Ben Brown

Beautiful! Brilliant masking job, too! Ben

Thanks for posting these great photos! I really need to get back there. Ben

Great build! I never had a chance to fly a V-tail, but got to fly an A36 a few times. Great airplane! Ben

Another photo of an F-100D from the 614th. Definitely silver. LINK since I can't get the photo to hotlink. Ben

681 is definitely gray. The two jets in the first post are from the 614th TFS, 401st TFW. The Colors and Markings book says they were painted silver in 1960. A couple of other interesting things in the photo. Both jets have been fitted with a barrier hook, but neither has been modified with the speed brake with the wider cutout to clear a centerline store. Both of these mods were done to the F-100 fleet around 1960-62. Ben

F-4s did have WoW switches, but if I'm not mistaken, they relied on hydraulic pressure in the retraction struts to keep the gear down. Same as the F-101, which is why they had a problem with main gear collapses early in their career. Also a SWAG, perhaps the Hornet, Viper, and Eagle have some kind of overcenter locking mechanism on the struts, so they're mechanically locked down? Perhaps @Gene K and @Pete Fleischmann can comment, since they have stick time in F-4s and F-16s. I think there's at least one Eagle driver here, too. Ben

The two dark round spots to the sides of where the tank mounted are where the sway braces touched the underside of the wing. Ben

Those look like fun kits! A year or so ago, I saw a few photos of a diorama someone built using the Meng tanks to recreate the paint scene in Kelly's Heroes between the Tiger and Sherman. He used Minions for the crews. I wish I could find the pics again. It was a brilliant. Ben

That's a brilliant idea! I might have to try that on my next build. If you don't want to do any cutting and just paint nav lights, I use a dark silver paint, like Metalizer Magnesium as a base layer and then Tamiya clear red and clear blue (not green) for the lenses. The starboard lens is blue when it isn't lit. The reason for the darker silver is that something like chrome silver or aluminum makes the lights too "bright," for lack of a better word. Ben

True! Two companies I used to work for had airplanes named “Christine” for good reason. Ben

Those were the Batcat C-121Rs. Interesting history. One of these days I’m going to build the Da Nang Glider. Link to pdf doc Ben

So sorry for your loss. My condolences. Ben

The old Cutting Edge afterburners were underscale, too. Sierra Hotel made some nice afterburners, if you can find them. Everything I've seen from Reskit has been excellent. Speaking of Cutting Edge, don't bother with the F-4E conversion for the F-4C/D kit. The nose is a mess, just like the Revell nose. I once spent hours trying to fix the shape, but there were too many problems that just couldn't be fixed. Fortunately for me, Tamiya released the F-4E kit before I lost my mind battling the CE set. Ben

If you want to build an F-4E in 1/32, your best bet is to track down the Tamiya kit. As has previously been noted, the Revell/Academy kits have shape issues. The old 1970s-vintage Revell F-4E kit is best avoided, as is the out of production Cutting Edge conversion for the Tamiya F-4C/D. I once spent many hours trying to correct the shape of the Cutting Edge nose, but it just wasn't possible. There was way too much wrong with it. Ben

Congratulations! Welcome to the club! MARU5137's da Vinci quote is so true. Ben

When weight comes off of the wheels, the oleo extends fully. As the gear retracts, that shrink link compresses the oleo so it will fit in the gear well. Most kit manufacturers omit this little detail and they also put the "spur" of the shrink link on the strut centerline. It should be slightly outboard. Here's the best video I could find. You can see the main gear oleos compressing as the gear retracts. Ben

Correct! Ben

Just to help anyone in the future looking for Weasel F-100F info, I've added a scan of a photo of the rear instrument panel to my post above. Ben

I’m hoping Hasegawa will eventually release right hand drive versions of their two street RX-7 kits. Ben

One of my favorite cars at the VIR Gold Cup vintage races was a silver split bumper ‘70 Camaro. I think they said it had a 305 in it. It sounded soooo good at full speed down the front straight! Ben

Ben

Hi Jeroen, Sorry for the delay. Turns out, I didn't have a scan of the Hasegawa part, but I do have a pic of the straps made by Pierre "Madman" Gertreut (sp?). I don't recall if he posted his amazing F-4S conversion of Tamiya's F-4J on LSP, but it was an ongoing thread on the F-4 Phantom email list for a long time. I had forgotten I had taken some pics of the F-4S at Udvar Hazy, too. I can provide much larger versions of these if you need them. Ben

It should still be FS35237, the standard TPS upper color, however the paint faded like crazy. Your best bet might be to just eyeball it. Using the TPS colors right out of the bottles comes out way too dark for a plane that has spent more than a day or two in the sun. My plan for my Z-M F-4S is to start with the standard colors and add a lot of white. If you need any reference pics of the leading edge slats, I can post some of mine. I used strips of styrene under the leading edge to change the profile of the inboard slats on the Hasegawa kit I built a few years ago. For the outboards, I built up the slats a little with Milliput and sanded them to shape. I think I have a scan of the photo etched wing straps that came with the Hasegawa kit. I’ll post it when I find it, so you can reduce it to use as a pattern. Ben

Perhaps they could fund it by selling off all of those confiscated yachts and private jets for scrap? Ben

You might have better luck sending your artwork to someone who can print white. Here's a list I've put together of companies that can do this. I haven't dealt with any of them besides Indycals, as I haven't finished the artwork for the decals I want to print, but they've been recommended by others. Most of them require the artwork to be in a vector graphics file or a pdf. Note that some of these are in Europe. https://www.indycals.net/ https://highballgraphics.com/index.php/custom-decals/custom-waterslide-decals https://switchlinedecals.com/3-amigos-decals/ http://www.circletrackdecals.com/index.html https://tailormadedecals.webshopapp.com/en/ https://www.spotmodel.com/index.php?cPath=565 http://www.bvh-decals.de/index.php?id=579 Ben