Grey Ghost 531

Yup, it happened to me once on my VFR800I at the Honda shop where I bought it! I pointed it out and faces were red and it was fixed in about 15 minutes.

I don't mind that a model of a bike looks showroom fresh, that's how I do it too, but....the front tire is mounted backwards. You can see the rotational arrow in the close up. Should be easy to flip it around though. Anyway, nice job on the kit, paint is fantastic!

Lots of Luftwaffe aircraft had a personal emblem or name painted on them. Just not big nekid frauleins. Russians also had names and sometimes emblems and lots of big patriotic slogans. The US Navy and Marine Corps seemed to be limited to an occasional wife/girlfriends name. I think not having specifically assigned names was part of the cause for that. In 531, we only had two jets with any kind of marking and they were just stenciled aircraft nicknames on the bottom of the rudder. One was "CATWALKER", obvious reason and the other was "HULK". That name came from the fact that during

Sure thing Picknpluck, I call them as I see them! Yup, I worked on F-4Ns in VMFA-531 from late '77 until the end of '82 and then F-4Cs in the Hawaii Air Guard from summer of '85 until the summer of '88. I was in the radar shop both places. I moved to Vermont in '88 and got into the VTANG where I was a loader. I didn't go back into avionics because I was sick of going to schools and I could do the loader training as OJT and correspondence back then. You can't any more. I use Testors Gloss Coat, mostly because I got several bottles for free. Gently sanding between coats with 1200-200

The worst thing I can see is a little decal silvering. A smoother gloss coat before applying the decals should fix that. You could also experiment with which decal solvents work best with a specific decal manufacturer. One more tip is a technique used by William De Coster over on Hyperscale. He'll kill decal silvering by careful applications of Tamiya Extra Thin cement. Now for the good: The hot metal look on your stabilators is spot on. Weathering is spot on, particularly the way you captured the tire rubber smudge on the lower landing gear doors. Cap AIM-9 is a goo

Note to other Phantom builders: That's just about as dirty as one would get before the XO started kicking asses and taking away liberty chits. Good job, I like it a lot!

It would depend on the diameter of the spark plug wire of course. I don't have one handy but if memory serves, they're about a half inch. If I'm right, divide by 24 gives about 20 thou which my indispensable Pocket Ref by Thomas Glover says equals about 24 gauge. If the wire is more like 5/8 inch, the right wire in scale would be 22 gauge. 30 gauge wire is 10 thousands thick which would be equal to a full size of 1/4 inch if scaled up from 1:24 scale.

Have you looked at Bear Air? I've bought from them a couple of times and had no trouble. Both a new airbrush and parts for an old one.

M/S Batory, Mirage kit, 1/500 scale. Built as assault transport at Sicily, July 1943 Tom's Modelwork generic railings set plus TONS of scratch built details. Rigged with a combination of stretched sprue, EZ Line, Uschi fine elastic rigging and one piece of ceramic filament running between the mast tops for its stiffness. Paint is Model Master and Colour Coats. All of the windows from the main deck up are masked and painted. The kit was molded of a brittle plastic with tiny parts. I had to use a razor saw to remove almost all of them from the sprues and still broke quit

I thought the bump was the radar altimeter antenna. The APR antennae were in the leading edge of the wing just inboard of the leading edge flaps.

Awesome pic, thanks for posting.

323 only flew Bs and Ns.

Oh! It's Olive, the other reindeer!

And they hadn't even selected, much less, paid for a weapons system. The Iroquois definitely should have been kept and developed. The USAF had interest in the engine. The rest of the jet was better off set aside.

How weathered the wood would look would depend on how recently the paint was rubbed off. If the truck was in heavy, regular use, the wood would continue to be rubbed showing "fresh" surfaces and not be much weathered. So, some variation on the wood's weathering would be in order, I'd say the floor and inside of the bed would look show fairly fresh wood but the outside maybe more grayed? Anyway, the model looks really nice. I didn't know that the sign on the cab meant something was being towed! Good to know, Thanks!!

The RIO scope was mounted in what we called, "the pedestal". It was just a hollow box that the scope slid into angled about 10 degrees toward the seat. The 'scope was rectangular, about 8x10 inches and maybe 20 inches to 2 feet tall with the actual display flat on the front face so it was angled 10 degrees from horizontal toward the RIO (by the angle of the pedestal). The face of it was just above knee level. The plugs were in the bottom of the 'scope and when you slid it down into the pedestal they'd mate with jacks that were mounted to the cockpit floor inside the pedestal. The radar hand co

I've got a five or six or maybe seven year old Tracfone that sits usually in the pocket of my motorcycle jacket, turned off. It's probably been actually used only about a dozen times. It's my 911 phone and that's about it. Works for me. Every once in a while I turn it on to check the state of the battery and infrequently my wife and I use them when we're on a trip somewhere and need to coordinate.

They make braided steel grounding straps for cars too, It bolts to the frame and drags very lightly on the ground.

Side note, P-51C kits with decals for the 530th (predecessor to the 134th) are available in 1/72 by Academy and 1/48 by Accurate Miniatures.

Where can I pre-order a sheet in 1/72?

It wasn't REAL glossy even new but I don't remember it ever getting any less glossy with age. I use semi-gloss varnish on models. Also, we sprayed the fasteners with an anti-corrosion compound when we replaced panels that were removed for maintenance. It was transparent brownish in color and could darken the panel line area. I always thought it smelled something like root beer.

Andrew, here's an album of shots I took of the VTANG gate guard a few years ago. It concentrates on the antenna fit. http://s1192.photobucket.com/user/DaveDeLang/embed/slideshow/EB-57B"

I'm assuming it was the same paint as we had on our Phantoms. It was two part DuPont Imron epoxy paint. It was indeed very durable. It kept its gloss for years in the Southern California sun.

It's just shadow. The photo was taken in the winter with overcast skies. The light is very "flat" and makes the shadow look odd. The DC bird is very highly polished and the bottom is just reflecting the color of the concrete. IMHO anyway. Clearly the bottom of the DC bird is painted light gray, anybody could see that!

That would probably make a kit of a GAZ-AA a pretty good starting point. Those were license built Fort AAs.