement stripes and sprue L JULY EDIT Fumbling with Revell F-16 made me notice that BAF F-16 intake blister it's available on every kit with the Aim-120 spure, whereby the other missing bit for the tailhousing is contained on the common sprue Luigi