Brian P: Fightertown Decals

Wow - I've never heard to that before. Very cool. I just tested AK Acrylics, AK Real Color Air, Testors MM, MRP and Tamiya acrylics bottle mix and sprays. Not a single brand matches another, and a lot of them are really far off. So much that decals printed to FS wouldn't come close... MM was the best for 35237 and 36320 but both bottles of 36375 needed to be lightened to work. I'm really surprised how much variance there is the AK Air line was my hope for a good match but there's is so light in every color that nothing will match... Do you have the paints mixed to standard for you, or you do them yourself. Is it a reference guide that has matching colors mix, or you buy off the shelf paints that match FS? thanks! Your colors look amazing. I especially like your 36375... brian

Manuel - what paints did you use for this? The colors and contrast balance look amazing and very realistic. TIA brian

Just bought a bunch of their paints. I like them so far. A few colors are questionable. For Adversary work, their 35450 and 35190 are excellent. Their 35109 is a bit too light and a touch purple. MM 35109 is a dead on perfect match to the FS color and is darker with more blue. I'd probably buy a dark blue Real Color bottle and add a few drops to rich and darken it up. Just my take. Picture also shows MRP 35190 and 35450. I like the Real Air color version better.

Been testing AK acrylic, AK Real Air and Model Master. Big difference in 36375, 36320 and 35237 in all of them. AK Acrylic 35237 and 36320 are almost identical. Real Air 36320 is too purple and a touch too light. All 3 colors are close. I'd say 35237 is too light compared to the others. MM 35237 is dead on perfect to the FS color chip. 36375 is identical to 36320. This would be a bad batch, or at least one that people complain about. I've had them with more contrast and I'd add 10-20% 36495 to this one. 36081 for Real Air is light and arm. MM is blue and dark. Take your pick... Going to test with fs match printed Fightertown Decals next to the colors to see what happens. I'm waiting on an order of MRP to test theirs. YMMV. brian

Watched both videos- very cool stuff! You’re building is very clean and inspiring. Can’t wsit to see more of the project. Have you fit the Revell nose to the HB kit yet? After taking such care to do the kit nose, I was curious if you were cutting it off after assembling the fuselage. Ive debated this project. My first plan was to use the Kinetic kit w Prowler football tail and just extend and scratch the nose. Then I looked at the HB kit but decided the parts wouldn’t line up as well. Finally I just bought the Revell EA-6A kit and decided to use it and re-scribe the lines. If you need decals, I'm doing the VAQ-33 low viz jet on the new Fightertown Decals Combined Test and Eval sheet. Should have it to print by the end of this month. Cheers brian

Just happened across this, if I'm in town, I'll be at the IPMS meeting that night. Would be cool to check out! brian

If you have a problem with your order, you need to send an email and it will get sorted out. Edit*** had it looked up and tracking shows it delivered on Nov 19 at 1:31pm** thanks, brian

1 rivets. Generic detailing, panels, gear doors. Whatever you want to use them for. 2 Tomcat squadron triangle shoulder patches, flag shoulder patches, data boxes, the red dashes boxes are for landing gear doors, 3 Landing gear top of the mains and top of front gear on the back side 4 helmet visor pads 5 interior canopy data plates and radio cards 6 ALQ-167 pod data plate 7 wing formation light NVG strips. Several sets on the sheet

There's no top decal because the part on the Tamiya kit is raised and not flush, and has the 4 knobs and is meant to be painted. I would have had to cut out the knobs for a decal or printed knobs and you'd have to cut them off the kit. It didn't make sense to do it as a decal. Same with the sides of the PTID frame. Brian

This is so cool!! Such a rare jet and great markings. Thanks for building it. Feel free to post on the Fightertown Decals fb page. Makes me want to finish my EA-7L... cheers brian

Hahaha. All good! cheers, brian

Not at all. Read into it my love and appreciation for the Hasegawa kit. For its time. And how those details and not perfect accuracy never affected my joy of building it. But yet they did exist and I never cried that the kit was unbuildable because of it. And strakes are too long in length, too short in height and placed incorrectly on the body. Brian

If you really want to get into accuracy discussions of the Hasegawa Tomcat, there a lot of issues. Depends how detail oriented and precise you want to get.... tails are too tall and narrow, strakes are too long and short and don't have the correct placement, exhaust fairings are mis-shaped, wing flaps are incorrectly molded for dropped flaps, slats are too narrow, TVSU is undersized (A/B) IRST (D) has a funky shape, tailhook is too long and narrow, intakes are squared off, front gear doors are too short... the list goes on. But does any of that matter? Unless you need your model to be a perfect 1:1 replica, probably not. It looks like a Tomcat and for a long time was the best thing out there. I don't think you can base accuracy off another model to compare. I believe the AMK kit will be great and I stopped paying attention to the arguments over an old test shot a long time ago. When it comes out, it'll be what it is. I, and a lot of other people will buy it. Maybe it isn't a perfect 1:1 reduction, maybe it is. It's a model and it looks as good or better than what's out there. We all have our quest for the perfect model, and in recent times, kits have gotten closer and closer to that mark. Sometimes to me, that's a joy in modeling - working to bring a perfect scale reproduction. I've never gotten there and probably never will, but with kits like this, I'm getting closer. I love the Tamiya kit, and I'm betting I'll love the AMK kit. Just like for the last 25yrs I loved the Hasegawa kit. ✌️

The patches and helmet markings are on every sheet. And the F-14 Data sheets have a collection of patches. We've done a bunch of 1/32 but they are long sold out. I have all the artwork so it's easy to put together a sheet of patches/helmet markings in any scale. Brian

Love these! If you need Navy squadron patches, we've been doing them since day one of Fightertown Decals and have almost every F-14 and a lot of F/A-18A-G patches done... we did nametags, squadron patches, type triangles, US flags, TOPGUN/NSAWC... Add to seated pilots, we really need HGU-55/68 helmets and MBU-12/20 Oxygen masks. I have both of the real things... brian.