Diamondback Six

As an '80s kid I remember seeing snap-together and the small/cheap glue-togethers like the old Testors/Hawk 1/72 WWII-warbird-size boxes seemingly even at the corner 7-11... but today, we have a culture that mocks ANY kind of "craftsman" hobby, not just scale modeling. (Look at how they depict avid woodworker Gibbs on NCIS, for example!) And they call 'em toys? News flash, peeps, if it's got separate pieces that are smaller than a FINGERNAIL CLIPPING as some model parts are, that's not a toy and any parent who gave it to a kid as such and failed to supervise NEEDS a visit from CPS.

I prefer Breitbart (world/national) and Orbusmax (local), personally. Though I DO check both CNN and Fox every now and again...

Russ, Boeing wouldn't have changed that particular detail lightly. You actually could interchange G and H engine nacelles with some work--the prototype H was a JB-52G that was re-engined with TF33s and then restored to line G configuration after the tests were done. Why they didn't replace the J57s with more efficient TF33s across the entire G force I'll never understand... unless it had something to do with the view that "everything short of the B-70 is a stopgap until it comes on-line."

Sorry, got a toss out an old saw of air-arm wisdom here. "The only thing more expensive than a first-rate Air Force... is a LESS THAN first-rate Air Force."

CS, industry and the Pentagon aren't my worry... it's whether the TV-addled, self-absorbed Nintendorks of my generation and younger have it in them to answer the call. I mean, the 9/11 Generation was my people and I'm proud of how those of my generation who participated did there (*hand salute*, TT), but... that's still a lot of my generation and later that stayed home fat dumb & happy, and after all this time in combat ops with CENTCOM it's taking a psychological toll on those still in.

Re LAU-88 triple rails: they're incompatible with IIR Mavericks for some reason in the interface, and VERY "draggy". Even when you see Hogs fitted with TER's in Desert Storm loadout's they're usually only loaded with two stores at a time... part of the move to the BRU-55/57 family of two-store racks on other platforms like the Hornet, I'd guess. IF the Hog had the interface capability... well, GBU-39 or -53 SDB's are supposed to be good for anything up to and including MBT's, so I might consider them as a force-multiplier to expand the number of possible hits each Hog can get before rearming.

Hence my point--when Vlad the KGB Scumbag Who Needs His Throat Crapped Down Until Asphyxiation orders the Red Army to continue West, Poland and the Baltics are gonna NEED all the help they can get. And since I don't think the American people really have it IN us to fight another Major Regional Conflict, I find it difficult to see OUR boots on the ground until Russian jackboots march on Berlin by which time it'll be too late. If we're going to DISarm, we might as well transfer it to ARM the people who need it most and get both return on investment AND some PR goodwill, right?

The Game of Thrones is a sport for sociopaths, just that some are more benign than others. Let's face it, with the stakes of losing, would anybody really WANT Mother Theresa being their representative in that environment?

Why? If we're going to be so @$$-tronomically dumb as to get rid of the A-10 force, it would be of far better use in Polish or Baltic States hands, since they're going to be the next ones staring down the muzzles of Vlad the Needs Impaling's T-90s...

Thought I saw some of those old kits at Jo-Ann or Michael's last time I was in one or the other... Hobbylinc has the Gee Bee and Nieuport 17 for about five bucks plus shipping, which is about what I consider those old Hawk kits of about this size worth. Hope this helps!

Well worth the download, I've been studying it for two PL builds on my own bench. (A historical MH-53M, and a speculative CH-53E-based Pave Low derivative, which Sikorsky actually designed and tried to sell to USAF, rebuilt into a kind of Hind On Steroids.)

Either way, man, like I said, she's a beautiful build--I wish I had half your skill.

Nice build! Better than anything I could ever do... Just a trivia note to other F-117 builders: those hexagon blisters are radar reflectors--they came off before combat ops, and were mainly used to facilitate Air Traffic Control handling of 117s in training and ferry flights.

LOL... I was taught "Twelve Hours from Bottle to Throttle."

I know that Blackbird crew liked to freak people out by extinguishing their smokes in JP-7... O.o lol

Curtis LeMay had no problem puffing stogies around birds... including around the Boeing proof-of-concept rig for the Flying Boom that was dripping fuel everywhere around.

Best guess, either the ejection handle--some seats do use a pull-down trigger that covers the head--or a canopy-breaker.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever did a "compass rose" for the early 318th FIS--another member here and I were just discussing that over on the F-106 Forum.

So much for competition keeping everyone honest... LOL

Caps, maybe it's just that perhaps a few too many of us got really bad shots in the last run... and I'd bet between Trumpy and AMK both having Sixes in the pipe, whatever holes one leaves the other will pounce on. LOL

Am I the only one creepily reminded of Penn Central Green by that primer shot? Or badly-weathered New York Central Jade Green?

Last time I talked with the folks at Bare-Metal Foil, EC's publisher, they're abandoning the decal business completely--no more reprints and when it's gone it's gone. Sent a note to Squadron asking them to consider negotiating to buy the line from 'em, but no response.

Jennings: Oh, please... 318th FIS "Green Dragons" all the way! (My grandfather retired out of the Dragons, and a prof of mine was one of the last CO's before they transitioned to F-15s.)

C-5 as a civilian L-500. Problem is, for the app where I'm writing the L-500 as having been built, it would need to be camo'ed to look like a military bird... :( (Think "C-5 as airmobile command post", like a bigger but less flashy and non-VTOL version of the SHIELD Globemaster.)

Given that most ARM's are surface-attack only (we'll leave the dedicated AWACS-killers the Russians converted from ALCM's/ASM's out of it), the idea of "eyes in the sky, ammo down below" does make a certain degree of sense, and I have to agree it is one with potential for point- and behind-friendly-lines area-defense. If we could get F-35 to talk to the Patriot system, that'd be a further expansion of capability...