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Phantome

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Posts posted by Phantome

  1. The Fujimi is also full of rivets... a bit strange and off putting for a stealth plane.

     

    If the Hasegawa B is as good as the A then it's a great kit. The inclusion of RAM decals is a must unless you want to waste your adult life masking them. My only gripe was that the fins are a two-piece that leave a seam in a place that has no seam on the real one. The Academy does not have that problem and looks like a better kit overall... so I'll be waiting for their B.

  2. 17 hours ago, azureglo said:

    I think you definitely need to re-read what I wrote: I think you may be missing the point,: Here's a hint 😉

     

    Sorry, it came across as I was objecting to your statement which was evidently ironic. I was just trying to add to it!

  3. On 11/22/2018 at 5:38 AM, azureglo said:

    As someone who has spent over 3 decades  working with "marketing execs", I can tell you Allan, that you are absolutely, positively and totally correct. "Marketing execs" know exactly what they're doing...😂

    Literally every time I criticize Revell's marketing decisions (mainly over all their missed opportunities to make different variants of kits) I get a flood of indignant replies from people here basically saying that companies like Revell must know something we don't.

     

    These, I should add, are the same people that go ballistic over a missing rivet.

     

    So basically, modelling companies have genius marketing teams, and idiot engineers :P

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    • Haha 3
  4. On 12/2/2018 at 5:12 PM, opus999 said:

    Absolutely!

     

    I'm glad you mentioned this... I found mixing the AS12 with another color was a bit difficult because it was hard to get looking right.  I haven't looked at Vallejo much, but isn't it an acrylic? I've seen a lot of people use it, so maybe I'm missing something, I'll have to look around on the internet and learn about it.

     

    Thanks for the feedback!

     

    Yes, Vallejo is acrylic, water-based. Their Metal Color range is very good though, sprays right off the bottle and has a similarly fine texture as AS-12. I am not a huge fan of their Aluminum color, however, as it tends to streak quite easily when spraying over larger areas; decanted AS-12 is much more forgiving. However, for panel shading, they are excellent and like I said, you can use Duraluminum and Dark Aluminum for progressively darker shades, or White Aluminum for a lighter one.

     

    Old Citadel Chainmail was also a great color for darkening NMF panels, shame the old formula paints are gone forever...

    • Thanks 1
  5. Great job on the NMF! I myself am a recent convert to decanted AS-12 and it is a life-changer. Sprays beautifully, very forgiving, dries quickly, and dries like rock. No primer needed either (it's basically a primer).

     

    If I am allowed a suggestion, if you don't want the hassle of mixing darker shades of AS-12, Vallejo's Metal Color range is really good and goes over AS-12 quite nicely. Duraluminum gives you a slightly darker shade and Dark Aluminum goes a bit darker still.

    • Thanks 1
  6. On 11/20/2018 at 10:00 PM, dad's lad said:

    The Italeri (also boxed by Airfix) is quite crude and not the best fitting but not unbuildable.

    The Revell by contrast is a more recent release on a par with their Tornado/Typhoon quality and also available as a 2-seater.

    If your budget allows, I would recommend the Revell every time.

     

    Clive. 

     

    Surface and interior detail is nowhere near as good at their old Tornado. In fact, it's pretty terrible: deep panel lines, blocky cockpit interior, no rivets, etc.

     

    I found it to be quite a disappointment and yet for some reason few of the reviews seemed to be critical of it (I guess that's what happens when reviewers get free samples...)

     

    It's only claim to being the best is that the Italeri is even more appalling. But we really need a nice new modern Gripen from a company that has more consistency in its quality control than Revell which seems equally capable of producing a winner and a stinker back to back.

     

    http://www.themodellingnews.com/2015/06/grappling-with-gripen-building-revells.html

     

     

    • Like 2
  7. On 11/17/2018 at 4:10 PM, Flankerman said:

    Great choice of 1/72 scale Flankers - but what's wrong with the Su-27SM????

     

    Su-27SM_01.jpg

     

    ....just for completeness.:thumbsup:

     

    Ken

     

    Great kit, built it last year myself.

     

    Having said that, I would recommend people get the Revell boxing. The Zvezda original lacks missile stencils which is quite a shocking omission. And the SM carries LOTS of missiles.

     

    • Like 1
  8. Academy. It's one of those cases where there's absolutely no contest.

     

    It is not entirely shake-and-bake though. The nose is a four-piece affair which can be tricky and there are some alignment issues as well. Depending on the variant you may also have to do some removing of bumps and filling of panel lines.

     

     

  9. I just tested with a night intruder Hurricane I'm building and a light source.

     

    Putting it an angle in which the light source creates the exact same shadow from the stabilizer, a slight upward tilt of the port wing does lead to the light hitting the radiator, which would make it look brighter... but not as dramatic as on the pic. So maybe it is the case that Z's slightly different angle is the cause of the different radiator color. Who knows? Granted, this is 1:72 scale and using a lightbulb half a meter away, which clearly is not the same as a real aircraft being hit by sunlight millions of miles away :P

    • Like 1
  10. That's not a shadow. The aircraft are all angled identically. The shadow cast on the horizontal stabilizer is identical in all 4 aircraft which means the shadow on the radiator should follow a similar pattern. It is literally impossible for the sun shining on that radiator for Z (which would suggest the sun being more in the direction of the camera) while casting that shadow on the stabilizer (the sun being behind the aircraft)

    • Like 1
  11. On 8/29/2018 at 5:21 PM, Murph said:

    The dividing line between metallic green and gloss white was Fiscal Year, not model.  FY79 and older jets (which included the first two years of C model production) had the green Bay 5, FY 80 and later were painted gloss white.

     

    Just to add to this, but it is my understanding that many (most?) pre-FY80 aircraft had their avionics bays painted white after undergoing maintenance. So it would be somewhat inaccurate to paint a modern F-15A with the original green-blue color.

  12. If you're referring to 1/72 scale, that's perhaps because there is no decent and widely available GR.4 kit.

     

    Revell has not bothered with an update to their otherwise excellent GR.1 kit, much like they don't bother with new variants for most of their kits even when they would only need a handful of new pieces. Hasegawa had a one-off boxing that was ridiculously expensive. Airfix kit is a dinosaur.

     

    The aftermarket industry thinks it's more important to have 4 types of wheels for [insert obscure short-run kit].

     

    But who am I to criticize their genius marketing people... :P

  13. On 8/28/2018 at 11:44 AM, Roman Schilhart said:

    Hello Phantome, I have so far built three KP Mustangs, and in my opinion, they are pretty easy to assemble - for a short run kit the fit is excellent.

    Sorry to disagree with you on that point!

    May I present two of my  finished KP Mustang models here:

     

     

    I thought they were not short run, but actually steel molds... but I'll take your word for it regarding fit since I haven't built any myself!

    Having said that, absolutely phenomenal work on your NMF Mustang. Loved the weathering on it (post-shading with smoke I presume?)

  14. I'm a fan of the Academy, despite its inaccuracies. It looks good, has a nice interior, and has excellent fit. The Hasegawa kit has slightly inferior detail and is also not readily available.

     

    Having said that, one issue to note on the Academy kit that nobody seems to have mentioned is that the closed version of the early canopy has some fit issues: it's wider than the fuselage. The Malcolm Hood has perfect fit, however.

     

    I have not built the KP but it looks a bit over-engineered from what I see from the manual. I really don't want to spend 4-5 hours building a cockpit in 1/72 scale, and KP's small cockpit parts tend to be quite fiddly and with poor fit (I speak about the Bf 109s). Don't want to sound like I'm dissing KP, the 109s are lovely little kits otherwise (especially the Friedrichs)! I suppose the Mustangs are not too shabby aside from this.

  15. On 8/18/2018 at 8:52 PM, MiG-Mech said:

    Hasegawa white is seldom white.

     

    It is in their newer releases. Every brand new Hase and Tamiya kit that I've bought in the last few years has had nice, white decals that don't yellow which makes me think they've changed their decal formulas circa 2010 or so.

     

    That same E18 kit, if bought today brand new, would most likely have perfect, white decals.

     

  16. 20 hours ago, whiskey said:

    Thanks Hovis. I found a set and I think I’ll go ahead and get it. The only thing though is that’s a Gr. 7. I wonder if it it’ll even fit a Monogram kit though?

     

    If I may ask, who was the kind soul?

     

     

    If you're not too pedantic about every little dial and knob, the GR.5 cockpit is vaguely similar to the GR.7/AV-8B+ except for the fact that the right-hand LCD was a less modern, circular map display. Also note that the RAF machines had the right LCD/map display with a slight lower offset than the left one, whereas the AV-8Bs were at the same height.

     

    It would be trickier to modify an early AV-8B since it only had one LCD.

  17. 2 hours ago, Andre B said:

    I would say that the Italeri and Esci kits comes from the same family and are not related to Fujimi. Wasn' a lot of the Esci moulds made by Italeri (Italaerei).

     

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESCI

     

    Cheers / André

     

    Although Italeri inherited the ESCI molds, it has not repackaged any of the ESCI F-4s until quite recently with its F-4D/J kit.

    As such, the ESCI and Italeri F-4s are completely different beasts, the latter having raised panel lines.

     

    You can see the full history of the ESCI molds here: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/122492-esci-9027-f-4e-f-mc-donnell-douglas

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