CF104

At least ResKit did their research. The pylon is in the correct orientation. Cheers, John

You can order direct from BAM. His online shop is back open at this time and I just received an order from him. https://bam-models.com/product/f-14a-early-gun-panels/ Cheers, John

Thanks for the info. I saw your Ready For Inspection over on Britmodeller.com. Very nice work. I'll be using the Trumpeter MF kit along with a moderate amount of aftermarket parts. Cheers, John

Hello All, I’d like to pick the brains of Mig-23 SME’s. I have the Caracal CD48228 USAF Aggressors now.. and then sheet. I want to build one of the Red Eagles Mig-23MS jets but it looks like the MS was only released in 1/48 by ESCI but I want something a bit more fresh and accurate. Is it best to use the M or MF kit with modifications to bring it to the MS standard? And this brings me to the next questions. What exactly is required to be modified to get a Mig-23MS version from an existing kit and what is the best kit to start with? I'm aware of the shorter radome and IR

The F-4 didn't have a HUD. It looks similar to a HUD but doesn't function as one. It was called the Optical Sight Unit and did not contain flight data like a HUD does. It was used for weapons deployment. Basically a glorified gunsight. Cheers, John

I think what Illu was trying to say is that the Mig-31 has trailing edge flaps and leading edge flaps. From the what I can see the leading edge devices look to be hinged from the lower surface and droop very little when extended. Since they don't extend out on tracks like slats do this would make them leading edge flaps. Cheers, John

According to "The Modern Eagle Guide" by Jake Melampy, the round exhaust is for the Regenerative Heat Exchanger. Factory installed on all Eagles up to F-15E 96-0200. Later Eagles had a change to the ECS which negated the round exhaust. Many earlier Eagles have been modified to also remove this exhaust which is what happened to 090 in the photos. Best to check photo references for the particular jet being modeled. Cheers, John

Nice build. Just so you know, there are 2 sub forums here to display your built models. The Display Case and Critique Corner. Links below. THE DISPLAY CASE CRITIQUE CORNER Regards, John

And this is what can happen as a result. Alaska F-15 shoots AIM-9 at another F-15 Cheers, John

More likely an alert barn since the jets are armed and look ready to go. If you look at a google earth photo of Eielson, there's a 4 bay Alert barn off the threshold of runway 32. Cheers, John

Hi Marc, No TCS pod on the early blocks. The TCS wasn't on a production jet until FY82 (Block 125). If you're going to model an F-14A around the 1976 time frame you could find up to Block 90 jets. The Tamiya kit builds a late block 75 through block 100 with standard beaver tail, 7 hole gun vent and ALQ-100 chin pod. All blocks up to the early block 75 had the original beaver tail and variations of the IRST/ALQ-100 pod. The following link gives a good breakdown of block numbers with beaver tail, gun vents, chin pods and ECM gear. F-14 Block variant list In th

Those illustrations aren't the greatest modeling reference. Always best to use photographic reference of the subject aircraft you're modeling if you want to be accurate. The illustration of the grey over white F-14A shows the wrong pod and has no BuNo. The only VF-2 Modex NK215 I could find was F-14A BuNo 158996 which was a block 70 jet. The block 70 had either the IRST/ALQ-100 or just the ALQ-100 chin pods. The TCS pod didn't show up until the Block 140 jets. Cheers, John

Quote from the linked article. ”Normally we train F/A-18 against the F-5. This helps us to distinguish blue air from red air. The F-5 has a single tail fin whereas the Hornet has a double one, but still during a fight it is quite difficult to see that. We therefore often equip F-5s with orange fuel tanks and missiles to identify them as part of red air, so we don’t have blue air shooting other blue air jets. Generally, we only fly F/A-18 versus F/A-18 in Beyond Visual Range combats.” Click here ALPINE TIGERS article Cheers, John

Look 4 posts up. Arnaud stated he will be releasing a PAV-1 conversion set and a PAV-2 upgrade set. Cheers, John

That's great. I'll be ordering when available. In the meantime I'll be watching this build closely. Cheers, John