Gary F

Sounds good. Safe trip.

Hi Tom, I can do the Tam F-14 trade, at your convenience. Gary

Enjoy and nice meeting you! Gary

Hi ziggy ... I was pretty sure there was one on your sheet too but wanted to check, since I have a few of your sheets ; )

In a lot of cases the only difference in markings would be the tail number and 2 digit numbers on nose, flap, and tail tip which tou could piece together. The aft fuselage tanker band could be painted. So if you can find a squadron you want to do and can find the decals in general you should be able to piece the tanker specific bits from the rest of the sheet or spares. I know there are VA-196 decals for tankers (Super Scale) and pretty sure there were tankers on the Furball Intruder decal sheets (48th scale). SS did both 48th and 72nd. If you have any other questions just ask.

Yes it was common for the tankers to carry a buddy store, as you thought, as a backup for the tankers system. Assuming your buddy stores were in working order. They could be a pain to keep working at times. We had one occasion where we had 5 buddy stores we just couldn’t get working. They loaded all onto one of our A-6’s to ferry back to the PI for heavier maintenance and as the plane cleared the cat and started to retract the gear all 5 stores jettisoned .... problems solved. I cant say all squadrons had tankers all the time but we always had more (5-6 D’s) while we were deployed than when we were home between cruises. Some got transferred to deploying units and some went to overhaul. It’s fairly easy to find tanker pics that show them with the wrong color aft fuselage band for the squadron meaning they got transferred from another unit to cover a loss or just bring the squadron up to strength for deployment.

Hoops, that got me some good results. Thanks a bunch. Habu2, I came across a NASA report on the XL program (~350 pages) and it mentioned several other pylons that were tested including heavy stores stations for 2000 lb stores, ones for the 370 gal fuel tanks, and another for 600 gal tanks. One pic I found today had what looked like the pylon used on the F-22 for the large tanks and carrying 600 gal tanks. A second photo appeared to have 2 of those large pylons back to back, front one with beveled end fwd and the back one reversed. Maybe that’s how they were carrying the large CBU stores?

Yeah I saw that designation also ... believe it means Low Drag Ejector unit. I haven't had anything pop up while searching it either. From the description in the build I saw, it sounds like just filling the pylon slots in the kit parts is appropriate but it would be nice to see a pic.

Camus, thanks for the response. However those 2 sprues with the snake eyes and MERs are not in the 2 seater. Those sprues are common with the Kinetic Kfir and Intruder kits and the sway brace parts are for the MERs. I did find a build of the single seater in which one of the XL flight crew mentioned the XL pylons didn't have the sway braces and pads that snugged the stores. He said those pylons had t-crutches to secure the stores, that there was basically nothing visible along the side of the pylons, and they were developed from stuff used on the F-111. There were pics in the build but not visible (lost in the Photobucket snafu). I've been looking but can't seem to find a good pic of the XL pylon.

To anyone that's done one of the XL's, the instructions show 2 bomb shackles per each small pylon under the wings but these parts don't seem to be on the sprues anywhere ... am I missing something? Also the 2-seater doesn't come with the weapons stencil decal sheet. I've got spares from Kinetic F-16 kits but it would have been nice to have that stencil sheet in this kit. Otherwise, happy with this kit!

Camus, are there bomb shackles for all the small pylons in your kit? Your build got me looking into one of mine and I don't seem to see the shackles among the parts but they are indicated on the instructions.

Got mine today. Raymond, if you're watching, thank you for doing this kit!

Can’t see the pics ... just get error 404 not on this server. Seeing it now. Looks good.

I'm going to try to do something for this GB. Right now I'm planning on an F-CK-1 done as a USAF aggressor (probably) and /or an F-106B turned into a fighter-bomber (assume USAF just couldn't accept the navy F-4). I'm still working on posting pics, actually the resizing part so they'll post from my iPad. I've washed the F-CK-1 but that's all for now. To be honest I haven't had chance to work on anything for about 3 years. I took in some feral kittens and then several homeless cats over the last 3 years and have spent most of the time trying to socialize and get them all to get along. Mostly there on all of them so time to play models again. Gary

Been trying to order a couple all day but the payment gateway won't load so can't pay. Anyone one else having this problem?