Brian P: Fightertown Decals

I remember when that kit was fairly new in your stash!! Bet it felt great to finally get it built and to do it so well!! Congrats and good job. Scratch built canopy?! Nice!! brian

2 rectangle decals are 36375. Top colors are AK acrylic far left, AK RC Air on the left, MM on the right. Decal across both. FYI, MM 35237 is dead on fs match. Still the best match I’ve seen. Middle bunch of colors is 2 sets of AK RC Air. The triangle is 35237 from Fightertown 48083 or 48086. It is noticeably darker than the AKRCA 35237 paint. You can see very little contrast in the 36375 decal on top of AKRCA 35237. And the 36375 decal is darker than the paint for both 36375 and 36320. FYI, the small blotch on top of the AK/MM 35237 is the Tamiya mix given in the F-14D kit. I thi

Not even close. Why not just use the actual paint? Buy the spray cans and decent them. Or use another brand. Nothing in the Tamiya bottle acrylic line will be close and in the end your model won’t look like the TPS colors...

Tried uploading the paint/decal tests w/ AK RC Air and MM but tsaysbthey are too big. Only have them on the phone so will have to figure a way to downrez them...

Don’t know what other decal makers colors are but we color match print to fs. Cartograf guarantees within +\- 2% color shift. I used those same 35227 decals on test plastic and had a much better result. Tried them on MM enamels and Tamiya spray cans of 35237/36320/36375 and they color worked perfectly...

Dave - unfortunately the AK Real Color Air TPS paints are scale affected so heavily that they don’t work at all for TPS if you’re using low viz decals. The paints look nice but the 36320 is so light that 36375 decals are darker than the paint. And 36375 decals have barely any contrast to 35237 paint. I tested them out and was very hopeful but the results were disappointing. If you’re not using TPS decals, then you’re good...

Gotta say those HB wings suck pretty bad. They don’t fit well together. The ‘riveting’ is massively excessive and imaginary. The slats are wrong in size and in extension. They have have the slat rails coming straight out - not so in the real thing. And the angel and shape of the formation lights edge of the wing is wrong. Basically I see nothing on the HB wings worth saving or adapting. Haseohas it’s own issues with the flaps... Tamiya nailed the wings but they are locked closed... Would like to see AMK knock it out of the park with the extended wings and spoilers.... but still ha

There are no Acrylic bottle matches. The above posts are true. They make all 3 in spray cans. But I don’t think their 35237 is close. They have a pretty good match mix on the Tamiya F-14D Kit. If you try to use paints that aren’t close and want to use any low viz decals, you’re in for a disappointment. MrP, AK, Mission and others make acrylics...

But grossly over scaled decals are ok?...🤙

How is it dumb?... I think it’s very cool and allows you to just paint and weather the parts. Decals require a gloss coat and you’re then locked into whatever color they print the decals. The textured parts are amazing and you can paint them however you like. Just at my opinion, but I think this is a new step in technology for exhaust cans. And FYI, all these exhausts and burner cans are 3D printed, not resin cast. They are extremely durable and not prone to chipping and breaking like resin is. Well worth the $$, IMHO. Brian

The Fightertown Decals profiles are accurate profiles. VF-213 jets were overall 36320 with some 36375 on the bottom. The skunk stripe on the line jets was 35237 and there are various grays used for CC work. The CAG 200 jet had 2 blues for the skunk stripe. You can look at a lot of pictures online and see the paint scheme pretty clear. There were touches of 35237 as shown on the instructions. The exception being 204. That one was a replacement jet from another squadron and had the 3 tone TPS. Brian

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,

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...

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.

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 mo

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