Ad-4N

If I see an 1/48 A-4B from Magic Factory, my interest may increase.

Here's my Chinook story: 1988 or so. Living in Arizona, spraying outside is the desert air. Take my Matchbox kit out to give a coat of gloss in preparation for the decals. Giant Union Jack and all. It is looking FINE. Airbrushed DSG/DG, black bottom with the cool scalloped edge just as the RAF intended. Very proud. I'm home for lunch, no time to break out the Badger 150 so I will just use Testors Gloss Coat. Scan my Testor spray cans, grab the gloss coat and give it a nice smooth pass. I look and I cannot comprehend. The gloss coat has "frosted or something." I just stare at my beloved Chinook. It is now speckled with a fine film of silver. I do another short pass thinking the frostiness will burn off. More silver. I have grabbed Testors' Gloss Metallic Silver Spray Enamel and not the gloss coat. So I carefully hand brushed Humbrol enamel paints over the silver. Looked good when I was done, but when I take my last breath I will still recall the horror of looking at the half silver RAF Chinook.

1/48 would have been the ideal size, but 1/72 is doable.

I built that exact bird using the Welsh Models 757 vacuform in that same scheme in the mid 1990s.

I will be crowned Emperor of the Known Universe before we see a 1/72 airliner from Eduard or Tamiya.

A Coastal Command version is a metaphysical certainty.

I am fearful of rigging biplanes.

The above verbiage means only one thing from Airfix: a 1/32 F-111B in both USN and FAA markings.

As I said above, I look forward to seeing your Mach 2 DC-9.

Absolutely amazing. Outdoor shots of models are the best.

I am all about well-weathered WWII US-built bombers. See my Hasegawa 1/72 Marauder below. Love your Mitchell.

Agreed, but for me it depends what design team is on the project. If it is the team that did the 1/32 SBD and TBM, great. Same with the 1/48 Wyvern. If it is the folks that did the HB 1/32 B-26 Invader, run away fast.

When your Mach 2 DC-9 is finished I hope you post your results here. I built one Mach 2 kit and that was enough. Time is too short.

Since Academy are re-issuing the Minicraft AWACS, my money is on Revell's own ancient 1:139-ish kit. Which is some sort of 707-120 with a AWACS radome on top, as you know.

Dennis and Kinks, you make valid points. But I remain skeptical the modeling world waits for a Culver.

A PB4Y-2 Privateer in 1/72 would be a license to print money, but hey do the Culver instead.

They could make real money re-issuing the radial Halifax.

Thanks, but I am afraid I have seriously derailed this discussion of the Mach 2 DC-9. 😄 We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming . . . . . . .

No matter how fine the ICM kits will be, they won’t have an interior as nice as yours.

A modern 1/48 HH/MH-60 Jayhawk would make my day. A modern 1/48 HH-3 would make my decade. Come on, ICM, you can do it.,

As much as I would like a 1/48 A-4B (the Hasegawa version last appeared in 2007) I will wait until the reviews are out. I know zero about Magic Factory.

Thanks so much. He was. He started out as part of the beaching crew with VP-49 and then persuaded a Petty Officer to allow him to go on patrols out of Norfolk. It was 1948 US Navy, so how that all worked is lost in the mists of time. Eventually, he cross trained to be an electrician and a radar operator on AD-4Ns off the carriers Wasp and Tarawa with VC-33. Hence my moniker. He tired of life at sea, so just before I was born in '57 he transferred to the USAF where he became an electrician on KC-97s, KC-135s and B-52s. Made Chief Master Sergeant (E9) in 19 years which I understand was pretty good for the late 1960s. Retired in the mid 1970s and eventually became a logistics expert on the LGM-118 Peacekeeper. It was a case of the military literally changing his life. He quit school as a dumbass, by his own reckoning, his senior year. Did terrible on the entrance exam, which gave him a nothing rating, but the two things he could do were swim like a dolphin and do math. Hence, he started on the beaching crew because he was probably the best swimmer in all of Norfolk and because of his math skills, he picked up electrician duties quickly. Eventually got his GED. After he married my mom, she would help him study for exams which were required for promotion in the Navy. He probably had a an undiagnosed learning disability. He found it hard to read, but eventually powered thru that. But not for the US Navy, he would have remained a semi-literate box car stacker at the Heinzs factory in Salem, NJ.

The 1/32 T-28 is a strange choice for Z-M, I think. I haven't heard anything tremendously wrong about the KH 1/32 T-28 and I think the JASDF only had one T-28. Not seeing the logic here. But then again, I don't own a model company.

I built the Mach 2 PBM for my dad, complete with his VP-49 squadron markings. This was long before the Minicraft kit. No more Mach 2 kits for me. Life is too short. Never in the history of models has a company had such a great lineup of such crappy kits.

Hell, I have not even built my Hasegawa version I bought 44 years ago. It's been dragged from Fort Lewis, to Schweinfurt, to Kitzigen, to Fort Huachuca, to Camp Zama, to Fort Monroe and now Utah. Guess, I ought to drag it out before this one is issued.