paulsbrown

Very nice! I still love the old Revell and Monogram kits.

I've made some progress on the double build. All ready to paint and.... My reshaping of the HB intakes didn't take well to tape. Easily fixed though. That repair made and the cockpits are pretty much finished and I finally got some painting in. Decided to get the HB nearly finished first so I can concentrate on the Collect-Aire with it's dropped flaps and it's weapons bay. Caracal decals pretty accurate and went on fine. A painted kit needs landing gear so I plumbed up the landing gear for both. HB did a great job on the gear. They added the connection

It's got quite a chin on it, thats for sure. The C-A has a much better nose profile.

Getting the cockpits up to speed. The HB one needs to be fully rebuilt behind the seat. I didn't quite do that but made it look a lot more accurate and it pairs well with the Collect-Aire now. Test fitting the HB copy in the C-A cockpit. Adding the missing bits. And getting some uniformity.

I bought the Collect-Aire resin YF-23 when it came out, I think in 2002. Big price, big box and some big hunks of resin, it was awesome. Although well designed and molded it did require extra skills and I was fairly new to resin, I think at that point I had made a handful of resin kits including Collect-Aire's MiG-19, which was fairly straightforward. For those who never built any kits by this company the detail and quality differed substantially. Their YF-23 was good however, good cockpit, decent shape, metal gear, rubbish missiles and wheels and a good attempt on the decal sheet (it had dec

Well the Su-30SM looks pretty good- on the outside. 4 cockpit instrument panels included (Su-27UB and Su-30MK2) but none of them correct for the Su-30SM/MKI. How can they get all that nice detail everywhere else and get the cockpit wrong?

Yeah, I've read a lot of FAC books but I was totally unaware of these guys.

I read an article in last month's Combat Aircraft written by Joe Copalman about the US Marines forming small squadrons of fast forward air controllers in 1966. They were called tactical air co-ordinator (airborne) or TAC(A). The Marines essentially had fast FACs in operation 10 months before the USAF had F-100Fs 'Misty' on the scene. The TF-9J was a tough airframe from the Grumman 'ironworks', these platforms usually carried two 4 shot Zunis had a pair of 20mm cannon with 200 rounds per gun as well. I like FAC aircraft and this one had a shark mouth so it was an easy decisi

The Revell landing gear is nicer than the KP Frogfoot's and easy enough to fit. The Revell I believe is an early or pre production model.

Looks great! Pigs with lipstick... I'm currently building the Kinetic TF-9J Cougar and share your pain.

Care to elaborate?

Great project. I used to see them flying down here in Dorset. I think one of them flipped over while powering up and had to come back and be repaired.

Thanks guys, that's looking right to me. I had gone with the middle seat because of the red/gray but the one on the right looks a little closer, doesn't have that bit at the top.

Hi all, Trying to tackle a vac model of Have Blue and need help identifying this seat. Most literature says it used (off the shelf components) an F-16 side stick, F-5 landing gear and ejection seat. To my eye, this doesn't look like an F-5 seat. Anyone know what it is? Cheers!

Thanks Ken, I came across you mentioning that phrase on another board from way back, wanting to see the three in the lineup. After finishing the Ye-8 I had to strip and repaint the Typhoon for the photo, it was an early days Italeri build and in need of a more accurate paint job so I got it in shape to pose with the other two. Glad I did, now I can do the British 1st prototype in the gray livery and the Tornado engines to go with 98+30. Yes, it's a great looking MiG, a rare kit these days and finally looking good. This was what it looked like the first time it was built. It loo