Flankerman

Hi Tony PM is 'Personal Message' - sort of internal (ARC) email. Click on the envelope icon at the top of this thread. Or use my 'real' email :- kenduffey@flankers-site.co.uk Regards Ken

Hi Tony I'm Flankerman - and the model of HMS X1 is mine. PM me and I'm sure we can come to some arrangement. Regards Ken

The Sukhoi family in Russian service uses a pale blue-grey. On my 1/72 scale Flankers I use Humrol 'Helblau' - mixed with a little grey. Ken

Hi Anthony, I don't think I did - at least I never noticed that the pivot point is wrong - so I never corrected it. Sorry I can't be more helpful Ken

Some years ago during a RIAT airshow here in the UK, a C5 crew member was talking to the assembled crowd in front of the C5 - telling them that the Galaxy was the world's largest aircraft. I interjected and said the the Ukranian-designed An-124 was bigger......... He seemed a bit put out, but replied "OK - the C5 is the SECOND largest plane in the world" To which I replied "Well actually, the An-225......." During flight testing of the Mrya - they loaded pallets of scrap metal on board - and made numerous record-breaking flighs with heavier and h

There are two distinct types of solid-nosed, rear-ramp Hips.... Those bulit by Ulan-Ude and those built by Kazan... The Mi-8MTV5 is Kazan-built, the Mi-8AMTSh is Ulan-ude Note there are differences in the nose, the rear ramp, the cabin heater shape and the sliding-door arrangement... Hope this clarifies.... Ken

Gluing the upper and lower hull halves reveals the usual join line - easily fixed with the application of filler..... The join lines in the ventral pannier are filled and sanded smooth...... Ken

Missing photos fixed... Kem

As with most Mikro-Mir sub kits, the parts have large sprue gates and need a lot of 'fettling' (scraping and sanding) to make good mating surfaces..... The ventral structure for the divers saturation chamber is made up from two sides and a floor (or 'roof' - depending on your point of view)..... There are no positive location pips - so I added strips of L-section plastic to form a ledge on which the 'floor' can sit..... This made locating the sides much easier.... ..... although there are still seams to fill

Just delivered - courtesy of Hannants and Royal Mail - Mikro-Mir's latest 1/350 scale submarine USS Parche SSN-683 - Late Version. Box art - note the divers lockout chamber on the aft casing - disguised as a DSRV.......... The instruction sheet is a flimsy A4 page folded in half ........... the first page gives a brief potted history of the boat and a painting guide (!)... The reverse is the construction diagram....... The hull is split horizontally..... The only other sprue provides

I always assemble the fuselage, paint the engines, mask them off then add the (already painted) vertical fins. I have tried adding the fins, then painting the engines afterwards - but trying to airbrush the camouflaged inside faces of the fins is almost imposible - especially in my preferred scale of 1/72nd. So - I paint the engines, mask them off - then apply the camouflge pattern to the fins before glueing them in place. Happy Flankering Ken

I hadn't heard that one Jabba29 - do you have more info ? I know that the Soviet equivalent - the Ilyushin Il-62 - had a long retractable tailwheel that was deployed when parked to stop it tipping onto its tail.... Taken at Domodedovo in 2004.... Sorry for the thread creep Yuri...... Ken

As a complete aside.... a friend who worked on Concorde at BAC Filton told me the following story. They were doing some tests on the fin fuel tanks and decided to fill the fin tank - by bypassing the other tanks in the fuselage/wings. As they filled the fin tank, the nose slowly tipped up and the tail tipped down - damaging the exhaust buckets on all four engines. They had neglected to support the rear end as they filled it up !! Luckily the aircraft was in the Brabazon hangar - which was high enough to take height of the upturned nose without it

I think your assessment is correct. Tu-160's on an active ramp are seen with the wings fully forward - unless there is a tail support/jack in place. The White Swan in the video with it's wings fully swept is probably de-fueled - AND it is attached to a tow tractor - which would keep the nose wheel down. If you want to display your model fully swept, I guess you would have to fit a tow tractor - or put a jack under its tail. I took this photo on the ramp at Engels in 2007......... (More photos here... http://www.flankers-s