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Showing results for tags 'FAC'.
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In the just under a month remaining of this GB, I'm going to try and get my Airfix Bird Dog built! It's a tiny kit with not a huge amount of parts, so hopefully should be fine! Fair to say, probably never before was such a tiny, little plane so feared by the enemy, with the knowledge that it could, often within minutes, call down bombs, missiles, napalm and strafing if anything remotely suspicious was spotted. The Bird Dog had a long service life with the US military, it being the first fixed wing aircraft acquired by the US Army following their separation from the Air Force in 1947. It saw action in Korea, but the dangerous skies above the Vietnamese jungle were where it really earned its stripes in the hands of Forward Air Controllers. Cruising at tree top height, looking for signs of the North Vietnamese, the first indication of which would usually be gunfire aimed in the O-1's direction, in a plane armed with nothing more than phosphorus marker rockets, it was not a job for the faint of heart. Indeed, during the course of the war, 469 Bird Dogs were lost to all causes. Bought this kit off Ebay a couple of years ago for less than £10 including postage. 4 small sprues of parts, plus one of clear parts, which look nicely moulded especially the pilot, although there are some annoying ejector pin marks around the tail area. One page of instructions; Nice looking decals; And this is the scheme I will be doing; Picked this up from a local model show earlier this year to help me along; First bit of research required, what colour should the interior be? The instructions are somewhat vague, just giving details for the seats and cockpit floor. -
This is the Fujimi 1/72 OA-4M Skyhawk. The OA-4M were used as fast Forward Air Controllers and were modified from TA-4F (so why wasn't it OA-4F or OTA-4F?) trainers. The Fujimi kits were considered the best A-4 kits until the new tool Airfix A-4B, but I found this kit to be a bit crude. The one thing it has over all the other A-4 kits, other then the Airfix, is that the front slats and rear flaps are molded separately so they can be posed open. The front slat actuators are molded into the wings so they would need to be removed in order to show them closed. Unfortunately the boxing that I got must have thought I was going to pose them closed because 3 of the 6 were broken off and gone missing. Replacing them wasn't too much of a big deal so it worked out. The cockpits were fairly well well detailed with decals for the instruments. I wasn't happy with the kit decals so I used the Wolfpak 72-041 decal sheet (from Fantasy Print Shop) which worked perfectly. One comment on the Wolfpak decals is that they correctly depict the marking that cross a fuselage color boundary as changing to the correct contrasting color. But that means that you need to paint the fuselage boundaries to match the decals before you add the decals. I found this to be impossible and had to touch up the paint after applying the decals. So here it is: Next up will be the Sword TAV-8B that I started before the Skyhawk, but was waiting for decals. Should be done in a few days Enjoy
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Cessna L-19/O-1 Bird Dog (48035) 1:48 Iliad Decals This well-known Observation aircraft from civilian manufacturer Cessna had a lengthy service record and was well-used during Vietnam to obtain and transmit intelligence on the enemy back to the US troops for targeting of bombardment and tactical/strategic use, often whilst under fire. It was also popular with other operators and continues in private service today. This new decal set from Iliad in Canada depicts a variety of airframes in the service of different operators on an A5 sheet of decal paper. There are six decal options included on the sheet with side and top profiles printed on the instructions along with captions and arrowed areas that give additional details to help you make your model more accurate. The underwing decals are shown as ghost images on the overhead profiles which both saves space and paper, which is always a good thing. From the sheet you can decal any of the following: O-1A Bird Dog 14856 of the Kansas Army National Guard, 1968 L-19 751 of the Pakistan Army's 11th Army Aviation Squadron L-19 1002 South Korean Navy 1960s O-1A 14617 US Army Reserve L-19 0-12744 203rd Recon Airplane Company Hawkeyes, An Khe, South Vietnam 1968 L-19 H-1001 Hoantai, predecessor to Japan's Self-Defence Force The decals are printed on a pale blue paper in good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas. There are some large areas of carrier film between the lettering by necessity, but due to the extremely thin nature of the film it should disappear, especially if you add extra clear gloss after application. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of
