aircommando130

The Marine dash 30 tankers had a problem with the hoses out and recievers the turbulence was making the fuselage twist. I talked to a guy that was in the Marines and got out and went in the AF Reserves at Patrick and he said you could stand in the cargo compartment forward of the wheel well and see it twist. Yikes! Cheers....Ron

Great looking Edwards Test Phantom! I really miis the sound of those big J-79's turning kerosene into noise! Great job! Cheers...Ron

Johnny Cash - (Ghost) Riders in the Sky (Official Audio) (youtube.com)

I'm hearing the Johnny Cash song...."Ghostriders in the sky" in my head! That was and probably always will be the gunship song. Great job! Cheers...Ron

Great job on the props Steve! Cheers...Ron

MH-53J/M Pave Low MH-47 HH-3E

That's a great looking N model! I liked that paint scheme on the Herk. I flew the MC-130P special operations version of the old rescue Herk. Brings back memories...no air conditioning...inside smelled like puke and hydraulic fluid/JP-4. A lot of people forget to add the ODS rails on the door. That and the flare launcher were exclusive rescue. The MC had the rails removed and the tracker dome removed and they added the air refueling door and defensive system flare cans. Great job on the old handsome, sleek, high performance C-130! Cheers...Ron

Looks really good Steve! Paint/details make it look mean like a gunship should. Any current and former gunship guy would be proud! Cheers...Ron

Great looking Nighthawk! Carried the airwar to downtown Bagdhad during Desert Storm. Looks great in it's inflight enviroment. Cheers...Ron

The Ball is an awesome looking jet. I do believe I saw one on Shemya way back when I was flying the C-5A out of Travis in the mid 70's. Strategic Air Command needed to eat too! Cheers...Ron

Israeli F-4E in that desert paint always just looked like it was saying " Don't F With Me". Great job on a great airplane! Cheers...Ron

Cobra Ball is awesome! It will have a black right wing as well? Did the 135 series always have the strengthing bands or what time frame were they added? And... one last question....can you show a picture of the actual jet so we can follow along. You have an awesome collection of 135's. Cheers...Ron

Do you have the outlines of the troop door and side hatch and crew door? They are in reverse of the airplane paint. Cheers...Ron

Those lights on the stabilizers are to illuminate the hose pods on the HC/MC. If it's really dark from no moon illumination they turn them on way down dim so the receiver can see the pod and the hose. Looking good so far. Cheers...Ron

That's awesome!

Looking good Steve...your walkway lines came out great! Cheers....Ron

That's an awesome build of the test F-15A! I remember seeing them at Edwards in the mid 70's when I was in. Now you need to build a test F-15EX that's in that same paint (kinda) to go with it. Cheers...Ron

No worries...glad I could help since I have the airplane right on the balcony at work. Happy New Year....Ron

Looking good Steve...I feel your pain painting those walkways! Cheers....Ron

That turned out great! Cheers....Ron

That airplane had flown several test flights. That particular test was big rudder inputs and when they pushed it to yaw the airplane the mission computer pulled the power off the opposite engines to stop the yaw and the airplane went inverted. I forgot how much altitude they lost but it pulled out close to water in the Eglin range. It didn't have the 105mm gun. Just the 30mm up front. A graduate of the AF Test Pilot School was in the seat to recover it. Cheers...Ron

It still has the complete right wing...half the left wing...3 engines and they cut the vertical tail down about half to get it in the hanger. It's backed in so they can load/unload out of the weather and student loadmasters can do a full power up preflight on it. It's called the "E-FUT" (electronic fuselage trainer) Cheers...Ron

They took it to Lockheed in Georgia and modded it back to an MC-J...took the wings and tail off and trucked it out here to Kirtland AFB and stuck it in the fuselage trainer hanger and made it a loadmaster trainer.

That's the AFSOC way...if it's big, heavy and painted black they'll buy it. The Talon II ended up with an operating weight about 102,000 pounds....max takeoff weight was 155,000 pounds. I don't know how much weight the TF radar mod adds to the MC-J but I bet it's a lot. OK...the tail boot...the 6 blade prop moves the air around the tail different than the 4 blad Hamilton Standard did and that area of the tail collects ice more than the rest of the tail so they added the boot in that area and it works just like the wing de-icer boots on the old B-17/B-24....

The only deice boot is on the tail. Everything else is just a paint indicator. They use bleed air heat in the leading edge on the wings and stabilizer to melt the ice off. The props sling it off...you can hear it hit the fuselage on the ice panels along the prop line. I think the fellas said there is an antenna (HF?) under the boot so they can't use heat to defrost it.