Chappie

Oh yeah, I know #86 wasn't Pappy's aircraft and that is was only used as a publicity prop, but it does hold a place in Black Sheep history. I bought Bruce Gamle's "Swashbucklers and Black Sheep" last year and it is what sparked a renewed interest in 214. Chappie

Hi Scooby, I did notice some similarities between the sheets, but the Fundekal sheet does not include #86 or #915. It is an amazing sheet though. Extremely detailed. It even includes and aircraft from little-known VMF-441. It was recently discovered that the F4U-1A BuNo 17799 at the Planes of Fame Museum saw combat with that squadron in 1943. Chappie

Thanks Larry. I did find that site after I posted this message. Quite a few gems from the past on that site. Chappie

Hello again everyone, I've been out of modeling for almost a decade now, but I still have my 27 kit stash in the attic that I will get to.....someday. I am looking for two old Cutting Edge decal sheets in 1/48th scale. 48-226, which includes several of Boynton's Corsairs 48-267, which includes a Korean War-era VMF-214 F4U-4B. Anyone have one or both of these for sale? Cheers and Happy New Year, Chappie

Thanks for all the replies fellas and thanks Phantom of the congrats. I just finished a 60+ hour work week which is why I haven't been here to check on responses. Since I know the Hasegawa kit so well I'll just look around the internet for a B or D model and pick up a resin cockpit set. I'm not worried about weapons, we were only carrying a single inert AIM-9L on Sta 9, but we were also loaded with 210 rails on 2 & 8, WWP on 3 & 7, wing tanks, and a C/L pylon. What I want to do is attempt a Ken Middleton-style mount where I pose the jet in a vertical climb. That was the most impressive part of the flight- full burner take-off, holding the jet down on the deck while we accelerated to the end of the runway and then stood her on her tail and went straight up to 17,000. My pilot was one of the pilots that got airborne over DC on 9/11. Pretty cool stuff. I don't have a photo hosting site or whatever they are called otherwise I'd post a few photos of the flight plus some shots of my warbird A2A photo flights. Thanks for the assistance. I'll be around. Cheers, Chappie

Fan-damn-tastic conversion. Well done. Chappie

Good afternoon gentlemen, In four days it will be official- my retirement from the ANG. Come September 1, 2014 I will have served 21 years 3 months 11 days. The highlights of my career was kicking off OIF in 2003, and the second and by far the biggest was my F-16 Incentive Flight in F-16D 85-509 up in Cold Lake in 2005. Experienced a max performance climb, took the stick for some akro, and punched through the sonic barrier and up to 1.22 Mach. I'd like to build a model of that jet and asking what would be the simplest way to build a 1/48th small mouth Block 30 D-model. I've been out of the hobby for 7 years and back then I was building Hasegawa kits and purchased two of the then-new Tamiya F-16C. I'm not getting back into the hobby, my new one is keeping me very busy, I'd just like to know the best way to go w/o a lot of resin, PE, etc. Don't need decals either, when I flew the jet, it had just come back from depot and wore only its serial number. Chappie

Good day everyone, I"m researching the Tupolev Tu-2 and looking for any books that cover the type, especially combat ops during WWII and Korea. I've already ordered Andrei Tupolev's memoir and 'Tupolev: The Man and His Aircraft'. Anyone else have suggestions on where to gather information on this aircraft? Chappie

Ahhhhh.....the Good Ole Days of the Cold War with the U.S. and Soviets with thousands of nukes pointed at each other and F-15s in Air Superiority Gray and color national insignia. Things were so much simpler back then. Chappie

Thank you gentlemen. I found the thread and Trigger was the guy I remember, but many of the profiles now show a blue question mark. I contacted Adam @ Gekko Graphics. Hey GreyGhost- I used to have you email, but can you PM it to me? I'll shoot you some photos of some of my photo flights. My photo planes have been six different T-6s, a Tora! Val, and a P-51. My subjects have been BT-13s, P-51s, Corsairs, RV-4s, TBMs, etc. Good times. Chappie

Hello again. I used to be a regular but have gotten away from it when I started covering the warbird world for Warbird Digest, FlyPast, etc. A while back there was a member who did dozens and dozens of of What-If Aircraft Profiles- like RAF F-111s, RNZAF F-16s, etc. Is this guy still on the boards? If so please have him PM me, I have a project I'd like to pitch to him. Cheers, Chappie

Good day gentlemen, I'm researching a 1:1 scale TBM-3E Avenger that rolled off the Trenton line on June 26, 1945. By this time in the war were Avengers being painted overall sea blue at the factory? This same TBM-3E was converted to a TBM-3U in 1951 or 52 and served at Quonset Point and Chincoteague until retired in 1956. At this time it would have been wearing the blue fuselage/yellow wing scheme yes? Thanks ya'll Chappie

Well I'll be damned! Hi Darius! That is the hanger where I did my initial F-16 bomb loader training! They made it a museum? That is so frigging cool. I recognize several of the airplanes in there- the A-7, F-111, and B-1 were all there back in 1994. I was in the second to last F-16 class to go through Lowry. Being from the flat east coast I never tired of walking out the front door of my barracks and seeing the Rocky Mountains. On the weekends I'd see the Rockies from the cockpit of an Pitts S-2B I used to rent out at Centennial Airport. Would you believe my classmates and I used to shine that entire hangar floor every Friday? We'd put down some kind of sweeping compound then used push brooms and walk up and down up and down that floor until it shined. Chappie

Hmm, nobody mentioned war until now. Well Godspeed to Neil Armstrong. To do many of the things he did in the space program- Gemini 8, LLTV, and Apollo 11- required great piloting skills and Neil had them in spades. I will miss him and I echo the sediment that we all seemed to think that these men would live forever. If you want to read a good book about Apollo 11 get - FIRST ON THE MOON. It was written by all thre astronauts in 1970 when it was still fresh, raw, and exciting. It's excellent. Chappie

Still got that X-15 kit waiting. When? When? Chappie