afspret

Odd there was has been no mention here, as far as I can see, of the minor mid-air between two P-51s during the airshow @ Duxford this past Saturday, the 23rd. Both 'stangs received minor damage and were able to safely land back @ Duxford, but it could've been worse, as they were attempted to form up with "Sally B" at the time and were at a pretty low altitude. It seems like its not been a very good display season for Mustangs, especially @ Duxford, this summer, what with "Princess" loosing part of her canopy during a fly-by @ one event and another 'stang bellying in off-field a

Not an expert, but I think most of the early P-61A and A-1 models where OD/NG and I've seen pics of some A-5s in both schemes, as well as some A-10 models. In addition, and I came across a pic of a formation flight with four a/c, one of which was OD/NG and the other three black. OD/NG painted a/c were not limited to the Pacific, they also served in the ETO, particularly with the 422nd NFS and 425th NFS based in the UK and I've seen at least one OD/NG painted a/c wearing invasion stripes on the lower side of the booms and wings. IIRC the P-61 was deployed to the MTO late in the

I finally saw Dunkirk and thought it was okay, though I didn't care for the exterior dogfight shots from the cameras mounted on the so called "Spitfire". One thing that struck me was how amazingly similar the voice of Spitfire flight leader sounds just like that of Michael Caines!

nicely done

I'd like to apologize in advance if anyone gets offended by this. I've been trying to read through the July issue of Scale Aircraft Modeler International and am totally surprised about how badly most of the articles are written. Most are filled with everything from bad punctuation to incomplete sentences and they look as if they were initially written in a foreign language and then poorly translated to English, either that or the writer(s) and/or someone at SAMI didn't check or read the articles before submitting them for publication. Hope this is one off thing and not a growing trend, as I

nope don't seem to see it anywhere, but then again this is showing parts for post-war versions, since it was revised in 1948

One thing that's been nagging at the back of my normally scattered brain for a while has to do with sound proofing material. Did they continue using it in the cockpit, nose and radio compartments of all models right up till the end of production or was it discontinued at some point, or maybe taken out a modification centers after being built? I only ask because I've seen a few pics, mostly of 'Gs', with no sound proofing in the nose compartment.

I have a three of the Revel kits (an 'F' and 2 'Gs') and an Airfix 'G' kit in my stash and I think they are all great looking kits and can't wait to get started on them. That being said, to my eye some of the gun barrels on both companies kits look to long and skinny, and on the Revel 'G' the cheek windows look small. Also, and this might be just because of some of the built kit pics I've seen of both types, the dorsal turret on one, the Revel one I think, looks odd, in that it looks narrower at the bottom than to top and seems to sit higher than the turret on the other one. Also, on one ki

Thanks all, and I did enter the number and found it had been delivered to my local post office the day before, so now I can say I'm the happy owner of a 1/48th HB P-51D, a 1/72nd SP P-40F/L (2 for 1) and a new tooled 1/48th Airfix Seahurrican Mk1.

Just got me one the other day like what I saw, however I did notice a complete lack of cockpit sidewall detail and also see the instructions call for the majority of the cockpit parts to be painted in interior green, including the cockpit fuel tank and the radio gear. A couple of nitpicks I have is the separate wing pylons and the fact the sway braces molded to the under wing tanks, but at least this one has the pylons, their 1/72 easy build P-51D doesn't have them.

Thanks all, and yeah I meant 9 Aug, guess I was having a scattered brain moment!

I live in the US and I recently purchased some items from Hannants and had it shipped with a tracking number. According to the last entries on both the Royal Mail and Parcelforce websites the package was shown as arriving at JFK on 9 Nov and then nothing. I know the package has to clear US Customs first, so I guess my main question is once it does, will I still be able to track it through the USPS with the original tracking number?

The last post in this forum was on Tuesday, but the last one in the jets forum was about 40 minutes ago, and if you look at the "in progress" and "display" forums, with the exception of the ubiqutious Me-109, the vast majority of them are for jet projects. Is building prop job kits going out of fashion?

I guess the F-14 is to jet kit lovers what the Me-109 is prop kit lovers.

Yeah I've got one in my stash and it has a small PE along with the same aircrew figures that came with the Pro Modeler B-17G. I also think it came with four small jars of acrylic paint and a small brush, although I could be thinking of a version of the Monogram B-24J that came with the paints.

A small number of the first a/c off the assembly line had the two gun upper forward turret and I think a couple actually went to India with these turrets.

from this angle it looks like the nose cone ain't gonna clear the edge the upper edge of the hanger deck opening, and it looks like they don't have enough room to back the a/c any more.

Got an email the other day saying one of the two HobbyTown USA shops in the Charleston, SC area is closing. I've been to this store a few times, which is actually in Mount Pleasant, SC, and found they had a larger selection of plastic models kits than the other HT store. The location for the closing store, IMHO, was not great, as it was in a small shopping center with very limited parking, in fact a couple of times I left 'cause I couldn't find a place to park. Probably because of this there were times where I've been in this store and was usually their only customer. So, after being one o

Got some updated info on the a/c; its actual serial number is 42-31435 and it was assigned to the 544th BS of the 384th BG, which matches up with info in the Joe Baugher site. The nose turret mod was the idea of an armaments officer and the a/c was written off on 6 July 1944 after crashing landing at RAF Manston, due to flak damage, sustained on its apparent first and only operational sortie with this mod. Another thing I found interesting is the being that the a/c is an early model G with the unstaggered waist positions, it has the Cheyenne tail turret. From the pic its clear

Would the crew even have a full time bombardier and maybe just a togglier? I know its kinda hard to tell from the pic, but it doesn't look like there's a mount for the bomb sight. Oh, I found additional picks on the same website, but in a different folder, the second which shows the back of the mount was open.

Found this rather interesting pic of a field mod to a B-17 on the 384th BG website. It identifies the a/c as 42-31425 coded SU*S and nicknamed West End. On interesting note is that it appears the modified turret is non-trainable and the back appears to be opened, although there could be panels at the back that were removable for maintenance. According to the Joe Baugher website 42-31425 was a B-17G-15BO and was assigned to the 20th BS/20th BG and was shot down over Austria on24 Feb 1944.