Oldbaldguy

Okay. Uncle. I give up. I am literally sitting here with my fingers in my ears, going, “Nananananaaaaaaa.” I was hoping someone would pipe up and tell me that, yes, indeed, some enterprising aftermarketeer offers a more accurate looking tailhook than the Capt Hook’s hook-like thing that came in the kit I’m working on. These guys make everything else, so why not that? Obviously I failed to communicate.

The shoes on the end look pretty much the same no matter which airplane we are talking about because they are a replaceable line item with a limited life cycle; likely you already know that. While the shafts come in all shapes and sizes, the gizmo on the end is enough the same across the fleet that you probably couldn’t tell if it was a little off, even in 1/32. Until recently, kit manufacturers got the shape wrong more often than not, so there are a lot older kits floating around out there with hooks that are painfully wrong. I’m old school and enjoy expending the blood, sweat and tears needed to bring old kits closer to current standards. My life would be a lot more simple if AM tailhooks were as plentiful as wheels and gear struts.

There are aftermarket replacements for just about anything you can imagine but I’ve never seen correct, accurate generic universal qAM tailhooks in any scale. Do such critters exist? I’d love to acquire a passel of them in 1/32 and 1/48.

Now I really do feel old. Saw one at Colorado Springs when they were trying to see if it would work better there than at Denver, later watched them land at Dulles and was lucky enough to tour one at Oshkosh. What a lovely airplane and just small enough inside to be cozy. Absolutely loved the cockpit - more Formula car than airliner. I wonder how many still exist.

You are looking at the horizontal stab in bright light. The wing is in darkness and you can barely see it.

Those are some seriously big azzed external tanks. Any idea how much gas they actually put in them?

Civilized debate? Where is the fun in that? I think most of the aforementioned display issues come from a genuine lack of hands-on experience. There is so much mostly irrefutable research material out there that building in accuracy to the nth degree is simply a matter of deciding to do it, even if the airplane being built went extinct decades before the builder was born, so the getting it right part is easy. But how many modelers on this site and elsewhere have hands on experience with any airplane on the ground or in the air, not counting flying missions in a sim. Judging by what we see in displays, very few. Nature abhors a vacuum so people with no hands-on will dip into their imaginations for something that looks right to them whenever they need to fill a gap in knowledge. That’s how we end up with stunning models in weird circumstances. And reality always will be trumped by the petulant “well, it could have happened that way” card, no matter what.

Wow. Those crew figures are really nice. You say this one will be in flight?

Walking into the wings or walking into the spinning prop? Yellow for exercise caution in this area; anything inside the yellow is an imminent danger zone?

It is funny the many different things we are thankful for. On the day after this wonderful traditional American holiday which has left our refrigerator packed full of the remains of a large fowl and various dishes with improbable names, my wife and I are most thankful not for our health, our children and grandchildren or what remains of the great country we’ve called home for more than seven decades. No, we are most thankful for having a sink and running water in our kitchen after doing without for the past eight weeks. And countertops on our cabinets - or kitchen cabinets at all, for that matter. So, I am most thankful that urban camping and washing dishes in the loo are behind us. At least for a while. Turkey and mashed potato omelets anyone?

And yet the F-14 had a gun and its crews were trained at Top Gun. Clearly somebody had other ideas.

Talk about topic creep. Can someone please remind me what Pete’s original premise was? Something about how his little airplane could turn inside an F-14 all day long but the great unwashed loved the F-14 better because of saturation advertising over performance or something like that, wasn’t it? Don’t think carrier size or A-10s figured in the original mix, although if carriers get much bigger, I think Pete might be able to squeak his F-16 aboard even without a tailhook and then what?

These are painted with a brush???? Holy cow!

This should be interesting to watch. I’ve always liked the look of an F-104 but have never built one and don’t think I’ve ever seen a camoed build. A flying friend at my airport flew them his entire career, including a tour in Vietnam. He had a bushel of war stories but was such a talented liar that I never believed a word he said.

Interesting. The blue on the original cowl piece looks like it is trying to do the same thing the blue on your Corsair wings did - thin out and show the chromate underneath.

Tell that to any fighter pilot of any stripe. Any that refuse to rise to the challenge should be flying rubber dogshit out of Hong Kong.

To me, the F-14 always looked rather Ichabod Crane-ish - all knobs and knees and elbows - while the F-35 in any form looks so very turd-like. In a world where computers do so much of the design work, I’m afraid elegance is much a thing of the past. All the really sexy planes of the fifties and sixties are products of slide rules and cocktail napkin doodles and the old adage about an airplane often flies like it looks. Those days are long gone. Airshows, rivalry and Hollywood aside, I think the F-14 and the F-35 are more kindred spirits than not. The F-14’s job was to deliver the goods as far away as possible in a very analog, battering ram way at a time when that was the only solution. The F-35 does the same thing by manipulating ones and zeros without the need to get its hands as dirty. Neither is/was intended to bring back the swirling dogfights of WWI. What a wonderful, modern time we live in. Now, the real elephant in the room is not the “My Chevy is better than your Ford” syndrome, but pilots in general. Most everyone who flies is convinced that they are/could have been a fighter pilot. It’s the nature of the beast. Straight and level is about as exciting as your easy chair at home. Upside down and backwards gets your blood to pumping. Pilots see themselves that way no matter what airplane they fly. I have done loops and rolls in a Cessna 172. My wing commander thought nothing of fighting A-10s with a C-130. I once jumped an ultralight in my little homebuilt and immediately got my ass kicked at less than freeway speeds. ANY pilot who tells you he has never flown lower than the tree tops, has never seen the ground where sky should be, bombed cows or strafed a train is lying. It’s a pilot thing. And there is the rub. Not every wife is beautiful and smart nor every airplane nimble and quick, no matter what Hollywood or some PR guy wants you to believe. I think that’s Pete’s biggest gripe: He was dancing a wicked tango with the prettiest girl in the room while everyone else was gushing over the big girl who could barely waltz. I get it and I can’t dance at all.

Couple of random thoughts as they occur to me: Grumman and the Navy had a mostly monogamous love affair for at least fifty years. I can think of only one Grumman airplane the Navy did not want that somebody else bought - the OV-1 - although there may be others. The Navy always has been burdened with airplanes that have to operate from carriers as well as fight and win. That’s a hard combo to resolve because weight and all those extra moving parts rarely result in something as universally capable as, say, an F-16, which is one of those rare airplanes that became all things to all people. When you give an engineer free rein to build a device that does a certain thing, you may not get the final product you were hoping for, engineers being who and what they are. The F-14 is a good example. It was supposed to fly fast and far with a heavy load, turn and burn enroute, then come home and land in a couple of hundred feet on a boat. That’s a very tall order. Grumman produced an 80% solution and the Navy bought it, probably in large part because it was a Grumman product and partly because of politics. One of the easiest ways to address an airplane’s lesser traits is to turn the PR department loose. Both Grumman and the Navy did just that and it wasn’t long before every kid on the planet was convinced the F-14 could actually do all the things Hollywood said it could. The recruiters loved it, the Navy was heavily invested and the airplane hung around longer than it should have. I have no doubt that in the right hands and conditions, the airplane could be cosmic. My F-14 pilot neighbor flew F-14s exclusively while on active duty. Of course he loved it - it was all he knew. He told me a Luftwaffe F-104 exchange pilot in his squadron was terrified of the thing. He also said it was the best dive bomber he’d ever seen. It was big, complicated, pricy per flying hour and it had a big ego. It was not the first Navy airplane that had way less motor than it needed, which also seems to be a Navy thing. I never much liked the look of an F-14 and, as far as I can remember, I’ve never once rubbed up against a real one. I can tell you that there are five or six A-4s lined up on my shelves but not one Tomcat.

Throttles and mixture controls on the left side, both of which are pretty worthless without engine instruments. No prop controls that I can see, so about all the gunner could do is speed up, slow down and shut them down. Rudder pedals are on either side of the stick at the bottom near the horizontal walking beam so he could at least make coordinated turns and slips. These look to be in a stowed position. A gunner could look outside easily enough to keep it straight and level but, without any sort of instruments for airspeed, altitude or direction of flight, that’s about it. Seems like added complexity and weight for no good reason.

Looking forward to learning what you think of the Reskit gear.

Very nice. I have never in my life been able to turn out a respectable model car no matter how hard I tried. Have no idea how you guys do it.

As I mentioned in other posts, contractors are swarming my house on the odd days they actually show up and I consider it my sacred duty to constantly be in their way, offering advice and opinions, unwanted chats, etc., so I am familiar with their stuff. These guys are BIG fans of lime green battery powered hand tools and have bushels of them for various jobs. I noticed two in particular: a battery powered flat bladed oscillating saw and a small battery powered portable compressor with tank that drives their nailers. The saw is imminently useable for all sorts of things and I found myself wondering if anyone makes an LSP sized version. What an essential tool that would be and much more useful for cutting plastic (I would think) than something like a Dremel. And the little compressor is a marvel in itself. It is quiet-ish, small, light enough to be carried anywhere, has a tank pressure and adjustable hose pressure gauges, and is also battery powered. Neither is particularly expensive. Even if a model-sized version of the saw had to be wall-socket powered, it would be very useful. If such a thing already exists, I would very much like to know.

A couple of gin and tonics drove me to do much the same thing as you are doing when converting a Revell F-4G to a USMC RF-4. Then I discovered a distillery in the mountains near here that puts up a decent rye and now I’m convinced that I can hammer Revell’s old OLD J model into a B. Don’t know if there is a connection or not. Just to be safe, I’m avoiding the local moonshine place at all costs.

Bummer. Shoulda listed my KH kits on traders row already.

Yer right. Decal stripe was grim at best while your painted version is obviously much better, not to overstate the obvious.