rav

The paint is Gunze C59. I considered to add some red, but first I checked how the stock C59 will look like. I was satisfied, so I did not modify the paint.

X-1 was launched from B-29, not B-52. I have B-29 in my stash, but it must remain in the box until I get more space for exhibition. Thanks for all kind comments above, guys.

The first test aircraft, no. 46-062, famous of the first supersonic flight (piloted by Charles 'Chuck' Yeager, 1947.10.14). Named "Glamorous Glennis" for Yeager's wife. The aircraft flown 80 times taking off with B-29, but she also made one ground take off (1949.01.05, Ma=1,03). 46-062's top speed was Ma=1,45, achieved in diving. The other pilots of the aircraft were: Jack Woolams, Chalmers Goodlin, James Fitzgerald, Gustav Lundquist, Jack Ridley, Albert Boyd, Frank Everest, Patrick Fleming and Richard Johnson. The last flight (1950.05.12) was made for the "Jet Pilot" movie. Currently the X-1 #1 is exhibited in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Kit: Tamiya (1/72). Stars and bars: Techmod.

Hello again, I compared the gray tones on photos (pylons to the fin and AMRAAMs to the fuel tanks) and decided to use the FS 36375 on the tanks, their pylons and missiles. Everything else, including remaining pylons, are in FS 36270.

Revell molded some sticks there, but they were too thin to survive my modelling work and too heavy to look good - so I cut them off as a first step. The new ones from stretched sprue were added as the final touch. Sorry, it's a Photoshop. The model was mounted on a "third hand" which had to be removed by cloning of the cloud behind the tail.

Aircraft built by Fokker as F-16B Block 15 80-3692 for Royal Norwegian Air Force (RNoAF). Served in skvadrons 334, 331 i 332, and currently in 338. In the 90-ties it was upgraded to Block 20 MLU. Since 2007 is painted as "Arctic Tiger" and is frequently seen at "Tiger Meets" and other air shows. Model captures F-16BM no. 692 with AMRAAM and IRIS-T missiles and Pantera/Sniper pod - as it was shown at Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford, July 2010. Kit: Revell 1/72. Decals: Model Alliance Decals. AMRAAMs: Hasegawa Aircraft Weapons V. IRIS-T missiles from Revell's Eurofighter. Pantera/Sniper pod: Hasegawa Aircraft Weapons IX.

Second prototype of F-16 (72-1568), winner of LWF (Lightweight Fighter) program. First flown on May 9th, 1974 by Neal Anderson. Initially painted in Cloud scheme (off-wite and light blue), in March 1975 repainted in two-tone gray Ghost scheme. It was used for stores tests. On May 8th 1975 YF-16 #2 had landing gear failure and belly landed on grass area. It was rebuilt, but never flown again. Kit: Design (Academy/Hasegawa) 1/72. Fin: Revell. Fuel tanks: Monogram (from F-16XL kit). Mavericks: Hasegawa (Aircraft Weapons IV).

I mixed some light grays and greens (e.g. RLM02) with clear varnish and sprayed it freehand in thin, uneven layers. Some of them were applied prior to the decals, some later.

Any chance for MiG-29 wheels in 1/72 maybe?

The rudder balance guard shown above is different than the guard known from the photos. While I was working on my Airfix Mk.I (1/72) I attempted to find the real look of this element. Look at the photos: You can see that the shape is not oval as shown on the drawing but it is rather a "blown up triangle" with curved sides, but still visible horns. The guard is connected to the fin not by a rod, but by a flat plate. To determine the accurate shape and size of the element I distorted a well known photo and put it onto a plan to "straighten up" the perspective. Then I drawn the shape and copied it onto a tail plan for clarity. Here is my result - still not perfect. I was not able to make it as small as it should be:

I finished Defiant Mk.I of MPM Hi-Tech kit a year ago. You are right - the turret did not fit well. I had to correct the fuselage and canopy parts to make it fit. Another problematic thing is the shape of the moving (not in the model) part behind the turret. It is wrong when you look from above - its side walls should be parallel to each other and the kit part is getting narrower near to the tail. When stowed down, the part should not be as one surface with the surrounding area, but it should fall a bit deeper. I noticed that too late and did not corrected it. Roundel and Fin Flash colours in my kit's decals were too bright, so I replaced them with Techmod items. The Spitfire markings had the same size and correct colours. Click the photo to see and read more.

Here is my way (Spitfire Mk.Vb, Tamiya 1/72): All parts in Surfacer, mounted on toothpicks: Yellow and Sky elements painted: ...and masked with Tamiya tape, 0,5 mm tape and Humbrol Maskol: Undersurfaces painted Medium Sea Grey, including landing gear: ...and masked with pieces of paper glued with Maskol (to protect details) and Tamiya tape: Painted with Ocean Grey and masked withBlue-Tack and Maskol: Painted with Dark Green and unmasked: Decalled and weathered: Finished:

Hello All, I/m working on Norwergian "Arctic Tiger": i learned that Norwegian F-16s are painted FS36270 overall with pylons in FS36375. We can see here that the fuel tanks and their pylons are lighter than the airframe. But it seems to me that middle pylons (stations 3 and 7, empty) and maybe outer ones too (stations 2 and 8, with Sidewinder rails) are darker than the fuel tanks pylons. Are they in FS36270 or my eyes fool me?

I followed this direction and found the same pod on a photo in "A-7 In Detail & Scale" described: "ALQ-119(V)". Size od the pod, compared to the pylon, is close to the Academy pod of my YF-16. Some sources say Light/Dark Ghost Gray (FS36375/36320) and I think it's reasonable.

i don't think so. Maybe a shorter version of -119, but I did not found any picture od such pod. I tried to replicate the photo using my model and two ECM pods: a "noname" from Academy YF-16 kit (shorter) and AN/ALQ-119 from Hasegawa Weapons IV (longer): My YF-16 with Academy pod: ...and with Hasegawa pod: And detailed comparison: Do you still think it is AN/ALQ-119?

Hello, I'm working on second prototype of YF-16 (Academy 1/72) in this variant: My question is: what is the ECM pod under the fuselage? It looks like AN/ALQ-101 or early AN/ALQ-119, but is shorter (it ends close behind MLG wells, as full lenght 101/119 would end between ventral fins). Was such shorter version of the pods really existing or maybe it is something else? Additional question: what kind of centerline pylon could be used for the ECM pod here? Standard fuel pylon or a smaller one, as for present F-16s with AN/ALQ-131? Any info, especially photos of two-tone grey YF-16 with weapons are welcome in this thread. Thanks in advance.

I understand the problem... I started to create a database of by books and magazines to find information about selected aircraft. But it will take much time to catalogue them all. Meanwhile,I'm trying to find as much as possible manually and having some sources at hand I'm working on many models of the selected type.- currently 4 F-16s. I'm sorry, I don't have this book. Could you check just the one and say if there are more useful photos of the grey YF-16? I promise to buy your decals if I will work on a YF-16 or F-16 FSD in the future. In the current build I'm using Academy decals. The kit contains two schemes: the one shown above and white/blue camouflaged one. It seems to me that markings on white/blue and grey/grey variant were the same, but if I have the opportunity to ask an expert, I do.

Hello Vingtor, Yes, I saw your Impressive build. The result is way better than mine. BTW, I'd like to ask you, what photos did you use as background for you decals of YF-16 #2 in two-tone grey camouflage? I'm working on it now, having yours and Tamiya's painting schemes and 5 photos: In-flight from below, with 2 MERs and 12 MK.82 bombs (BW photo) In-flight from left side, with 2 empty MERs (BW) Parked from right/front, with 2 Mk.84 bombs, 6 Mavericks and 1 fuel tank (color) Parked from right/front, with 2 fuel tanks, 6 Mavericks and ECM pod (BW) Parked from the left side, with 2 Mk.84 bombs, 2 empty TERs and ECM pod (color) My model will be in configuration 4. Do you have any other photos from two-tone-grey era? Is it correct to use decals of white/blue camouflage scheme? Thanks in advance for any information.

Hasegawa and Academy kits are the same and they are significantly smaller than Revell F-16A/B/C. I found some informations that FSD and production fuselage was 26 inches longer than YF-16 (16 inches in the nose and 10 inches behind the cockpit), wings and stabilators were redesigned (enlarged, two hardpoints added), but the fin was one of the few main unchanged parts. After I corrected Academy fin base, I got almost the same shape as Revell fin - just surface was not that good and that was why I abandoned Academy fin and took the Revell one (I just had to remove antennas from the rear end of the base and top of the fin).

I built this model a few years ago, but it needed some corrections. This is how it was looking about month ago: The fin base had wrong shape - it was clearly visible when the base was painted blue. The nose was canted up a little - my mistake. The prototype was standing in the back of my display cabinet. Finally I decided to correct the fin. I bent it a few times until it fell off, cut the base from the upper part and added some plastic between them to get correct angles. Then I realized that the new shape is almost the same as fin of the production F-16A/B. I found a statement in the net to support this. Luckily I had F16A/B fin spared from Revell F-16C... So I put my corrected fin away and simply used the production fin - Revell did it better than me. I painted it with some part of the fuselage. Decals came from another YF-16 kit (the rest is enough to portrait the second prototype - stay tuned). Correction of the nose was more risky - I had no spare decals to replace them if damaged. But I could not stop half way, so I cut off the snub nose and corrected the angle. Decals were not damaged during sanding of the scar and repainting the nose. Now my YF-16 is looking much better:

Very nice tiger. I see one mistake you can easily correct: the fuel tanks are too far from fuselage. They should be fit to the inner hardpoints, not the middle ones.

Hello, I was watching the transit from Wroclaw, Poland. The observation meeting was organized by Wroclaw University with my friend, heliophysicist and pilot, Pawel Rudawy. He provided a Newton telescope with screen. It produced very good picture: My 4,5 years old son is also interested in astronomy, so we went there together (we had to wake up at 4 AM) with our own instrument: a 7-feet-long pinhole camera. The picture was far worse than the Pawel's one, but we were proud of it anyway. Venus was visible.

The VIP variant of Yak-40 was used by Polish government till last year. The aircraft portrayed here was the last one in service and now is presented in Polish Army Museum in Warsaw. The kit looks good in a box, but it is not very easy to build. Main parts do not fit each other very good. Engine nacelles do not look much like the real ones (they may be based on early series of Yak-40). The landing gear also suffer similar problem. Some details are missing but I scratchbilt some of them. Decals are very good but the numbers 044 on front landing gear covers are missing.

D-ACFA, Eurowings airline. On December 21st, 2009 I was traveling onboard of D-ACFA on route Frankfurt-Wroclaw.

03-09, 203 Kokutai, pilot: Takeo Tanimizu (32 air victories). Kiusiu, Japan, June 1945. Kit: HobbyBoss (1/72). Hinomarus painted with templates.