Oldbaldguy

This is gonna be more fun than I don't know what! Not to cause thread drift, but, now that my ancient Revell Wildcat is behind me and yours is just beginning, I plan to do the same thing to my ancient, first edition Revell Corsair. That ultrasonic knife looks mighty interesting. Carry on, please.

This particular photo gives me the willies - I've never seen uniforms like this on a flight deck. The two in white look like cooks in someone else's navy. They would never be on a flight deck in that uniform. No muzzle ports on the nose of the airplane that I can see and the guy in the seat is wearing headphones, not a helmet. Are we being AIed?

If you haven't resolved your color problem by now, you might want to check out some of the Russia-specific colors offered by MRP. Some of those look very like the colors on your subject jet. Might be worth a look.

Those hinges are really nifty. Sooooooo much better than what I kludged together. However, I cut the elevators off the stabs so they could be drooped a bit. That would definitely solve your hinge issue if you did that.

Really pretty paint scheme but there ain't no gunship gray in it. Were it me, I would eyeball the colors and go for it. Remember, these aggressor paint jobs are supposed to look like they belong to another country so why would they use US milspec colors? I think model companies come up with these charts not because they actually know what the colors are but because they think we expect them to.

Or maybe our equivalent of AI. There seems to be an awful lot of "that looks about right" engineering going on in some of these files. But we see that in IM kits as well, so you pick your poison I guess. Everyone exclaims the beauty of the Hustler but there is so little real familiarity with it out there that an awful lot of the details are wishful thinking. I wonder if organizations like the Air Force Museum and the Naval Aviation Museum have considered scanning their airplanes and then selling the files to people like us to build from. That would solve many of the accuracy problems and could generate some income as well.

I always cast an envious eye toward vac kits, knowing some of the subjects would never be available in any other format while also admitting that even a simple vac kit is likely beyond my skills. I have a couple that I dig out and fondle once in a long while, but that's as far as it ever goes. I also have one full 3D kit that will never see daylight. Bits and pieces might one day make their way into a different kit but that, also, is as far as that one goes. It seems very likely that 3D printed kits will supplant all others in the not too distant future, leaving most of us with a pile of rejected injected kits that no one will want. Except me. I'm going to stick with IM kits for the duration. Any and everything I could hope to want to build in my lifetime is either already in my meager stash or is readily available somewhere close. Be nice if the prices of IM kits would come down some, however. Half a grand for a model kit can be pretty eye watering.

Never too late. Duty comes first. We appreciate the sentiment any time. Hopefully there will be no divided loyalties in a few hours from now when the match starts. ⚽️⚽️

And now we know. This may be the best airplane site ever - ask a question; get an answer. Now, the next question is: How did we miss this for so long? I, me and myself, have never seen anybody tint those clear parts on a model or even talk about maybe trying to. Sometimes, I think we look but we don't see.

I've seen this phenomena on at least two different airplanes. One is the recently restored and flying F-4C out of Texas. And the other was a target drone F-4E making a couple of flybys years ago at Oshkosh. When viewed from the inside, both airplanes' windscreen side panels look exactly the same - uniformly yellow. In both cases the canopies are clear with no apparent fogging or crazing. Go figure.

While rummaging around looking at various videos on YouTube, I noticed something worth noticing. At first I thought it to be an age related anomaly (not mine) but now I am not so sure. Based on videos taken from both inside and outside the airplane, it appears that at least some F-4s have windscreens that have a yellow tint rather than being clear like we always model them. As we all know, F-4s have a three piece windscreen. The center piece of armored glass often presents a pale coke bottle green color when photographed and many builders have found ways to model this. But I have never seen anybody attempt to model the yellowish tint plainly visible in the panels to either side. They are certainly not clear and look to me to be the same yellow color as some shooting and driving glasses. I wonder if this was done on purpose to enhance visual acuity for the pilot or if it is discoloration of the material brought on by years of exposure to sunlight or maybe something else. The two canopies always seem clear; it is only the two side panels of the windscreen that are effected. Ideas? Concurrence? Refutation? Calls of BS? Logic? Science? Bueller?

Hunh. So do I.

Thank you, Canada, for sending the Snowbirds to our party!!

How did this get approved? Welcome to America.

Happy Birthday to US, indeed!!