Steve McArthur

Same paint formula, new packaging. Instead of jars they are in dropper bottles like Vallejo or Hataka. They renumbered everything and dropped about half the existing product line while adding some automotive and motorcycle colors.

I work remotely from home, my hobby workspace is my work desk during the week. It's got 3x4K monitors, so I normally just watch old movies on one of them and use the other two for reference photos.

Normally I only use AK RC for brush touchups since MRP is really too thin for brushing. Mr. Color Leveling Thinner has worked for me when I've airbrushed AK RC. I had a case where I needed a color for a base coat that I couldn't find MRP in stock and substituted AK RC. I thinned it about 60/40 MLT/paint. I don't recall there being any problems.

The size is on the sharable links. On the popup window where you can pick links of different formats (direct link, BB code, etc.) in the bottom right it has different sizes available which change the link structure. The idea looks like they want the original and you can choose to share it at smaller image sizes. Personally I don't see a need to limit image sizes, imgur limits are large enough it usually won't trip up most users and most modern forums will automatically limit the displayed size. If I'm sharing something publicly I share the full resolution. I like airplane photos with enough resolution that I can read the stencils. Sharing low res images limits their usefulness. It's one of the things that bug me with a lot of flickr galleries. Some guys post awesome reference image galleries, but the resolution is awful and then they disable downloading.

I've been interested in development of smart bombing systems for a while and a designator/bomber pair from VA-164 are on my todo list. @Marcel111's video is pretty interesting. There are a couple appearances of a '416', but it's a single seater and the name plate is blank. VA-164 did 3 cruises equipped with A-4s modified for laser tracking: 72, 73-74 and 75. Skyhawk.org has a list of every TA-4 deployed with combat squadrons during Vietnam. So you can see which BuNos served on each cruise. Below is a captured from the video and shows that the white nose cap on @Finn's photo is a cover for a clear nose. Another shot from the '73-74 cruise book of TA-4 417 with no names on the plane. From the 1975 Cruise Book there is a shot of a '416' that shows the bent refueling probe, but by this cruise the VA-164 had upgraded to the Superfox variant. You can't see the BuNo above, but there is this photo of 354622 as '416' that I think is the same plane.

Osprey's US Navy and Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawk Units of the Vietnam War 1963–1973 has a side view illustration of 153491. I only have the Kindle version and it's too low of resolution to make out the names, but maybe the print version would be readable. If you can read name in the print version, you could also cross check against the cruise books to see if the names were in VA-164.