Tailspin Turtle

The bits on the bottom of the wing are the S slat actuation fairings...

It was a while ago, but for sure the inflight refueling probe location/length needs to be changed. I added or replaced the shrink link and scissors on the nose gear. It winds up looking pretty good (unit markings were painted on):

What Andre said, except it doesn't sit at a high angle, it sits fairly level. The reason that the belly is so far off the ground is for ground clearance at rotation for takeoff with the big Mk 7 store on the belly. All of the interim tactical jet nuclear bombers had marginal, if not negative, clearances with the Mk 7. For example:

It helps to have more light on the work area. Hard to have too much. High contrast illumination is one catch phrase. Those bulbs that provide "Natural Light" might help, but beware of using colors that look good in the light on your work bench and then displaying the model in a hall with a different type of light, e.g. flourescent. That brings out the trolls...

I may have to kill you for telling you this but there was an evaluation of a 20mm Gatling in the left seat area of an OH-58, one of the slide off the C-130, extend the skids, and go kill types. It took a brisk and anticiptory application of cyclic and pedal to keep the second and subsequent rounds on target due to the lateral and vertical offset from the cg. And no, I don't have any pictures...

Telltales are the scoop above the crew compartment, location of the crew door, no side fuselage dive brakes, and no large pod under the right wing. Some antennas may vary...

The AD-4NA was the night attack variant of the AD-4 stripped (hence the addition of the A to the designation) to be used as a regular bomber with more payload and one more "heavy" weapon station than the N provided. It was even more useful as a passenger/light cargo transport since it retained the crew compartment in the lower aft section of the fuselage with the doors on each side. As a result it still had no side dive brakes - these had been removed on the production line to provide for the crew compartment. However, all the AD-4N unique antennas and radar pod/pylon were removed.

Ah yes, that brings back the halcyon days of my youth... I was peripherally involved with the Reliability and Maintainability trials of the OH-58A at the US Army Aviation Test Board in 1970/71. One of the requirements was to fire an enormous number of 7.62 rounds from the mini-gun in strict accordance with flight manual limits, one of which stated something like "After X seconds of firing, the burst interrupter will stop the gun. To reset the burst interrupter, release the trigger." Nothing about why there was a burst interrupter (to keep the barrel from overheating) much less how long to let

Even if the seat was functional and operated as designed, ejection was more likely to be fatal (almost certain) than riding it out (depends on the terrain/obstacles beyond the runway). Those old seats were merely bailout enhancements which got the pilot clear of the aircraft - they didn't propel him up high enough to allow the parachute to open and establish a survivable rate of descent before hitting the ground when used at low altitudes, much less when the aircraft was on the runway.

I don't think the slats have drooped in this case (probably can't due to the geometry of the actuation linkage). The impression of droop is caused by the fact that the leading edge of the inboard slat extends below the original mold line of the wing: It ain't pretty and it won't go as fast, but it sure could corner better...

Yes - If you look at the pictures of the model above, the inboard slat is sticking out ahead of the leading edge slightly on an F-4S.

According to a McAir Product Support Digest, the F-4S slats use the same mechanism as the F-4E: the inner wing slats are moved forward and up on a parallelogram type linkage and the outer wing slats hinge about a support point, raising the trailing edge for increased lift. The contour of the slats was slightly changed to improve landing/takeoff characteristics.

I like the twisted strand wire that comes with picture hanging kits. The individual wires are very easy to work with and about the same size as the smallest readily available tiny drill....

Let me express my appreciation for your input with some drawings that you might not have:

More trivia - the RF-4B rear seat right console was about half the width of the C's because the USMC aircraft had the inflight refueling boom. The C rear cockpit also had flight controls; the B didn't. The instrument panels, particularly the rear seat's, were different in detail between the Air Force and Navy recon aircraft but those are the major differences. The reason for the thick wing on the last ten was that this was a reorder by the Marines and McAir was only building the thick wing at that point with the F-4B having been replaced in production by the F-4J. They probably weren't called

Put all the big pieces in place, put a "knife edge" under the fuselage at the position of the main landing gear wheels, adjust the attitude so it is sitting at the angle it will be on the landing gear, and add weight to a little box located where the weight will be placed in the model until the model tilts forward:

An informal report by the pilot on the Navy's P-51 trials hints that the landing gear was not considered as sturdy as desired, but for sure it didn't have quite enough rudder. Note that a landing gear beefup isn't necessarily obvious except to the weights guy...

The other 1/72 resin kit is from Planet in the Czech Republic. It's pretty good. The main landing gear has to be modified to fit correctly.

This site provides some photos and diagrams of the Stanley extraction system: http://www.ejectionsite.com/frame_sg.htm On all single seat ADs, there was a canopy actuator behind the headrest that angled down from the top of the headrest to the fuselage at the rear of the canopy. It was normally hidden from view under a canvas cover on the non-Stanley seat equipped aircraft. I don't think that there was any radio equipment in this location...

Here's more detail on the subject: http://www.clubhyper.com/reference/updatin...rvikingbs_1.htm

To see a very brief film clip of the nozzle transitioning, go to http://www.jsf.mil/gallery/gal_video.htm. It's in the X-35 Demonstration section in "Reach Higher".

The exhaust geometry is a little more complicated than just a 45 degree cut, because the thrust has to be in the vertical plane of the fuselage at all time. This means there are two obvious swivel joints and they are a bit more than 22 1/2 degrees so that the nozzle can be pointed forward a little. I'm doing the 1/72 version of the kit and have changed or replaced almost every part. Here are two pictures that should give you the general idea of the nozzle - the kit's, which is slightly wrong, and my scratch built interpretation:

I usually don't like to speculate, but since nobody has stepped forward on behalf of the F-22 community and my most knowledgeable source isn't sure, my guess is that it is more than a simple radar reflector. Its purpose is probably to provide a bogus skin paint return that masks the real radar signature of the aircraft. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be on the aircraft when it is used operationally since it is clearly not streamlined and probably has a bigger signature than the rest of the aircraft even when turned off. There is another possibility and that is it has a function similar to a McDo

I have it from an excellent source at Sikorsky that the RAH-66 was never given a Sikorsky model number because it was a joint program with Boeing. I don't know whether it got a Boeing number or a unique joint number. It is also correct that Sikorsky assigned model numbers to strictly military programs. These internal numbers were particularly useful back in the day when the services did not have a joint designation system. As reported above, Vought and Sikorsky were under a single corporate structure for a while which is why Igor's first helicopter was the VS-300 and the first few subsequent