jeroen_R90S

Thanks for sharing Dutik! I was there as well for the first time and saw a lot of nice models! Even managed to pluck a new in box Tamiya F4U-1D out of a big pile of completely unrelated models at a vendor, discounted to 99€ if you saw an orange camper van near the end of the parking on saturday, that was me

Looks pretty much like their aftermarket sheet in a new box then... unless the white/grey schemes are new, but I would not be surprised if they are the same VA-176 as the base boxing. (Like the A-1J) A loooong time ago I backdated an Hasegawa 1/72 model to an AD-4... had to scratch-build the inner pylons. Chose an AD-4 as they were the most common seen with the AERO pylons and some still appeared to have only the 2 guns, and the lower rudder is the same. I did sand off all the armour as well (a rotten job as I remember on that hard Hasegawa plastic!) Jeroen

Like some others who posted here, I'm not really into doing multiples of the same aircraft types, unless perhaps they are very different, like the Albatros D.II compared to a D.III or D.V. But I won't build a D.Va when I already did a D.V for example. I do have 3 duplicates: WNW Camel; 1x USAS 1x Duellist Camel > prior to their demise I got a really good deal on a duellist box I wanted for the LVG and got a free Camel with that. As I like the Camel I kept it, too 2x CSM Nieuport XVII 1x (late, French, 1x RFC) -because I like Nieuports, and a bit of CSM support 2x Trumpeter A-6 > building an A-6A now with most buttoned up / wings folded I wanted a low-viz A-6E with everything extended. Too much different stuff to build to keep repeating the same aircraft, but of course every person is different so to each their own!

Nice! I really wish there was a better kit of the A-7...

I'm not sure of the NZ connection, it is more of an extra benefit in my opinion However, points I would consider if I were financing things: create something that people are interested enough in to buy multiples and/or variants. interesting and varied paint schemes (see above) can lead to other versions (like the Spitfire) keep at a roughly fixed price point (hopefully) decent size/complexity (see point above) Based on this, as much as I like them, a P-38 (big/complex) or F6F (blue/blue/white, blue.... also the FAA schemes are quite standardized and pretty much look alike) or A6M3 (limited opportunity for version models and not that famous) would not be very likely. What may be likely would be a later Allison P-40E/K/M/N, or an un-complexed (so not like Trumpeter or Z-M) series of P-47C/D Razorback, a bubbletop P-47D/N, or a P-51B/C. Edit: and as posted above, Fw190D-9? Jeroen

fixed it An EA-3 would be cool... but huuuge in 1/32...

No disagreement on the age of the 1/48 (and 1/72 kits for that matter!) However, in 1/48 and 1/32 there are really nice kits for example the A-6, and you don't see those built often, at least around here, unlike a row of F-14s or F-4s in all sorts of squadron markings. By that logic the 1/48 Tamiya Fi-156 and IL-2 would be much more popular, and the Wingnut WIngs DFW C.V, which was both important and (IMHO) quite pretty, would not end up on the discount pile at Modellbau König years after WNW stopped their sales... Still, I look forward to what Trumpeter pulls out of their hat!

I'm a bit in doubt on this one... I think it's a neat aircraft that's about the size of the A-6, but having both side by side in 1/72 I can say as stated the wings are a lot longer, but it also has much more presence, or bulk, to it. I hope they are, shall we say, "inspired" by the right kits, as most of their better kits seem to be like this (A-4, F-8, Me262)... Except perhaps the A-6, that doesn't look to have a relation to existing kits. I hope it's closer to the A-6 than the F6F! Fingers crossed on that... I also think it's a bit of an odd choice though, in 1/72 or 1/48 you hardly see any S-3 being built and the Hasegawa and Airfix kits are seldom re-issued. This may have something to with that, unlike the S-2, the S-3 was only used by the US Navy, contrary to the S-2 that saw a lot of exports all over the world. The A-6 is a great kit, but how often do you see one being built? The A-6 also seems to have come down massively in price, too (used to be €200, can be found for ~€120 in shops new for the A-6A, the A-6E is even cheaper at ~€90). But I guess Trumpeters tea leaves are hard to read anyway, they just do as they do. Here's my 1/72 one for a bit of inspiration, if I do get one it'll be like this, in the early factory scheme with the white bit behind the cockpit: (Hasegawa kit with kit decals, I tried using CAM ones but they were dreadful: transparent and massively oversize even though they were designed for the Hasegawa kit) I'll await some plastic and reviews first, then make up my mind As I wrote, I do like the S-3! Cool shot just for the coolness of it I think Reskit makes the refueling pod. Jeroen

looks nice, I'm really tempted by the early version myself! Regarding the spinner I'd be more inclined to go with yellow, also based on the other photo in the manual and better versions of that photo on the IVM website. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205260361 https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205442794 from: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235101754-brian-lanes-spitfire-p9386-qv-k-underside-tech-stencils-or-not/ Jeroen

As a little fun side note, I used to have a Windows Media Center instance with crappy old firewire DVB-C cards in them (cut off the internet, of course...). Using this technique of pass-through I was able to use a virtual machine running W7 with direct access to both TV tuner cards, and an ATI graphics cards to watch & record TV. Cool thing is also you can create snapshots before config or software changes and such on the virtual stuff. On top of that I was also able to add more VM's for testing and general use (and run things like a pi-hole) on one PC. All I had otherwise was an old laptop that would RDP into one of the VM's > I have a small house (I do wonder why I build 1/32 anyway ) so any PC I don't need to keep around is one taken to recycling The machine was an already not-quite-new Workstation with a lot of PCI slots. It had a massive power supply and used loads of electricity -if it wasn't for that the setup may still have been there. (in todays routers you can run virtualized applications so my pi-hole runs on my router now -the pace of technology...

If you have spare(s), that's a good option! Especially as the printer itself is probably pretty old by now as well, so should you be able to virtualize the whole lot, hooray, it works, then next week the printer dies (fingers crossed it does not of course!) When you virtualize such an old machine the virtualization takes care of translating that shiny new parallel port card, chipset and CPU etc to something that W98 will still understand so it's IMHO a more viable option than to try to install old hardware and drivers on a newer OS.

Congratulations! I was rather busy so forgot about this and did not participate this year

I find them the most durable of all the acrylics I tried (Vallejo, AK, Lifecolor), but they take some getting used to. They are really thick, but, this does mean you get a lot of paint from that container! If they dry out but are not completely hardened yet, you can even re-activate them with water and a lot of mixing, so you can use all of the paint. One drawback is that Revell, like their enamel range, does do a lot of RAL, but not a lot of FS/BSC/etc paints so if you want something like light gull grey (FSx6440) you'll need like 2 parts 43, 1 part 75 and 2 parts 05. I like to experiment and mix myself, but it may not be for everyone If you can find them they are definately worth a try in my book. Jeroen

It's hard to judge one's technical / IT skill though a forum, but in the past I've had success by using a separate LPT interface cards in my host PC and using "direct passthrough" of that slot to the virtual machine, which means it is directly assigned to that VM and can only be seen and used by that VM. You can then virtualize the whole of the old PC as it is and transfer it to the host machine where it'll pick up that LPT port and hardware changes (most virtualization hosts can use pretty old emulated hardware just for this purpose) A neater way would be to spin up a new VM and install w98 on that (gets rid of a lot of crap, usually...) but it may introduce issues like you mentioned. I've managed to get this working with some pretty esoteric parallel and serial hardware from crumbling or (already dead) medical and industrial systems, but it can take more than a little bit of fiddling... on the other hand, since you virtualize your old physical box there's not much to lose (you can keep that intact), other than buying an LPT card like this one: https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pex1p2 Jeroen

not very surprising with it's BSD/*nix roots, though I prefer the originals

the good (?) old days of C:\>_ on an CGA/EGA/VGA montor Today there's powershell as you are probably aware. You can get rid of a lot of junk or make changes that are not configurable otherwise via this way what you can't via the GUI. Just annoying that it is what it is, having to do it that way.

I run Windows 11 on a refurbed Dell Latitude 5x90 that came with W10 -other than, for Intel, the CPU needing to be at least Core i3/5/7 of the 8th Gen or higher you also need a TPM security chip version 2.0 to be able to run W11. The Dell came with a Pro license so I can use W11 pro now too. Other than some annoyances already mentioned it works pretty smooth. I hated all the W95/98/ME versions and was glad when NT4/2000/XP became their new future route! Main annoyance carried over from W10 is their pushing for a Microsoft cloud account and Onedrive. Also at first it had nice photo's on the login screen, now I get Forza Motorsport Xbox game screenshots which are in fact masquarding as advertisments (I suppose only switching to a Linux OS will get rid of that... but getting off topic here) I've found W11 to have some neat features, useful for me at least, like WSL where you can run Linux fully integrated within Windows > makes it a lot easier to manage my network with SSH and key pairs for example edit: IIRC the Pro version of W10 and 11 comes with Hyper-V which, using hardware passthrough, may allow those old W98 boxes to run virtualized? On a related note, for anyone still needing older unpatched OS'ses I highy reccommend you at least cut off the internet access. Jeroen

and on the photo of a trade show or event where ZM attended, which Mike Maben has posted on occasion, you can see how they intend to differentiate between the SWS and Basic versions if you zoom in on it.

as the title suggests... I have a GWH AVG/Hawk81 I might be temted to do as an RAF one, like Quang did to his, though I'd prefer desert camouflage. Is this book useful, as in, does it have new information, unknown pictures not easily found on the internet, detail stuff for building the Hawk 81 as an RAF Tomahawk in desert colours? https://wingleader.co.uk/books/wpa24p40/ Thanks!

I'd save up and get Kotare P-40D/E/K/M/N or something.... Unless you'd want something less complex to build the GWH looks good for the earliers ones. That painting is really nice, what particularly catches my eye is the sharpness of some specific parts vs the blurryness on GA-V. I really like that

Nice, thanks for sharing -happy to see modellers build those WnW kits, rather than collecting them or keeping them as a sort of investment.

Gorgeous artwork! Especially compared to that of the P-47, which looks like it was painted by the boss' nephew on a friday afternoon, with the kit due to be released monday...

I'm more thinking about selling some things, rather than buying new stuff currently... The A-20 is a nice choice, I hope you find a nice one for a good price! Jeroen

Thanks for the explanation, Pete! I did have to search out some of the acronyms, (CW illuminator for example...), but really interesting stuff. Interesting that the AIM-54 would still depend on the launching aircraft's radar to give it it's long range and only use it's own for the last part. A bit off-topic, but being in a job that involves things like exploits and vulnerabilities I think this is a really good example of how exploiting (algorithm)vulnerabilities is much, much broader than what we're involved with. I might use this example to certain target audiences, so thanks for this! Jeroen

The F-35 is already scalable/upgradable to do that.... (loyal wingmen)