seawinder

FS 36270 is not the WW2 era color, it's a modern color found on F-16s etc. Really too bad Testors chose to name it "Neutral Gray" -- it's a source of constant confusion.

Will you be making it available for sale? If so, I'm down for one. Thanks!

For Neutral Gray I mix black and white, either 50-50 or 40-60 (black to white). MM1711 and 2050 are not the same shade. I like Mr. Color No. 12 Olive Drab 1 for OD 41.

I'm working on a Hasegawa 1/48 F/A-18C and plan to do it in Desert Storm markings for VFA-81 Sunliners using the Bullseye sheet. They state, and photos seem to confirm, that there were no national insignia on the wings. I'm wondering if this was a widespread practice.

This may have been covered earlier in the thread, but I'm too lazy to track through all 166 pages: Does the AMK kit have provision for wings in overswept position as well as full forward?

Well, in that photo I think I'm seeing that the aft S.L. is definitely proud of the fuselage surface. Granted, AMK has them quite a bit too raised, but shouldn't it be really trivial to sand/file them down?

If the landing gear were to collapse, it wouldn't be the nose. All the weight would be brought to bear on the main gear, which act as the fulcrum; the nose would be just heavy enough to sit on the gear, not enough to collapse it.

Good project, but doesn't this thread belong in "In Progress Pics?" Re the panel lines, IMHO don't bother. It's a lot of tedious work for dubious gains, especially for the camouflage scheme you'll be doing. You're going to have enough fights to win getting everything to fit together. Just my 2 cents.

Actually, Collect-Aire did a fairly awful resin F-86H in 1/48. Check this link for some useful information and specs that can be compared: http://www.airvectors.net/avf86_2.html Deeper fuselage and intake, longer wings, extended exhaust, raised tailplane, flat slab tailplane, new ejection seat, clamshell canopy a la F-86D. I'm sure there's more.

Thanks again, Quixote74. Now I'm really good to go, once I make up my mind which BuNos to build.

Thank you Quixote74 and GW8345! That clarifies things greatly. Do you know what the array of 5 bullet shaped things forward of the ventral blade antenna is for? If the Kinetic parts options are to be believed, they were present on some planes with the louvered vents and all of those with the mesh vents.

Well, that's certainly helpful. I think I'll just find the median BuNo of the C/D production run and declare it the turning point. Apparently few if any will be able to say I'm wrong!

Thanks for the reference. Being primarily a prop guy, I'm unlikely to be spending $40 on a book for one or two projects. I don't suppose anybody with access to either the Modern Hornet Guide or the Daco book would be willing to take a look and let us know what they find?

Good to know for that particular plane, but where can we look to find what to use for other BuNos? For example, I'm going to be doing two -Cs in the near future, and the short list of BuNos I'm considering includes 163464, 163467, 164252 and 164703. I presume the two 164XXX's would have the late configuration, but what about the 163XXX's?

I have asked the same question on this and two other forums and have yet to see a definitive answer. Apparently the vents on the nose under side changed from louvered to mesh at some point during C/D production, and based on the options that Kinetic offers, the array of 5 antennas (?) appeared at some point before the change from louvered to mesh vents. What nobody seems to know (or want to tell) is even roughly in which production blocks these changes occurred. I'd also like to know what those 5 bullet-shaped protrusions are.