spike7451
-
Posts
3,282 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Events
Profiles
Forums
Media Demo
Posts posted by spike7451
-
-
Will you be doing something to the Radar Air Conditioning unit aka "great big void where the intake ceiling should be", or will you go for a FOD screen ?
Probably do intake blank for it.
-
Nice links, unfortunately mostly well out of date.
This is not a surprise as in the UK we all have to adhere to the Law, its called the Official secrets act, and information about our weapons systems is usually not circulated as would be permitted in the US.
Suprisingly I am fully aware of what a GCS is, having spent the last 35 years in Aircraft Munitions both as a serviceman and civilian, in the UK and abroad, (Yes even in the US!) so I am quite conversant with both UK and US munitions and their designation systems, (and several other countries systems as well!)
Strangely I can determine the mark of British 1000lb bomb by just looking at it, but I do know what I am looking for and know what all the mark differences are anyway.
I am familiar with the "sectional breakdowns" of all the US/UK weapons you have described in this and previous posts, and I can assure you I have not said anything dubious or incorrect, within security limits. It is obvious that I could not or would not ever publish anything like that on a public forum for fear of prosecution.
By the way I should mention BL755 and JP 233 are now long withdrawn due to them being now illegal under the UN mines legislation. I don't think that the US has ratified this treaty yet.
As a modeller I go for accuracy. As I am "in the business" I like my weapons to be very correct, and I can tell you that it is not difficult to achieve this with what is available commercially and a little modelling skill, and with what references are available on British weapons on the internet, even if they are mostly out of date.
Selwyn
Beat me to it Selwyn,I was going to reply much the same in answer to the post.It's one thing posting a phot of something to help a modeller but it's another to provide what could be restricted or sensitive data that could be of use to our enemies.
-
1
-
-
Spike 7451,
Labeling the British LGBs Paveway II would not be technically precise. They may use PII technology but they are not WGU guidance groups combatible with U.S. munitions which leaves you with CPU-123B to provide a dead-on indication of what the weapon _should_ look like-
Paveway II Family
http://www.ausa.airpower.net/USAF/000-GBU-10-B-1A.jpg
The British preference for forged case weapons and a different filler to the U.S. standardized cast case Mk.80 series with tritonal is well known as it tends to provide superior smooth-case aerodynamics and better balance for superior penetration and fragmentation. However; for the purposes of a penetrating weapon, the U.S. BLU-109 and 116 are functionally identical in the latter two categories (forged case, also having a much higher energy fill) and the provision of the GCU makes ballistic accuracy as fineness ratios unimportant.
According to this page-
Hard Nut Crackers
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-112132955.html
>
The same warhead is used in Britains P3(UK) Paveway 3.
>
While this one-
UK Bombs And Paveways
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?97802-UK-bombs-and-Paveway-s
>
Paveway III uses the Portsmouth Aviation version of the BLU-109
>
Seems to support the argument that the warhead is fully licensed copy of the U.S. design.
I have read ('Raytheon UK Helps The RAF's Smartest Bomb Get Smarter') that Paveway IV has been trialed with new warheads based on a lowered collaterals explosive content but the RAF site confirms that this is a Tucson Arizona sourced munition and thus more apt to conform to BLU-111 standards than say, the old Mk.1/2 shape.
I know that when the RAF ran short of GBU-24, (I believe it was during ODF but it may have been OAF), they borrowed straight from U.S. stocks.
Looking at the photos of the weapons, they appear form and fit identical to extant GBU-12/49 (correction, the taper on the GCU and the presence of the GPS antennas on the PIV mark it as different) and GBU-24 in terms of adaptor collars, tail kits and fuzing.
As such, I would offer that you are incorrect in this until such time as you can point me towards another source.
Spain's Expal does a CPE-800 and IMI does a variant on their Lizzard warhead for their own P3 kits so it is not unreasonable to suppose Britain might license produce a similar warhead but MOD did not have an extant, 2,000lb, penetrator case munition before taking up the P3 and their 540lb bomb looks substantially different from that shown in the drawing, having no hardback as well as a different shape.
I never suggested that the GR.1A carried bombs during ODS and I would appreciate it if you did not imply otherwise. OTOH, while I am aware of the first operational use of ALARM in ODS, the fact remains that it had been seen, both yellow and grey, on RAF Fins from the mid-80s onwards.
What I have available to me suggests that the RAF also didn't use BL.755 from the Tornado in the 1991 campaign which leaves you with a choice of options: radar Mk.20, JP-233, CPU-123B/TIALD, centerline tanks for the recce mission, CBU-87s. Or ALARMs.
If you steal all the good stuff for the Pinkmobiles, then the Green And Grey Fins don't get anything. If you concentrated on just two primary munitions as CPU-123B and Recce for the ODS aircraft, you could move the model forward through the 1990s (Sea Eagle?) until the GR.4 and then use the TELIC/ELLAMY jets for Storm Shadow and later LITENING/P3/Brimstone.
Just as Airfix did with their Tonkas.
I think it's important to provide every release with a unique weapons sprue relevant to two interesting decal options so that the sales of the kit remain high for each new boxing and you don't bog down your marketability in later releases.
Again, I do not care for special schemes, these are tools of war not flying billboards, and as such they deserve to have proper weapons fits.
Let me add here my own bias in that the Desert Pink Tornados with their vulgar nose art were always hideously ugly to me and became more so as they accumulated desert grime and reverser smear and I would not buy a Tornado kit bearing those markings for that reason alone.
The later grey versions are very beautiful but simply not what looks cool about the MRCA mission around which the aircraft operational requirement was originally written. Tornado has huge wingloading, awkward wingsweep settings with no autosweep to control Mach point compressibility build, and even the Mk.105 version of the RB199 doesn't retain power at altitude. To doll it up with cruise weapons and PGMs is to functionally admit that it's now a bomb truck because it's EM globals are just not good enough to do the F-16 type, mid-level, contested mission.
In a word, it is the F-105 of the modern era.
OTOH, at low level, with the wings partway back, the jet has the power and control authority to remain quite hand agile and of course very fast. That is the environment it was meant to fly and fight in and that is how I would build mine, Sea And Spinach.
P.S. What the AIM-9L/S _should_ look like-
See the rollerons. See the section bands, see the mounting brackets (which should be how you secure the kit part, centered up and correctly fore and aft aligned, into cutouts on the rail), see the dual taper canards at the correct spacing back from the nose.
Then I suggest you contact the MOD/RAF & tell them that they are wrong to call them Paveway II/III/IV/EPW II/III then....As that is what they are called in the inventory.
The are a few innacuracies in that thread you linked to,as to my source,how about being an RAF armourer with over 12 years experience working on fast jet aircraft & other types.BTW,most of the links you posted don't work.AND I know how to load a Sidewinder & what they look like,I've loaded enough of them...
-
3
-
-
Spike 7451,
Does the British LGB have a U.S. or NATO designation?
If not, then CPU-123B as the GCS designator is closer than 'Paveway II' because the Paveway II is in fact a family of weapons, theoretically any one of which the Tornado could drop.
Since the MOD doesn't make this clear within their own nomenclature system, CPU-123B lets everyone know it's a Paveway II kit intended for the British Mk.13/18, 1,000lb, weapon; as used by Tornados in both Granby and ODF/OAF. As opposed to, say, a GBU-24 which is also a Paveyway (III) or the equally nebulous 'Paveway IV', which is roughly analogous to our GBU-49. Both of which presumably have been used in Telic and Ellamy.
http://imagery.vfnawing.com/archive/weapons/egbu/p0552944.jpg
http://defense-update.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/tornado_elgb1.jpg
Both of the U.S. BLU-111/116 series based LGBs, which RAF and German Tornados are cleared with, can be had from existing Hasegawa Weapons Set D. Along with a passing fair representation of the LITENING III LDP as the AAQ-28 in Weapons Set E.
But there is nothing in plastic for the British LGB. Which is a shame since the Typhoon is also now certified to drop it while the Continental Eurofighters use GBU-16.
I myself prefer the Cold War Green-Grey Tonka schemes with a preference for the X8 Mk.13/18 with Radar Fuzes and Shoulder Station ALARMs (as originally intended for a 'self escort' capability) along with the JP-233 as a combined OCA Flak Suppression and Runway Killer capability. It is the definitive, symbolic, mission role for the Tornado as a low level interdictor designed to penetrate by speed and height through the WARPAC IADS.
But Revell have effectively made this impossible without reverting to the much earlier and more primitive Airfix kit weapons which essentially spoils the purpose of having a new-tool Tornado that looks like a puzzle kit.
I don't dig 'special schemes' as they make sleek wartime jets look like circus clown cars. But if Revell had put some thought into how they intended to release this model, they could have had at least five different boxings, using a sprue for each:
RAF Tornado NATO (As Above)
RAF Tornado Granby (TIALD and CPU-123B, perhaps GR.1A recce fit)
RAF Tornado Ellamy (GR.4 with LITENING and ELGBs)
Luftwaffe/Marineflieger NATO IDS (MW-1, Kormoran)
Luftwaffe Tornado ECS OAF (AGM-88 and recce fairings)
I would be interested in at least three of those boxings but if they make me hunt around for functional weapons loads, they lose a kit sale in pricey A/M parts sourcing.
I may be just one builder but that's the bottom line for me and Revell sir. Shrug.
I'm sure they have their business model oriented around a sales curve centered on a much less discerning demographic, but equally it is surprising that a German firm would make such a hash of the basics when the flagship release is clearly for a variant of a serving airframe in their own Air Force. German modelers won't put up with such nonsense.
British Modelers won't either if it's ever released in RAF colors with the weapons fit shown.
U.S. Modelers, by and large, won't buy it because it doesn't have Stars And Bars.
They are called simply Paveway II ect,I spent a good few years on Tornado & never heard them referred to as CPU-123.As fir the RAF Tornado being cleared for the US BLU-111/116,we do not nor have used them with a US bomb component,so the bombs in the Hasagawa sets are useless if you want to model a RAF Tornado.Also GR1(A) did not carry TIALD or bombs during the Gulf War,& at the time,the was only a couple of squadrons who had jets wired to carry ALARM,initially on the wing pylons before the shoulder pylons were wired,they were 9 & 31 at my old station,Bruggen.
The only US weapons that were loaded to the Tornado (but never flew with) was US CBU's towards the end of the war.
Part of the reason,in my opinion,that we use our own weapons is they are made by a British firm,which has unless I'm mistaken,ties to British Waste of Space (or BAe as they are called..)
-
As far as I remember I am sure they were white.
Same here,the MR2s were white iirc...
-
Good Grief...
Separate wing gloves fairings -and- intakes? Does it come with a jig to check alignment? And how long have those Krueger flaps been wired shut anyway?
ALQ-101/Cerberus but no Vorgelander (sp.) with Mk.82/BL.755 or MW-1 or Kormoran or even AGM-88? Why? It -is- a warplane is it not?!?! It's like this model was built by closet pacifists.
Those AIM-9S are all wrong, the nose has the taper of a Lima but the canards are too far back from the nose of the missile and they are virtually a solid triangular shape rather than the delicate, double-taper, profile they need to be. AIM-9B canards on an AIM-9 'shape' missile (no rollerons), it's not even fit to be a CATM. Hasegawa did better than this on the F-16A.15 OCU back in the 1980s!
Whoever said the tanks were off is absolutely correct. Constant sectioned, they look too short for a Hindenburger and yet are both too fat and lacking the teardrop taper of the 1500s. Just look at the tanks on the photos the other's have posted here!
No RAF weapons at all. No VER-2 Alkan racks on which to mount them. It's _not easy_ sourcing Mk.13/18, CPU-123B, JP-233, BL.755, Sea Eagle, TIALD or ALARM on this side of the pond!
It's as if Revell Germany are slapping you in the face with a "Ha-ha, you must buy a 40 dollar Airfix kit from the 1970s to make it look real" (two different boxings actually, depending on the loadout...). With Flightpath being both too expensive and too brass for my tastes, and Paragon now out of the game forever, that only leaves Armory, Skunk and Eduard Brassin to take up the challenge. For a European-only platform... Good luck on that.
Those cockpit side consoles are pathetic. We have had better detail relief on Hasegawa F-4/14/15/16. The same holds true for the rudder pedals.
It had better be cheap or I'll only buy two. :-]
No such weapon...What you refer to is the guidance / processing unit of the LGB parts.I gather a aftermarket accessories maker started calling them that,wrongly,and it caught on.
-
Muzz
There have already been photos of seperate sprues with HARMs on and also Sparrow/Skyflash. I still think given how the latest photos show specific GAF ECR sprues, there will be a RAF IDS, hopefully with 2250 ltr tanks at least. I can't see any reason to engineer the kit as they have unless they plan to do an F3.
We (RAF) Don't use HARM missiles,we did use ALARM's up until a couple months ago when they were withdrawn from service.
-
That makes 2 of us mate,I think the RAF ones are good,but the ones done by Germany & Italy make them look like bloody racing cars!....Wonder how long it'll be till they have spomsorship logo's on them....
I was under the impression from the web site there are 3 decal options in the kit, 1 German, 1 Italian, 1 RAF). I agree I'm generally not a fan of anniversary schemes
-
One of the guys on 'that other site' posted the instructions,looks like it's a lot more complex than the sprue shots make it out to be,the's even some scope in the cockpit area as the IP's are separate from the backboxes,so should make scratch building/adding aftermarket PE a bit less fiddly..
http://www.revell.de/fileadmin/import/images/bau/03987_%23BAU_PANAVIA_TORNADO_IDS.PDF
-
For the Tornado experts; does it appear it can be built out of the box as an 80's Bruggen based RAF jet? I can live with a few incorrect features in the cockpit but externally I'd be happy if I could model it that way.
And if it's not too much trouble, could anyone sum up the significant differences between GR1's GR1A's and GR4's? And maybe any approximate timeframe for the service of these different variants? I love the Tornado but as with all aircraft, my detail knowledge is terrible.
Yes,we only had the GR1 at Bruggen,all the GR1A'a were over at that second class dump Larrparts...
-
Several things actually. The two that sort of led to this thread (neither is the Harrier; that's down the road, but it got me thinking) are a Revell Tornado GR1 that I was originally going to do in Saudi colors. I couldn't get motivated to do that much masking, so I'm going with a 27 Squadron jet loaded with some aftermarket JP233s from Aviation Workshop instead. The other is a Hasegawa Shaguar in the old green/gray wraparound scheme and loaded up with a WE.177 from Freightdog. Speaking of which, I assume that store would be carried only on the center station of the fuselage centerline pylon?
Regards,
Murph
I assume so,although I've loaded them loads on times on Tornado & we always loaded them on the centerline SWERU on the port shoulder pylon,with a drop tank on the right one.I cannot for the life of me remember if we ever loaded a boom to the starboard shoulder pylon or even a pair of them!....
You'll need to add the thin red fin guards if it's on the ground as well....
"TAIL SUPPORTED MAN ONE!"
-
Looks very nice and all the RAF specific bits are there, counting my penny's out!
No they're not,I can't see any MACE fairings for the shoulder pylons.....
-
What are you working on Murph?
-
Ive built more than a dozen Hasegawa Phantoms and I'm yet to build one where there is a flush fit where intakes join the fuselage. To be fair, its never far off but usually the use of a combination of rubbing down and plastic card shims inserts, sorts it out - its just a gradual trial and amend process.
I find the most important place to have alignment is the fuselage because that's where the most surface detail is, so providing you can get a good meet at the top and along the fuselage depth the rest should be fixable with minimal effort.
I then tippex down the very narrow gaps that's left and job done.
Good luck
I have the same issue with the one I've got on a stalled build,again none of the ones I've made before have fitted flush...
-
Spike, What color were they then? I thought bronze green was the standard RAF color for air to ground ordnance?
Regards,
Murph
No mate,the bombs can vary in color quite a lot,Training weapons were blue,not Bronze Green as Bobski said.aside from display weapons,Coming upto things like WST (Weapons Standards Team) visits,bombs would ofter be repainted by the dumpies
-
AAAGGH!
JP233 on a Type 'Z' Loader!
These were a Hovercraft loader for use on flat floors in HAS or on the Pan, Unfortunately nobody told the designers that a HAS or Pan with a 'Flat' floor does not exist in the real world and if you wern't careful your JP 233 would beetle off sideways on its own when you weren't looking!
Selwyn
And sods law one side of the loader would fail,normally on WST....We managed to rip off the main undercarriage hydraulic lines when that happened... Thankfully it was on the WTC's training (non-flying) airframe...
-
Thank you for the help, I'll save the deep bronze green for the JP-233s then.
Regards,
Murph
They were'nt deep bronze either Murph..Photo pinched from a mate..
-
They were either bare metal or painted the same RAF green as used in the aircraft camoflage. They were never painted Deep Bronze green.
Selwyn
Yup,the may have been some painted up in a different green for display ,but not used on operational jets.
-
This build's on hold for a while,I'm gonna have to retrofit some kind of cockpit back & floor,and sods law the local hobby shop has ran out of the thick plastic card I need!
(TBH,It's also trying my patience!)
-
I'd say this scheme was pretty special: http://www.airliners.net/photo/Germany---Air/Panavia-Tornado-IDS/2285793/L/&sid=623561b35f9d0bfd62ad77023df1da19
Sean
Nah...THIS is by far the best ever scheme done bar NONE!...
http://img.airport-data.com/images/aircraft/small/000/479/479916.jpg
-
1
-
-
Got the fuselage buttoned up,haven't added the movable gear doors as yet as they are flexible enough to bend to fit,nose gear well slipped a bit when fitting but I'm gonna live with it!lol
And the pilot & seat is coming along nicely!
-
Correct,they're baggage pods.
Dave,
In the pics in the 2nd and 3rd links, are those not baggage pods rather than 6 shot CRV-7s?
Mark.
-
Incidentally,the Type F trolley can be used with the BAe Nimrod aircraft with some slight modifications,
-
I'm in if I'm out of hossy by then,I have the Airfix 1/24 Harrier GR3 which'll be built in conjunction with Dave Parkins update set...Now just need to find space to put it!
-
1
-
F-16 Fighting Falcon 'Code One Candy'
in Ready for Inspection - Aircraft
Posted
Pictures not working.....