SebastianP

Does anyone have any good examples of real life painting mistakes - things like cockeyed or upside-down national insignia, misspelled or flipped warning stencils, or things being blatantly painted in the wrong color on real aircraft or ground vehicles? I know in peace time these things will get corrected post-haste at the behest of zealous crew chiefs etc, but during a shooting war like WW2 where things went basically from the assembly line to the front line on occasion, I figure some of those bloopers would survive long enough to get documented... The reason I'm asking is I'm trying to convi

Note that the white one is explicitly stenciled with "inert" near the tailfins. The silver one in the second photo...isn't. In fact, none of the stenciling on the bomb seems to indicate a training shape, at least to this layman... That doesn't mean that the F-15 in the picture is carrying five live bombs though, they may simply be operational casings with the physics packages (the actual warheads) removed.

So I'm giving Italeri's 1/72 Gripen another shot, starting with the "new" release with "super decals" since I appear to have lost a few pieces for my previous, stalled out, build. Aside from the usual Italeri issues of soft detail and plastic, I remember this kit in particular as having a few really annoying parts to it, those being the very poor fit of the under-wing hardpoints (if installed without modification, there's a *huge* gap between the pylon and the strake/actuator fairing, and I had to sand the platform around the locator pin to near paper thin before that gap went away); and the s

Yup, that's the one. SC made a couple of mods that I don't like (the LERXes look silly to me), plus it's too small, but the concept was really neat. I should have an untouched Revell A-6E decal sheet laying around so I don't need to mod any Hornet decals like SC did,

Thanks for the comments Mark! Looks like the Trumpeter kit is my best bet after all, now I just need to figure out what to fill the rest of my Hannants order with. I'm sure I can come up with something though. :) The A-5B is indeed the starting point I had in mind, and building one of those from the Trumpeter kit looks like it's as easy as leaving off the ventral canoe, which is a separate part just like in all the other Vigilante kits. And while it doesn't come with drop tanks, I still have the ones from the Revell kit I mentioned, which should be OK. Depending on how much work would be inv

Airfix is not among the ones I've been able to find for sale online (neither is the Hasegawa, but I remember seeing that at the hobby shop), and I usually would only go with them if they're the only option, since they tend to need a lot of work. Especially their older kits.

Forgot about that. I found an in-box review of the Fujimi just now, http://www.fightercontrol.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=313&t=22564, this does seem to be the kit to get just from the look of the sprues. I haven't found a decent picture of one that's built up though, and what I *have* seen suggests that it has the same problem as the Academy kit, i.e. the boundary layer diverter area is AWOL...

I've decided on this winter's silly project, which will be a 1/72 what-if A-5E Vigilante in OIF/OEF markings - essentially, I'm going to start with an RA-5C, leave off the camera gondola, and have some fun adding stuff like modern weapons, chaff/flare dispensers, and whatever else strikes my fancy as I build it. A couple of pre-build questions have arisen, though - first of all, which kit to use. I had an old Revell kit, and while it has recessed panel lines at least that is about the only modern feature of the whole thing - it also has fit issues, and the canopy is molded shut which takes a

Thanks for the info. So, my options are really limited to the Revell (with its missing panel lines and irritating sink- and ejector marks) or the Academy (which apparently has shape issues that cross my "aaarrgh" threshold)? kits? Dammit. At least the Revell kit is good for stocking up on weapons...

Once upon a time, Italeri was the only game in town, then came Revell of Germany, and since then the Asian manufacturers seem to have *all* jumped on the bandwagon. Hasegawa, Fujimi, Hobby Boss and Academy all have Raptor kits out there, and unlike the two European offerings, I have no experience with any of those... Italeri has that separate forward fuselage with the big seam and the weird nose-up posture. It's also kind of crude detail-wise, which is par for the course for both very early release kits (IIRC there were only two Raptors in existance when this kit was engineered), and for Ital

Hah! I have solved my problem, at least for this car, courtesy some guy who had the guts to do *this* to his Corvette: No, the car wasn't actually *painted* that color, he used olive drab 3M wrap to protect the gloss black original paint since he lives out in dirt-road country. And I'm not quite spot on for accuracy, since I'm using a ZR1 rather than a baseline C6. It's close enough for me though, and from the forum thread where I found this image there are apparently other cars done up the same way for the same reason.

It turns out I actually had a can of Tamiya's gloss red, so I've given that a shot. I also figured out recently what household cleaner you should use for removing Tamiya Spray paints (96% fuel ethanol, which is available in 1-liter bottles for less than half of what I pay for a rattle can...) so even if the first attempt doesn't succeed, I can try, try again...

Nice Nissan! What I'm trying to paint is a 2009 Corvette ZR1, and while I do have an airbrush, I'm so new to using it that I still have trouble getting paint to come out of it at all. Plus, I have a dust problem (comes from having a cat), so anything that takes more than minutes before going non-stick will need sanding afterwards to get all the rogue particles out of it. :( I can lay down Humbrol flat paints completely even in two coats with a soft wide brush and a few drops of thinner though, and it dries quick enough to avoid the whole dust problem...

Gloss paints are evil - they don't go on evenly, they dry slowly, and they're sticky as heck meaning they tend to pick up particles by the hundredweight. I have yet to manage to paint a decent car using gloss paints, and I'm about fed up with the whole thing. So, I'm thinking about attacking the problem from a different direction... Is it possible to get a decently car-like finish if I start out with a completely flat base coat (flat black or red) to get a perfectly even color, and then use Future to make it nice and glossy afterwards?

I wonder which would be easier - mixing regular gray paint with metallics or metal-sheen paints (Metal-Cote, Alclad, etc); using metal-sheen paints with a flat-ish overcoat, or gray paint with a shiny overcoat of some kind. I'm leaning towards the last option myself, not that I have any kits to test it on right now. :(

Now that I think about it, one of the possibilities is that they're simply loaded on a MER inside the bomb bay...that would be an awesome pain in the rear to get right in the game though.

How exactly are the internal stores of the B-52 configured these days? I found some data sheets that told me how many of each type of bomb could be carried, but I haven't been able to find any pictures of anything except the nuclear options and 84-bomb conventional loads. What about those conventional munitions that *aren't* loaded in a full up 3x3x3 configuration or on the rotary launcher? Right now I'm specifically looking for info on how the CBU-87/89/97 family and the 2000 lb JDAM are loaded inside the bay - the tables say the B-52H can load six of these internally, but I can't picture it

I've been working on correcting some aircraft for a flight simulator, getting the chaff/flare dispensers and other such things right on transports and other aircraft that had been done a little half-baked originally. Worst off of the lot seems to be the heavy transports, most of which had completely fictious setups. Correcting the rank and file, at least for the C-5 and C-141, was easy - just delete the countermeasures, the real things didn't have them - but the literature tells me there were a few exceptions to the rule, namely the "Pacer Snow" modifications for the C-5, and the SOLL II progr

I'm playing around with an Italeri 1/72 F-111A at the moment, while waiting for the paint on some of my other projects to dry. Like most ex-ESCI kits I've built, the detail is a little sparse, but the fit appears to be at least half way decent and the panel lines are engraved. One small irritant about the kit though is while the armament sprue comes with two sets of hardpoints, there are only pre-drilled mounting holes for one set, and no hint of where to drill the ones for the outboard set if you want to load for bear. So, my question is - are the outboard stores stations appropriate for th

I've assembled the interiors and gotten the first layer of paint on them, and I've taped the fuselages together to see what the beasties will look like. The major difference between the TTI and HC.3 at this point is that the TTI has an additional window on each side, otherwise they're pretty much identical (they're even the same color - they're both molded in light gray plastic). The Skyfall version is a different animal, what with the dome window being repositioned, and the prototype features. As it turns out, I actually have at least *some* spares for an HC.3 - nearly all the HC.3 specific

Ihe Academy MH-60k likewise has all the bits needed to make any UH-60 variant, and they use a harder plastic with finer detail. The kit comes with both M60s, M3s and Miniguns. The refuelling probe is also better in the academy kit. I's missing a bunch of small details compared to the Italeri offering so you might want to have one of those on hand to serve as a parts source or scratchbuilding template.

I've already made my first booboo - I made the hole for one of the TTI's dome windows just a leetle too large when I was cleaning up the hole I'd drilled. Very irritating. It's just large enough that the window piece will drop right through. Hopefully I can fix it - there might be a spare rear fuselage in my spares box. Wouldn't bet on it though. Edit: No spares, but I fixed it anyway - a little putty round the edges of the hole, let it half dry, and then squeeze the window in place. :) I'm just hoping it stays put now...

This month's shopping spree is over, and the score was one Merlin HC.3, one Merlin TTI, and one Merlin "Skyfall", all three from Italeri. I'm planning to build the lot of them more or less side by side, and hopefully remember to take some pictures while I'm at it... The first kit bought, and started, is the Skyfall version. To describe it fairly simply, the real thing is a prototype/pre-production airframe (the smallest cockpit windows are blanked off) with a fixed main and tail rotor, a fuselage ramp, and five square windows to port and starboard (two on the door); plus a dome window just be

I'd suggest waiting to see if Airfix (or for that matter anyone else) will release a Cormorant - as has already been said, restructuring the interior is one of those things where by the time you're half way through, there'll be a kit out... Consider the Cobra company Seahawk conversions, they basically had to supply a new fuselage in its entirety...

I've gotten a few pieces put together now (and, I've taken the time to see the movie...) and it appears they have fixed some of the issues with the kit - most prominently, the side panels now actually fit, without settling too deep in their recesses. A very welcome surprise. I can also tell you to ignore the kit instructions to use only single main wheels - the helicopter in the film has twins, which is what the kit supplies and how it's shown in the built-up photos on the box.