PeepingBear

Gentlemen, could somebody please shed some light on the dimensions of the ammo container on the left fuselage side of .50cal equipped OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters? And if you're at it, maybe some sizes of the M2's cage? I would like to scratch build a M296 weapon system for Italeri's quarter scale KW. Detail photos are galore, no problems so far, but my tries to measure and compare the dimensions from the pics yielded only fuzzy results. I dislike cutting plastic without knowing the sizes. I'd hate to build the system too big or small. A precision of 1 in. is OK, in 1/48 that's n

SIR! My greatest respect, I thoroughly enjoyed your Me-410 step-by-step build and I am very happy to find another of your instructive and delighting, if a bit naughty (YESSS!), projects. You are an inspiration. Your pin up artwork would be a joy on any WHIF Luftwaffe fighter plane. Although I can only hope for the swastika earpins to be too small to discern, otherwise the PC police would ban any such irresponsible frivolity, especially as it is to the power of three (Militarism, nazism and sexism, OMG!) But I do not care for PC, my Hooray for all of your nice work. Jan from Germany PS:

Attaboy! Very well and niftily done, thanks for posting this here. Several "nose-breathing" jets come to my mind which would benefit from such treatment. Cheers Jan

Hi from Germany! To salvage the old and possibly brittle decals, you could thinly cover them with Future (Pledge) acrylic floor shine (cheap as dirt) or with MicroScale's own clear decal laquer. That has worked for me with older ESCI decals, notorious for their brittleness. There are several more potent decal softeners available besides MS's classic "Set" and "Sol" combination, e. g. from Daco of Belgium: See here: http://ultra.glo.be/daco/Ksetting.html . Gunze's Mr. Mark Softener is stronger as well, IIRC, but please check the web for more info. Also you could try to force stiff decals i

Hello Floyd! Since I like the quality and variants offered in your AH-1F decal set very much, I will definitely buy one 1/48 scale set of your NSDQ decals. Especially now that the CMK resin sets for Little Birds are available. Advance and fear not! I accept and prefer rpre-oder but can also understand if you postpone the project. Best regards from Germany Ian

Greetings from Germany! This is a very inspiring build, thank you for showing step-by-step how to enhance the basic kit from Italeri. The modernized Whiskey-Cobra with the "Lederhosen" exhaust - viewed from above, the turned exhausts look like a pair of bavarian leather shorts ;-) - is high on my wishlist so I will definitely follow this thread. Three cheers for your Cobra project! Ian

Maybe because the mesh for the frontal intake needs to be curved in two directions, kinda hard with PE but easier with real mesh, isn't it? Cheers, Jan T.

Hello Kursad! Please be aware that the lettering example quoted by Spejic is the correct style for "1. generation" aircraft (1956 to early 70es). Later types (such as the A-Jet) are usually stencilled using the DIN Mittelschrift: MyFont link "Mittelschrift". For the newer style there is a good example on RC network as well: RC Network link "Luftwaffe Kennzeichen". But still you have to check photos, because the technicians sometimes had to make do with DIY templates, or old ones, or they just erred... Best regards from Germany Jan

WOW! This is a very inspiring building thread. And all these enhancements in tiny 1/72nd scale. You ARE guilty of luring me back to my Blackhawk again... Oh my, this way I'll never finish any model... Keep up the good work, best regards from Germany! Jan

Revell's old H-34 (S-58) kit has several weaknesses, some of them nicely augmented by the very good Cobra company resin set: The interior is simplified: the cabin benches are near useless, the well-visible forward bukhead sits in the wrong position (too far back), the cockpit has only little detail. The exterior is OK, depending on the subvariant you want to build you'd have to add pipes and other small parts, but this is manageable. BUT: The kit is missing the prominent engine cooler under the nose. Look at an Italeri S-58 (1/72 scale) for a good replica. The wire-mesh openings around the

Hi! As I have all the mentioned kits here, let me tell you that the aft doors of the MAP kit are the big-sized ones as well. Sorry! Still I think the AMP kit is a good one: It has the nicest interior detail of the quartet, coloured PE parts (by Eduard, I presume) and offers decals for Hugh Mill's MISS CLAWD IV. Alas the clear parts have a rough surface, without thorough polishing they are definitely sub-standard. For further information, I'd have to open the box, this might take until next week. HTH Jan

Hello everybody! These canopies are gorgeous! www.fairy-hobby.com seems to be down, but still let me take a place at the end of the queue. I would like to order two single seat canopies, and I am quite sure that these sets will sell like the proverbila sliced bread. Please, Yufei, let us know where we can order! Cheers from Germany Jan

Hi from Germany! Roger that, RAL 7001 silver grey is correct, except for the earliest ex-RCAF "NATO military aid" ones who were painted in some light blue. All 60es-era Bundesluftwaffe birds with the wavy camo scheme used these colours: Tops in RAL 6014 NATO olive drab and RAL 7012 basalt grey, bottoms in RAL 7014 silver grey. The supersonic f-104 and ®F-4 used the same upper colours in a straight angular pattern with metallic RAL 9006 white aluminum (a not-to-glossy metallic dope, which aged quickly into a light grey). The CAS aircraft (FIAT G.91 and Alpha Jet)were painted RAL 7001 "below"

Oh, yes, the perennail RAL 9006 vs. RAL 7001 debate... a problem even here in Germany, where the situation should be a tad clearer. OK, it breaks down like this: Originally, in the late 50es, all our aircraft were natural metal. When the Bundesluftwaffe started to apply camouflage schemes (in the 60es), the first pattern was wavy RAL 7012 (Basaltgrau, close to FS 36152) and RAL 6014 (NATO-Oliv, close to FS 34079) uppers with RAL 7001 (Silbergrau = a light grey close to FS 36375) undersides. The F-4 and the F-104 were painted in an irregular angular "geometric" pattern (called Norm '72) wi

It seems the Luftwaffe updated their old ELTAM (of Israel) "Cerberus" ECM pods from 1998 on. Now this System is called TSPJ You might want to visit the TSPJ's official Federal German Bureau for Arms Development and Procurement website: http://www.bwb.org/portal/a/bwb/kcxml/04_S...E%2Fcontent.jsp HTH Jan

AFAIK, in all newer fighter aircraft jet engines, the interiour of the reheat (afterburners) pipes is covered with ceramic material (due to it's better heat resistance compared to metal). The colour of this ceramic is usually whitish, thus a very light grey or creamy white should be correct. Add streaks of soot if you want to depict a used aircraft. But be ware: the soot-pattern is typical for the engine. Check Walk Arounds and Google, there are pics of the F-22 derriere on the WWW. HTH Jan

Yeah! Good Options, I will definitely buy a set. Please scale it up to 1/48 and 1/32 later this year (Airfix and RoG Lynes are under way...) Hooray!

I take my hat off to you! Your model looks wonderful. The Wooden Wonder has classic lines and your built cptures this well. Cheers! Jan from Germany

Looking GOOD! Is this the old and rare 1/50 scale HELLER kit? Oh, to own this as a starting point ... You've really built a nice model, was it a hard task to finish? Cheers! Jan

Weeell, considering the obese wing roots, Italeri isn't world-famous for their Tornado's svelte wing roots either. This seems to be an area where all kit engineers haven't hit the mark yet. HB's thrust reversers can be built closed by "real" ;-) modelers, but the cockpit fuselage shape is a tougher problem. Wrong ordnance? Just leave it off, there is enough usable stuff around, so you get surplus for your spares box. It is however sad that HB's Tonka falls short of expectations, now the ground is kinda burned for the competitors. But we can still hope that RoG might do a quarter scale fi

Hi! as I own both decal sets, let me tell you this: Hi Decal's sheet is not bad, but it has no stencils (they planned to print an additional stencil set, dunno if it ever came true). Further, AirDoc's set offers more variants and even a few Zapping marks. Due to the aforementioned facts, , I would not buy the HiDecal set unless it were a lot cheaper than AirDoc's set or only if AirDoc's set was not available. HTH, Jan

Hi Folks, some points: Methinks the lower canopy frame is to narrow, compared to the real thing. The pics of the kit show a step from the aft end of the canopy up to the fuselage spine - if the canopy were higher (1 mm, maybe) - no step, no "squashed canopy"-look. Furthermore, the windshield needs a beefed-up lower frame as well, at least under the aft region. Sadly, HB didn't get this right, but it can be done by a dedicated builder with average talent. The "hanging chin" - could somebody please hold a mechanic's bubble level to the underside of a real Tornado? I'm not sure that the re

Hi, I own that kit and will send you jpegs of the instructions this weekend. HTH Jan

Hi! It seems our German Tigers get the regular Norm'84 three-colour scheme. Maybe I was mislead by a prototype picture or it was just my weak memory. This picture on Airliners.net shows a production variant (towel-rack antenna on port tail, countermeasures-box under the tail), so I'd go for three colors if I were to paint a German Heeresflieger UHT. Even RoG, who nowadays do a good research for their kits, shows their 72nd scale Tiger in triple-colour: Revell UHT / HAP manual The two greens are quite close in hue, especially if the colours have aged. I was just close to some of our CH-53Gs

Hi from Germany! Here you can find information about nowaday's paint scheme of our helicopters: Heeresflieger Norm '84 by Don Color On some aircraft, the colour Forest Green (FS 34079) is not used, e.g. on the Bo-105 and the UHT Tiger. Our CH-53G(S) fleet has just changed frome plain NATO-Olive Drab (RAL 6014 ~ FS 34064 or 34087) to Norm '84. RAL 6003 Olive Green is close to FS 34102. RAL 7021 is close to FS 37038, a greyish Black. Bronzegruen is RAL 6031, typical for our army vehicles (with Leather Brown RAL 8027 and Tar Black RAL 9021). According to David Klaus's "IPMS Colour Cross-Refer