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Steve McArthur

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Everything posted by Steve McArthur

  1. In the last 25 years Revell has done new tooled F-86D, SR-71, Tornado, Eurofighter, Rafale and F-15E that are all the best 1:48 kits of these planes even if they aren't without their flaws. I'd argue their 1:48 F-15E is better than the newer GWH mainly because Revell got the shapes right which seems to be a challenge for Chinese companies. I'm a little surprised Revell hasn't added a Gripen to their offerings since they have the other European manufactured modern era fighters..
  2. That's TERs inboard and MERs outboard. A MER is too long to fit inboard.
  3. I don't think CAT4 sells direct. I think the closest you can get to buying direct is to shop at the Plastic Models Store in Ukraine. I've done several orders from them over the last couple years and it's been taking usually about 3 weeks to get to me in Kansas, but one time it took about 3 months early in the invasion. I know PMS has a e-bay shop, but that is mostly fulfilled from a USA warehouse.
  4. I'm not so interested in the Bucc in Raspberry Ripple, but a set for the XP505 Gnat for the 1:48 Airfix kit would be be appreciated. The owner of S&M decals passed before I got interested in building it. AFAIK, no one has done Raspberry Ripple for the Gnat since then.
  5. What are the chances these are just a re-pop of the Kitty Hawk molds?
  6. The CoG will be around the 1/4 chord of the mean aerodynamic chord of the wing. (look it up on wikipedia). It's not hard to measure. This is where you actually want to put the missiles. Or another way to estimate the CoG is just forward of the main gear wheels. (Where the dorsal mounting has them) The CoG has to be forward of the mains to keep the plane from tipping over, but too far forward and you can't rotate to takeoff. Look at where payloads are carried on any of the European canard deltas.
  7. Just look at the site formerly known as Twitter for a textbook example of the decision maker doing stupid things.
  8. I don't see a problem with the lower positions. It's looks less likely to rip off a canard during a rail launch, but is there really room? I don't think you want the missiles sticking out forward of the intake. Sideslips will shed vortices that will get ingested by the intake creating problems. Assuming that is the main gear bay shown in your photo, I'd consider moving the missiles to underwing pylons like a normal airplane. The Lightning couldn't use the under side of the wing because so much of span was used for landing gear stowage. This plane was an unsuccessful design proposal, so I'd probably build it as the oddity it is with the dorsal missile mounts or for an operational whif put them under the wings.
  9. It was the light attack plane when the other Navy attack aircraft was the A-6.
  10. Doesn't surprise me. I bought a few Missing Link parts back when they were active and don't think any of them made it to an finished model. I remember buying a Missing link GR3 nose to convert a Monogram AV-8A, but ended up hacking up an Airfix GR3 to convert the Monogram kit.
  11. But who's going to be buying it when the Hasegawa is still available and, based on recent pricing of Chinese kits, I'd guess for at least half to a third of what the Magic Factory kit will probably retail for? If they want money come out with variants that are hard to find: A/B/C/G/H/K/KU/L/N/PTM/P/Q/S/SU/AR/AF-1
  12. Missing Link made a 1/48 gun pack back in the 90s, but good luck finding one now.
  13. You give more info about what you are trying to do and it's easier to provide relevant answers. Doing a training squadron, you are going to have some of the oldest rattiest looking F-35Bs out there. Also the Marines started getting F-35s before the other services, so they probably have more planes with the old style RAM. If you want a clean new plane I'd look for a squadron that transitioned after 2017. The exterior color is 36170 (flat) not 16170 (gloss). If the finish is glossy it's more of feature of age and cleanliness of the F-35s I posted in another thread showing a difference in one squadron 2.5 years apart. Another nit to pick is the white should be 17925 and not 17875 Furball has in their instructions. You can look it up yourself MIL-STD-2161C Notice 1 2161C refers to 17875 as Glossy White and 17925 as Insignia White (untinted). In MIL-STD-2161C 17875 is only called out on the C-40 (Boeing 737). In all other cases the white called out is 17925. The problem is a color named "Insignia White" has been around since WWII as ANA 601 and went into MIL-STD-595 as 17875 but the names are not official. Many of us grew up with Model Master paints where Insignia White was 17875 and it was much later they came out with 17925 as Gloss White in their Model Master II line. I prefer to use Tamiya Liquid Surface Primer White thinned with MLT as my untinted white. https://www.dvidshub.net/image/7052909/vmfat-501-shop-photo Feb 14, 2022 June 22 2023 If you zoom in you can make out the white rudder and stars on the tail. August 3, 2023 - Note the VM on the tail is different.
  14. Now that's the question you should have led with, since it's really what you care about. I can't find any info on F-35s being stripped and repainted which is what would be required. Which leads me to believe it's rare for now. Their coatings are supposed to be more durable than previous paint technologies. Have you tried to find newer pics? Sites like airliners.net or jetphotos.com are searchable by tail number. The US (assuming a US plane) military's media sites are constantly adding new photos, look for photos of the unit or base its stationed at. Did the unit deploy, are there news stories with plane photos? Typically all the planes in a unit will be of similar age if not sequential serial numbers, so the build level and mods are the same for the squadron. If you find a current photo of a plane with a close tail number or a plane from the same unit odds are your plane is configured nearly identically. But, it's also reasonable to assume that eventually the fleet will get the new scheme as they go through repaint (no idea how often that is). Finally it's your model, so you can paint it how you like. BTW, I did run across this article that quotes a Lock-Mart memo dated April 13, 2017 announcing the change in RAM color to employees. The article also concludes that eventually the fleet would receive the new coatings during depot maintenance. It also had this image of the first plane off the line in the new scheme.
  15. What are you trying to accomplish? Why is the date important? Googling "F-35 change to RAM colors" it took just a few seconds for me to push the date back to at least 2018, but the change probably happened sometime in 2017 to allow for the time it would take for the change to be captured by plane spotters and circulated in the civilian world. The current panels have a different sheen than the main surface treatment, so depending on the lighting they are virtually invisible or stick out like the old panels did. The F-35 primary color is FS36170 with FS36270 being called out by some kit makers as the lighter RAM panels. FS36270 is the light gray in the two-tone F-16 color scheme, so pretty light compared to F-35s. In Mr. Paint's line it's MRP-280 Camouflage Grey FS36170 that has (F-16, F-35 use with HAVE Glass) printed on the label
  16. Here's a video of 57-2507's first flight in January 1958. Several of the photos above look like stills from this video. After going through the entire video I'm not convinced it's a fluorescent color. There are several shots where the plane is flying past the camera with changing light angles and it just looks darker than day-glo to me. I'd use MRP-232 FS12197 International Orange sprayed over a white base since I'm familiar with it. For AK Real Color, I'd probably use RC008 RAL 2004 over RC207 RAL 2005. This plane spent it's entire service life as a test plane for the USAF and eventually NASA. By the time it was used for ejection seat tests several years had passed from the video below. If it was delivered in a non-fluorescent color I doubt it would have been repainted during the brief window where the USAF used them and I haven't seen any photos that look like faded day-glo.
  17. I'd wait to see the Minibase take on this variant since it's specifically designed to be a Taiwanese Block 20 and not just another decal sheet for Kinetic's existing Gold Kit.
  18. According to Scalemates Hong rebranded as Zimi, The Zimi release is just a new box with current branding. "Hong Models" is really generic. Try googling it, I only get hits for HK Models.
  19. I don't know anything specific, but would guess the Kitty Hawk kits hitting shelves now are NOS (New Old Stock). Kits produced before Kitty Hawk shut down that have been sitting in a warehouse in China since then. Zimi Model probably acquired these as part of their acquisition of the Kitty Hawk assets and shipped them to retailers as a simple way to bring in some cash while they get production going on kits with their branding. Once the mold is cut for a kit it is an asset that companies will want to keep in use as long as there is a market buying those kits. ESCI was an Italian kit producer that went out of business about 35 years ago, but it's molds are still in use (mostly by Italeri). The company Atlantis specializes in producing kits from old molds no one else is using. I know some of their molds date to the '50s.
  20. It's easy enough to just Google for builds. The kit has been around for 40 years.
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