Giorgio N

Standard colour scheme was Extra Dark Sea Grey over white. Yes, codes under the wings should be black, sounds like Trumpeter made a big mistake here. There's a decal sheet from Xtradecals, designed for the Airfix kit but I don't see why it shouldn't fit the Trumpeter one

All the alternatives proposed above are good and all work. I may add another: spray the red circle on clear decal paper. In general having a separate red dot has the advantage of allowing an easier placement, if you mess up the mask alignment on the model you have a problem, with a separate dot you can simply make another one.

Finally some progress to show ! This kit has a reputation for not really being the easiest to build and having been in continuous produciton for almost 30 years means that parts can be warped. These facts caused some delay in my build when I approached the main fuselage assembly. These needed a lot of fettling to assemble propely, with the inserts for the main wheel wells causing me a lot of troubles. Anyway, with a lot of patience I managed to put most parts together The fuselage sides behing the wing never fit well on this kit and I've had to sand quite a bit to get to what I have now. I may sand a bit more to level things even better, fortunately there are very few panel lines in this area. The main wheel wells are decently detailed and Hasegawa correctly represented the area of the wheel well below the intakes (most other kits have a wall here). There are however some problems in this area, for example the rear wall is not represented to its complete length. This is done to avoid interference with the front of the wing joint but IMHO it's not a good thing. I simply added a plastic wall and sanded part of the wing, as I will fix the wing open this part will never be visible. Some filler will however be needed on the wheel wells walls. Speaking of a difficult build, mating the front and central fuselage sections is always cause for problems in this kit and my build is no exception. A quick dry fit shows that things are not too bad... However looking at the joint from a shorter distance reveals a step where the fuselage meets the top of the glove vanes Best way to sort will be to sand this area on the main fuselage before gluing the front section. Oh well, at least the exhaust sections have a pretty good fit

Received the book today and I'm very happy with it ! The only surprise was a hard cover, I was expecting a soft cover like I have on the Hunter book, but can't complain with a hard cover Thanks everyone for their comments and suggestions !

I personally never apply red onto a yellow, as I find spraying yellow difficult enough... Generally I spray both red and yellow over white

I've always understood that FS colours don't have names, they are only referred to by a generic name and their number. In my copies of TO-1-1-4 16473 is simply referred to as "grey No.16473", with all other colours similarly referred to by generic names, like "green, No.34079", "tan, No.34219" and so on. Was 16473 given a name at some point ?

Guess that I'm lucky here as I can get Hasegawa Tomcats for around €60. A difficult build it sure is, but the Monogram Tomcat is also a frustrating build and while aftermarket is an improvement on the Hase Tomcat, this is almost a must for the Monogram Cat I am also looking forward to what AMK will be able to offer and at what price, hopefully they will give us the best OOB solution for every Tomcat variation

Haven't read anything on that page that specifically states the end of special markings and colours but I can see where it may come from... CAG aircrafts now have to adhere to standard USN corrosion control procedures. I have the official USN corrosion control documents (they can also be found on the web) and what they require is the use of approved "paint systems". All the various greys are available in approved paint systems, some basic colours also are, but a lot of colours previously seen on CAG aircrafts may well not be available as such.

The resurrection of this thread pushed to do a quick search online to see if anyone still had these kits for sale and I found more than I expected ! A web based shop in Italy has several pistols with prices around €250, really a price that collectors only can be interested in. Other dealers in Europe have pistols in the €100-150 range. Then there are some in the US but delivery cost alone from there is pretty high. One of the US dealers even have a Sten, didn't know LS did one. Of course for UK modellers none of these could be purchased today unless the modeller fits the VCRA exemptions.. I have to see if I can find a catalogue I had for these guns when they were produced and imported here, would be interesting to see what they costed then and compare to the current price

I can understand the appeal of the Monogram kit for a quick build, however adding tons of aftermarket to this kit ? New nose, new exhausts as the kit ones are both in the open position, wheels are only the early type, main wheel wells are simplified, no ECM bumps for late production aircrafts, canopy could do with replacing, pylons under the wings are moulded with a Sparrow in place, no choice of undernose sensors, no reinforcements on the tails... It would end up as more expensive than the Hasegawa kit and still not a hassle-free build.

Thanks Dave, then I have that revision. I'd love to get the 1973 one and also the original 1978 version ! The schemes you mention sound very interesting, I'd love to see a Phantom in that scheme. Have to say that some of the schemes found in the TOs don't seem to have ever been applied even if an official scheme was approved (camouflaged F-106 for example), wonder if the same happened to this Phantom scheme or there actually were aircrafts painted this way ?

The plan sounds good to me. I should add the pressurisation system intake on the right side of the engine cowling. If you want to make things easier, you could buy a Smer Spitfire VI and rob the wingtips, prop, canopy and decals from that. The rest of the kit is bad but the Mk.VI specific parts are acceptable and the decals are usually pretty good. It's a kit that can be found for a fiver or less and will save you searching in the spares box. Alternatively the older AZ short run kits also included parts for the Mk.VI and they issued a specific box for this variant.

It was not a matter of being weird and the high commands changed a lot of their views based on the experience of the war. Simply in some aspects they continued to follow paths that had been proven to be satisfactory. Nose mounted armament have pros and cons and the same apply to wing mounted armament, the Italians kept a mix of the two simply because they found this to be succesful. There is another aspect that however explains why certain layouts were retained and this is the evolution of the various designs within the design teams. The MC.205 is an example: this aircraft did indeed retain several features of the MC.200 but this was due to the fact that the 205 was little more than a re-engined MC.202, in itself an advanced derivative of the MC.200. A good number of structural components were carried through from one design to the other and so was the overall layout of the 3 aircrafts

The matter of grey-green and/or black cockpits on the late variants of the Spitfire and Seafire was discussed here a few times. There should be threads with all the information, but to summarise, at least to the best of what my memory allows me, the situation was this: Spitfires: all grey-green, with the possibility of black on a number of Mk.21s Seafires: Seafire XV in grey-green. Seafire XVII with the mixed black/grey-green arrangement mentioned above. Later marks in black

The use of two 12.7mm guns in the nose of Italian fighters was the result of some conservative views by the Air Force high commands that were however based on experience. The CR.32 had introduced wing mounted MGs in addition to the standard nose mounted ones a good few years before but the experience was not positive. The presence of these guns affected the manouverability of the aircrafts, something that in an Air Force that placed this feature very highely in their combat philosophy was a serious problem. The CR.32 installation was also not particularly reliable and the wing mounted weapons were removed quickly. There was also the ever present problem of weight: until the "Serie 5" aircrafts most Italian fighters suffered from lack of power and excessive weight. The MC.202 itself could carry 2 7.7mm MGs in the wings (apart from the very first production series) but these were very rarely installed and most pilots preferred to leave them off their aircrafts. he Re.2001 on the other hand commonly retained the wing mounted MGs. The Serie 5 aircrafts were a different story and the 3 X 20mm plus 2 X12.7 armament of the G.55 was a massive improvement over the older types.