JasonW

I am pretty sure that Kitech is no longer in business. They were an extension of the Zhengdefu brand from what I understand and I haven't seen any of their kits offered from our distributor for some time.

At the rate you build 'em, I'd think you had at least twice that number......Seriously, every time I check out the ARC home page I swear there is a model you built on there.

That was my thought, but I'm on the opposite side of that spectrum. I'm actually not sure how many kits are in the stash now. :blink:

Girlfriend.

My live in girlfriend and I each have our hobbies. A joint household account pays the mortgage and bills etc. and we each get an allowance if you will with the rest going into respective savings accounts and rainy day funds. She likes nail polish and clothes and I like military history books, models, sports jerseys (and a few other things). We both agreed that unless it starts to look like an episode of one of those hoarder shows, we just accept it. That said, the basement is starting to look like a hobby shop, I might be on the edge of that one. I consider myself lucky. :)

Eh, such is the society in which we live. Mainstream television panders to the lowest common denominator. I personally don't watch any of it because I feel like every time I see it more of my brain cells die. I hardly even watch the Military Channel any more because it isn't even all military stuff any longer (seriously, if I see another JFK assassination show.....) All the stuff they do tend to show is, well, rehashed rehash as one person here put it. They have done the top tens to death. What is worse is they use totally random and meaningless categories to compare aircraft and armored vehic

That's one way to survive the ARC blackout. :DCongratulations!

Same here, several posts actually.Oh well, a fun thread derailed. It happens.

I'm probably one of those people. I actually leave my Firefox running while my computer is on and ARC is one of the tabs I leave open all the time. So even when I'm not physically looking at the forum, I am still logged in.

I actually got a 1/700 Aoshima Akizuki built and ready for paint and got about halfway through a 1/700 Aoshima Hatsuhara built as well. Did a bunch of stuff around the house also.

Waco, I think it's great you're doing this. Do you need/want any prizes donated? I had donated a few kits in the past to Hal's raffle and would be willing to help if you like.

I thought the Mayans missed Sundays in their calculations and the end had already come and gone but we all missed it because of the election and NFL football season starting......

I heard there was a secret commie base on it.......

Yes, ALF explained that the CF-104's were out for good in 1986, but they started to phase out in 1984 so that what you say makes sense.

With the French, they were still theoretically a part of NATO but they had removed themselves from the NATO military command structure, insisting on maintaining their own military command. I don't remember all the specifics, but they were sort of an autonomous part of NATO. They are still a member nation, but not a part of the military structure (unless that has changed recently).This had taken place in the late 1960's as Degaulle wanted an out in case war broke out between NATO and the WARPAC. He wanted the ability to negotiate a separate peace. That said, the French did continue to station t

In 1983-83 was the CAF still flying the CF-104's? When did they deploy CF-18's to Europe? My understanding was the IOC for the CF-18 was some time in 1982 but I'm unclear on deployments to Europe or when they happened.

I didn't think the Belgians, Danes and Norwegians were that deficient? I have heard that there had been issues with the Italians keeping combat ready on that standard.The East Germans were probably the most effective of the WARPAC allies from everything I've read. They were also considered the most reliable. I think the Polish forces were well trained but I don't think they would have fought well for the Soviets. The dark horse on NATO's side for me would be the French. Reasonably well equipped, I'm pretty sure a fair amount of Mirage 2000's were in service by 1983 (IOC was November 1982). W

That was my thinking when I made the comparison with Israeli pilots etc. Time and time again the showdowns between west and east supplied air forces have been pretty one sided in the west's favor. I think the typical Soviet fighter pilot was more competent than the typical Arab pilot, but the reliance on ground control direction that is so often mentioned and documented might have limited their abilities in many instances. I would also think that the training levels of the non-Soviet WARPAC pilots would not have been to the same standard as the Soviet pilots, thus limiting their contribution t

It depends. I think that the MiG-23 operational count in 1983 is part of the wild card here. I'm unclear on the total of deployed Floggers was by that point. I'll check references when I get home. WARPAC surely had swarms of MiG-21's which the F-16 would have done well against. There were still tons of F-4's in USAFE in 1983, and even thought it had the flight characteristics of a rock I think with a competent pilot they handled well against MiG-23's (at least the Israelis seemed to do okay).

To clarify my previous post above, the dates for NATO countries are for first squadron operational.The USAFE squadron (313th TFS) at Hahn AFB was operational in June of 1982.

They had F-16's in USAFE at Hahn AFB in Germany in 1982. Some NATO countries had been taking delivery of F-16's by 1984. Denmark in 1984, the Netherlands in 1981 and Norway by mid 1982.

That is one of the things I had wanted to discuss as well. I had addressed the WARPAC question earlier: The China question is in fact an interesting one. In the early 80's they had a vast army but it was still pretty poorly equipped with mostly 1950's era Soviet knockoff equipment. Their armor was mostly T-55 knockoffs in 1983 timeframe. Their air forces had mostly MiG-21F-13, MiG-17 and MiG-19 knockoffs. That said, after WARPAC and NATO knocked themselves silly in Europe, Asia might have been a much easier task for China. Japan and Taiwan would have been tougher nuts to crack, but making a gr

An excellent book. One of my favorites in military fiction.It may sound silly, but I read that book in high school and it was one of the deciding factors why I picked armor when I enlisted in the US Army upon graduation (well, the unrealistic video of the Abrams jumping over ditches played a factor also....).

I really like this discussion a lot being a military history/technology buff! Well, enough of the world ending nuclear devastation talk. Back to the subject at hand and one of the things that I think impacts the potential conventional flashpoint in Western Europe circa 1983-84 that I haven’t seen getting much attention. Reliability of WARPAC alliance armies/air forces etc. East Germany was generally regarded as one of the more reliable Soviet allies. I think Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland were iffy at best and I believe they would have turned on the Soviets early on. I am pretty s

I am not necessarily trying to compare Gulf 1 to a potential Fulda Gap type scenario in that regard, only trying to illustrate that the size advantage afforded by the Soviet designs was not necessarily as important as some might think given the capabilities of the fire control systems on western tanks at that point. My point was the technological differences and advantages the Abrams and western tanks had over the bulk of the Soviet/WARPAC armor forces in the early to mid-80's negated most of the potential benefit of the much smaller target profile of Soviet tanks.In tank gunnery the advantage