John1

I've got the book. Pilot's name is LCDR Leon Bryant, backseater is LT JG Jim House.

So it appears that Takom's E truly is riddled with errors. Every E model Apache out there has a flat belly with a plate of ballistic armor. Takom completely missed this. Only option is to do some seriously involved scratchbuilding or reach out to a very talented 3D printing guru and buy his correction set. For me, I'm past the stage where I can incorporate this mod. Between this and the screwed up optical windows on the TADS housing, I'm pretty much all set. That doesn't even include the crap decals, absolutely horrible instructions and all the missing details in the cockpit. Here's the corrected fuselage.

Lol, I’ve fired .50’s. You can’t hit a thing with them. Outside of a hundred meters they are an area suppression weapon. Now try to imagine hitting a fast moving target that’s in range for a split second from inside a bouncing aircraft that’s moving in a different direction. As far as those “confirmed” kills by bomber gunners, they were vastly over reported. Don’t put any faith in those numbers, they aren’t based in reality. Handheld MG’s did little / nothing to protect those bombers. If they actually did hit something (assuming it wasn’t another ship in their formation), it was nothing more than pure luck. Lastly - how many attacks came in from the sides? Luftwaffe doctrine was to attack head on or from the rear. Both modes are completely outside of the waists gun’s field of fire. All they did was put 2 additional kids into harm’s way for little or no return.

The cheek .50’s were pretty much useless. Next to nothing for field of fire. Should have eliminated them and the aircraft would have picked up a few knots from weight / drag reduction. Same with the side mounted weapons. Just adding two more KIA’s when a ship went down, for no tangible increase in its defense.

I look forward to hearing the mod’s rationale. My only concern is that I don’t frequent the Vendors forum that much (I try but I’m just set in my web surfing ways) and would hate to miss out on a cool new product because it’s quickly pushed off of this page.

Question - I saw that a post announcing Monkey Models F-4 intake set got moved to the Vendors forum (which is kind of like the equivalent of being sent to Siberia) and yet this post remains and is flourishing. What's the criteria for what stays and what goes in this forum? Are some announcements more worthy than others?

Yeah, it’s been tough. Haven’t seen my daughter for nearly three years. Next duty station will be in CONUS so that’s good news.

My daughter will be there for another 10 months, I need to start working on a shopping list! Would love to go over there and pick out stuff myself but flights from the Northeast US are crazy expensive.

I just don’t get the whole - “I can’t build models of x because of its horrible history in RL”. By that standard, no F-4’s because they, on occasion, may have napalmed villages in S Vietnam, no Lancasters because of Dresden, nothing Italian or Japanese (for obvious reasons), no IAF subjects cause of issues in Gaza, the list goes on forever. Every aircraft that flew in combat did bad things on occasion, that’s kinda what happens in war.

Ooooohhh, you got me interested here. My daughter lives in Japan (down at Iwakuni), never even thought about having her pick up a model or two locally. She mentioned there were a couple of big hobby shops near her.

Rather than make a grand announcement about cancelling your membership, etc, why not just walk away from the forums, relax and focus on whatever you want to focus on? If you feel like returning at a later date, come on back. We'll still be here. As a side note, I feel 100% the way you do about Russia. Take care bud....

Amazing paintwork!

To be honest - I’m not certain ICM’s kit will surpass the KH kit. Assuming the quality is similar to their Cobra kit, I’ll give the nod to KH. Their Cobra is pretty basic. Where I predict ICM will shine will be on the instructions (the KH instructions are a complete dumpster fire) and surface detailing (we’ll get accurate raised rivets).

The vets I’ve dealt with sent me some of their personal pics from OIF. The amount of crap they had in the cabin was amazing. And that doesn’t include the cargo or gear that their passengers brought along.

Bit of a milestone, I've got the cabin assembly completed. Still will be adding bits to the cockpit. Next up is a decision - whether or not to add about 10,000 tiny .030 "solder balls" to fill in all those recessed "divots" on the fuselage. I'm conflicted on this one. The real thing is covered in raised rivets, not little dents like KH opted to use. I'm gonna do a trial run in an inconspicuous area to see how hard it is and then make a final decision. In the meantime, a few pics: Also placed a helmet on the CE's seat. The other CE pilfered a pilot's seat cushion for his seat (a common occurrence for those crew chief's who no longer had a "4 hour ass", according to a couple of vets). That's it for today lads, thanks for checking in.

Just a thought, if you strike out, maybe post your question on the F-4 Phantom Modelers page on FB? I got a great deal of help from those guys when I built my C-model last year.

What a great idea for a build. The Vb is my favorite version. I’ll be following…

That’s some amazing work!

Hi Alex, I can’t help with your request but just wanted to say welcome to LSP. It’s a great forum.

I'm sorry.... it's a bit of an "inside joke". Don't pay any attention to my pining for the holy grail of model kits!

Funny you mention that. My daughter and her husband just went to Vietnam (their second time there) for vacation. He speaks a decent bit of Vietnamese but was surprised to find that the accent up north was so different he couldn't understand anything that was being said.

Just received their book on RAF Tomahawk / Kittyhawks. Very impressed - lots of pics I’ve never seen before, geared toward the modeler, and well done color profiles. Received my book here in the US within a couple of weeks of ordering from the U.K. and best of all, it was very favorably priced. Worth checking out guys. https://wingleader.co.uk/shop/

Very impressive build, I’ve enjoyed following along.

I’m still in shock that Kotare didn’t deliver on this. Would have been a license to print money. Thought about trying to scratchbuild a D into a K but that’s simply overwhelming. Maybe by the time I finish gluing 10,000 microscopic solder balls onto this model, someone else will have stepped up. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

I'm calling the interior pretty much done. Mounted the crew chief seats to the brackets on the ceiling, I'll install the legs and support wires once the seats are fully in place. These fittings are pretty fragile, hope these seats stay secured! Also repainted the crew helmets in Helo Drab (my original color was off), repainted the pilot's seatbelts as well. They got repainted in a darker shade; this was pointed out by an Ex-Army Hawk pilot over on FB. Lastly, I added another helmet to the co-pilot's seat. Next up will be the most challenging phase of the build, glueing the interior subassembly together and getting it to fit between the fuselage halves. Some initial dry fitting shows I've got some trimming / sanding to do here. Wish me luck! I've also got a decision to make regarding surface detailing. The kit is covered with recessed "divots", in contrast, the real thing has very pronounced raised rivets. On FB I saw a guy using tiny "solder balls" to fill in every divot. The final effect looked awesome. I'm trying to decide if I'm crazy enough to go this route or just bit the bullet and keep things as they are! My order of 10,000 .030mm solder balls just arrived from Amazon....