Aaronw
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Posts posted by Aaronw
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Sorry work has been keeping me away. Some nice choices
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I've seen this as well, good fun if you grew up watching these movies. Interesting even if you didn't.
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Fine Scale Modeler is a pretty good general subject modeling site, the tie in to the magazine results in a large number of members of varying interests and ability.
Model Cars Magazine has a good forum for car models (in case the title doesn't tip you off).
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Diamond plate is the common term, tread plate is another but can take other forms than the raised diamond shapes (raised lines, cross hatching, circles etc).
Plastruct offers several varieties, but you can't go by their listed scale so it is best if you can get it from someplace where you can physically paw the product. I think the last time I bought it the HO scale tread plate was the best match for 1/25. They also offer a variety of patterns, not just the common alternating diamonds.
On modern vehicles it is often bare aluminum, older vehicles typically used painted steel.
There are alternatives to Plastruct but I've found that to be the best value giving you 2 large 8x11" (ish) sheets, many of the alternatives are 4x6" at the same or greater price. As a fire apparatus modeler I go through a fair bit of the stuff.
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That spacer in the wing is clever. I've run into that issue before but never thought of that solution, just relied on the brute force hold it in place until the glue cures with hit or miss results.
The black looks almost like a very dark navy blue, does it come across that way in person or is it just a feature of the photography process.
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That kit offers an interesting version of the F117.
I have to agree with you that the Two Bob's decals are probably more appropriate for the GB, although there is a small voice in my head saying do it OOB.
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How about a night fighter Spitfire?
That would definitely qualify.
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Thats a simplification of this issue. Everytime there has been changed it hasn't exactly gone just perfect first of all and there were all kinds of race issues in the 1960s and 1970s. for example.
The other issue with women that you mention is that again, its "working" but at the cost of additional efforts, additional blood sweat and tears, inappropraite relationships, pregnancy, harassment etc. Its ground careers into dust, and continues to do so. And this is before we get into other issues like just basic preferential treatment. in order to make it work at a basic level we had to lower standards right off the bat.
I don't look at the last 20 years with women in the military as "success" its been a long painful process that cost us in ways most people don't even realize. Bascially military leaders are under constant pressure to make the square peg fit the round hole. Every prediction in the mid 1990s has come true. More work, less payoff
This is going to sound basic but what helps achieve the objective is a good thing, and what gets in the way is bad. Sexual harrassment briefs, Court martials, pregnancy, inappropriate relationships, and reams of paperwork do not help you kill the enemy and win wars. Sorry.
This is ARC, where a if a study found the F-35 was only 90 percent as effective at CAS as the A-10 there would be a riot since the A-10 saves the infantry, yet if we put in actual infantry with females that 70 percent or less as effective, we are fine with that. I don't get it. I told "ask any infantryman, they love the A-10" funny the survey question doesn't include women in the infantry.
If we thought of it in terms of weapon systems (which Infantry are) or athletes as Kevin appropriately mentions (which Infantry are) we have a case of system/player A vs System/player B.
System A is strong, faster, more resilient and has a higher pass rate and better accuracy with fewer injuries vs system B, which is not as strong, not as fast, less resilient has a lower pass rate and lower accuracy with a higher rate of injury (AKA downtime)
which do we pick Coach/Commander/Taxpayer?
The last little gripe that really russles my jimmies, is that we have har 14 years of heavy infantry combat, and rather than put woman in we expanded the serivices and constantly redeployed males. My point being this amazing equal untapped resource, remained untapped. But now we are winding down on combat (so I hear) and now this issue comes up again?
Where were all these voices in 2005? 2006? Why didn't we use these additional combat forces then? I can think of a 14 year experiment we could have run that is as realistic as it gets, yet we didn't.
Here is my issue, basically it comes down to military leadership is lazy. Doing the right thing is hard, time and time again they have chosen the easy way out until the civilian government that they work for says enough. Then it goes back to the whole well they don't "get it" they don't know how it is in the real world we work in and their soft civilian rules are going to get people killed.
Understand I'm referring to the culture of top management not the individual service members. There is example after example of playing the "readiness" card when they are asked to conform to modern life, whether it is properly disposing of hazardous materials or treating their service members like employees of a 1st world nation, not disposable factory workers of the 1890s.
You've responded before that raising the standards for women to that of men would practically eliminate women from military service, you have also said that having standards for combat troops and non-combat troops is not an option.
Either seems to be workable to me. If it excludes a large number of women from service is that really a bad thing? We already exclude many men of small stature or with certain physical disabilities who would be able to meet the lowered women's standards.
If they adopted a combat arms standard and a non-combat arms standard again you would open up the opportunities, women who could meet the higher standard would no longer be second class members of the organization, and the services would gain more potential recruits into non-combat operations. Does it really matter if a drone pilot weighs 300lbs, or has no legs. Does it really matter if an intelligence analyst has a brilliant mind for cryptography but also has bad asthma?
I'm sorry but the race issues and gender issues are tough, deal with it. We expect these people to go into a country and kill the soldiers while protecting the civilian population. Do you really think that will happen in a force that can't keep its members from harassing its own members based on race, gender and orientation? The military can't keep its service members from raping other service members in peacetime and I'm supposed to believe that if they didn't have women serving that they would be able to prevent these people from raping the population at large during military operations?
This is the 21st century, having a "break glass in case of emergency" force is no longer an option. We expect the military to be a professional, controlled force able to discriminate between friend, foe and non-combatant. The days of harassing the local population and acceptable collateral damage are over. If the current organization is unwilling or unable to meet these standards then perhaps there is a need for a major overhaul and re-organization.
Don't blame the guys on the ground, it all stems from a leadership that chooses to look the other way.
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As they have lower standards for women, would you expect any other result?
It seems pretty simple to me, one standard for combat troops male or female.
I would be more sympathetic if the answer from the military for every change asked of them wasn't DOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!
The military has integrated minorities, women, and homosexuals into the service, each time insisting that it would have dire effects on combat efficiency, yet somehow the world still turns and we aren't speaking Russian, Chinese or Canadian. Not sure why I should believe the hype this time.
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Yeah, I found the color of plastic an interesting choice as well, there must have been a sale on abnormally bright baby blue plastic when they pressed this kit. :unsure:
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Sean, that is quite an ambitious program of work you have there.
I'm in with two jet nightfighters, both 1/72. An Hasegawa F-117 with Balkan Decals for the jet that was shot down ( should've flown by night, eh? ;)/> ) and an Academy F/A-18D Night Attacker with some Hasegawa decals for the VMFA(aw)-121 jet from Desert Storm. Hope they're ok for the GB :)/>
Those are both fine and fit right in with the theme.
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I thought I had some aftermarket decals, but I'm not finding them. Luckily the kit decals look to be in good shape, they just don't give any details as to the history of the markings, unit, date etc.
I probably built this kit more than 30 years ago, I don't recall any issues with it. The kit I have appears to be a re-issue from 2000. I have 2 more in the stash one appears to be an '84 Monogram re-issue and another is a RoG boxing from '94. The instructions in the '84 kit include both 1984 and 1973 copyrights so I assume 1973 was the first issue of this kit.
The 2 Monogram kits include the same decals, the RoG kit actually has the most interesting markings, but the decal sheet does not seem to be as well done, and the girl on the nose art is just a flesh colored more or less women shaped blob, no detail at all.
A plus for the Monogram markings besides being better quality, they represent what is believed to be the aircraft used to score the first US air to air kill in the Korean War. Strangely nothing in the kit indicates this, I had to google the tail number to find that out.
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And black?!? I have it on good authority - Army authority - that black is not a color commonly found in nature.
“Black is no longer useful on the uniform because it is not a color commonly found in nature. The drawback to black is that its color immediately catches the eye”
- Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Myhre, the Clothing and Individual Equipment NCO in charge of ACU, 2004.
Apparently this guy couldn't be bothered to find out why they used black in the first place. Studies found black broke up the shape so the eye didn't recognize a tank (or man or jeep) outline it saw several individual blobs.
These people have the attention spans of 3 year olds hopped up on Mountain Dew. It's like the quote posted in the F35 thread, where after spending a considerable amount of time explaining that the F35 totally makes the A10 redundant, and then in almost the next paragraph he explains that the USAF never planned for the F35 to replace the A10, they want to get a new dedicated CAS aircraft in the works to replace the A10.
The F-35 will be able to perform high-threat close-air support in contested environments the A-10 could never survive, Welsh told reporters, although he noted the aircraft won't be fully operational until 2021 and beyond.The fighter jet is designed "with the entire battlespace in mind" — it is equipped with advanced stealth, integrated avionics and an integrated sensor package, which will provide the pilot enhanced situational awareness, said F-35 Joint Program Office spokesman Joe DellaVedova.
The plane has proven its ability to conduct close-air support missions at night and during the day, according to DellaVedova. During exercises, the aircraft was able to receive targets from terminal air controllers on the ground, and then attack and prosecute targets in a timely manner, he said.
Still, Welsh noted the Air Force never intended to use the multi-role fighter jet as a direct replacement for the A-10, which is a single-mission platform dedicated to close-in attack.
"The idea that the F-35 is going to walk in this door next year when it [reaches initial operational capability] and take over for the A-10 is just silly," Welsh said. "It has never been our intent and we've never said that, so that's not a plan."
Welsh said he would like to see an A-10 replacement, often referred to as A-X, that can perform the low-threat CAS mission even better than the legacy Warthog. Service officials have recently indicated a notional A-X might be in the works.
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I've decided to start off with a Monogram F-82 Twin Mustang. I remember building this kit as a kid, so it has been around a while.
The F-82 was initially designed as a long range escort fighter for use in the Pacific. The war ended before the fighter was delivered but due to delays in jet powered night fighters, and the short range of jet fighters, the F-82 found a new role replacing the P-61 as the USAF's primary night fighter / all weather interceptor as well as being used in its original role as a long range escort.
F-82s stationed in Japan scored the first US air to air victories in the Korean war, and it continued to serve as a night fighter and long range night / all weather strike aircraft through 1951 when jet night fighters began to arrive.
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I've decided to start things off with a Monogram F-82 Twin Mustang.
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I'm going to get started with a German Arado Ar-196.
The Ar-196 was the standard ship board reconnaissance plane for the Kreigsmarine during WW2.
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I have a lot of possibilities in the stash, so I've been having a hard time choosing one.
I've decided to get things started with a RoG Arado Ar-196. I like the looks of the plane and it is a fairly simple build so shouldn't get me hung up.
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I really like the Cadillac Gage armored cars and was happy to see Hobby Boss do them. Don't believe I've seen one built so will be curious to watch this.
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Nice job on the cockpit, and neat info on the night intruders. I also ran across info on the turbinlites, Douglas Havocs armed with big searchlights to illuminate targets for the hurricanes. That must have been a fun job, not... :blink:
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I saw this on clearance for $9, and I remember building one when I was 11 or 12 so I had to pick it up. Not exactly the most accurate thing around but it should be fun.
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I'm going to start things off with an old Monogram M48A2. I picked this up on clearance for $9 and remember building this kit around 1978 or 79 so this is just kind of a fun build.
I've had this in the stash for several years looking for an excuse to build it, I think this may provide the proper motivation.
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No, there is no problem with duplication, if one person wants to build the same kit twice I've got no issue with that either.
and BTW we are up and running in the group build section.
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Looks good so far. I like your comment, pre-enjoyed.
I've only built Eduard 1/72 WW1 kits, but I think they make great kits.
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Neat, I knew about Defiant nightfighters but haven't run across Hurricanes. I assume as an early war single seat nightfighter they relied on pilots with good night vision, and ground control to guide them?
Top Secret
in The Graveyard Shift
Posted
I remember these kits, neat to see one getting built.