Air Hockey Propellers

Got the paints I needed and spent a few hours today on the next steps. On the process of painting the pilots. Note the silver buckles on their uniform an seats. What I'm doing here is gently tapping on the paint. There will be no brush strokes or little spots from the airbrush technique. Could you believe the underbelly is gloss white?

Inspiring and perfect. Congratulations.

Wow, impressive kit. If I built it I would put all those zigzagging decals aside, really. Too much contrast, too, I think. Can't wait to see it finished.

Well, today I carefully adjusted the arms of the pilots. I had to cut off the control stick from the base, something like ungluing it, to shorten it and get the grip closer to the pilot's hand. It was the only way. I then proceeded to paint the pilots but not having khaki green, I used another green which is close enough but unfortunately it was too glossy. I have another A-6 with modern Marines camo where the plane is overall one color and I also noticed that the grey for the cockpit I used there was darker. Well, I will look at pictures of the real thing to decide. This model will be painted with the black nose scheme.

Hello everyone, I will be building this kit of the venerable Intruder. A plane well ahead of its time that could have performed a lot better in Vietnam if only they had better maps. I hope to build this one very nicely. This is what I did for today. I want to wait for the decals to dry properly to trim them well and make sure they get the texture from the plastic before going forward. Once the cockpit is ready I will figure the best position for the pilots' arms.

Cool. You know I once read that in case of the Intruder, the bombardier/navigator had to toggle 16 or 19 different switches to switch from bomb to missile. I imagine your 1/72 pilot won't be annoyed if he's expected to toggle between three different weapons, right? I mean, how sophisticated is this jet?

Hello Thomas, Nope, no WIP. You have follow interesting steps when it comes to painting. You know you'll have to deal with large gaps between the wing and fuselage, right? 1) Don't make my mistake of sealing shut the canopy with a transparent HUD. (Paint it in clear green.) 2) Be very careful with the clear parts, just a little bit o pressure and it'll get the micro-fissures. 3) I compared the R-550 missile with that one from a Hasegawa Jaguar kit that was left over and the Italeri depiction has the rear fins way too small. That's just so you know. How are you going to load it? I'm loading it with rockets, (flare pod?), and R-550s. Those are rockets, right? The olive drab things.

How's it going? I'm building mine here already. The darker shade of blue will come out quite lighter on mine. I mixed the paints myself, lacquer based Gunze or Mr. Hobby. If you're using the acrylic Hatakas with a brush I wish you good luck. In my experience, acrylics only work well with airbrush. Vallejo, by the way, is vinyl AFAIK. I was looking at the cockpit of your model and I noticed something odd about the panel before noticing there's no ejection seat. All ok? Oh, and I noticed the intake bit, too. I just painted the forward facing bit in black.

Thank you very much for the photo of the canopy. It is acceptable although as @Azgaron says, there are nicer canopies... In general or for this Mirage??? I didn't understand the surgery bit but well, maybe I will when I get that model someday. Anyway, what are you painting it with?

Sometimes the frames on the clear parts are exaggeratingly think on Italeris. I'm thinking of their Super Puma or Cougar model. Hopefully it isn't that bad on this kit as you say. See for example: I really do wonder if there is a way to fix that with klear or something.

Cool. I'm going to follow your posts because I'm planning to build it, too. Your modifications seem interesting. I wonder how you are going to tackle the canopy with its unrealistically thick frame.

Thanks for the insight. I didn't quite get the "anti-glare panel" part but I did compare the two FS colors you mentioned and they look very much alike. However, those are the new colors. What about the bluish tone of the Hornet in the picture? That's the one I'm after. (Unless it's an illusion)

Hello everyone, I'm seeing two colours on these Hornets. Are they the same colour under different lighting conditions or does the color marking toning down directive have anything to do with it? Any insight will be greatly appreciated.

Jajajaja! Can you tell us more about this? I know the Raptor can carry two drop tanks for long haul flights. And by the way, the F-35 looks so bloated already that it would be funny to see it with conformal fuel tanks and drop tanks! Anyhow, I saw an article somewhere about the achilles heel of these stealth jets, their (so far) inevitably non stealth tankers. To this I say hurry up MQ-25 tanker. However, that's so far only for the Navy.......

Speaking of which, I read on a magazine that the latest cockpit of the SuperHornet can be connected to a Windows 10 tablet. That's worrying. If we evaluate this issue, we come across the example the operating systems in ICBM which are programmed to self destruct the missile if any modification is made upon launch, preventing the missile from turning toward friendlies. Good. But then that kill switch can be exploited to kill jets in the air, too so they would have to take it away. Another example of cyber security are chromebook operating systems that are extremely small and therefor can check the entire OS every time you turn on the computer to see if it has been modified and revert to the original backup copy if such were the case. The operating systems of F-35 are humongous making such anti-tampering verification upon booting unfeasible. I've read it can take days to update an F-35's operating system. I'm actually starting to get concerned. Well, I actually prefer the 3rd generation jets. Fourth and fifth generation jets in models look like toys to me. Third generation look like real machines.

Hey man, I'm not that good of a modeller myself. I hardly bother filling the seams and my camera is only sharp at 28mm, which distorts the image (!). But I do think that an imperfect model has more personality than a perfect one that might as well have come out a factory line. In your case, I was just surprised that you missed the seams after so much attention to the shading and the colors on the missiles. Perhaps your strength is with the paint!

Well, I'd have a hard time understanding how it would be politically better to let news about how bad the aircraft is go on and on. However, I do remember almost the exact moment when the media stopped criticizing the jet. When it comes to our abilities, it's been known for years that aircraft are cheaper if designed not to sustain life, since life support systems do take a lot of money and space. Actually, a same aircraft without cockpit and life support could cost less than half? The study has been made and it has been determined to be substantially cheaper. Moreover, these aircraft would be able to sustain more G forces than what the pilots can withstand, hence out-turning even the Flanker. However, you do point out an interesting issue, if the mothership is knocked down. The point of "controlling" the drones from an F-35 would be to have instant communication with them. Anyway, I'm sure this contingency has been looked into. An F-35 would be supported by the drones nearest to him with the required capabilities. If that F-35 gets shot down, either they'll support the next nearest jet or linger over the ejected pilot providing cover. The possibilities are endless. I do have this nagging feeling, however, that the drone support will only be available for the US, UK, and Israel and that that is why it's not talked about. Once the countries that ordered the jet get them, we'll see the launch of the support AI wingmen and the US persuading the countries that don't get it that the "interoperability" and the "situational awareness" enhancements are enough for them.

The F-35 was not meant to have a great payload capacity or be highly maneuverable. It was meant to be a Forward Air Control of sorts for Artificially Intelligent drone wingmen that would supplement and augment it. Imagine different wingmen with missiles, bombs, buddy refueling, sensors, ECMs, decoys, etc... In this sense, the "code" the jet has in it is the most important part. The pilot selects the target and this is automatically assigned to an AI wingman. The weapon's bay of the F-35 would be more appropriate for missiles that turn 180 degrees to defend the jet's six (French-style?). This is why so much money has disappeared in Skunkwork's labs. They are using it to develop the AI drones in secrecy just as they've developed other technology like the F-117 in secrecy. Not trying to sound facetious, this, however, makes me wonder why this little known fact is seldom stated in the news. Why are they trying to hide this from us. Or rather, why don't they defend their product by reminding us it's true nature and purpose. Whoa, that link is slightly over a year old. I saw some reference to this I think in articles from October. What do you reckon an AI wingman hitting it's leader will be called? Grey on Blue?

Interesting result you have there. It got me thinking: I started to dislike raised panel lines when I learnt that everybody considers recessed panel lines better. However, upon looking at real aircraft, you do not notice neither raised or recessed panel lines. Instead, there's just a line. Furthermore, some kit's recessed panel lines are too thick or too deep or both and it really does not look realistic. I find that there are only a very few cases where the recessed panel lines are soft enough and even then, they are objectively unrealistic when you multiply their dimensions by 72 or whatever your scale is. And knowing that people like recessed panel lines on the basis of weathering, I think it could be done with the help of masking tape on smooth surfaces to a much more realistic effect. But now, looking at your raised panel line Hornet and comparing it with mine from Fujimi with extensive narrow but deep recessed panel lines, yours is better because there is less contrast from those panel lines whereas mine, well, it does not look realistic. Unfortunately, the resolution of your camera doesn't help me appreciate the model very well though I can tell by looking at the wing joints that you built it for the enjoyment (like I do). Also, unless the resolution is tricking me, I can tell it was airbrushed like most models here. Now I don't want to go on and on how airbrushed models hardly look realistic because of that orange peel effect but all in all, I would like to see a model with the weathering quality that you managed here but with an entirely smooth surface and sealed seems. I have one question, though. The canopy frames look very smooth for Italeri. Did you sand them down? PS: I'm building a 1/72 Kiowa with a smooth surface to see how it comes out.

Well, much better than my first 10 models after 20 years! Nice work, there! Too bad about the orange peel effect, though it's a prime example of it.

Is it just me or what we now know as drones such as the Reaper were at first called UAVs. And back then, what we called drones were semi-autonomous machines. Now, we seem to be left without a word for semi-autonomous machines, while we completely forgot about the term R/C. Here's a link with with further reading: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-drone-and-an-R-C-plane-or-helicopter

The poll. And nothing but the poll.

Your answer is valuable.