Doom3r

Could you elobarate on how did you produce the clear parts? I have few ok vintage models that have all the framing on the inner side of the canopy and would love to replace those with the frames on the outer side.

I guess these guys were afraid of the number 13. B/c they left off one significant and "weird looking" variant of the KC-135: the "Rivet Joint" https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104608/rc-135vw-rivet-joint/

I haven't seen that one. I've built few years back SMT and 9.13. These both look looked a bit wrong (I grew up next to Air Defense base where 9.13s were based). Oh, one thing I completely forgot: I am not sure if I've seen that on MiG-29s but usually on Russian airplanes from Trumpeter you do not want to read stencils if you know Russian language. Since I this is my native language I've made a mistake of using magnifying glass to read stencils for Su-27 when I got that model... I have suspicion that they just hit a keyboard in a Cyrillic layout at random keys to generate it.

Trumpeter has more panel lines and rivets details, however they blew the shape of the "hump" (well, they've got this area wrong for all 29s). Zvezda got the shape right, however big question is if you are going to notice any of this difference if you are not having both models side by side and not too much familiar with 29.

Looks good freshly painted S-37 (see what I did here?) To fight the "toy-like" look you needed to do a bit of weathering on it (if you check the photos of the real thing you would notice that it is a bit spotty so either grey oil dotfilters or blackbased "near the the grey" marbling or both should do the trick.

Didn't know all this. I have a Zvezda Mi-28 in the stash and only b/c I was buying some other model kit online and opened box of the kit I was after + Mi-28 was cheaper then a brand new kit I was after (Don't really remember what kit that was, only remember I've built it almost right away, however Mi-28 is still waiting it's time.

Probably b/c at the end of USSR it lost competition to Ka-50, it is constantly changed, does not have a "cool" factor as either Kamov's helos or Mi-24, current production model is viewed as "we really want all these to be Ka-52 but we cannot afford it" and is probably quite a niche product (would be interesting to find out how it sells in 72 scale (I know only the one from Zvezda, the ancient one from Italeri is a fiction)). What is a bigger mystery is why there is no decent short Huey in 48 scale... I mean I know there is an ancient Revell as well as more recent HobbyBoss but at the best I ca

I think either is going to be too large. In the pre-covid times I ordered a bunch of 0.5 mm from China and slowly using those for my arduino/raspberry pi projects. Hopefully some day I might light up one of the airliners as well. However today delivery from other countries might take forever so if you are not able to find such leds from electronics supplier closer to you I would suggest checking model railroads sections of hobby shops. Lot of lights used there might be small enough to fit in the wingtip of your model.

IMHO Italeri Hind is worst of the other Hinds: raised panel lines, not very accurate, etc. However it does not have too many parts and is quite easy to build. If you want accuracy above else Zvezda is your best bet. However it has lot of parts, quite complicated, not really good instruction steps, etc: heard lot of stories of people without much experience buying it and giving up in the middle of the build and some of the gaving up on the hobby as well. If you want something in the middle: Hasegawa is good alternative.

I clean it in the Windex (or it's generic replacement, I use the one that has ammonia b/c I use keep same bottle for both cleaning and stripping paint/clear from canopies if I mess up) and quick rinse in the water. I usually dry it in a flow of cool air (hair dryer in cold mode) so spots wouldn't show up and then dip it in the Future.

I wouldn't worry too much about painting really well fan blades: just google the pictures and you would notice that front blades on A-10 look nasty (even the birds I've seen on the shows look quite nasty: blades look like corroded or something, paint chipped at places, bumps in another place, paint touch ups: basically you can clearly see that this plane is definetely not spending it's time in some climate controlled hangar). As well as area in front of them occasionally has black lines that are parralel to blades rotation. So what I would do in such case is to paint the engines and then take

As people mebtioned it means high and low visibility schemes. On this picture hi viz aircraft is in the front and lo viz in the back. As far as rivet counting though: from what I hear (I have built only Hasegawa and Academy and have Hobbyboss in the stash so cannot speak for sure) that unlike Academy or Hobbyboss Tamiya's offerring is pretty accurate for the US cat.

Bounty Hunters. Btw, are you going for hi viz or low viz?

Actually I just checked F-18F pictures and it looks like there is a very subtle gold tinting on thw windscreen. Let me dig into more pictures I took and see if there is somthing like that on single seaters

I've seen Super Hornets on the airshows few times as both static and performer and do not recall any canopy tinting on them (last time was 2 years ago). However from same shows I've noticed that Growlers do have windscreen tinting (similar color to Prowlers or and Vipers)