Sabrejet

85th FIS: bear in mind that 53-664 above is an F-86L; 52-3879 and 52-3725 are drag-chuted F-86D-41s. The ‘early’ (non drag chute) scheme was applied circa August 1953 and retained up to February 1955 when the last of the 'early' (non-drag chute) aircraft departed 85th FIS for conversion. The early colour scheme was applied to the following 27 aircraft: 51-2982, 51-2991, 51-2999, 51-3004, 51-3026, 51-3029, 51-3099, 51-3111, 51-6123, 51-6225, 51-6226, 51-6228, 51-6232, 51-6235, 51-6236, 51-6242, 51-6244, 51-6253, 51-8280, 51-8281, 51-8283, 51-8291, 51-8299, 51-8306, 51-8409, 51-8479 and 51-8496. Here are a few photos for inspiration: I do like this scheme.

The Big H has a few sets at less than £8: Superscale 48-954 (85th FIS 51-8291) - £7.99 Superscale 48-955 (93rd FIS scheme, 51-6245) - £4.80. Superscale 48-772 also has a 469th FIS aircraft 52-3675 with no chute at £3.33. All good schemes!

...the 85th FIS aircraft on Superscale 48-954 is also an early machine.

Cutting Edge does a sheet (CED48155) which has a 97th FIS machine (51-6024) which is correct. Note that the other Cutting Edge sheet (CED48153) has 97th FIS options, but these are brake-chuted machines. Eagle Strike also has two sheets for ‘non-brake chute’ F-86Ds: 48070 with 51-6024 in the 97th FIS scheme as above; and 51-8437 of 13th FIS. 48071 with 51-8377 of 86th FIS; 51-8407 of 2nd FIS and 51-3078 of 465th FIS. These should be good for a start. There may be others.

Green wheel wells; green speed brake wells; green speed brake panel interiors; silver gear door inner faces.

Good job! 👍

Possibly MFH? They have announced a new 1/9 kit coming soon...

I noted some debate on the Kitty Hawk ejection seat. I've managed to find some scaleable NAA drawings and measured the seat width at approx. 22inches, or 11.7mm in 1/48: And the KH seat is....approximately 11.4mm. So I'm happy that KH got it right in terms of width. The proportions look good too, so I'd say those other seats are wrong, not Kitty Hawk. Each time I look at this kit I find precise dimensions so I think we need to stop picking holes in it and rejoice in a job well done. 🤗

And another that @Tailspin Turtle may be able to clean up a bit: showing compressed, static and max extended positions:

Try this: official NAA FJ-2 drawing, so will be accurate. I've put fuselage stations in so that it can be scaled. It's also shown with fuselage centre line horizontal, so the forward rake of the leg can be shown correctly:

Don't hold your breath but a full set of stencils for NMF and GSB FJ-2s would be a start, as would a nice sheet of VMF and Reserve aircraft, with correct colours etc.

There's no record of an official Service Change for deletion of the doors, but it's possible that if the doors were not considered flight-critical (as @Tailspin Turtle mentions above), they might have been removed with local approval. However I can find no photographic evidence of it on FJ-2s. Regarding tail surfaces, I measured the span of the horizontal tail and can confirm that KH got that right too. I think there may be a resin set of AM being issued for cockpit, seat, radio compass etc but the set referenced by @Jon Kunac-Tabinor above looks good and will come in handy for sure.

Neither kit will give you an accurate Sabre 4 OOB; the Airfix kit will address that issue correctly.

Yes it seems so: tailwheel on the drone was fixed (not rectractable).

It's a curse you know: as pointless aviation info goes in one ear, something valuable (e.g. wedding anniversary date) gets pushed out the other one...

It's the Horton Wingless, designed by William Horton in California in 1952. And it did fly: there are images in the LIFE magazine archive.

And finally a couple of schematics. Aerial fit first: Note external Generator Warning Lights (32) & various remote control servos (1), (2) and (3) etc.

And some F6F-5 drone controllers: 29 White front and rear (Critical Past still): White 8: White 9 and (Blue 5?): Then Blue and Red F6F-3Ks (left rear) with two Blue and one White drone control F6F-5s at right front:

A few more F6F-3K shots, showing particularly the fixed (non-retractable), elongated tail wheel mentioned by @NorthBayKid. 18 Green: black tail number just visible on the original image. Testing F6F-3K drone (White 7) and two white-colour F6F-5 controllers Stateside: Another oft-seen colour shot of Yellow 11: Interesting: This should be Red 9 but obviously re-coloured for the Crossroads Able/Baker test: And two White F6F-3Ks (note white wing tips) aboard Shangri-La for the actual test (still from Critical Past):

F6F-3K; the controllers didn't have a specific designation and were all F6F-5s.

I had been struggling with the Crossroads test colours and think I now understand what occurred; the colours above were for the pre-test phase (including flight testing at Johnsonville, Chula Vista etc) and for the actual test, the Red, White, Blue and Yellow colours were applied (these were the only call signs used and correspond to the drone control F6F-5s). Also the wingtips of the drones seem to have received the same colour but not the drone controllers, which just had the front of the engine cowl painted. These are two of the Red drone controllers for the Crossroads Baker detonation; 25 and 8. Video from Critical Past is available on Youtube, as are others. You can also see the drones in the background plus white wingtips on two of the White F6F-3Ks in the video. I had wondered for a while about another F6F-5 drone controller (below), but now thanks to the video above, I now know that 'Red 5' was named 'Prislyn':

Note that F6F-3K drone aircraft in this scheme were used specifically for the 1946 Crossroads tests at Bikini Atoll; they had been tested in the US prior to deployment. The tail colours were allotted in pairs, as follows: 1 & 2 medium blue 3 & 4 orange 5 & 6 - (dark blue?) 7 & 8 white 9 & 10 red 11 & 12 yellow 13 & 14 pink 15 & 16 blue grey 17 & 18 light green 19 & 20 orange 21 & 22 - ? 23 & 24 - ? 25 & 26 – ? Tail colours seem to have been used to identify the aircraft and their drone controllers (F6F-5) and used as the flight callsigns during the actual test (Red, White, Blue and Yellow for the Crossroads Able test for example). Most photos showing these aircraft were either taken on Kwajalein atoll or aboard the USS Shangri-La. These drones featured extra tail antennae and some also incorporated K-17 or Mitchell cameras.

You need Reskit RS48-174 (RS72-174 for1/72).

Revell wing is only out by a degree or so: many other wings are too but don't get the criticism. The R-M wing looked OK to me on this:

I have explained the various pylon locations, so the kit should be OK; the render isn't representative of the kit which will be boxed as a RAF Sabre 4. The drop tank type is not correct for that version either by the way (make of that what you will). Not quite sure why that render was released with the initial announcement.