nfiler

My 104 time was before the unpleasantness of VN, but I can tell you that 479th a/c did NOT use that center line rack for AIM-9Bs. It was flown a couple times in the 1958-59 time frame and never used again. As I remember, one of the guys who fired a missile from that belly rack said it scared the hell out of him. The Sidewinder name was due to the fact it came of the rack with a corkscrew flight path. The pilot swore it did a circle around is pitot tube and left him blind for a fraction of a second. The racks were put back into the fly away kits and never used. When we started the TDY deploy

yeah, the local VW dealer! They will sell you a replacement and program it for you in about five minutes.

While they have covered about every option ever done on this bird, and very well too, the two seat F-106B is not going to be one of them from the way the fuselage,and other nose parts are done in this kit. But there seem to be little hints that it could happen. The tree with the two fuselage halves also has some interior parts and other stuff, but two fuselage parts are on the outsides of the tree, so maybe a new tree with the B fuselage in place of the current A parts could be done. And there is a very large four inch square blank spot in the tree that just screams for an mold insert to be pl

It was a North American Aviation product, and the gear doors operated in exactly the same way the Mustang gear bay doors operated. Up with hydraulic pressure on the system and down if unlocked manually or if the system pressure was leaking. Like the guy above me said, build it the way you want or just copy a photo. Either up or down or anywhere in between would be correct. Norm

Academy hands down. Fit and assembly are far better. No ugly nose seam to try to clean up and make look right. And the rear fuselage sides actually fit. Only real drawback is the vertical fins are different is shape. What that means is if you want to use any of the wide variety of markings from Hasegawa or aftermarket decal suppliers they might not be a good fit at all. Both companies have kits for the whole range of A thru D versions so that is not much of a consideration as to which one to build.

Yeah, it is about as nice a model as I have seen in a long time. My complaints are very minor. I do not like the really dark plastic at all. It makes the kit details stand out very well and looks great in the box, but probably not gonna be much fun to work with. And the color instructions are for Vallejo paints only. No FS numbers or any indications of what they are to help with other brands. Probably no big deal to us, but not much help for casual builders. And they really didn't pay much attention to the Montana bird. The Blue markings should have a slight metallic shade, and they comple

Jennings, I doubt if anybody actually has one yet. I and my modeling buddy placed advanced orders with three different far eastern hobby shops. I have received a shipping notice from only one of them and the other two still show as a future release. The shipping notice said it was shipped on Friday, the 15th. Might see it late this week or early next week. Norm

Per the original paint instructions. "NO FINISH - 6061 AL. ALLOY" Also the same on leading and trailing edge of Horiz. Stabs. and leading edge of vertical fin.

Well,MMD is the distributor for dealers. An individual cannot buy directly from them. So (in theory) an individual would have no recourse to them because they could not prove they bought the kit from them. I would suspect that Squadron would be your only recourse to getting any parts replacement. And I suppose without a direct sale receipt from Squadron, they would be of no help either.

Well you now know what MMD knew a long time ago. Trumpeter was not going to help MMD with replacement parts and they were unwilling to burn a whole kit to give you a part. The problem seems to me to be you are expecting a Chinese company to provide customer service to your standards. It ain't gonna happen. They have clearly demonstrated on many occasions that all they care about is getting your money out of your wallet.Once that has occurred, the transaction is over and they no longer care.

There is a very good reason for the offset pylons. Clean separation of bombs and tanks. The slight increase in drag is insignificant compared to the more important issue of weapons separation.

Probably a good air brush. But why are you considering buying something that you might not be able to buy parts for? I have been using air brushes for over fifty years. Eventually either due to wear of accidents like dropping it, you will need replacement parts. I would suggest buying something that is "mainline" that you can buy parts for. No matter how great it is, if it is broken, it is worthless if you can't get parts.

I have a Sherline lathe/mill that I think is the best miniature lathe around. It was expensive when I bought it a long time ago and is even more so now. But it is a precision tool capable of doing very close tolerance work. Sherline is a first class operation from top to bottom. I have called them with questions and advice and ended up talking to guys in their shop who actually do use the tools. Frequently ended up talking for an hour or so just discussing how and with what tools it could do the current project. It would be easy to sink a thousand bucks or so into the lathe/mill combination

That is a pretty all inclusive statement. How did you come by this information? A little supporting documentation would be nice.

I have built the Phantom, and while the method of construction is unusual, and the multi colored plastic a bit distracting, the finished model looks just fine. It probably has better details than the Hasegawa kit. The Hasegawa Super Bug is a good kit, and you can find them with both early and late mods. But I suspect the forthcoming Academy kit just might be a bit better. Norm Filer

Jennings is absolutely correct. I spent 29 years at Boeing and access to the color cards was very restricted. What the specific shade used by a customer was seemed to be a very closely held secret. Customer Service folks seemed to have some success at that as did some QA inspectors, but the rest of us great unwashed Boeing weenies did not. You could request and get a copy of the printed catalog with a simple document request, and that frequently had the key to where the color came from (the customer) and even the brand name and other identifying information, but getting an actual paint card

Here is a quick comparison between the P-2V-5/P-2E and the later P2V-7/P-2H. You can see that the whole canopy area is much different.

Interesting effort so far. So what are you going to do about the whole different canopy and windscreen? And the flight deck you just installed will be too high if you try to make it correct for a P-2V-5/P-2E. Falcon conversions did do the correct canopy windscreen for a P-2E.

Paul hit it pretty much dead on.

Well, The correct Yellow for the Goose, if it complies with USAAC standards, would be ANA 614 which would be FS 33538, not 13432. It should be Yellow with a bit of Orange, not Orange with a hint of Yellow. That would be Gunze #329. I have that and it matches the relevant FS card perfectly. I don't use Testors, so I will not comment other than to say the Testors reference book sez 13538 would be Testors #1707. Their little dinky chip looks pretty close to me. Norm Filer

157344 would have been the third of the last 10 built. Bu Nos were 157342-157351. I would assume it had the fat wing and later engines.

Don't sweat it. The real bird quite frequently was tilted when parked. With the narrow wheel tread, if it leaned on touch down or from turning during taxi in, it stayed that way after shut down until after fueling. And sometimes even after that. It was NOT due to uneven fuel load in the tip tanks. The fuel system balanced fuel in the tip tanks at all times due to the fact that too much weight in one tank would quickly lead to loss of control. The system also would automatically jettison the remaining tank or AIM 9 rail if one was lost for any reason.

Well, I just checked the Japanese Hasegawa web page and the Osprey is scheduled for release again on Sept. 28th. The box art illustration has it flying over what looks like a WW II Essex class carrier, and the view does not make the markings visible, so don't know any more than that. If your really serious about having one, I would suggest ordering from one of the Japanese web sites, as I doubt if many U. S. shops are going to be ordering many.

I would question the term "discontinued". Unless Hasegawa has changed their process lately, they only do one production run of most kits. And they do not "warehouse" kits. They make 'em, they ship 'em, and they move on to something else. So I guess everything is "discontinued" as soon as the production run is finished. What is currently on the distributor/hobby shop shelves is all there is. The Osprey probably isn't a hot seller/modeling subject for most of the world, and I think the kit has been released in several different markings and versions since its original release. That included a

A bit late to this thread, but Gunze does indeed make a 16473 Aircraft Gray. It is No. 73. And the Goofy Blue used on the interior by the Montana ANG had a metallic tint to it as well as the Darker Blue used in the markings. Great scheme!