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nfiler

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Everything posted by nfiler

  1. I have used Kitbase now for a few years. Before that I did make a couple Excel spreadsheets but was never really satisfied with them. I wanted to be able to tie aftermarket, decals, and a photo of the boxart to the kit entry. I could not make Excel do that. With kitbase I have been able to do everything I wanted and probably could have done even more. Yeah, it does cost a bit, but like most things in life, you get what you pay for. I have currently 786 kits in the data base and a boxart image of every one. I don't see how you could do that with anything else. Norm
  2. Well, VF-84 is long gone. VF-103 assumed the heraldry, so the patch reflects a squadron that is long gone. Squadron patches are usually purchased locally, and I strongly suspect the one you have has been generated by some web store that sells enough of them to warrant the cost of silk screening the emblem. I would say it is a "reproduction/duplicate" not an original patch.
  3. Rob, Yeah, 16473 was the poison of choice. You see it on the underside of many of the cargo birds like C/KC-97s and C-54s a lot. We got the C model F-104s just after the A models went to a few ADC outfits, so we were pretty early on. I have no idea where you might have read that, but I really would say he does not know what he was writing about. Only the first flight test birds had unpainted wings. From the very first deliveries to ADC and TAC (560891 in Oct. 1958) they were White. And while we did have some losses, I don't think they were much different than what they had been with the F-1
  4. Regarding the wings. The top of all the production F-104s were White, and the bottom was 16473. The wing skins were milled aluminum, somewhat rougher than sheet aluminum, so the paint was added as a smoothing material. As to why the difference top to bottom? I never found out but suspect it was simply to hide the dirt and grim thrown up by the main gear tires. The TAC headquarters order to remove all squadron markings for all TAC a/c occurred in the winter of 1959-60. Long before the advent of the various corrosion control painting. Needless to say, it was not well received. At least one of o
  5. Darren, The whole underside of the slats and all the slat tracks are White. At least they started out that way. The grease used on the slat track rollers usually did a job on the tracks and a bit of the surrounding area, but they started out White. Usually the ends of the slats were red. You can see the Red ends when the wing is folded. Norm Filer
  6. My decals arrived today and appear to be very well done. They were printed by Cartograf so should be good quality. After a couple days of trying to run down the color references on the instructions for the Blue I have come to the conclusion that neither the Revell paint colors nor the Honda Vivid Blue Metallic are valid. The Revell or Revell of Germany paint references do not list either #394 or #395, and any attempt to find Honda Vivid Blue Metallic #031781 has come up empty as well. Anybody have a clue as to where else to look?
  7. Decals are already available for the Blue and Gold scheme http://www.shopofphantoms.com/rhino/Pulsar/en_US.Shop.displayShop.7572./ppw020
  8. Grant The assignment to the 8th was an administrative TDY (temporary duty) assignment. Parent organization was still the 479th back at George. While overseas, they operated pretty much as an independent squadron with the 8th providing administrative duties and of course tasking. The installation of the RHAW equipment would be well within the capabilities of the squadron maint. troops. With an assignment like this, the squadron traveled with all the associated maint. specialists temporarily attached to the squadron. During the "consolidated maint." years they would have been assigned to suppor
  9. There were no "replacement" a/c. A far more likely situation was that the RHAW equipment was added during the deployment. There was no need for that equipment during stateside flying nor operations over South Viet Nam. All four of the 479th squadrons were based at George AFB and deployed to VN on temporary duty as required. Since the birds did accompany some of the strike packages into North Viet Nam, the RHAW equipment was added. The 479th was the only active Air Force unit to fly the C model. First deliveries were on Oct. 1958 and over the years I suspect every C model airframe probably
  10. the only photo I have strongly suggests Red. The image is not good enough to make it diffinitive. However, it was not unusual to see different colors within the same squadron. The fence color often reflected the flight within the squadron.
  11. As Jennings said, they really are just modified B-29s. Externally there is not a lot different from a standard bird. The aft pressure area is where the cameras were located and there were several camera ports located there. The forward bomb bay carried a cargo rack and the aft bay had two fuel tanks, one stacked on top of the other. Other modifications would depend on what time period you are interested in. The F-13 was part of some of the Pacific nuke test after the war and some of the turrets were converted into various test mounts. Again as Jennings pointed out, you really need to obt
  12. Well the advertisement has text as well as photos and it sez "Mid February".
  13. Well, considering the alternative sources of information, about none, I would suggest you buy the books. The Guardian book has about anything you would want on the airplane. Not interested in the other one and don't have the book, so cannot comment on that one. From what I remember, it is one of Steve's earlier ones, so may be a little slimmer.
  14. Well actually there probably isn't a whole lot wrong with it. Biggest problem might be the raised panel lines. But they are pretty fine, and there are not a lot of them. The interior is probably pretty decent considering how old this kit is, but it seems to be more fiction than fact, with nothing more than a flat front instrument panel with no detail or decal,and totally the wrong shape anyway. No attempt at all to give you a rear panel, just a wild attempt at the radar screen (I think). and the seats are better than some of the period, but could use some serious improvement. Then there is t
  15. Further on the Silver painted Deuces. Fifty of them were painted with Silver Acrylic lacquer as a experiment. It was found that the silver lacquer did not preform as well as the high grade enamel Gray and as they reached overhaul facilities, most were repainted. The Silver birds did seem to end up in several different squadrons during the time period they were in Silver.
  16. You are correct. When I did the artwork for the Draw sheets two through five, the only kit available was the Hasegawa kit. I debated about even doing these due to the fact that the kit was so old and somewhat unavailable. But the beauty of the Draw process is that you can do decals that probably would not be financially practical with the minimum requirements from the normal decal printing companies. Greg's position was let's do them and see what the response is. The ability to do them in other scales also helped. With regards to the mix of Case X and XX wings on the decal sheets. Yes, t
  17. Well Jennings, if you read and follow the instructions that come with every Draw Decal they work just fine. Yeah, they are a bit different, but last time I checked there wasn't any rule that said silk screening was the only way to do decals.
  18. No, they are printed on a 21st Century state of the art commercial grade printer. They use the same decal paper that Microscale and almost all other decal manufacturers do, and they are comparable in quality to silkscreen printed decals. The advantage of these decals is there is never a registration problem, and limited interest subjects can be offered at reasonable prices
  19. If your interested in ANG F-102s almost all of them are in the works at Draw Decals. (www.drawdecals.com) The first sheet features Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina and is currently available. The second sheet has Northwest ANG birds. Montana, Idaho, Washington and North Dakota. That too is available. Sheets three, four and five will be available shortly. Sheet three has California, Hawaii, Arizona and Oregon. Sheet four is Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York and Vermont, and sheet five is Wisconsin,Minnesota, South Dakota and Texas. These sheets cover almost all the ANG F-10
  20. Having built about 30 of the various versions of the Hasegawa kit before moving on to the much better and easier Academy kit, I can tell you that there is no such thing as a "quick" (or easy) build of the Hasegawa kit. The fit is not bad,i but the convoluted assembly process makes alignment and good seams almost impossible. I don't think I was ever able to glue the aft fuselage sides and the top and bottom nose parts together well enough to not have to sand, file and fill everything to the point where most of the detail was long gone. And the seams were in very visible places. I don't know wh
  21. I have all three of the Hasegawa Grolwer releases. The first one (VAQ-132 and 129) has Hasegawa decals, the other two (VAW-141/138 and VAQ-135)have Cartograf decals. To be honest, I cannot see one bit of difference between the later Haseagwa decals and the Cartegraf ones. The "standard markings" portions of the sheet layout is very similar, the details are every bit as crisp and in register and they micrometer out as about the same thickness. (Yeah, I did do that). The creamy Whites and dull Reds are long gone and the decals are really outstanding as far as I am concerned. My problem with t
  22. Jennings, If you go to his web site, he has a tentative layout of the decals. As far as I can see, the decals look a whole lot easier than the endless masking on everything that scheme would require. And just as an aside, I think those of us who do decals should refrain from negative comments about other companies work. To me it just seems like running down the competition and reflects poorly on the guy doing the negative comments. If there are errors on the sheet, the very critical folks here can usually find it without us making those comments. No question but there is some pretty poor
  23. I live in Seattle and am a Seahawks fan. I don't think anybody really "won" that pig. The refs stunk to the point where neither team came out winners. That final touchdown catch by Golden Tate was about as poor a call as I have ever seen. Of course I am very happy the stats will show Seattle as the winner, but not anything there to be proud of. Talk about a mismanaged mess??
  24. This kit is the wrong scale, subject and era for me, but the constant debate and bashing of Trumpeter lead me to read the review. I suspect the kit does lack accuracy, but the basis for the conclusions are in my opinion suspect. The principal source for comparison in another kit. While there are references to photos, there is no reference to published basic data comparisons like length, span etc. The fact that the Falcon kit matches the Falcon provided drawings is a non starter to me-of course it does. Please don't construe this as a "I love Trumpeter" post. It is not! But It seems to me
  25. Yeah, the fuel thing is a pain in the butt, but my plan is/was to store about 20 gallons, treat it with fuel stabalizer, and only run when I needed the power. A decent sized generator, like maybe 7200 or so will eat fuel pretty fast ans storing that much for extended outages like your having is difficult. And this ethanol treated gas raises hell with the gaskets in the generator if the gas is not treated. I know of a guy who was going to considerable expense to install a rather elaborate system. Even planned it right down to a rather large fuel storage tank with electric pump. Was ready to
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