Joe Hegedus

International Orange. I like to use normal Testors square bottle orange for that color, as in scale International orange looks too red to me.

Yeah, the orange flight clearance stickers were prominent.

Darn near almost 20 years ago at this point. I had a flight in a Super Hornet back in 2005 that was configured as a 5-wet tanker and at least 2 of the tanks were unpainted (black carbon fiber) FPU-12s.

I'm nowhere near an expert, but I would think that the slats on an F-4E or G would be in whatever color the surrounding aircraft surfaces were, since those surfaces on that airplane were to enhance maneuverability. I don't know about red in the speed brake, but I again I suspect it would be the surrounding color. Red on moving surfaces was more a USN/USMC thing than a USAF thing.

You’re mostly correct here, except that VX-9 doesn’t do the work to clear weapon configurations. That is the role of the DT test squadrons (VX-23, VX-20, and the others at Pax; VX-30 and 31 out west are weapon development squadrons that evaluate how well the weapon actually works, generally after the east coast squadrons have established an envelope to use it). VX-9 is an OT squadron - they take the weapon envelopes that the DT guys determine and evaluate whether or not they are actually useful for the mission. In other words, the DT guys establish whether or not the weapon or system that th

Oldest by what measure? Oldest tooling? Probably the Revell 1/28 WWI kits (Camel, Spad, Triplane) or maybe the Lindberg Deperdussin monoplane, Testors/Hawk PT-20, or Revell USS Nautilus. Oldest boxing/release? Probably the 1/720 Revell USS Pennsylvania kit Been in the stash the longest? Not sure I can answer that one, as my stash has a pretty high turnover rate besides building kits - changing interests means selling off some kits to make room for the new direction as I have a personal desire to limit the number of kits in the stash at any given time (ide

VF(N)-513 was often employed in night interdiction missions, and it was not uncommon for them to fly with HVARs under the wings, napalm, and bombs. The kit ordnance is perfectly reasonable, although I don’t know if I’d put the large bombs on with the rockets. - one or the other I think. https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/VMA-513?file=F4U-5N_VMFN-513_Wonsan_1950.jpeg#

For the dark gray, I’d go with something closer to Gunship gray. It’s far too dark in those pictures for Dk Ghost gray. If not Gunship Gray, maybe AMC gray (the gray used on the C-17).

I've ordered from them in the past, but it has been several years. No complaints at the time, but I don't know if they are still operating or how the current political climate may impact US residents ordering from them now.

I'm pretty sure that the BRU-33s in the kit are VERs; any specific reason you can't use those? I don't think any one ever did aftermarket VERs, since all the kits included those. It was the CVER that was not available in the kits, hence the aftermarket ones. Then again, by 2008 I'm not sure how many VERs were still out in the fleet - they were by that time either being converted to CVERs, or converted to the BRU-57 for the F-16. I think the CVER would be much more likely to be seen on a Hornet in 2008 than a VER.

Sometime in the early 80’s. This was one of the original kit schemes in the 1/72 Fujimi A-4E/F kit that came out in the mid-80’s. I may have more precise information on the time period in my files; I’ll take a look later.

There isn't really anything special about it, other than it had a lot of different paint schemes and there's a local connection via Test Pilot School.

Overall gloss gull gray, I believe. Standard TACAIR scheme at the time - I think it ay have just come out of a depot rework and NFWS hadn’t had a chance to put it in an adversary scheme again yet. This one is a planned model, eventually (along with several other schemes for 150023. I think I have a dozen or so identified and have accumulated markings for. I’ve done 2 so far, one in VA-12 markings and another in a blue/gray NFWS scheme.

150023 wore the number 56 for almost it's entire career at NFWS (~ 16 years give or take a bit), except for the very beginning of its service with NFWS (1974) when it wore side number 23, and a brief period when NFWS used 3 digits and it wore 556 (between 23 and 56 as far as I can determine, all the photos I've seen of 150023 as 56 have all had the fin-mounted pitot but the 556 photo does not). That specific scheme may have been applied in 1988 through 1990, but 150023 was side number 56 since at least 1979. As an aside, after 150023 was reassigned from NFWS, side numb

150023 was at NFWS for a lot longer than 2 years; it was assigned there sometime in the mid 70s and wore a number of different schemes including the ‘MiG 17” scheme. It also spent some time assigned to the Naval Test Pilot School before going to Topgun.