Joe Hegedus

Looks good! Now, on to the Hornet!

Looks good! One additional note: The BA A-4s normally flew with the centerline pylon fitted. It's visible in several pictures. The pylon was painted the same blue as the jet with steel swaybraces. Joe

Monogram F-4J had slotted stabs, late style exhaust nozzles and a different radome, different inboard wing pylons that included TERs and bombs and a centerline tank. The F-4C/D had unslotted stabs, the early exhaust nozzles, AF-style inboard wing pylons, no bombs and a couple of ECM pods, and the centerline gunpod.

If it was SD-106, it left here a couple years ago and went to the Blue Angels. Might still be there.

I like Model Master Dark Sea Blue enamel, FS15042.

The Victory decals are excellent, I believe they have the correct McD logos and upper fuselage flash, but if you want to do any season other than 79 you'll need the Yellowhammer sheet, also. When I did mine, I used parts of a second sheet to get some additional yellow to fix the flash and also get the two of the right logos (least I think that's what I did, it's been a year or so).

On BA Scooters, the leading edges of the wings, intake lips, tailcone and drag chute housing were polished bare metal, the leading edges of the fin and stabs were painted. The Yellowhammer 1/32 Blue Angel A-4 decals are essentially a scale-up of the 1/48 sheet, and the comment about the reversed MCD logo is correct. The logos should not be "handed", but should be the same on both sides of the fin. The other thing about the YH decals is the upper fuselage yellow flash. It's not big/wide enough; the upper fuselage beacon should form the apex of the flash rather than the flash ending in a p

How on earth did you managed to post as a guest?? AFAIK one can't unless one's registered. And if you refer to the Flap "step" , it started to be in production on -1D Corsairs.... to fill it, yup, I used Putty and some sanding HTH Take Care I do believe the open step was introduced during the production of the F4U-4. Earlier versions may have had the step with a kick-in cover, but from the factory the -4 was the version built with an open hole. And not all F4U-4 were delivered with the step open, either. The earliest ones had the same flaps as the -1D with no hole.

4 JSOW and a centerline bag is reasonable.

Henry's right. If you want to put JSOW on the middle pylons, the only choices you have for the inboards are tanks or more JSOW. The outboard can have the LAU-127/AIM-120 combination, LAU-118/HARM combination or LAU-115/AIM-7 combination, or may be empty. AIM-9X isn't cleared on E/F yet. Henry, Sounds like some interesting stuff going on. Unfortunately, we dont' get too much of the neat foreign stuff here usually. The last one I recall was a Sea Harrier FA.2 a few years ago doing something for the JSF. And the occasional export P-3 that comes through. Joe

Well, it's your model so you can load it however you like. If you want something that is correct ,though, you're gonna need to rethink the load. As I mentioned, JSOW is only authorized to be carried on midboard pylons next to an inboard tank or another inboard JSOW. Mixing it on the same wing as GBU-24 is not authorized. If you want to put the GBU-24 on, put it inboard with either an AGM-65, GBU-12, GBU-16, or MK-82 on the middle pylon. There just isn't a legal way to load a JDAM, GBU-24, and JSOW on the jet at the same time. That will probably change sometime in the future, but when a

Right now I've got no planned excursions to the Lake. Haven't been there since 2000, actually haven't really travelled at all for business other than a short trip to Eglin and a couple day conference in Baltimore since then! Been so long that I'd pretty much have to re-learn the proper procedures now to travel. Will see what goes on with BRAC; no one seems to know what that little blurb in there about consolidating weapons development at China Lake REALLY means. Ergo, no one knows if it will affect us or not yet so I'm not gonna sweat it until the higher-ups make up their minds. Too many o

I'm with you on all that, Henry. I was just trying to give a "legal" load in the vein of the original post. It sounded to me like he wanted to use 2 tanks, JDAM, JSOW, and an LGB. What I posted was the only reasonable way to get all the different weapon types on the jet, at the same time, and be able to fly, that I could think of based on what's currently authorized in the manual. Using the "left wing/right wing mixed load rules". The mix of LGB, JSOW and JDAM didn't make too much sense to me, either; one would think that if the jet was going out with JSOW that it'd have a bunch of those

No. Switching the tank with the JSOW won't work, JSOW can only go next to itself on middle or inboard pylons, or next to a tank on inboard, or next to an empty midboard pylon. If you want a JSOW, you've gotta either get rid of the GBU-24 or the JDAM. If you really want to put a JSOW, JDAM, and an LGB on the jet at the same time, I'd suggest this (leaving the wingtips and fuselage stations, stations 1, 5, 7, and 11. out of the sequence): Sta 2 empty or LAU-127/AIM-120 combination Sta 3 GBU-16 Sta 4 JDAM Sta 6 480 gallon tank Sta 8 480 gallon tank Sta 9 JSOW Sta 10 empty or LAU-118/AGM

See quote.

NO. GBU-24 only go staggered on the forward and aft, one right and one left. The canard and wingspan is too great to put them side-by-side and have them come off safely, and they're too long to go one behind the other. JDAM can go side-by-side though, but I don't think GBU-24 would be mixed with JDAM.

I think the numbers might vary a bit from class to class, but I don't think it's more than maybe 4 to 6. Joe

Are you at Mugu or "The Lake"? I'm an AD type myself. Joe

Nice looking build, but I gotta ask: Why are the wingtip missiles marked with inert motors and live warheads? Joe

I agree that the load isn't legal, but it isn't because it's too heavy. 2 GBU-24 plus 2 MK-83 still weighs at least 1200 lb less than 4 MK-84, which is a perfectly legal load for the Tomcat. If I had to guess, I'd say that it is not a legal load because it was never evaluated, and it was never evaluated because there is no reason to load the jet that way. Nobody asked for the capability, so there are better places to spend the $$.

No need to appologize about weathering. To each his own! :-) WHich one is buiding 304? Joe

Nice job, love those adversary schemes! I agree with the other guy, the HC Scooter is a decent kit (not as nice as Hasegawa, but decent, significantly less $$, and it normally includes some kind of weaponry as well!) Great for quick, easy builds that look good on the shelf. Joe

A "Teeny-tiny Tinker Tanker"! Love it! Good job, Joe

No. SLAM or Harpoon are only authorized for the midboard pylons on the SH. To Habu: GBU-12 was authorized on the SH near the tail-end of OIF. VFA-14 and VFA-41 both operated with GBU-12 over Iraq, but VFA-115 was already gone from the area when GBU-12 became authorized. 115 may have already been home, but I think they were still enroute TRANSPAC at the time.

You can also find a HARM in the Revell/Monogram 1/72 F-16C kit (the US release, I don't think they were in the Euro MLU box), and I think Hasegawa put a couple decent ones in their F-16C block 50 boxing, too. Alternately, you can put another AIM-120 there, or an AIM-7 on a LAU-115, or (a LITTLE bit of artistic license here) a GBU-12- it's not cleared there yet, but it is coming. Personally, I'd lean toward the GBU-12, but I'm a bit biased...