picknpluck

"The MiG" is up on its landing gear awaiting clear coat and weathering. Meanwhile, the Classic Airframes TA-4J's array of fiddly bits are prepped for paint. The kit comes with nice resin wheels, but I seem to have misplaced one of the MLG wheels so I pilfered a set from another Hasegawa Skyhawk in my stash that will be built in-flight.

Way back in the early-'90s, a guy brought a 1/32 TA-4J in this scheme to a club meeting. I've wanted to build one ever since. I'm glad I finally got around to it.

I'm not seeing the 1/72 NASA F-104s sheet on your website either.

Thanks guys! I've got decals on now. The CA kit comes with a very nice set of Cartograf decals with four adversary options: two from VF-126, one from VA-127, and one from VC-8. There are enough decals on the sheet to do every option, so I'll have several future adversary Scooter builds! I opted for the VA-127 markings from the box art. Afterburner did this particular aircraft back in the day as well and they called for FS36320 as the grey; CA calls for FS36307. Looking at pictures of the real thing, I opted to use the latter color. The Hasegawa kit comes with a beautiful 75th Anniversary decal sheet but I was able to get ahold of Fightertown Decals' VA-127 Cylons Adversary Scooters sheet with "The MiG", which is a scheme I've wanted to do for a long time. CA (foreground) and Hasegawa: Hasegawa kit decals:

That KH build looks like a total slog-fest. Way to keep at it. One of these days I'll get around to the Monogram kit in my stash.

And here's where things stand for now:

I've got the Hasegawa kit masked up with the MiG outline and the pattern drawn in with pencil.

I got sidetracked by a couple other builds I wanted to finish up but I'm back to the Skyhawks. The Classic Airframes kit is wearing camo while the Hasegawa kit is standing by in primer.

Gunze or MRP for me.

That's a cool scheme that isn't often portrayed. Like I said about, it shouldn't be too difficult to replicate with a mix of Academy kit decals and tail letters/MODEX #s, etc from another sheet. You could even mask off and paint the NL tail letters with a little bit of patience.

You could mask and paint the rudder markings easily enough and grab tail code decals from a Tomcat sheet like FCM or Furball, then use the kit decals for the remainder of the squadron markings and stencils. You'd just need to splice BuNos and MODEX #s

Assuming 1/48... VF-111: not sure why you don't want to use the Academy decals, they're actually quite good. I'm not sure who else does this squadron except for maybe an ancient Microscale sheet. VF-51: Look at Furball's "Bravo MiG Killers" sheet. VF-194: Again, Furball if you want the Ferris scheme. Incidentally, CAM does a VF-191 F-4J sheet. VMFA-531: Again, Academy does this and their decals are printed by Cartograf and are quite good.

Fightertown Decals is doing this S-3 in a forthcoming sheet.

They must've changed their formula. My bottle is definitely too dark, but it's a couple of years old.

The F-4 had Mk7 seats. The Black Bunny was a J model, and later an S. Both had the Mk7. The F-14A had GRU-7 and the F-14D had SJU-17 NACES.