Planegeek

The Academy 1/72 kit includes extra propellers and early horizontal stabs IIRC

We generally loaded them on the centerline station 5. Unless the centerline was needed for a fuel tank, then they were loaded on station 3 or 5 (wings) such as for a transocean flight. But that would take a wing pylon away from munitions load out, so we never flew them operationally on the wing stations.

I seem to recall some of the block 5s having no JFS doors in the early 80s. I don't know if that was all of them.

Wow

That camo paint job looks AWESOME. Is that freehand or masked?

Cool! I saluted a Canadian loadmaster at Red Flag once. His NCO shoulderboards looked like officer bars haha, what did I know.

I can do a high resolution scan if you'd like it for print or stencils

Yes, the decal sheet looks like it has Texas Air National Guard, and Canadian markings.

Very cool. I've been wanting to do a large scale GT-40 since seeing Ford vs Ferrari! Has anyone else noticed vintage car models are going for crazy prices! I just scored the same Monogram F-101 kit on the auction site. So I'll have a nice shelf full of century jets eventually haha

Wow! All these cool Phantom builds. Makes me want to dig one out. I have a couple oldies Monogram and Testors (Italeri?)

Air Force runways do have arresting systems at both ends, for hydraulic/brake failures. The arresting hook is also a good way to hold the aircraft down on the pad for maintenance runs in afterburner. Cool on nightshift!

Those AIM-9s on the bottom rails look like they'd scrape the ground haha... But the ALQ-131 pod on the F-16 centerline was only a few inches off the ground also. I don't remember them being damaged, except one where he landed gear up...but thats another story. Great work!

Nice paintjob! I like those Aggressor style camo jobs.

Well, it came out pretty good. I'm not up to the skill level of the posters here, but I'm havin a lot of fun. I had trouble with the wraparound decals on the nose and debated sanding it off and painting the blue stripe, but lots of MicroSol helped. I didn't trust myself to trim out the passenger windows so I used the decal. I have a high resolution scan as a back up if anyone would like to make a mask or print version.

Wow! Those turkey feathers are perfect! The tan/white deposits like spark plugs get scraped off on the edges as they move leaving the strip down the middle.

Decals were easy, I used a slight wash on the recessed details but I haven't resprayed it with flat because I didn't want to peel the canopy decals off with remasking. And the very last step was adding the horizontal stabs, which made it a tail sitter. I have the -G also and of course, the Hun. I want to do the F-100 in SEA camo also and I have a new Iwata Eclipse to practice with. I don't know if I trust myself to free hand one yet though.

Wow, very cool project and nice work! IIRC, the RHAW fairing with all five aft antennas on the top of the vertical stab came out in the C/D models. A/B had rounded fairings with two on top and two beneath the rudder. I do remember changing a lot of those later antennas because the coax cables weren't well secured and we had to add more clamps and remove the entire fairing to get at it.

I was assigned to the 428th TFS in the 80s after they converted to F-16As. The 4450 was just down the road towards the phase hangars. The rumor was they were trainers because they handled like the stealth. A-10 loader. there was also an A-10 parked in the hangar with fire damage from a flare dispenser fire IIRC. The 80s are a little hazy in spots now.

I built all the 1/48 Monogram WWII models growing up of course. Then I went into the AF in 1983 and didn't do much modelling. I remember the Century Series kits coming out in the 80s and always wanted to do those. I remember the Polly-S paints, I think those were for the railroading world but we liked them, and they had some nice flat colors. But those are long gone apparently, so I've been experimenting with the inexpensive hobby acrylic paints and mixing my own colors. I have the AK colors SEA set for reference and they spray nicely. But it takes multiple thin coats so I can't freehand it.

I used flat black Alclad primer and polished aluminum which was way too bright. So I covered that with white aluminum. I used burnt metal for the exhaust heat shields and dark aluminum for the nacelles. I got lazy and used rattle can white haha. The instructions call for gray (coroguard?) panels in the wings behind the exhaust going all the way to the trailing edge. Those are visible on photos of the later DC-6 livery with the red and blue spear. The art deco blue cheatline photos I can find look like all natural metal on the nacelles and wings behind the exhaust.

The canopy clear piece fits OK. I've seen some build threads use all kinds of splinting and tape. I just used liquid cement and held it in place while watching a movie, it wants to splay out on the sides and I didn't want to fiddle with a lot of putty that close to the clear windows. My wings were a little warped from storage, so I used wood splints and clamps when gluing them together.

The decals are 25 years old but seem OK. I started with some of the smaller ones. Now the cheatline is going to be a little trickier. The decals are solid for the DC-6A cargoliner, and include a gray overlay for pax windows. I'm thinking I could trim the window openings after application with a sharp #11 blade. Trimming the openings before would probably shred them after softening them in water.

Well, summer's over, time to get back at the bench. I dug this out of stash finally. I have a set of United colors from Liveries Unlimited (1998) for it. I just dry fitted the major components to get the minimum amount of weight for the nose. Apparently the kit landing gear is notoriously weak. It looks like a decent kit.

Funny story: The F15s in Alaska used to fly training missions with one inert missile to interface with the radar. But they also carried a live missile on another station just in case they got tasked to do an intercept....

Its been a while, but when I was at Nellis AFB in the early 80s, they had just converted the Thunderbirds to F-16s. They were fully operational we were told, with the exception of the engine oil tank modified to feed in inverted flight. They were carried on the books as war ready and could be converted to a wartime mission just by reinstalling the Vulcan cannon. I haven't touched one in a while though. The F-16s have gotten heavier with the addition of nav and targeting pods, and larger landing gear. The F-16 pictured in the article #86-0310 is listed as an F-16C Block 30D in the