NorthBayKid

I don't think Paul is going to return to business as it was before the fire. He's having health issues that may force him into retirement.

The problem with that is that the Hasegawa cowlings are wrong as well. The side intakes are not symmetrical on the Hasegawa parts as they are on the real aircraft, and they are also too small and shallow.

That’s the only system an F-4J was capable of using. The USAF versions had a boom receptacle on the spine.

The Iranians have a thriving industry producing all the parts in they need.

Yes, the yellow area is primered metal. The 737 fin is still built the same way it was in 1967.

The kit comes with LED lighting, although it's very bright white and not really appropriate for the incandescent lighting used in 1912. The Facebook threads have talked about ways to either replace them with warmer white LEDs, or possibly give them a thin overpaint of off white or tan paint to warm up the colour. I can confirm that the angle of the stem (bow) is correct according to photos and plans of the real ship. I think they took a shellacking when they showed their original test shots and completely re-tooled the hull. I don't see any evidence that they hacked out the bow area and re-did it (you should be able to see a faint joint line on the inside of the hull), but the production part looks much more like the real ship. I was ready to chuck this one if they hadn't fixed that, since it threw the whole look of the ship off. Happy they did!

BAC 51519 is a custom mix (the "BAC" is a Boeing-specific code) used to get aircraft paint that matches the corporate colour specs that the livery designers came up with (Pantone 654). The colour scheme springs from that, not the other way round.

Anyone else tackling this monster? Mine arrived in the Great White North today - it’s HUGE! I’ve been following a couple of threads on Facebook and there is some great information on what needs to be done to her. It’s going to be impressive!

The US FS595 colours do not have names. Any names attached to them are attached by someone other than the US government. The whole point of the exercise when the 595 system was implemented in the 1950s was to eliminate the confusion caused by different names for the same colour, differing standards, etc. Be all that as it may, none of the Delta jets I’ve seen with my own eyes look anything like the blue that I’ve seen with my own eyes on Blue Angels F-18s. Delta’s blue (per the colour standard I posted) is much darker.

I looked at doing that many years ago. Doesn't look too difficult with some sheet plastic and putty.

It being fixable isn't the issue. With a one-second glance at images of the model anyone who has ever looked at a Tiggie can see that the nose is utterly unlike the real thing, so why, in the age of LIDAR scans and CAD design, should they have got it so badly wrong? We shouldn't need to fix an issue like that. I hope Mr. Adams had a hand in getting it right!

This is a photo I took at Pima Air Museum of a Blue Angels F-18, which (according to the volunteer) is still in its original Blue Angels paint. This is much brighter than anything on a Delta airplane.

The US only has one Insignia Blue colour - FS 15044. These colours are for web and print use, but they are the equivalents to the custom paints used on the aircraft. Corporate identity departments' job is to ensure uniformity. There is essentially no difference to what you see on the aircraft. I was just in Atlanta last week (thanks to United for the cancelled flight - I sat there for hours), and every Delta aircraft I saw looked exactly like the sample above. None of them looked anything like the Blue Angels.

The real thing is Pantone 654, which is vastly different from any Blue Angels airplane I’ve ever seen. Here it is from the Delta corporate identity document on the current colour scheme: Much closer to US Insignia Blue than Blue Angels blue, which is a vibrant royal blue colour.

Best you can do is look at a photo and look at your paint rack and see what comes close. If you start looking closely, there are all kinds of colours to be seen on those “green” airplanes. Modelling that would be a great challenge (one I have considered more than once). Just recreate what you see..