Doom3r

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 your best brush and paint blades in blades base colour. If you are really wat to make sure that blades color would not end up at places it shouldn't before painting blades you can clear coat the engine. Then heavely weather the blades and slight wather the area that is right in front of them to hide the places where blade color got to the places it should not.

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)

For such things I usually use oyumaru (sometimes sold as blue stuff) and green stuff (tamiya epoxy putty would do too). The good thing about oyumaru is that once you made replacement part you can reuse mold by melting it in hot water.

Thousand pieces might be attempted to be fixed via liquid decal film. Sunny window works really slow and some times it might take over a month. Also it is possible that glue gone yellow. For that case you just wash off glue in water and apply using "future" as a glue (I beleive there was a guide on how to do it here on the site) However at this point it makes sence to try get different decals though.

If the only issue is yellowing and decals are not cracking and falling to thousand pieces you can rescue those by sticking face of the decals to the sunny window for a week or two. There is a faster way though: to use that UV device ladies use to speed up nail polish dry. Just stick thebdecal sheet in it face up for couple hours (rarely days) and the yellowing would be gone. PS: how many people (including me) were bought by the nice subject and beautiful box art of this kit... What is disappointing is that this is the worst Tamiya kit. And once you are done with it you should try some other (newer) kit of theirs (if my memory serves me right it is older than the event that made SHAR famous)

By the plane number looks like following model kit might help (check out painting guide for 5040) https://www.super-hobby.com/products/MiG-21PFM-Vietnam-War.html#gallery_start

I don't see F-105G from Hobby Boss being mentioned. Is it any good?

I am wondering if the MF profile was similar to the PFM. If so you can search for instructions for zvezda MiG-21PFM 1/72 or Eduard MiG-21 Vietnam 1/48 kits. However you can use these schemes as "suggestion" since I am not sure if there are any color photos from that era of Vietnamese machines so all these profiles either artists interpretation of bad b&w photos or even just of descriptions

Here is the manual for the one from airfix https://www.scalemates.com/products/img/6/7/0/968670-81-instructions.pdf If you go through the steps you would notice all colors they recommend. In addition to that they are using humbrol paint codes (which is a problem on my side of pond but easily available on yours).

@Max Headroom yeah this article is very useful, however it was almost the 1st thing when I googled for the 707 wing and the one that made me look specifically for 320 since I did not realize that wing changed so drastically. My original though was to use photos and videos that I've found earlier but those were the latest variants. Thanks anyway, though. @rob Lyttle I've seen this video, however I am not sure if this is the 320 or B/B Adv (I suspect it is not the original 320 since the leading edge does not form straight line so I suspect there is a "dog tooth" at the closest engine). @bzn20 @Bangseat sent you PMs.