Giorgio N

Exactly, and IMHO that's how it has to be ! Each generation has to find their way to express things and a bit of rebellion against mum and dad is necessary to move things forward. Of course in return the previous generation will complain that today's youngsters are bad and they follow ideas that will corrupt society and so on.. that in music is the same people said about blues in the '30s, rock'n roll in the '50s, psichedelia etc. in the '60s, metal in the '70's, rap in the '90s and so on and so on and so on. I keep hearing a lot of complaints from people in my age range saying that young folks today should listen to classic '70s rock and everytime I ask why. Why should a 16 year old boy today be excited by something that was already old when his father was 16 ? It would have been like asking me to listen to music from the '40s. Now I do listen to a lot of '40s big band music today, but would I have this relevant to me when I was 16 ? Not at all... It is debatable if subjects in rap music are really all that different from those in other genres. Same for the contents of many lyrics. Sure some subgenres of rap feature very violent content but is this so different from the many country songs about outlaws of all eras or the murder ballads of popular music everywhere ? Sure rap artists often glorify misoginy and the exploitation of women but were the lyrics of many "hair metal" bands so different in content ? Rap musicians have also been often linked to the criminal world but again this is nothing that hasn't happened in other genres, just think of how many american singers of the '50s had ties with the mafia. Not to mention how certain subgenres of rock made the news more for the actions of their musicians than for their music, the Norwegian black metal bands above all. The reality is that in rap music there are good lyrics and bad lyrics as in any other genre. There are songs by say 2Pac or Ice Cube that are extremely deep, exploring very serious issues in a very insightful way. And of course there are others by the same artists that just talk about having a good time with the girls and the "homies". At the same time there have been rock bands with lyrics that were always only about having a good time with the girls and the mates. Now I have my views on why if say Johnny Cash sings about prison it's a poignant song about the misfortunes of life while if an 18 year old boy from Compton sings about prison it's an incitement to crime but better not go there and keep it to the music...

Glad to see Electronic mentioned. It was a band I didn't care much for when they hit the scene (I was in my early '20s back then). I later rediscovered them and now love their music. Guess it was because when I was younger I was listening to music in a different way. It was in my mid '30s that I started looking at records in more depth, trying to hear different things and understanding where everything was coming from without prejudice.

The current issue of their F-14A includes decals for a VF-1 aircraft, you may see if anyone has the kit and does not intend to use these markings. Of course there are a couple of potential problems... one is that the Italeri decals are designed for the Italeri kit and they may not fit perfectly the Hobbyboss one... but then this is a potential issue with every decal sheet. There is then the fact that the aircraft proposed by Italeri featured a different rear fuselage end (known as beaver tail by Tomcat fans) and different gun gas grilles compared to the Hobbyboss kit and the same Italeri Tomcat. Of course this is something that may or may not bother you. Alternatively you can keep checking the usual second hand outlets, decals for the hi-vis VF-1 scheme were made by Microscale early in the type career and later by Fightertown, HAD models, DXM and Eagle Strike. DXM and HAD sheets are the most recent, they should be the easiest to find in shops. Others are likely only available on the second hand market

Hmmm.... a difficult one, as even in some masterpieces (some of which have been mentioned here) I can sometime find tracks that do not warm me as much as the others. I'll try with a few off the top of my head, in no particular order Depeche Mode's Violator, others have mentioned this and I have to add my vote too. Really an album where all tracks are well deserving The Velvet Underground and Nico. King Crimson's Red Dr. Dre's the Chronic. Yes, a rap album and one of the most important. Here even the skits are worth listening for those who like the genre. No surprise that Dre has become one of the most succesful artists ever. Einsturzende Neubauten's Haus Der Luge. That yes, it's from a band whose international appeal is relatively limited (and for many is not their best album, most would consider this to be Halber Mensch) but there's music outside of the English speaking world too. Almost up there: The Queen Is Dead, by the Smiths. I say almost because I'm maybe not too sure about a couple tracks. Then there are a number of Massive Attack's albums... I never skip any track when listening as they all satisfy my hears, however I'm not sure if all tracks can beconsidered killers. Same for Portishead eponymous album and Tricky's Maxinquaye. And the same applies to a lot of progressive rock albums, where even the fillers have a strong place within the album development. But then there's here the matter that defiining "killers" the tracks of bands that are relatively "niche" is not always easy. Or at least not as easy as with rock or pop albums that contain a selection of individual songs.

Gloss varnish.... it really depends on what you're going to do over the paint. If you're applying a wash then yes, it could be useful to have a gloss coat over the paint. This because on matt paints the wash can be harder to remove and leave excessive residues. Said that, if I'm using a wash applied very carefully I often do not add a gloss coat. At the same time if I have to apply decals in areas of the cockpit then of course it's best to have a gloss coat, followed by decals, whatever wash or other effect required and then a final matt or semimatt coat. Have to add that often I paint the cockpit in a semigloss or gloss paint by adding some clear gloss to the base paint. This mostly when I airbrush the main cockpit colour, Regarding drybrushing, I generally don't bother with a gloss coat before this, you can drybrush over Vallejos with no problem. I generally do this using the same paints, if I find the result excessive (and sometime I do apply too much paint while drybrushing), I just cover with a thin coat of the original colour to blend everything in.

Personally I use Vallejo's a lot in painting cockpits, both the Model Air and the Model Colour. Of course I prime before painting: for larger areas I use a spray primer (Tamiya or Mr. Surfacer). For smaller details I either groupe a number of parts together and use the same spray cans or alternatively I use.. Vallejo's primer, that can be brushed easily and sticks well to plastic. Vallejo's primers are also available in a number of colours, something that can be of help when painting a cockpit. Their black primer for example is perfect as a base for those ejections seats that are mostly painted in black. They have a number of grey primers including a German Panzer Grey one that is very similar to RLM 66 and in any case, being a very dark grey colour, suits well black or dark grey cockpits. They even have a silver coloured primer. Once primed, I love these colours because of how quickly they dry, allowing me to add a lot of details in a short time.

Here it is: Quality of the picture is what it is but at least shows the shape. Just out of curiosity, I have checked the pilot notes for the Seafire Mk.45/46 (don't have those for the Mk.22/24 but the 45/46 were very similar) and the radiator flap actuator is included within the components driven by the pneumatic circuit. Speaking of the 4+ book, it's IMHO very nice, offering a lot of detail pictures and some diagrams, Only 28 pages but very useful to add details to any Mk.22/24 kit. I believe it's been OOP for a while though, not surprised it's hard to find

Would depend on each modeller's idea of what a very good kit is... To me a kit with recessed panel lines on the fuselage and raised on the wings is not a very good kit. A kit with a cockpit made of 3 flat surfaces is not a very good kit either, at the very best it can be a decent starting base. Really the 326 and G.91 are still interesting because they are the only available options and the 326 at least features good shapes. The Esci Skyhawk however was not rated particularly high when first issued, today it's hopelessly obsolete and it's only luck is that other better options are not always easily available. Among the better options is the Monogram kit, that is actually 2 year older than the Esci one

The opinions of a relatively small number of modellers in an online forum do not have enough weight to change the destiny of a company. Plastic kits are made in thousands per each production run and reach a wider audience compared to online forums. And even the people who post on a forum like this one often don't read everything that's written on the same forum, witness the number of times certain questions are asked again and again and again.... When companies fail it's because they have made some kind of mistake in running the business. There's plenty of mistakes to be made in this, although most times it's always the usual suspects....

The Occidental kit is a clone of the Esci kit with rough recessed panel lines. So retains all the inaccuracies of the original kit and in addition it's not particularly well moulded. The Esci kit features raised panel lines but fits better. In any case both are seriously lacking in interior details. As said, both are quite inaccurate, with problems that can be immediately noticed just looking at pictures of the real aircraft. There have been rumours of a new kit from Kinetic but nothing has appeared yet

There should be a jack in place of that metal sheet support, while the part attached to the flap is correct. To open the flap the jack would extend, so there would be nothing entering the wing. This setup is not the same as in the earlier Griffon engined variants, where the actuator was on the side of the rear radiator wall. There's a decent picture in the 4+ volume on the Spitfire 22/24, unfortunately B/W only. I'll see if I can make a scan

Exceptional decals is a bit excessive: the printing quality may be good (sometimes very good) but the accuracy of many of their sheets is debatable and often the stencils are oversized so being much more visible than they should be. Latest sheets seem to have improved but all the Sea Harrier sheets I've seen were best replaced with aftermarket items

There weren't but the Armycast set parts include the "double drooped" slats. Said that, I believe that with a little work and mixing the parts in the Armìycast set and those in the kit it's possible to build a folded E wing

And checked! The Mirage part is a bit shorter, narrow and not high enough. However the length and height depend in good part from how much of the framing is moulded on the clear part. Adding this in plastic on the AMK kit would sort the problem. This would also partly solve the width as compared to the Kfir rear canopy the Mirage windscreen section is very close except for the Extreme lower end. In summary, it can be made to fit. What I don't know is if the result would be accurate as I've not investigated the Kfir frameless windscreen much. Oh, and the instrument panel coaming will need to be thinned to not interfere with the narrower Mirage windscreen

I have a couple of these kits, I can check if the frameless windscreen fits the AMK Kfir. If it does, I can send it to you

Thanks guys, glad to see that this subject is of some interest! Let's see what's in the box: 2 sprues in dark grey plastic and one in clear, a decal sheet and a small PE fret with reinforcement plates for the ACOL improved aircraft, like the ones that served in Afghanistan. The plastic parts are not bad but not brilliant either. I'll go into more detail on the reasons for my opinion during the build but let's say now that moulding quality is not bad and some details are nice but at the same time clearly this is not a modern Japanese kit (and that's fine) so certain things don't really work as they should. Like the representation of the rivets that is something some companies do pretty well while here is a bit on the heavy side. One thing I would have liked to see is separate flaps and slats. Now this is something rarely done in 1/72 scale so can't condemn Italeri for it. However the AMX on the ground always feature open flaps and slats so it would have been a nice touch... that would have probably also increased the price of what is IMHO not a cheap kit. Now what should I do? The way the wing parts are moulded means that cutting the flaps is not going to be easy. I considered using the Cunardmodel parts as this kit offers them open but the difference in surface finish is too much (and the Cunardmodel wing is smaller than the Italeri one) Should I attempt doing this job or just build the model as is? I may just leave everything closed, more so as I know I can build the Kinetic kit with everything down. I almost forgot... this will be my main reference:

Thanks a lot ! I have now decided my subject and started my thread. Since nobody seems to have chosen Italy yet, I'll start with a subject from my home country. I'd like to be able to build another at some point, we'll see. I should first finish the models for a couple of other GBs though PS: and I have added the flag to my thread title... 🤣

I have already taken part in a number of NATO themed GBs (although the only model I completed was probably my Dutch Starfighter...) so I could not give this one a miss ! I considered a number of options for this, of course another Starfighter would have been interesting and a Sabre would have also been good. For a while I toyed with the idea of a Marineflieger Tornado, before realizing that I do not have the hi-vis walklines that aircraft in the early scheme carried (but who knows, I may find them before the end of the GB and add a second model). Then earlier today I read an article in the news: today the Italian Air Force officially retired the AMX!. At that point it was clear I had my subject ! Now the AMX is not really the best known NATO combat aircraft. The type entered service in 1989 and by then the Cold War had been won by NATO. However the end of the Cold War did not mean peace and actually the organisation has really seen combat only after that year, with a number of operations conducted under NATO control... and in these operations the small Italo-Brazilian attack aircraft did take part ! Ok, a lot of how the NATO was involved in these various operations is controversial and debatable but let's steer away of politics and just focus on the history of these operations. Aming them one of the most important was the long intervention in Afghanistan, first under the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and later through the Resolute Support Mission, until the withdrawal of all international forces from the Country in 2021. The AMX has not been particularly well treated by model kit companies and for a number of years the only options were resin kits (Warrior, Cunardmodel) or the Aeroclub short run kit. Things changed when Kinetik issued their very nice kit in 1/48 scale that finally brought a standard injected plastic kit of the type to the market. Later Trumpeter issued another 1/48 kit (actually more than one as they covered several variants) but no mainstream plastic kit appeared in 1/72 scale until last year Italeri finally issued one. This has been recently followed by the two-seater so cpmpleting the offer of Italian variants (the Brazilian ones need some conversion work). Personally I bought the Kinetik kit as soon as this was issued. Not only it was a brand new kit of the AMX but I had also been in touch with a couple of people involved in the design so it was a kit I really had to have. A few months later I also found a Cunardmodel kit for sale at a decent price (these kits used to fetch very high prices in Italy) and then I got the Italeri single seater, It is this one that I will build for this GB for a number of reasons, one being that it already includes stores and decals for an aircraft part of the ISAF in Afghanistan in 2024. Only one picture for today and this is the box art: In the next few days I'll post pictures of the parts and through the build I may talk a bit about the AMX, its difficult inception, its controversial debut and how the type finally managed to get a good reputation, thanks in no small part to the participation in operations like the ones in Afghanistan

Thanks, I'll now decide on a suitable subject or two... actually I was already set on one but then realized that I don't have all the necessary decals. Now I may move to plan B, for which I'd have everything from the box

Quick question about the countries: are members assigned a country ? Or could I build a subject from any country I prefer ?

Hmm... not sure any Hasegawa B has the unslotted stabilators. I'm pretty sure that the basic box has the later slotted ones

That's because the MGFF that armed the Bf.110 early variants was indeed a gun with slow rate of fire and also featured a low muzzle velocity. Reasons why it was later replaced by the much superior MG151/20 in the 110 and other types, including the Bf.109

Lysanders may keep cropping up but it's not really a subject that has been reproduced that often in scale model for. I can think of less than 10 kits over the last 70 years and kits by "mainstream" manufacturers can probably be counted on one hand.

Sure, however since you mention the Zero, well the Zero is one of the most famous aircraft of WW2, featuring in countless war histories and movies. It is a proper "classic" in the same vein as the Bf.109 or the Spitfire, as testified by the huge number of kits issued in the past when every company at some point had their own Zero. The Italian fighters are lesser known overall, sure the MC.202 is the most famous but it's not one of those subjects that used to appeal to the "masses". An MC.202 from Eduard is a bold move much more so than the Zero. Eduard have clearly stated sale numbers for several of their items in their past newsletters, so something is known about what they sell.

There are a couple of questions that a similar picture brings... Yes, we don't know what would have happen if this aircraft was hit by larger bullets. However we can say that if it received say 30 .303 hits it would have suffered less hits with a larger gun, for the simple reason that the attackers would have had less guns and less ammunition on board. Say probably 12-15 .50 hits or 5-6 20 mm hits. Now would these have caused more damage ? 5 or 6 cannon hits may have well brought the aircraft down, the .50 hits... hard to tell. Sure the 0.50 is a heavier hitter but a 0.50 bullet through the skin is not necessarily going to cause lethal damage. Different if it hits something vital of course The other thing to ask is what happened to this aircraft during the engagement ? Did the German crew have to retire because of damage ? Or did they keep flying until the targer regardless of the hits scored by the RAF interceptors ? If the aircraft had to alter course because of damage light enough not to put the structural integrity in danger but heavy enough to cause it to turn back to base for some reason, well that's a victory for the RAF ! Yes the aircraft was not shot down but even if it just had to drop its bombs before reaching the target it's good enough. The Do-17 would have also required at least some patching up and this may have taken the bomber out of action for a few days, another point for the defence. Did the crew suffer losses ? Even an injiured airman is one less returning over British skies the following night, so again point for the defence.