Steve McArthur

Why? It's grainy, out of focus and off topic.

It's in the pipeline right behind their two seat F-16s and fat wing F-4 kits.

Kitty Hawk went out of business a couple years ago and it's kits have gone up in price as they've become scarce. Zimi Models is resurrecting the line and there are a few companies taking preorders on reissues of Kitty Hawk kits expected to hit shelves in January. The F-35C hasn't been among these yet. If you search for reviews of the F-35C or any of Kitty Hawks F-35s you'll find they weren't considered that good. Swap "SH" for the "K" in Kitty and this is how many people referred to their kits. To be honest there just aren't that many F-35Cs yet. The F-35C service entry has lagged pretty far behind the A and B models. It's only been on a couple cruises with operational squadrons at this point. We'll see more kits of it eventually. It's the future of the US Navy.

I just noticed the outboard bombs look like they have a more nose up attitude than the inboard bombs. An IPMS judge would probably consider this a construction flaw.

The photos @Finn linked are training missions with inert weapons and range instrumentation pods on the port wing. I was looking for combat loads. So I spent way too much time looking for armed photos of F-16Ds and so far have failed to find a true combat load picture. Most of my time was spent going through a couple thousand F-16 photos from USAF Central Command where planes are flying combat missions and not just training. I tend to look for photos on DoD websites that are at raw camera image sizes. I want to be able to zoom in and read stencils. I really dislike the people that post interesting photos to file sharing sites with no resolution and no sharing. If you are posting tiny photos why bother attempting to lock them down? I've got 3x4K monitors in front of me and anything smaller than a 2000 pixels wide is small, less than 1000 pixels wide is tiny.

I'm in Kansas and got a copy of the CTA sheet last year from a non-hobbyshop e-bay seller out of Serbia that primarily sold Warsaw Pact memorabilia.

@cicarista Besides the vent, the vertical tail around the vent you circled looks wider than normal to me. The green one is the standard F-16 targeting pod adapter used by every operator that carries targeting pods, since that's a Sniper pod hanging under it.

@Head in the clouds. The reference datum is somewhere forward of the nose. It's common in aircraft, so all fuselage stations are positive anywhere on the plane. Check this report and search for C-130. Figure V-5 has the loading diagram for the cargo bay. FS245 looks like the forward wall of the cargo bay and FS257 corresponds to just behind the first row of cargo tie downs. This would be as far forward as cargo could be secured. https://www.ustranscom.mil/dtr/part-iii/dtr_part_iii_app_v.pdf

That pod is unique to the Block 60, no one else uses it. More recently the Block 60s have started using the Sniper pod on the right side as their original pods have aged without being upgraded. Also note the base of the vertical tail is unique to the Block 60.

F-16D is cleared for anything a F-16C can carry. Whether or not they would fly SEAD missions is a different question, but the first F-16 AIM-120 kill in combat was done in a F-16D. So the USAF has used them in combat. I'm not sure which ECM pod is appropriate, it varies by unit and location. If you mount a pair of HARMS you would have the HTS pod installed. Originally this was on the right side, more modern usage is for HTS to be carried on the left with a Sniper (or LITENING) pod on the right.

I don't know why you can't figure this out if you have photos. The green is interior green. There might be variations in paint batches, but all the green is interior green. That was the standard for most 50s USAF aircraft. Dirt, grease, soot and corrosion control touchups will change the look over time. The photos I've seen show a mix of colours on the trapezes. This photos shows the body of the launch rail in black with one of the supporting arms also black. Some rusty nuts are visible, so these were problably unpainted in service. The edge where the missile actually connects to the rail body will always be unpainted steel. The original of this photo is on wikipedia and it's HUGE. Different plane, different museum. Based on the paint wear it doesn't look "restored". The green looks a little different, but I think that's just different lighting or exposure. It's still interior green. The forward missile rail body here looks to be unpainted steel with a black nose cap. The rear rail could be black or steel. Hydraulic actuators for the trapeze are visible. The bodies look grey or maybe unpainted metal with polished chrome pistons. The hydraulic lines to the actuators are braided steel hoses with anodized blue fittings. Various other components are visible that look like bare metal and trapeze pivot joints look grimey with grease seaping out attracting dirt. A shot with the missiles out of the way. There's a gray wire harness going to the center door, but most aircraft wiring uses white insulation. It looks like the hydraulic lines were painted the same interior green, but blue anodized hydraulic fittings and standard black Adel clamps are visible. Since the colors of these are still visible it makes me think the hydraulic lines were not oversprayed for preservation like many museum aircraft, but were installed painted green. Hydraulic cylinders are grey or unpainted, hard to tell in this photo. The Mighty Mouse rocket mechanisms have unpainted metal covers. Running along the top of the door you can see the bare metal wire that forms the piano hinge for the lower door.

I think most of the weapons integration has concentrated on internal carriage with limited effort on external carriage. I wonder if "Beast Mode" is more marketing hype than operationally useful. As soon as you start carrying external loads drag is going up with range coming down.

I am disappointed in Eduard's decision to shelve this one, but it's obvious I'm not really Eduard's target demographic for the majority of their releases. I only build 1/48 post-WWII aircraft, and they just don't tool that many post war kits. I have a Eduard Mirage IIICJ on the bench that I need to finish up the fiddley bits before calling it done. I've got a couple of their MiG-21s and a Bell X-1, but other than the Zlin trainer I can't think of anything else they tool themselves that falls into my area of interest.

Every GBU-12 in this photo seems to have a different combination of colors. Google "Beast Mode" and you should find a lot of photos with GBU-12s on F-35s The Original Caption:

I got the Don Color profile from the web archive athttps://web.archive.org/web/20090803132230fw_/http://www.jpsmodell.de/dc/main_e.htmI hadn't looked for them since they disappeared until @JayBee link to one of them. Now I've archived the jets locally.

Hataka makes the RAL colours in acrylics (Red Line) or lacquers (Orange Line). You can use Scalemates to search for paints for a given color https://www.scalemates.com/search.php?fkSECTION[]=Paints&q=RAL+7012 7012 - HTK-C192 7023 - HTK-C149 7030 - HTK-C233

That's a different question. I'm assuming you are talking about the Agresssor Boxing with the Black/White/Grey camo box art. Everything you need for a Block 50 is in the box. To build the Block 40 kit as a Block 50 the simplest approach would be to look up the instructions for the Block 50 release on Scalemates and use that instead of the kit instructions. Tamiya's F-16 kits are modular that varied which sprues were included depending on which blocks it was supposed to cover. The Agressor Boxing covers all USAF C models even if the markings are only for a couple specific Blocks. Compared to the Tamiya Block 50 kit I think the only thing you are missing is the weapons sprue with the HTS and HARMS, but those could be found aftermarket if you wanted them.

Depends on the time frame and which airforce. Brand new off the assembly line, the only differences in USAF service were the WAR HUD in the Block 40 and LANTIRN Pods. The Block 50 had the same WAC HUD found in earlier blocks and only carried the HTS pod on the inlet. If you want to talk today, it's a can of worms. I'd Google it or start here

Squadron Hobbies in the USA have several of the larger aircraft kits (1/32, 1/35 and the 1/48 Su-34) available for pre-order with an expected January 2024 ship date.

I don't think it was really that slow or underperforming for a non-afterburning aircraft. What I see as it's main problem was it's limited usefulness. It's an awfully big aircraft with a relatively small payload. It's contemporaries were the A-4 Skyhawk in US service and the Etendard IVM in French service. All 3 had first flights within a couple years of each other. All had similar performance and very basic avionics, but the A-4 and Etendard were about half the size being near 5000kg vs 11000kg empty for the Scimitar. The Etendard had slightly lower max payload at 3500lb vs 4000lb, but the Skyhawk was a little over double that at 8500lb.

That's not quite the full story. From the factory the cockpits are still 36231, the USAF has never changed their specification for the cockpit color. It's been reported (back in 2006) that USAF corrosion control was using 36270 for touchups and repaints. I don't know how prevalent a full cockpit repaint is, it's not like the exterior that does get repainted on a regular basis. I've never seen a cockpit photo where it was pointed out that it was a 36270 repaint instead of the original 36231.

I've yet to see any of the 3D printed decals or painted photoetch come close to accurate cockpit colors. I did a Hasegawa F-16 and had the same issue with a Quinta set. I used some Tamiya dark grey panel line wash to tint the grey darker around the black instruments and side consoles. I ended up just painting over the cockpit sidewalls and rear panel.

I was severly disappointed when I bought the Tamiya Sea Harrier back in the early 90s. It's based on a GR.1 mold from the 70s and not up to the standards of what I expected of a Tamiya kit in the 90s much less today. Kinetic has much better Harrier kits in 1:48 than the Tamiya kits. I'd only get the Tamiya kit if its really cheap and you want something to practice basic modelling skills with.

Resurrecting a dead topic: I just ran into a case where MRP Metal Balls had chipped and left flakes in a jar of Tamiya XF-86 Flat Clear. I'd had a pair in the jar and there should be no way I should be able to damage them just by shaking especially in something as viscous as the Tamiya XF-86, but both had a spot where the surface had chipped. I'd guess these had been in the bottle at least a year before I noticed. The exterior finish had also dulled to more of an iron color from the shinier finish the unused ball still have. I've been using Chrome Steel ball bearings from Amazon for about 10 years without problems, but in 2021 I ran low and got the MRP balls.

A couple more pics of Pave Pat 1