Nostromo Main Air Lock 1:18 scale update - as I begin building the ceiling to the air lock I have noticed it doesn't give way to much of the clear acrylic canopy I originally intended for the piece - so I will have to add the light sources as close to the original production piece as possible. 2 Nano LEDs on each side so far. Just plotting them at this point - more to come and will be the last item to be installed after the piece has been built and painted. #alien #mainairlock #nostromo

Ka-chow!

Cut from 2mm styrene sheet using an Olfa cutter.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

When the U.S. 8th Air Force re-opened its bombing campaign on Germany in early 1944 with the Big Week offensive, the bombers returned to the skies with the long-range P-51 Mustang in escort, and now performing air supremacy offensive "fighter sweeps" well ahead of the 8th Air Force's combat box massed bomber formations, intended to clear the skies well ahead of the bombers of any Luftwaffe opposition.

Compared to the He 162, handling and rate of climb were much improved, thanks to a much bigger wing area. Overall performance became also slightly better, since the He 273 was lighter than the conventional He 162. MTOW could even be increased, so that the canard fighter was even able to carry an external ordnance under its fuselage.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1, pilot

Length (incl. pitot): 7,98 m (26 ft 4¼ in)

Wingspan: 7.63 m (25 ft)

Height: 2.6 m (8 ft 6 in)

Wing area: 16.4 m² (177 ft²)

Empty weight: 1.570 kg (3.458 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 3.000 kg (6.607 lb)

Powerplant:

1× BMW 003E-1 axial flow turbojet, rated at 7.85 kN (1,760 lbf)

Fuel capacity of 695 litres (183 US gallons)

Performance:

Maximum speed: 790 km/h (491 mph) at normal thrust at sea level; 840 km/h (522 mph) at 6000 m; using short burst extra thrust 890 km/h (553 mph) at sea level and 905 km/h (562 mph) at 6000 m. (562 mph)

Range: 1.050 km (652 mi)

Service ceiling: 12.500 m (10.900 400 ft)

Rate of climb: 1.650 m/min (5.400 ft/min)

Armament:

2× 20 mm MG 151/20 autocannons with 120 rpg (He 273 A-1) or 2× 30 mm MK 108 cannons with 50 rpg (He 273 A-2); provision for a 500kg (1.101 lb) hardpoint under the fuselage for a drop tank, bombs, a rack with 24 R4M unguided missiles or a gun pod.

The kit and its assemby:

A small, totally fictional Luft '46 build - and actually not my original idea, it is based on a similarly modified He 162 kit that fellow user Tophe at whatifmodelers.com built in 1977(!) and had posted in 2005 - I stumbled across an image of that little thing and was inspired. Tophe's model had the original wings installed, though, moved backwards, while the horizontal stabilizer was fixe under the nose, very straightforward.

Anyway, I liked the idea, but wanted to take it a step further. The basis is the simple He 162 kit from Hobby Boss, which is O.K. but lacks any cockpit interior, and the canopy is a bit thick. But the surface details are good, the landing gear is fine, and for this conversion project it was a good basis.

The wing surfaces were totally changed, though: the swept main wings come from a Revell G.91, with the original landing gear wells closed and the original He 162's fins added as end plates. The canard foreplanes are stabilizers from an Italeri Fw 190, and in my case fixed to the nose flanks. I tested several options, including swept canards, but the straight solution eventually looked the most plausible to me, reminding of the J7W Shinden's layout.

The fuselage (it is a massive piece of styrene!) was simply cut away behind the engine and sanded into an aerodynamic shape.

In the rough cockpit a small pilot figure was implanted (covering up the emptiness inside...), and a dashboard with a gunsight added.

The rest was taken OOB, except for finer antennae and pitot replacements, and a mesh cover in the air intake. The latter is a nice detail I found on real life He 162 pictures, the round piece was simply punched out of a piece of plastic meshwork.

Painting and markings:

I did not want to use the typical, uniform He 162 look, even though I wanted a typical late Luftwaffe look. I used a Me 163 Komet profile as benchmark for the paint scheme, which is standard RLM 81/82/76 (all Model Master enamels). The hard-edged blotches were painted with brush and by hand onto the grey basis, and the kit received a light weathering through a light black ink wash and some dry-painting. Nothing fancy. All interior surfaces were painted in dark grey (RLM 66), the decals were puzzled together from various sheets, including markings from a Revell Me 262 and squadron emblems from a TL Modellbau sheet.

A nice and simple model project, done in about a week. Even though it is not a "real" Luft '46 design this He 162 conversion has some very plausible look about it? Who knows...?

This craft idea from Japanese KIMEKOMI craft.

The history of kimekomi (pronounced kee may ko mee) dates back to the first half of the eighteenth century. Kimekomi originated with dolls. A wooden base was carved into and fabric was then used to decorate the doll-clothing, face, hair, etc.

Kimekomi means “tuck in” in Japanese. They also may be known as “quilt balls”

I made this with a chirimen material tucked into styrene form ball. I scooped out the inside for the box.

This is a very delicate craft, don't throw it like a baseball!

5.5cm diameter

Some background:

Simple, efficient and reliable, the Regult (リガード, Rigādo) was the standard mass production mecha of the Zentraedi forces. Produced by Esbeliben at the 4.432.369th Zentraedi Fully Automated Weaponry Development and Production Factory Satellite in staggering numbers to fill the need for an all-purpose mecha, this battle pod accommodated a single Zentraedi soldier in a compact cockpit and was capable of operating in space or on a planet's surface. The Regult saw much use during Space War I in repeated engagements against the forces of the SDF-1 Macross and the U.N. Spacy, but its lack of versatility against superior mecha often resulted in average effectiveness and heavy losses. The vehicle was regarded as expendable and was therefore cheap, simple, but also very effective when fielded in large numbers. Possessing minimal defensive features, the Regult was a simple weapon that performed best in large numbers and when supported by other mecha such as Gnerl Fighter Pods. Total production is said to have exceeded 300 million in total.

At the end of Space War I in January 2012, production of the Regult for potential Earth defensive combat continued when the seizure operation of the Factory Satellite was executed. After the war, Regults were used by both U.N. Spacy and Zentraedi insurgents. Many surviving units were incorporated into the New U.N. Forces and given new model numbers. The normal Regult became the “Zentraedi Battle Pod” ZBP-104 (often just called “Type 104”) and was, for example, used by Al-Shahal's New U.N. Army's Zentraedi garrison. The related ZBP-106 was a modernized version for Zentraedi commanders, with built-in boosters, additional Queadluun-Rhea arms and extra armaments. These primarily replaced the Glaug battle pod, of which only a handful had survived. By 2067, Regult pods of all variants were still in operation among mixed human/Zentraedi units.

General characteristics:

Accommodation: pilot only, in standard cockpit in main body

Overall Height: 18.2 meters

Overall Length: 7.6 meters

Overall Width: 12.6 meters

Max Weight: 39.8 metric tons

Powerplant & propulsion:

1x 1.3 GGV class Ectromelia thermonuclear reaction furnace,

driving 2x main booster Thrusters and 12x vernier thrusters

Performance:

unknown

Armament:

None

Special Equipment and Features:

Standard all-frequency radar antenna

Standard laser long-range sensor

Ectromelia infrared, visible light and ultraviolet frequency sensor cluster

ECM/ECCM suite

The kit and its assembly:

I had this kit stashed away for a couple of years, together with a bunch of other 1:100 Zentraedi pods of all kinds and the plan to build a full platoon one day – but this has naturally not happened so far and the kits were and are still waiting. The “Reconnaissance & Surveillance” group build at whatifmodellers.com in August 2021 was a good occasion and motivation to tackle the Tactical Scout model from the pile, though, as it perfectly fits the GB’s theme and also adds an exotic science fiction/anime twist to the submissions.

The kit is an original ARII boxing from 1983, AFAIK the only edition of this model. One might expect this kit to be a variation of the 1982 standard Regult (sometimes spelled “Reguld”) kit with extra parts, but that’s not the case – it is a new mold with different parts and technical solutions, and it offers optional parts for the standard Regult pod as well as the two missile carrier versions that were published at the same time, too. The Tactical Scout uses the same basis, but it comes with parts exclusive for this variant (hull and a sprue with the many antennae and sensors).

I remembered from a former ARII Regult build in the late Eighties that the legs were a wobbly affair. Careful sprue inspection revealed, however, that this second generation comes with some sensible detail changes, e. g. the feet, which originally consisted of separate toe and heel sections (and these were hollow from behind/below!). To my biggest surprise the knees – a notorious weak spot of the 1st generation Regult kit – were not only held by small and flimsy vinyl caps anymore: These were replaced with much bigger vinyl rings, fitted into sturdy single-piece enclosures made from a tough styrene which can even be tuned with small metal screws(!), which are included in the kit. Interesting!

But the joy is still limited: even though the mold is newer, fit is mediocre at best, PSR is necessary on every seam. However, the good news is that the kit does not fight with you. The whole thing was mostly built OOB, because at 1:100 there's little that makes sense to add to the surface, and the kit comes with anything you'd expect on a Regult Scout pod. I just added some lenses and small stuff behind the large "eye", which is (also to my surprise) a clear part. The stuff might only appear in schemes on the finished model, but that's better than leaving the area blank.

Otherwise, the model was built in sub-sections for easier painting and handling, to be assembled in a final step – made possible by the kit’s design which avoids the early mecha kit’s “onion layer” construction, except for the feet. This is the only area that requires some extra effort, and which is also a bit tricky to assemble.

However, while the knees appear to be a robust construction, the kit showed some material weakness: while handling the leg assembly, one leg suddenly came off under the knees - turned out that the locator that holds the knee joint above (which I expected to be the weak point) completely broke off of the lower leg! Weird damage. I tried to glue the leg into place, but this did not work, and so I inserted a replacement for the broken. This eventually worked.

Painting and markings:

Colorful, but pretty standard and with the attempt to be authentic. However, information concerning the Regults’ paint scheme is somewhat inconsistent. I decided to use a more complex interpretation of the standard blue/grey Regult scheme, with a lighter “face shield” and some other details that make the mecha look more interesting. I used the box art and some screenshots from the Macross TV series as reference; the Tactical Scout pod already appears in episode #2 for the first time, and there are some good views at it, even though the anime version is highly simplified.

Humbrol enamels were used, including 48 (Mediterranean Blue), 196 (RAL 7035, instead of pure white), 40 (Pale Grey) and 27 (Sea Grey). The many optics were created with clear acrylics over a silver base, and the large frontal “eye” is a piece of clear plastic with a coat of clear turquoise paint, too.

The model received a black ink washing to emphasize details, engraved panel lines and recesses, as well as some light post-shading through dry-brushing. Some surface details were created with decal stripes, e. g. on the upper legs, or with a black fineliner, and some color highlights were distributed all over the hull, e. g. the yellowish-beige tips of the wide antenna or the bright blue panels on the upper legs.

The decals were taken OOB, and thanks to a translation chart I was able to decipher some of the markings which I’d interpret as a serial number and a unit code – but who knows?

Finally, the kit received an overall coat of matt acrylic varnish and some weathering/dust traces around the feet with simple watercolors – more would IMHO look out of place, due to the mecha’s sheer size in real life and the fact that the Regult has to be considered a disposable item. Either it’s brand new and shiny, or busted, there’s probably little in between that justifies serious weathering which better suits the tank-like Destroids.

A “normal” build, even though the model and the topic are exotic enough. This 2nd generation Regult kit went together easier than expected, even though it has its weak points, too. However, material ageing turned out to be the biggest challenge (after all, the kit is almost 40 years old!), but all problems could be overcome and the resulting model looks decent – and it has this certain Eighties flavor! :D

This is excess extruded Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) from a LEGO factory. The ABS pellets were heated in preparation for injection molding, but the liquid plastic was ejected from the machine before it could be injected into the mold. This is common when troubleshooting molds, and the waste plastic is typically discarded or sent for recycling at another company. Despite its fluid look, this ABS has cooled to about the typical hardness that you'd expect from LEGO bricks.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

In the early days of World War II, Royal Navy fighter requirements had been based on cumbersome two-seat designs, such as the fighter/dive-bomber Blackburn Skua (and its turreted derivative the Blackburn Roc) and the fighter/reconnaissance Fairey Fulmar, since it was expected that they would encounter only long-range bombers or flying boats and that navigation over featureless seas required the assistance of a radio operator/navigator. The Royal Navy hurriedly adopted higher-performance single-seat aircraft such as the Hawker Sea Hurricane and the less robust Supermarine Seafire alongside, but neither aircraft had sufficient range to operate at a distance from a carrier task force. The American Vought F4U Corsair was welcomed as a more robust and versatile alternative.

Most Corsair Vs were then relegated to the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) in August 1951, where they replaced Supermarine Seafires and took over their role as classic fighter aircraft, despite the Corsair V’s strike/attack potential with bombs and unguided missiles. Most of the time the Corsairs were used for lang range navigation training. RNVR units that operated the Corsair V included Nos. 1831, 1832, 1833, 1834, 1835 and 1836 Squadrons. No. 1832, based at RAF Benson, was the last RNVR squadron to relinquish the type in August 1955 for the jet-powered Supermarine Attacker, and this ended the Corsair V’s short career.

General characteristics:

Crew: One

Length: 34 ft (10.37 m)

Wingspan: 40 ft 8 in (12.10 m)

Height: 15 ft 4 in (4.68 m)

Wing area: 314 sq ft (29.17 m²)

Empty weight: 9,205 lb (4,238 kg)

Gross weight: 14,670 lb (6,654 kg)

Max takeoff weight: 14,533 lb (6,592 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Bristol Centaurus XVIII 18-cylinder air-cooled radial engine with

2,470 hp (1,840 kW) take-off power, driving a 4-bladed

Rotol constant-speed propeller with 14 ft (4.3 m) diameter

Performance:

Maximum speed: 453 mph (730 km/h, 397 kn) at sea level

Cruise speed: 215 mph (346 km/h, 187 kn) at sea level

Stall speed: 89 mph (143 km/h, 77 kn)

Range with internal fuel, clean: 1,005 mi (1,617 km, 873 nmi)

Combat range with max. ordnance: 328 mi (528 km, 285 nmi)

Service ceiling: 41,500 ft (12,600 m)

Rate of climb: 4,360 ft/min (22.1 m/s)

Armament:

4× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano Mk II cannon in the outer wings, 250 RPG

A total of 11 hardpoints under the wings and the fuselage for a total ordnance of

4,000 pounds (1.800 kg), including drop tanks, up to 16× 60 lb unguided aircraft rockets on twin

launch rails and/or bombs of up to 1.000 lb (454 kg) caliber

The kit and its assembly:

My first submission to the 2023 “Re-engine” group build at whatifmodellers.com, and a British Corsair with a Centaurus instead of the original R-2800 is almost a no-brainer. But taking the idea to hardware turned out to be a bit trickier than expected. I based my fictional conversion on an Italeri F4U-4, which would have been the appropriate late-WWII basis for a real-life conversion. The kit has good ex- and internal detail with fine engraved panels and offers the late Corsairs’ all-metal wings, too.

The engine replacement is a massive resin piece from OzMods, part of a conversion twin set for a Bristol Brigand; I assume it’s intended for the Valom kit? The set includes resin four-blade props with deep blades which I rather wanted to use than the Sea Fury’s typical five-blade prop.

The Italeri Corsair was basically built OOB, but beyond the different engine, which caused some trouble in itself (see below), I incorporated several mods to change the aircraft’s appearance. The streamlined Centaurus was insofar a problem because it has s slightly smaller diameter than the original R-2800 cowling. Not much, but enough to make a simple exchange impossible or at least look awkward. While the upper cowling section and its curvature blended well into the Corsair fuselage, the difference became more obvious and complicated underneath: late Corsairs have a “flattened” bottom, and from below the Centaurus appears somewhat undersized. To smooth the intersection out I grinded much of the cooling flaps away, and to even out the profile I added a shallow air scoop from an Italeri F4U-7 under the engine, which required some PSR. A good compromise, though. The resin propeller was mounted onto a metal axis and fitted into a hole/channel that was drilled through the Centaurus’ massive resin block.

As an FAA Corsair the wing tips were clipped, which was easy to realize thanks to the massive parts in this area. The Corsair’s original oil coolers in the wing roots were retained, but the four guns in the wings (separate parts in the Italeri kit with quite large holes) were replaced with faired Hispano cannon for/from an early Hawker Tempest, aftermarket brass parts from Master Models.

To change the model’s look further I modified the tail surfaces, too; the rounded fin was replaced with a rather square and slightly bigger donor, a stabilizer from a Novo Supermarine Attacker. The original stabilizers were replaced, too, with trapezoidal alternatives from a Matchbox Meteor night fighter, which offer slightly more area. Since the tail surfaces were all graft-ons now I implanted a vertical styrene tube behind the rear cockpit bulkhead as a display holder adapter for later flight scene pictures. Together with the clipped/squared-off wingtips the new tail creates a consistent look, and with the propeller and its dominant spinner in place the Corsair V reminds a lot of a late Bristol Firebrand mark or even of an Unlimited Class Reno Racer? It looks fast and purposeful now!

Even though unguided missiles and/or bombs could have been a valid ordnance option I decided to leave the Corsair V relatively clean as a pure gun fighter; I just used the OOB drop tank on the centerline station.

Painting and markings:

Very dry and using real 1948 Royal Navy aircraft as benchmark, the Corsair V ended up with a rather simple and dull Extra Dark Sea Grey over Sky (Humbrol 123 and 90, respectively) with a low waterline, and still with wartime Type C roundels with “Identification red (dull)”, even though the RAF officially had reverted to bright identification colors in 1947 and started to use the high-viz Type D roundel as standard marking. To add a British flavor the cockpit interior was painted in very dark grey (Revell 06, Tar Black) while the interior of the landing gear wells was painted in a pale cream yellow (Humbrol 74, Linen) to mimic zinc chromate primer. The only highlight is a red spinner, a contemporary unit marking of 805 NAS.

The kit received a light black ink washing and post-shading to emphasize and/or add surface structures, and this nicely breaks up the otherwise uniform surfaces. Decals/markings came from Xtradecal Hawker Sea Fury und late WWII FAA/RN aircraft sheets, and some decals were mixed to create a fictional serial number for the Corsair V (TF 632 was never allocated, but the code fits into the model’s era). Some light oil and exhaust stains were also added, but not as severely as if the aircraft had been operated under wartime conditions. Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish.

While a classic F4U with a British Centaurus engine sounds simple, and actually is, getting there was not as easy as it sounds – the ventral air scoop came to the rescue. With some more small mods like the new tail surfaces the aircraft got a subtly different look from its American ancestor(s). The Corsair V IMHO has now a very Blackburn-ish look, thanks to the big spinner and the square fin! And I wonder what I will do with the other Centaurus from the conversion set?

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some Background:

The Lockheed F-94 Starfire was a first-generation jet aircraft of the United States Air Force. It was developed from the twin-seat Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star in the late 1940s as an all-weather, day/night interceptor, replacing the propeller-driven North American F-82 Twin Mustang in this role. The system was designed to overtake the F-80 in terms of performance, but more so to intercept the new high-level Soviet bombers capable of nuclear attacks on America and her Allies - in particular, the new Tupelov Tu-4. The F-94 was furthermore the first operational USAF fighter equipped with an afterburner and was the first jet-powered all-weather fighter to enter combat during the Korean War in January 1953.

For better handling and less drag esp. at low altitude, the F-94B’s large Fletcher type wingtip tanks were frequently replaced with smaller ones with about half capacity. It also became common practice to operate the RF-94Bs with only a crew of one, and from 1960 on the RF-94B was, thanks to its second seat, more and more used as a trainer before pilots mounted more potent reconnaissance aircraft like the RF-101 Voodoo, which eventually replaced the RF-94B in ANG service. The last RF-94B was phased out in 1968, and, unlike the RF-84F, it was not operated by any foreign air force.

General characteristics:

Crew: 2 (but frequently operated by a single pilot)

Length: 43 ft 4 3/4 in (13.25 m)

Wingspan (with tip tanks): 40 ft 9 1/2 in (12.45 m)

Height: 12 ft. 2 (3.73 m)

Wing area: 234' 8" sq ft (29.11 m²)

Empty weight: 10,064 lb (4,570 kg)

Loaded weight: 15,330 lb (6,960 kg)

Max. takeoff weight: 24,184 lb (10,970 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Allison J33-A-33 turbojet, rated at 4,600 lbf (20.4 kN) continuous thrust,

5,400 lbf (24 kN) with water injection and 6,000 lbf (26.6 kN) thrust with afterburner

Performance:

Maximum speed: 630 mph (1,014 km/h) at height and in level flight

Range: 930 mi (813 nmi, 1,500 km) in combat configuration with two drop tanks

Ferry range: 1,457 mi (1,275 nmi, 2,345 km)

Service ceiling: 42,750 ft (14,000 m)

Rate of climb: 6,858 ft/min (34.9 m/s)

Wing loading: 57.4 lb/ft² (384 kg/m²)

Thrust/weight: 0.48

Armament:

No internal guns; 2x 165 US Gallon (1,204 liter) drop tanks on the wing tips and…

2x underwing hardpoints for two additional 165 US Gallon (1,204 liter) ferry tanks

or bombs of up to 1.000 lb (454 kg) caliber each, plus…

2x optional (rarely fitted) pods on the wings’ leading edges with either a pair of 0.5" (12.7 mm)

machine guns or twelve 2.75” (70 mm) Mk 4/Mk 40 Folding-Fin Aerial Rockets each

The kit and its assembly:

This project was originally earmarked as a submission for the 2021 “Reconnaissance & Surveillance” group build at whatifmodellers.com, in the form of a Heller F-94B with a new nose section. The inspiration behind this build was the real-world EF-94C (s/n 50-963): a solitary conversion with a bulbous camera nose. However, the EF-94C was not a reconnaissance aircraft but rather a chase plane/camera ship for the Air Research and Development Command, hence its unusual designation with the suffix “E”, standing for “Exempt” instead of the more appropriate “R” for a dedicated recce aircraft. There also was another EF-94C, but this was a totally different kind of aircraft: an ejection seat testbed.

I had a surplus Heller F-94B kit in The Stash™ and it was built almost completely OOB and did – except for some sinkholes and standard PSR work – not pose any problem. In fact, the old Heller Starfire model is IMHO a pretty good representation of the aircraft. O.K., its age might show, but almost anything you could ask for at 1:72 scale is there, including a decent, detailed cockpit.

The biggest change was the new camera nose, and it was scratched from an unlikely donor part: it consists of a Matchbox B-17G tail gunner station, slimmed down by the gunner station glazing's width at the seam in the middle, and this "sandwich" was furthermore turned upside down. Getting the transitional sections right took lots of PSR, though, and I added some styrene profiles to integrate the new nose into the rest of the hull. It was unintentional, but the new nose profile reminds a lot of a RF-101 recce Voodoo, and there's, with the straight wings, a very F-89ish look to the aircraft now? There's also something F2H-2ish about the outlines?

The large original wing tip tanks were cut off and replaced with smaller alternatives from a Hasegawa A-37. Because it was easy to realize on this kit I lowered the flaps, together with open ventral air brakes. The cockpit was taken OOB, I just modified the work station on the rear seat and replaced the rubber sight protector for the WSO with two screens for a camera operator. Finally, the one-piece cockpit glazing was cut into two parts to present the model with an open canopy.

Painting and markings:

This was a tough decision: either an NMF finish (the natural first choice), an overall light grey anti-corrosive coat of paint, both with relatively colorful unit markings, or camouflage. The USAF’s earlier RF-80As carried a unique scheme in olive drab/neutral grey with a medium waterline, but that would look rather vintage on the F-94. I decided that some tactical camouflage would make most sense on this kind of aircraft and eventually settled for the USAF’s SEA scheme with reduced tactical markings, which – after some field tests and improvisations in Vietnam – became standardized and was officially introduced to USAF aircraft around 1965 as well as to ANG units.

Even though I had already built a camouflaged F-94 some time ago (a Hellenic aircraft in worn SEA colors), I settled for this route. The basic colors (FS 30219, 34227, 34279 and 36622) all came from Humbrol (118, 117, 116 and 28, respectively), and for the pattern I adapted the paint scheme of the USAF’s probably only T-33 in SEA colors: a trainer based on Iceland during the Seventies and available as a markings option in one of the Special Hobby 1:32 T-33 kits. The low waterline received a wavy shape, inspired by an early ANG RF-101 in SEA camouflage I came across in a book. The new SEA scheme was apparently applied with a lot of enthusiasm and properness when it was brand new, but this quickly vaned. As an extra, the wing tip tanks received black anti-glare sections on their inner faces and a black anti-glare panel was added in front of the windscreen - a decal from a T-33 aftermarket sheet. Beyond a black ink wash the model received some subtle panel post-shading, but rather to emphasize surface details than for serious weathering.

The cockpit became very dark grey (Revell 06) while the landing gear wells were kept in zinc chromate green primer (Humbrol 80, Grass Green), with bright red (Humbrol 60, Matt Red) cover interiors and struts and wheels in aluminum (Humbrol 56). The interior of the flaps and the ventral air brakes became red, too.

The decals/markings came from a Special Hobby 1:72 F-86H; there’s a dedicated ANG boxing of the kit that comes with an optional camouflaged aircraft of the NY ANG, the least unit to operate the “Sabre Hog” during the Seventies. Since this 138th TFS formerly operated the F-94A/B, it was a perfect option for the RF-94B! I just used a different Bu. No. code on the fin, taken from a PrintScale A/T-37 set, and most stencils were perocured from the scrap box.

After a final light treatment with graphite around the afterburner for a more metallic shine of the iron metallic (Revell 97) underneath, the kit was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

A camouflaged F-94 is an unusual sight, but it works very well. The new/longer nose considerably changes the aircraft's profile, and even though the change is massive, the "Crocodile" looks surprisingly plausible, if not believable! And, despite the long nose, the aircraft looks pretty sleek, especially in the air.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Hawker Fury was a British biplane fighter aircraft used primarily by the Royal Air Force in the 1930s. It was a development of the earlier Hawker F.20/27 prototype fighter, replacing the radial engine of the F.20/27 with the new Rolls-Royce F.XI V-12 engine (later known as the Rolls-Royce Kestrel), which was also used by Hawker's new light bomber, the Hawker Hart. The new fighter prototype, known as the Hawker Hornet, first flew at Brooklands, Surrey, in March 1929. The Hornet was a single-engine biplane, with single bay wings. It was initially powered by a 420 hp (313 kW) Rolls-Royce F.XIC engine enclosed by a smooth, streamlined cowling, but was quickly re-engined with a 480 hp (358 kW) Kestrel IS.

The prototype was evaluated against the similarly powered Fairey Firefly II, being preferred because of its better handling and its all-metal structure, compared with the mainly wooden construction of the Firefly.

The Hornet was eventually won the competition and was purchased by the Air Ministry in early 1930. It was, however, subjected to more tests, with a small initial production order for 21 aircraft placed during 1930. At this stage the Hornet was renamed Fury, as the Air Ministry wanted fighter names that "reflected ferocity". The ultimate production Fury Mk. I made its maiden flight at Brooklands on 25 March 1931.

The other active Yugoslav Fury squadron at the time of the invasion strafed enemy tanks and ground forces, some aircraft being lost to ground fire and one was destroyed in a dogfight with an Italian Fiat CR.42. The rest of the Yugoslav Furies were destroyed at the time of Armistice on 15 April or when they became unserviceable.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 26 ft 7 in (8.11 m)

Wingspan: 30 ft 0 in (9.14 m)

Height: 10 ft 2 in (3.10 m)

Wing area: 252 sq ft (23.4 m²)

Empty weight: 2,9514 lb (1,340 kg)

Max takeoff weight: 3,814 lb (1,732 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Bristol Mercury IX 9-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine, 830 hp (620 kW)

Performance:

Maximum speed: 253 mph (407 km/h, 220 kn) at 14,500 ft (4,420 m)

Range: 270 mi (430 km, 230 nmi)

Service ceiling: 32,800 ft (10,000 m)

Time to altitude: 3 min 35 sec. to 10,000 ft (3,000 m)

Armament:

4× 0.303 in (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns; two in the upper front fuselage, synchronized to fire

through the propeller disc with 600 RPG, plus one with 400 RPG beneath each lower wing

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was based on the remnants of a Matchbox Hawker Fury biplane, which had donated its engine to another build, and leftover pieces from at least two Matchbox Gloster Gladiator kits, all mashed into one to create a fictional late Fury variant with a radial engine and some other updates. The Fury kit is a late Revell re-boxing, and while it retained the crisp details of the original, the molds seem to have suffered a little because the fuselage halves did not fit well and called for considerable PSR.

The Fury – or what was left of it – was built OOB, I just had to improvise the cowling ahead of the cockpit and scratch a front end to replace the inline engine. This was done with a piece from a bulbous (probably 1:48) drop tank, which was tailored to take the upper wing struts, and the rest of the fuselage was sculpted with 2C putty around an engine mount at the core, which was made from styrene profiles.

The different engine was 100% taken from a Matchbox Gladiator, even though I added a matching grid from another 9-cylinder radial for a different look. The three-blade propeller is new, too, probably from a Hobby Boss Fw 190A. From another Gladiator came the underwing machine gun pods as well as the Dowty wheels, which look more modern than the Fury’s OOB wheels. For an even more modernized look I replaced the Fury’s tailskid with a self-castoring tailwheel – apparently from a Gladiator, too.

The exhaust pipes were scratched from wire, the carburetor intake for the Mercury engine is a piece of sprue and the ventral oil cooler is a piece from a backrest (from a Matchbox Heinkel 70).

Painting and markings:

While the idea of an update Fury was quickly settled and defined by the ingredients at hand, finding a suitable operator was not an easy task. I considered various options and eventually settled for Yugoslavia, because this country was major Fury operator and I had appropriate national markings at hand.

The tri-color camouflage was based on the individual und very disruptive schemes that Yugoslavian Hawker Hurricanes carried. Information concerning the colors is quite contradictive, but AFAIK the schemes consisted of a yellowish sand brown, a medium khaki green and a dark, reddish brown, over light blue undersides with a low, wavy waterline raising from the wings to the stabilizers. Every aircraft carried a different pattern, and some machines of British origin also carried the former Temperate Land Scheme (Dark Green/Dark Earth/alu dope undersides), at least for a while.

I used Humbrol 63 (Sand), Modelmaster 2027 (FS 34096, Dark Olive) and Modelmaster 2106 (Burnt Umber), over Humbrol 87 (Steel Grey), because I wanted colors with good contrast from each other. The cockpit interior became anthracite (Revell 09), while the wing struts were painted in a dirty black (Revell 06).

The “windmill” roundels for the wings came from an Xtradecal sheet for Bristol Blenheims, the small fin flash was created with single decal stripes in red, white and blue, trying to match the roundels’ colors. The roman codes were typical for the Hurricanes between 1938-40 and created with single white letters from TL Modellbau. According to the typical Yugoslavian liveries of the era, the aircraft did, beyond national markings and tactical codes, not carry any colorful decoration, but I could not resist and added small unit badges in front of the fin flash.

The model received a light ink washing to emphasize the nice fabric structure on the wings, as well as some post-shading and weathering through dry-brushing with beige. Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish and the rigging was added, created with heated and stretched black sprue material.

A relatively simple and quick build, and an attempt to “create something plausible” from leftover stuff. While Yugoslavia is not the most exotic operator of the Fury, I think that the fictional aircraft looks good in these colors and markings, even though the bulky radial really kills the Fury’s elegant lines, esp. its streamlined nose section. It looks quite backdated and reminds of a juvenile Fairey Swordfish?

1:34 scale 2-yard rear-load dumpster converted to a front-load dumpster built out of styrene plastic. Done up with Waste Management of Kennewick "Single Stream Recycling" decals

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

After World War I, the German aircraft industry had several problems. German airlines were forbidden to operate multi engine aircraft and during a period all manufacturing of aircraft in Germany was banned. By 1921, some of the restrictions was lifted, civilian aircraft could be made after approval of an international control commission if they fulfilled certain requirements. To bypass these rules and to be able to make whatever aircraft they wanted several aircraft manufacturers moved abroad. In 1921, Carl Bücker handled the purchase of a reconnaissance aircraft from Caspar-Werke in Travemünde. Because they expected problems due to the rules in the peace treaty regarding the export of German fighter aircraft, Bücker explored the possibility to smuggle the parts out of Germany and assemble the aircraft in Sweden.

Because the airframes were still young and had a lot of service life ahead of them, most SA-16s were from 1941 on relegated to patrol and reconnaissance missions along the Swedish coastlines, observing ship and aircraft traffic in the Baltic Sea and undertaking rescue missions with droppable life rafts. For long-range missions, the forked ventral swing arm was replaced with a fixed plumbed pylon for an external 682 liters (150 Imp. gal.) auxiliary tank that more than doubled the aircraft’s internal fuel capacity of 582 liters, giving it an endurance of around 8 hours. In many cases, the machine guns on these aircraft were removed to save weight. In this configuration the SA-16 was re-designated S 9 (“S” for Spaning) and the machines served in their naval observation and SAR role well into the Fifties, when the last SA-16s were retired.

General characteristics:

Crew: two, pilot and observer

Length: 9,58 m (31 ft 11 in)

Wingspan: 10,67 m (34 ft 11 in)

Height: 3,82 m (12 ft 6 in)

Wing area: 30.2 m² (325 sq ft)

Empty weight: 2,905 kg (6,404 lb)

Gross weight: 4,245 kg (9,359 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 4,853 kg (10,700 lb)

Powerplant:

1× Bristol Mercury XII nine-cylinder radial engine with 880 hp (660 kW),

driving a three-bladed variable pitch metal propeller

u>Performance:

Maximum speed: 319 km/h (198 mph, 172 kn) at 3,650 m (11,980 ft)

274 km/h (170 mph; 148 kn) at sea level

299 km/h (186 mph; 161 kn) at 2,000 m (6,600 ft)

308 km/h (191 mph; 166 kn) at 5,000 m (16,000 ft)

Stall speed: 110 km/h (68 mph, 59 kn)

Range: 1,260 km (780 mi, 680 nmi)

Service ceiling: 7,300 m (24,000 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in 4 minutes 45 seconds

4,000 m (13,000 ft) in 15 minutes 10 seconds

Armament:

2× fixed 8 mm (0.315 in) Flygplanskulspruta Ksp m/22F (M1919 Browning AN/M2) machine guns

in the wings outside of the propeller disc (with 600 RPG), plus

1× 8 mm (0.315 in) Ksp m/22F machine gun on a flexible mount in the rear cockpit with 800 rounds

Ventral and underwing hardpoints for a total external bomb load of 700 kg (1,500 lb)

The kit and its assembly:

This purely fictional Swedish dive bomber was inspired by reading about Flygvapnet‘s pre-WWII trials with dive bombing tactics and the unsuited aircraft fleet for this task. When I found a Hasegawa SOC Seagull floatplane in The Stash™ and looks at the aircraft’s profile, I thought that it could be converted into a two-seat monoplane – what would require massive changes, though.

However, I liked the SOC’s boxy and rustic look, esp. the fuselage, and from this starting point other ingredients/donors were integrated. Work started with the tail. Originally, I wanted to retain the SOCs fin and stabilizer, but eventually found them oversized for a land-based airplane. In the scrap box I found a leftover fin from an Academy P-47, and it turned out to be a very good, smaller alternative, with the benefit that it visually lengthened the rear fuselage. The stabilizers were replaced with leftover parts from a NOVO Supermarine Attacker – an unlikely choice, but their size was good, they blended well into the overall lines of the aircraft, and they helped to stabilize the fin donor. Blending these new parts into to SOC’s hull required massive PSR, though.

The wings were also not an easy choice, and initially I planned the aircraft with a retractable landing gear. I eventually settled on the outer wings (just outside of the gullwing kink) from an MPM Ju 87 B, because of their shape and the archaic “double wings” that would complement the SOC’s rustic fuselage. However, at this point I refrained from the retractable landing gear and instead went for a fixed spatted alternative, left over from an Airfix Hs 123, which would round up the aircraft’s somewhat vintage look. Because the wheels were missing, I inserted two Matchbox MiG-21 wheels (which were left over in the spares bin from two different kits, though). The tail wheel came from an Academy Fw 190.

Cowling and engine inside (thankfully a 9-cylinder radial that could pose as a Mercury) were taken OOB, just the original two-blade propeller was replaced with a more appropriate three-blade alternative, IIRC from a Hobby Boss Grumman F4F. The cockpit was taken OOB, and I also used the two pilot figures from the kit. The rear crew member just had the head re-positioned to look sideways, and had to have the legs chopped off because there’s hardly and space under the desk with the radio set he’s sitting at.

The ventral 500 kg bomb came from a Matchbox Ju 87, the bomb arms are Fw 189 landing gear parts. Additional underwing pylons came from an Intech P-51, outfitted with 50 kg bombs of uncertain origin (they look as if coming from an old Hasegawa kit). The protruding machine gun barrel fairings on the wings were scratched from styrene rod material, with small holes drilled into them.

A real Frankenstein creation, but it does not look bad or implausible!

Painting and markings:

I gave the B 9 a camouflage that was carried by some Flygvapnet aircraft in the late Thirties, primarily by fighters imported from the United States but also some bombers like the B 3 (Ju 86). The IMHO quite attractive scheme consists on the upper surfaces of greenish-yellow zinc chromate primer (Humbrol 81, FS 33481), on top of which a dense net of fine dark green wriggles (supposed to be FS 34079, but I rather used Humbrol 163, RAF Dark Green, because it is more subdued) was manually applied with a thin brush, so that the primer would still shine through, resulting in a mottled camouflage.

On the real aircraft, this was sealed with a protective clear lacquer to which 5% of the dark green had been added, and I copied this procedure on the model, too, using semi-gloss acrylic varnish with a bit of Revell 46 added. The camouflage was wrapped around the wings’ leading edges and the spatted landing gear was painted with the upper camouflage, too.

The undersides were painted with Humbrol 87 (Steel Grey), to come close to the original blue-grey tone, which is supposed to be FS 35190 on this type of camouflage. The tone is quite dark, almost like RAF PRU Blue.

The interior was painted – using a Saab J 21 cockpit as benchmark – in a dark greenish grey (RAL 7009).

The model received the usual light black ink washing and some post-panel shading on the lower surfaces, because this effect would hardly be recognizable on the highly fragmented upper surface.

The markings are reflecting Flygvapnet’s m/37 regulations, from the direct pre-WWII era when the roundels had turned from black on white to yellow on blue but still lacked the yellow edge around the roundel for more contrast. F6 Västgöta flygflottilj was chosen because it was a dive bomber unit in the late Thirties, and the individual aircraft code (consisting of large white two-digit numbers) was added with the fin and the front of the fuselage. “27” would indicate an aircraft of the unit’s 2nd division, which normally had blue as a standardized color code, incorporated through the blue bands on the spats and the small "2nd div." tag on the rudder (from a contemporary F8 Swedish Gladiator).

Roundels and codes came from an SBS Models sheet, even though they belong to various aircraft types. Everything was finally sealed with matt acrylic varnish.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

After the division of Czechoslovakia by Germany in 1939, Slovakia was left with a small air force composed primarily of Czechoslovak combat aircraft. This force defended Slovakia against Hungary in March 1939, in the Slovak–Hungarian War in March 1939 in which Hungary reoccupied Carpathian Ruthenia and parts of southern Slovakia. In this the SVZ suffered some losses against Royal Hungarian Air Force. Later, the SVZ also took part in the German Invasion of Poland. The SVZ took part in Axis offensives in the Ukraine and Russian Central front sectors of the Eastern Front under the lead of Luftwaffe in the Stalingrad and Caucasus operations. This engagement resulted in great losses of aircraft and personnel, though.

Since Hs 123 production had already stopped in 1940 and all tools had been destroyed, the permanent attritions could not be replaced - due to a lack of serviceable airframes and spare parts the type’s numbers dwindled. When Romania and the Soviet Union entered Slovakia, they organized with some captured aircraft and defectors a local Insurgent Air Force to continue the fight against Axis forces in country, including the last operational Slovak Hs 123s. No aircraft survived the war.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.33 m (27 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 10.5 m (34 ft 5 in)

Height: 3.2 m (10 ft 6 in)

Wing area: 24.85 m² (267.5 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,500 kg (3,307 lb)

Gross weight: 2,215 kg (4,883 lb)

Powerplant:

1× BMW 132Dc 9-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine with 660 kW (880 hp),

driving a 2-bladed metal variable-pitch propeller

Performance:

Maximum speed: 341 km/h (212 mph, 184 kn) at 1,200 m (3,937 ft)

Range: 860 km (530 mi, 460 nmi) with a 100 l drop tank

Combat range: 480 km (300 mi, 260 nmi) with 200 kg (440.9 lb) of bombs

Service ceiling: 9,000 m (30,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 15 m/s (3,000 ft/min)

Armament:

2× 7.92 mm MG 17 machine guns, 400 rpg

Up to 450 kg (992.1 lb) of bombs under fuselage and wings

The kit and its assembly:

A relatively simple what-if project, and it took a while to figure out something to do with a surplus Airfix Hs 123 A kit in The Stash™ without a proper plan yet. The Hs 123 is an overlooked aircraft, and the fact that all airframes were used during WWII until none was left makes a story in Continental Europe a bit difficult. I also did not want to create a German aircraft – Finland was an early favorite, because I wanted to add a ski landing gear (see below), but since I won’t build anything with a swastika on it this option was a dead end. Then I considered an operator from the Balkans, e. g. Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia or Slovakia – and eventually settled for the latter because of the national markings.

The kit was built almost OOB, and the Airfix Hs 123 is a nice offering. Yes, it’s a simple kit, but its is IMHO a very good representation, despite the many rivets on the hull, a rather bleak interior and some sinkholes (e. g. on the massive outer wings struts). It goes together well, just a little PSR here and there. I just added a dashboard (scratched from styrene sheet) and modified the OOB 50 kg bombs with extended impact fuzes with a flat, round plate at the tip, so that the bomb itself explodes above soft ground or snow for a bigger blast radius.

The only major modification is a transplanted ski landing gear from a PM Model (Finnish) Fokker D.XXI, which had to be reduced in length to fit under the compact Hs 123. A small tail ski/skid was scratched from styrene sheet material.

Thankfully, the Hs 123 only calls for little rigging – just between the central upper wing supports and there is a characteristic “triangle” wiring in the cowling. All these, together with the wire antenna, were created with heated sprue material.

Painting and markings:

Finland had been a favorite because I would have been able to apply a more interesting paint scheme than the standard Luftwaffe RLM 70/71/65 splinter scheme with a low waterline that was typical for the Hs 123 during WWII. However, as a former Luftwaffe aircraft I retained this livery but decided to add a winter camouflage as a suitable thematic supplement to the skis.

The basic colors became Humbrol 65 underneath and 30 and 75 from above – the latter for a stronger contrast to the Dunkelgrün than Humbrol 91 (Schwarzgrün). Thanks to the additional whitewash mottles, which were inspired by a similar livery seen on a contemporary Bulgarian Avia B.534, I did not have to be too exact with the splinter camouflage.

The cockpit and cowling interior were painted with RLM 02 (Humbrol 240), the propeller blades became Schwarzgrün (Humbrol 91, further darkened with some black) and the bombs were painted in a dark grey (Revell 77) while the small 100 l drop tank became bare aluminum (Revell 99).

However, before the white mottles could be added, the kit received its decals so that they could be painted around the markings, just as in real life. The Slovak national markings had to be scratched, and I used standard white simplified German Balkenkreuze over a cross made from blue decal stripes. Later a separate red decal circle was placed on top of that. The only other markings are the red “7” codes, edged in white for better contrast (from a Heller Bf 109 K) and the fuel information triangles on the fuselage from the Hs 123’s OOB sheet. As an ID marking for an Eastern Front Axis aircraft, I retained the wide yellow fuselage stripe from the OOB, sheet, too, and added yellow tips on the upper wings’ undersides.

The whitewash camouflage was then created with white acrylic paint (Revell 05), applied with a soft brush with a rounded tip. Once this had dried, I treated the surfaces with fine wet sandpaper for a weathered/worn look.

Finally, after some soot stains behind the exhausts and around the machine gun nozzles, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish and the rigging (see above) was done.

The Hs 123 might not be the sexiest aircraft of WWII, but I like this rugged pug which could not be replaced by its successor, the Ju 87, and served in its close support role until literally no aircraft was left. Putting one on skis worked quite well, and the exotic Slovak markings add a special touch – even though the national markings almost disappear among the disruptive whitewash camouflage! The result looks quite plausible, though, and the old Airfix kit is IMHO really underestimated.

I had imagined doing models of all the component molecules of ABS, (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) but this is the smallest of them and uses over 500 pieces. I don't have nearly enough plate to do the others, not even one at a time. So this is a permanently unfinished project.

Custom 1:34 scale dumpster, handmade out of styrene for use with the First Gear Diecast 1:34 scale front-load garbage truck. This one is a 2-yard "cardboard only" recycling dumpster. This was a rear-load dumpster converted to a front-load dumpster.

Astell & Kern's latest universal in ear monitor, Michelle Limited. I've not had any ears-on time, but because of a last-minute magazine shoot, I got to handle it for a while. Pretty great looking. Let's hope it sounds good.

Strobist:

Profoto D1 x2, one aimed object below (to get the bottom line) through styrene, and one aimed almost straight down at the earphone behind two tilted styrene boards.

Camera: Novoflex BALPRO T/S

Capture: Leica SL

Lens: Sinaron 100/4 Digital (M39 barrel)

This screw together model kit is essentially a copy of Tamiya kit MM70, U.S. Armoured Personnel Carrier M3A2 Half Track 1/35 year 1975. Blu Ray released this years ago as a motorized kit marked incorrectly as 1/32 scale. The major issue is the flush level floor that covered the motor and battery box. I cut the floor in 3 pieces and used a piece of sheet styrene to make the floor closer to the way it should be. I had fun with this kit, and didn't go too crazy with the modifications.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Lockheed XFV (sometimes erroneously referred to as the "Salmon", even though this was actually the name of one of its test pilots and not an official designation) was an American experimental tailsitter prototype aircraft built by Lockheed in the early 1950s to demonstrate the operation of a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) fighter for protecting convoys.

As a historic side note, the FV-2’s detachable wing tip gun pods had a longer and more successful service life: they were the basis for the Mk.4 HIPEG (High Performance External Gun) gun pods. This weapon system’s main purpose became strafing ground targets, and it received a different attachment system for underwing hardpoints and a bigger ammunition supply (750 RPG instead of just 250 on the FV-2). Approximately 1.200 Mk. 4 twin gun pods were manufactured by Hughes Tool Company, later Hughes Helicopter, in Culver City, California. While the system was tested and certified for use on the A-4, the A-6, the A-7, the F-4, and the OV-10, it only saw extended use on the A-4, the F-4, and the OV-10, esp. in Vietnam where the Mk. 4 pod was used extensively for close air support missions.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length/Height: 36 ft 10.25 in (11.23 m)

Wingspan: 30 ft 10.1 in (9.4 m)

Wing area: 246 sq ft (22.85 m²)

Empty weight: 12,388 lb (5,624 kg)

Gross weight: 17,533 lb (7,960 kg)

Max. takeoff weight: 18,159 lb (8,244 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Allison T54-A-16 turboprop with 7,500 shp (5,600 kW) output equivalent,

driving a 6 blade contra-rotating propeller

Performance:

Maximum speed: 585 mph (941 km/h, 509 kn

Cruise speed: 410 mph (660 km/h, 360 kn)

Range: 500 mi (800 km, 430 nmi) with internal fuel

800 mi (1,300 km, 700 nmi) with ferry wing tip tanks

Service ceiling: 46,800 ft (14,300 m)

Rate of climb: 12,750 ft/min (75.0 m/s)

Wing loading: 73.7 lb/sq ft (360 kg/m²)

Armament:

4× 20 mm (.79 in) Mk. 11 machine cannon with a total of 1.000 rounds, or

48× 2.75 in (70 mm) rockets in wingtip pods, or

a pair of 200 US gal. (165 imp. gal./750 l) auxiliary tanks on the wing tips

The kit and its assembly:

Another submission to the “Fifties” group build at whatifmodellers-com, and a really nice what-if aircraft that perfectly fits into the time frame. I had this Pegasus kit in The Stash™ for quite a while and the plan to build an operational USN or USMC aircraft from it in the typical all-dark-blue livery from the early Fifties, and the group build was a good occasion to realize it.

The Pegasus kit was released in 1992, the only other option to build the XFV in 1:72 is a Valom kit which, as a bonus, features the aircraft’s fixed landing gear that was used during flight trials. The Pegasus offering is technically simple and robust, but it is nothing for those who are faint at heart. The warning that the kit requires an experienced builder is not to be underestimated, because the IP kit from the UK comes with white metal parts and no visual instructions, just a verbal description of the building steps. The IP parts (including the canopy, which is one piece, quite thick but also clear) and the decals look good, though.

The IP parts feature flash and uneven seam lines, sprue attachment points are quite thick. The grey IP material had on my specimen different grades of hard-/brittleness, the white metal parts (some of the propeller blades) were bent and had to be re-aligned. No IP parts would fit well (there are no locator pins or other physical aids), the cockpit tub was a mess to assemble and fit into the fuselage. PSR on any seam all around the hull. But even though this sound horrible, the kit goes together relatively easy – thanks to its simplicity.

I made some mods and upgrades, though. One of them was an internal axis construction made from styrene tubes that allow the two propeller discs to move separately (OOB, you just stack and glue the discs onto each other into a rigid nose cone), while the propeller tip with its radome remained fixed – just as in real life. However, due to the parts’ size and resistance against each other, the props could not move as freely as originally intended.

Separate parts for the air intakes as well as the wings and tail surfaces could be mounted with less problems than expected, even though - again – PSR was necessary to hide the seams.

Painting and markings:

As already mentioned, the livery would be rather conservative, because I wanted the aircraft to carry the uniform USN scheme in all-over FS 35042 with white markings, which was dropped in 1955, though. The XFV or a potential serial production derivative would just fit into this time frame, and might have carried the classic all-blue livery for a couple of years more, especially when operated by an evaluation unit. Its unit, VX-8, is totally fictional, though.

The cockpit interior was painted in Humbrol 80 (simulating bright zinc chromate primer), and to have some contrasts I added small red highlights on the fin pod tips and the gun pods' anti-flutter winglets. For some more variety the radome became earth brown with some good weathering, simulating an opaque perspex hood, and I added white (actually a very light gray) checkerboard markings on the "propeller rings", a bit inspired by the spinner markings on German WWII fighters. Subtle, but it looks good and breaks the otherwise very simple livery.

Some post-panel-shading with a lighter blue was done all over the hull, the exhaust area and the gun ports were painted with iron (Revell 91) and treated with graphite for a more metallic shine.

Silver decal stripe material was used to create the CoroGuard leading edges and the fine lines at the flaps on wings and fins - much easier than trying to solve this with paint and brush...

The decals were puzzled together from various dark blue USN aircraft, including a F8F, F9F and F4U sheet. The "XH" code was created with single 1cm hwite letters, the different font is not obvious, thanks to the letter combination.

Finally, the model was sealed with semi-gloss acrylic varnish (still shiny, but not too bright), the radome and the exhaust area were painted with matt varnsh, though.

A cool result, despite the rather dubious kit base. The Pegasus kit is seriously something for experienced builders, but the result looks convincing. The blue USN livery suits the XFV/FV-2 very well, it looks much more elegant than in the original NMF - even though it would, in real life, probably have received the new Gull Gray/White scheme (introduced in late 1955, IIRC, my FV-2 might have been one of the last aircraft to be painted blue). However, the blue scheme IMHO points out the aircraft's highly aerodynamic teardrop shape, esp. the flight pics make the aircraft almost look elegant!

A detail showing the connection-reveal in the styrene panels of Jim Isermann's work in the Palm Springs Art Museum.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The "Entwicklung" tank series (= "development"), more commonly known as the E-Series, was a late-World War II attempt by Germany to produce a standardized series of tank designs. There were to be six standard designs in different weight classes, from which several specialized variants were to be developed. This intended to reverse the trend of extremely complex tank designs that had resulted in poor production rates and mechanical unreliability.

Due to the ever-worsening situation, less than 100 E-25(P) hulls were completed and probably less than 50 combat-worthy vehicles arrived at front line units and were involved in battle until the end of hostilities. But the design work, with many radical and innovative ideas, did not get lost – many of the Fuchs’ design features like its hull layout and armor design or the Beuthen turret found their way into the highly successful German Leopard I MBT in the early 1960ies, which entered service with the German Bundeswehr in 1965 and still serves with several armies until today.

Specifications:

Crew: Five (commander, gunner, loader, radio operator, driver)

Weight: 38 tonnes (41.9 short tons)

Length: 7,02 metres (23 ft), hull only

9.77 metres (32 ft) overall, with the gun forward

Width: 3.96 metres (12 ft 11 1/2 in)

Height: 2.34 metres (7 ft 8 in)

Ground clearance: 495 to 510 mm (1 ft 7.5 in to 1 ft 8.1 in)

Suspension: Conical spring

Fuel capacity: 450 litres (120 US gal)

Armor:

10–80 mm (0.4 – 3.15 in)

Performance:

Speed

- Maximum, road: 52 km/h (32 mph)

- Sustained, road: 42 km/h (26 mph)

- Cross country: 16 to 25 km/h (9.5 to 15.5 mph)

Operational range: 210 km (130 mi)

Power/weight: 14,47 PS/tonne (12,86 hp/ton)

Engine:

V12 Maybach HL 101 gasoline engine with 550 PS (539 hp, 341 kW)

Transmission:

ZF AK 7-200 with 7 forward 1 reverse gears

Armament:

1× 8.8 cm KwK 43/4 L/56 with 48 rounds

2× 7.92 mm MG 34 machine guns with a total of 5.200 rounds

(one co-axial with the main weapon, one manually operated on the commander's cupola)

The kit and its assembly:

This fictional Heer '46 is based on the fact that the famous German post-WWII MBT Leopard 1 – at least the Porsche prototype – was based on designs from the WWII era. So, why not spin this story further and retro-grade a Leopard 1 into a Heer ’46 tank, as a kind of grandfather design with then-state-of-the-art technologies…?

Well, that job could be easily done with a Leopard 1 kit built more or less OOB and just painted in typical WWII colors – I have actually seen such things in simulation games like World of Tanks, and it did not look bad at all. But for the ambitious modelers, this would be a bit too simple, wouldn’t it?

For instance, there are some features like the running gear on the Leopard that are very modern and would IMHO not fit into the late WWII timeframe. The general lack of high quality materials and design simplifications everywhere would certainly also take their toll. As a consequence the starting basis for this whiffy tank model actually became an 1:72 Leopard 1 (to be exact, it’s Revell’s Leopard 1A5 kit), but from this basis only a few parts were actually taken over.

Work started with the upper hull, which received the transplantation of the complete upper rear deck from a leftover Hasegawa Panther, including the turret’s attachment ring. Internally the whole affair was reinforced with styrene profiles along the seams. The basic idea behind this move was to get rid of the rather modernistic, raised engine cover of the Leopard, and the Panther’s armored cooling fan covers would add a very familiar, German touch. Furthermore, the Panther turret is set relatively further back than on the Leopard, resulting IMHO in a positive side effect for the vehicle’s proportions. The front with the driver’s hatch and the side walls of the Leopard hull were taken over, just the glacis plate was cleaned from the moulded snow claws for the modern Leopard track.

While I could have used the original, casted Leopard 1 turret without any extra armor, I rather reverted to a donor part: an aftermarket resin turret from the German short run producer Modell Trans. What spoke for this aftermarket piece is that this Heer ’46 turret piece was exactly that kind of add-on this kit would need: a retrograded Leopard 1 turret, with a simplified shape, a simple commander cupola, typical bulges for a late-war optical rangefinder in the turret sides and even a 8.8cm KwK barrel! The resin turret, which also comes with an AA machine gun, was taken OOB. Only the original resin gun barrel came slightly bent – this could have been corrected easily, but I replaced it with a more delicate white metal and brass piece, anyway. Additionally, an adapter for the hull opening had to be scratched.

So far, so good - but the running gear became the biggest challenge. The Leopard 1’s advanced torsion bar running gear with rubber-rimmed wheels would not make sense anymore, due to the special high quality materials needed for its construction. Since the Einheitspanzer family was to share as many components as possible, I decided to implant an E-50-style running gear with its typical cast standard wheels.

This sounds easy, but scratching a running gear is a real stunt! Work started with the attachment points for the driving and guide wheels at the hull’s ends, which were cut off of the Revell kit’s parts and glued into their respective places. The drive wheel was taken over from the Leopard, but the guide wheel at the front end was replaced by a simpler and smaller pair of wheels from a Russian IS-3 tank.

Using the E-50 as benchmark for the running wheels, I gathered twelve of them from the scrap box and from several Modellcollect kits in the stash (The 1:72 E-50 kits from Modelcollect and Trumpeter all come with the option to build an E-75, too, so that each kit offers two pairs of excess parts). Mounting these wheels to the hull, in a staggered fashion, became the kit’s true challenge, though, because I did not have a sufficient number of original wheel carriers/suspension packs. Improvisation resulted in the adaptation of twelve leftover suspension arms from a Modelcollect E-100 kit, even though they had to be tailored in depth and length to fit under the Leopard’s hull. It took some trial and error to find a proper position that would produce a plausible stance, but I think the effort of this transplantation really changes the tank’s look into something Heer ’46-ish?

The track was taken OOB from the Leopard 1 kit, and it is of the segmented IP type. It was mounted after most painting was done, starting with single track segments on the drive and guiding wheels, and then the gaps were filled with other track elements. A bit of a gamble, but the theory, that the track parts should match, was confirmed. Phew…

Painting and markings:

For some subtlety, the model received a classic German paint scheme with “Hinterhalt” colors (Dunkelgelb, Olivgrün and Rotbraun). Once the kit’s components were finished (hull, turret and the separate wheels), everything received an overall coat with matt RAL 7028 (Modelmaster Authentics).

On top of that, a dense pattern of red brown (Humbrol 160) and finally green (RAL 6003 from Modelmaster Authentics) mottles in 1 1:2 ratio was applied with a flat, narrow brush, for a somewhat square shape of the blotches. Pretty straightforward, seen on a late war Panther - and suitable for a summertime scenario as well as in line with common field practice, even though at the time where the model is placed, tanks might have looked more extraordinary or improvised due to the general material shortages.

Once the basic painting was done, the kit received a thin, water-based wash with dark brown, carefully swabbed with a soft cotton cloth in order to leave just a thin and cloudy film on the surfaces and more of the wash in recesses and corners. There were only a few decals to apply, namely three small German crosses and the tactical code on the turret’s flanks. Later some dry-brushing with light grey and hemp was done, emphasizing the edges and highlighting surface details.

The track segments were primed with a mix of acrylic iron, black and dark brown and received a final paint treatment after mounting them onto the wheels, hiding some glue stains and other blemishes.

Artist pigments (a mix of ochre, grey and brown) were dusted with a soft brush onto the lower kit areas, after having sealed the model with matt acrylic varnish beforehand.

Well, what could have been a simple paint job in order to achieve a time-warped Leopard 1 became a massive kitbashing project. However, I think this extra effort, esp. the adaptation of the E-50 running gear, and all the potential risks of mixing parts from different kits, was worthwhile? The paint scheme certainly suggest the WWII era, too. The resulting “new” tank looks IMHO pretty plausible, and both hull and turret shape remind of the Leopard 1 without looking like the real thing behind this build. In fact, from certain angles this one appears like the missing link between the Panther and the Leopard 1, and a lot like an inspiration for the Soviet T-54/55 or even the T-72?

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

With Scotland’s independence from Great Britain in late 2017, “Caledonian International Airlines” (or just “Caledonian” or “CI”) quickly emerged as a privately-owned national flag carrier. The airline followed in the footsteps of Caledonian Airways, an independent Scottish charter airline formed in April 1961, which evolved into British Caledonian Airlines (a.k.a. “BCal”). During the 1970s and '80s, British Caledonian became the UK's largest independent, international scheduled airline, with an extensive global route network serving over 40 destinations in around 25 countries on five continents. However, a series of major financial setbacks during the mid-1980s combined with the airline's inability to grow sufficiently to reach a viable size put the airline at serious risk of collapse. BCal began looking for a merger partner to improve its competitive position, and, in December 1987, British Airways (BA) gained control of the airline. In April 1988 BCal was officially dissolved and the brand disappeared.

The airline also ordered two long-haul wide-body Airbus A330-900neos in November 2019 at the Dubai Air Show. The first plane is scheduled to arrive in January 2022 after a delivery flight from Toulouse and will operate on routes to Asia, e. g. Hong Kong and Tokyo, and to intercontinental destinations in North America and Brazil. A further order for six EMBRAER ERJ-190s was placed at the same time – these will replace the leased A320s on regional and domestic routes, and with these additional aircraft Caledonian International Airlines follows a slow but steady expansion strategy.

General characteristics:

Cockpit crew: Two

Length: 31.44 m (103 ft 2 in)

Wingspan:34.10 m (111 ft 11 in)

Wing area: 122.4 m² (1,318 sq ft)

Wing sweepback: 25°

Tail height: 12.56 m (41 ft 2 in)

Cabin width: 3.70 m (12 ft 2 in)

Fuselage width: 3.95 m (13 ft 0 in)

Operating empty weight: 39,500 kg (87,100 lb)

Maximum zero-fuel weight (MZFW): 54,500 kg (120,200 lb)

Maximum landing weight (MLW):57,500 kg (126,800 lb)

Maximum take-off weight (MTOW): 68,000 kg (150,000 lb)

Capacity:

Exit Limit:136

1-class max. seating: 132 at 29–30 in (74–76 cm) pitch

1-class, typical: 117 at 32 in (81 cm) pitch

2-class, typical: 107 (8F @ 38 in, 99Y @ 32 in)

Cargo capacity: 21.2 m³ (750 cu ft)

Fuel capacity: 24,210 L (5,330 imp gal; 6,400 US gal)

Performance:

Cruising speed: Mach 0.78 (829 km/h; 515 mph)

Maximum speed: Mach 0.82 (871 km/h; 541 mph)

Range (typical payload): 5,740 km (3,100 nmi)

ACJ range:4,200 nmi (7,800 km)

Takeoff (MTOW, SL, ISA): 1,780 m (5,840 ft)

Landing (MLW, SL, ISA): 1,230 m (4,040 ft)

Ceiling: 39,100–41,000 ft (11,900–12,500 m)

Engines:

2xCFM56-5B9/P turbofans with 23,300 lbf (100 kN) thrust each

The kit and its assembly:

I have been pondering the idea of an independent Scotland for some time and already built some what-if models with this background. But then arose the question: what could a national carrier airline be or look like?

This turned out to be a more complex question than initially ever thought of and led to more than a dozen potential design layouts, with the plan to avoid the much-too-obvious blue from the Scottish flag and rather incorporate the Scottish coat-of-arms (with a standing red lion on a yellow shield/background) but also based on limited decal resources. The small Airbus 318 was chosen because it would be a rather small airline, and the type’s extended range vs. it bigger brethren (making flight to America possible) made it a good choice for trans-Atlantic flights.

I settled for the Eastern Express A318 kit, which is BTW the only option for this airliner in 1:144. Upon an initial glance the kit looked quite O.K. – very simple and straightforward, and somewhat looking like a clone of the Revell A319/320 model (but it isn't). However, closer inspection confirmed the impression of a rather poor copy quality level. Most surface details (engraved) are there, but they are soft and somewhat blurred, and any fine details like pitots or blade antennae are missing or just hinted at. The material is also dubious, a very waxy and soft styrene. It can be glued together easily, but it is very sensitive to scratches or cuts.

However, things turned really ugly when I tried to build it! NOTHING of the major elements fits together, the worst flaws became apparent when I tried to glue the fuselage halves together, which turned out to be wavy along the seams and heavily dented, esp. along the spine. Massive PSR was necessary to fill the worst gaps, and even then, the result is barely acceptable.

Another disaster area is the wing/fuselage intersection. Unlike the Revell A320, the Eastern Express kit comes with separate, asymmtretical lower wing halves, which carry a part of the lower fuselage. Raised surface details and air scoops justify this construction, but the poor fit of everything involved in this area left me with a ventral 2mm(!!!) gap and further misalignments that called for even more PSR. Horrible.

The final major problem zone was the fin – in consists of a base, which is molded into the fuselage halves, and the extended fin tip as well as the rudder are a separate part. This could work, if the fin’s base halves were not about 1mm too thick when assembled, resulting in a crippled fin that called for more PSR to create even surfaces on both sides (and fill gap’s at the rudder’s base)…

Beyond that, there were some sinkholes on the wings and the (otherwise pretty clear) cockpit glazing did not fit at all, being much too narrow and leaving considerable gaps at its base. Since I had decals for the complete cockpit glazing at hand I short-handedly blended the clear part into the hull with some more PSR. No, this kit is NOT recommended – I guess that cutting an A319/320 from another manufacturer and scratching the longer fin leads to better results than the Eastern Express A318 kit!

Painting and markings:

I wanted to develop a personal livery for Scotland’s potential flag carrier, and this took a while. The process was inspired and also limited by decal options, and I wanted to avoid the obvious color blue. I rather took inspiration from the Scottish coat of arms, which shows a standing red lion on a deep yellow background. For potential layouts I took the burden to create profile drawings, which soon revealed that yellow and red would make the airliner look like a Spanish charter carrier, so more and more black crept into the design, eventually fully replacing the yellow, together with white as basic color for the fuselage and a little red from the lion as contrast. After more than a dozen layouts the one I chose reminds of the late BEA scheme (with the black fin and trim) or Air Canada. However, I wanted to avoid a contemporary livery with a uniform/featureless fuselage, so I incorporated a black window cheatline that visually stretches the fuselage. The design has a certain retro appeal, even though this was not intended.

The fuselage was prepared with grey primer and received a coat with pure white paint from the rattle can. The wings were painted with Humbrol 40 (Gloss Light Gull Grey) and 126 (FS 26270) for the Corroguard areas. Fin and engine nacelles were painted black (Humbrol 21). The small winglets were painted in red (Humbrol 19), as small color highlights. Black ink was used to emphasize the panel lines (esp. of the flaps and rudders) on the wings, the white fuselage remained clean, though, in order to avoid a dirty or worn look.

The cheatlines and the windows come from a TwoSix Decals sheet for a retro British Airways A319 with a BEA red square livery, the decals had to be tailored to the A318’s shorter fuselage. The black nose section was retained, because it reminds of the elegant livery of British Caledonian Airlines. The red “Caledonian” letterings and the smaller sublines come from a TwoSix Decals sheet for a Sixties’ Caledonian Airways DC-6B. I had hoped to use the sheet’s large red lions for the Airbus’ fin, but they were only printed on clear carrier film and lacked opacity, so that I had to improvise. I found a suitable alternative in a MicroScale H0 scale sheet for Cape Brenton & Nova Scotia Diesel locomotives.

The stencils are a mix from the (very nice) Eastern Express and the TwoSix Airbus sheet, and I printed the registration code with the Scottish flag as well as the “independence” tag on the nose myself.

Finally, the model was sealed with an overall coat of glossy acrylic varnish.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Saab 35 Draken ('The Kite' or 'The Dragon') was a Swedish fighter-interceptor developed and manufactured by Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (SAAB) between 1955 and 1974. Development of the Saab 35 Draken started in 1948 as the Swedish air force future replacement for the then also in development Saab 29 Tunnan dayfighter and Saab 32B Lansen night fighter. It featured an innovative but unproven double delta wing, which led to the creation of a sub-scale test aircraft, the Saab 210, which was produced and flown to test this previously unexplored aerodynamic feature. The full-scale production version entered service with frontline squadrons of the Swedish Air Force on 8 March 1960. It received the designation Flygplan 35 (Fpl 35; 'Aeroplane 35') and was produced in several variants and types, most commonly as a fighter type with the prefix J (J 35), standing for Jaktflygplan (Pursuit-aircraft), the Swedish term for fighter aircraft.

Another factor for the quick withdrawal was the disappointing performance of the type’s primary weapon, the Rb 05 missile: Its manual joystick steering in the cramped Draken cockpit (to be operated while the pilot was expected to fly at low altitude and evade enemy fire!) presented a number of problems, and the Rb 05’s ultimate accuracy was, even under ideal conditions, on the order of just 10 meters (33 ft), greater than desired. Targets like tanks or even ships were hard to hit with this level of scattering, combined with imminent danger for the pilot, and the air-to-air mode was even less effective. On the more modern Saab 37 the Rb 05 was therefore replaced by the Rb 75, a license-produced version of the American TV-guided AGM-65 Maverick “fire and forget” weapon. TV and laser seeker heads for the Rb 05 to improve the weapon’s accuracy and handling had been planned since the early Seventies, but were never realized.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 15.35 m (50 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 9.42 m (30 ft 11 in)

Height: 3.89 m (12 ft 9 in)

Wing area: 49.2 m² (530 ft²)

Airfoil: 5%

Empty weight: 8,175 kg (18,006 lb)

Gross weight: 11,500 kg (25,330 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 13,554 kg (29,845 lb)

Powerplant:

1× Svenska Flygmotor RM6C (license-built Rolls Royce Avon with Swedish EBK67 afterburner)

turbojet engine, 56.5 kN (12,700 lbf) thrust dry, 77.3 kN (17,240 lbf) with afterburner

Performance:

Maximum speed: 2,150 km/h (1,335 mph, 1,168 kn) at 11,000 m (36,089 ft), clean

1,430 km/h (888 mph, 777 kn) w. two dop tanks and two 454 kg (1.00 lb) bombs

Range: 1.120 km (605 nmi; 696 mi); clean, internal fuel only

Ferry range: 2,750 km (1,480 nmi; 1,710 mi) with four external 500 l drop tanks

Service ceiling: 20,000 m (66,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 199 m/s (39,200 ft/min)

Wing loading: 231.6 kg/m² (47.4 lb/ft²)

Thrust/weight: 0.7

Takeoff roll: 800 m (2,625 ft)

Armament:

2× 30 mm akan m/55 ADEN cannon with 100 rounds per gun

9× hardpoints with a total capacity of 4,500 kg (10.000 lb)

The kit and its assembly:

Even though the model depicts a what-if aircraft, the Draken’s proposed “Gustav” attack variant based on the J 35 D interceptor was real – even though I could not find much detail information about it. So, I took some inspiration from the contemporary Danish Saab 35XD export version, which probably had similar features to the Gustav? Another inspiring factor was a pair of Rb 05 missiles (from an Airfix Viggen) that I had bought with a spare parts lot some time ago – and an attack Draken would be the perfect carrier for these exotic (and unsuccessful) missiles.

For a low-budget build I used one of Mistercraft’s many recent re-boxings of the vintage Revell Draken from 1957(!), and this kit is nothing for those who are faint at heart. It is horrible.

The kit probably depicts a late J 35 A (already with a long tail section), but even for this variant it lacks details like the air scoops for the afterburner or a proper landing gear. The Draken’s characteristic tail wheel is also missing completely. Worst pitfall, however: there is NO interior at all, not even a lumpy seat! The canopy, the early model with struts, is disturbingly clean and crisp, though. The overall fit is mediocre at best, too – there are only a few visible seams, but any of them calls for filling and PSR. It’s a very toyish kit, even though the general outlines are O.K.

And the Mistercraft instructions are really audacious: they show all the parts that are actually NOT there at all. Suddenly a seat appears in the cockpit, a fin fairing from a J 35 D or later, or the tail wheel… And the decal sheets only roughly meet the aircraft you see in the painting instructions - there are three sheets, totally puzzled together, including material for aircraft not mentioned in the instructions, but that’s a common feature of most Mistercraft kits. But: how much can you taunt your disappointed customers?

So, this leaves lots of room for improvements, and calls for a lot of scratching and improvisation, too. First measure was to open both the air intakes (which end after 2mm in vertical walls) and the exhaust, which received an afterburner dummy deep inside to create depth. Next, I implanted a complete cockpit, consisting of s scratched dashboard (styrene sheet), the tub from an Italeri Bae Hawk trainer’s rear cockpit (which comes with neat side consoles and fits quite well) plus a shallow vintage ejection seat, probably left over from an early MiG from a KP kit or one of its many later reincarnations. As an alternative, there’s a Quickboost resin aftermarket set with a complete cockpit interior (even including side walls, IIRC intended to be used with the Hasegawa Draken) available but using it on this crappy kit would have been a waste of resources – it’s more expensive than the kit itself, and even with a fine cockpit the exterior would still remain sh!t.

Since I could not find any detail about the Gustav Draken’s equipment I gave it a laser rangefinder in a poor-fitting S 35 E (or is it a Danish export F-35?) nose that comes as an optional part with the vintage Revell mold – which is weird, because the recce Draken was built between 1963 and 1968 in 2 series, several years after the kit’s launch? Maybe the Mistercraft kit is based on the 1989 Revell re-boxing? But that kit also features an all-in-one pilot/seat part and a two-piece canopy… Weird!

Once the hull was closed many surface details had to be added. The afterburner air scoops were created from plastic profiles, which are aftermarket roof rails in H0 scale. Styrene profile material was also used to create the intakes behind the cockpit, better than nothing. The OOB pitot on the fin was very robust, and since it would be wrong on a J 35 D I cut it off and added a fairing to the fin tip, a shortened/modified ACMI pod, which bears a better pitot alternative at its tip. The pitot on the nose was scratched from heated styrene, since the kit offers no part at all.

Under the rear fuselage the whole tail wheel arrangement had to be scratched. The shallow fairing consists of a section from a Matchbox EA-6B drop tank, the wheel and its strut were tinkered together with bits from the scrap box and profile material. Not stellar, but better than OOB (= nothing!).

The landing gear struts were taken from the kit but beefed up with some details. The main wheels had to be replaced, the new ones come from a KP MiG-21, IIRC.

The ordnance consists of a pair of Rb 05’s from an Airfix Viggen, a pair of OOB drop tanks and MERs from a Matchbox A-7D, together with fourteen streamlined bombs from the same kit – twelve on the MERs and single bombs on the outer pylons. AFAIK, Sweden never used MERs on their aircraft, but the bombs come pretty close to some small bombs that I have seen as AJ 37 ordnance. Most pylons are OOB, I just added a single ventral station and two outer hardpoints under the wings. The Rb 05s received a prominent place under the air intakes on Sidewinder launch rails.

Painting and markings:

Finally a good excuse to apply the famous and complex “Fields & Meadows” paint scheme to a Draken model! However, this “combo” actually existed in real life, but only on a single aircraft: around 1980 a J 35 B (s/n 35520), aircraft “20” of F18, was painted in this fashion, but AFAIK it was only an instructional airframe. You find some pictures of this aircraft online but getting a clear three-side view (esp. from above!) as a reliable painting benchmark is impossible. However, a complete paint scheme of this aircraft is provided with one of Mistercraft’s Revell Draken re-boxings (not the one I bought, though), even though it is mismarked as a J 35 F of F10 in the instructions. One of the common Mistercraft errors, err, “surprises” (*sigh*).

Finding suitable model paints for the elaborate scheme is not easy, either, and after having applied it several times I stuck to my favorites: Humbrol 150 (Forest Green, FS 34127), 75 (Bronze Green), 118 (US Light Tan, FS 30219, a bit light but RAF Dark Earth is too somber) and Revell 06 (Tar Black, RAL 9021) on the upper surfaces and Humbrol 247 (RLM76) underneath.

A large ventral section was, typical for the J 35, left in bare metal, since leaking fuel and oil would frequently eat away any paint there. The section was painted with Revell 91 (Iron) and later treated with Matt Aluminum Metallizer (Humbrol). As per usual, the model received an overall light black ink washing and some post-shading in order to emphasize the panels, correct the splinter camouflage and dramatize the surface. Some extra weathering was done around the gun ports and the jet nozzle with graphite.

Internal details like the cockpit and the landing gear were painted with the help of Swedish Saab 35 reference pictures. The cockpit tub was painted in a dark, bluish green (Humbrol 76) with grey-green (Revell 67) side walls.

The landing gear and its respective wells were painted in a bluish grey (Revell 57), parts of the struts were painted in a bright turquoise (a mix of Humbrol 89 and 80; looks quite weird, but I like such details!). The wheel hubs became medium grey (Revell 47). The Rb 05 missiles were painted in white as live weapons, so that they stand out well from the airframe. The drop tanks received the same blue-grey as the underside (Humbrol 247). MERs and launch rails were painted in a neutral grey (RAL 7001) and the bombs became olive drab (RAL 6014, Gelboliv) with yellow rings and golden fuzes.

Decals/markings were puzzled together from a Moose Republic Saab 32 sheet (unit code number and emblem) and the spares box, including the red tactical tail code from an Italeri 1:72 Gripen and roundels from a Hasegawa Draken. Stencils were taken from the kit’s OOB sheet and also from the Hasegawa Draken sheet. Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

What a horror trip! The paint scheme itself was/is challenging enough, but modding the crappy vintage Revell kit into something more presentable was already a fight in itself. However, I like the outcome. “Fields & Meadows” suits the Draken with its huge and flat upper surface well, and while the Gustav conversion did not take much effort the “mud mover” ordnance under this Mach 2 fighter really looks strange and makes you wonder what this is. A nice what-if model, despite its blurriness!

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

In 1948, a swept wing version of the F-84 was created with the hope of bringing performance to the level of the F-86. The last production F-84E was fitted with a swept tail, a new wing with 38.5 degrees of leading-edge sweep and 3.5 degrees of anhedral, and a J35-A-25 engine producing 5,300 pound-force (23.58 kN) of thrust. The aircraft was designated XF-96A and flew on 3 June 1950. Although the airplane was capable of 602 knots (693 mph, 1,115 km/h), the performance gain over the F-84E was considered minor. Nonetheless, it was ordered into production in July 1950 as the F-84F Thunderstreak. The F-84 designation was eventually retained because the fighter was expected to be a low-cost improvement of the straight-wing Thunderjet with over 55 percent commonality in tooling.

A handful F-96Bs were camouflaged during the late Sixties with the USAF’s new SEA scheme, but most aircraft retained their original bare metal finish with more or less colorful unit markings. Due to its limited capabilities and the introduction of the Mach 2 McDonnell F-4 Phantom, the last F-96B was retired from ANG service in 1971.

General characteristics:

Crew: 2

Length: 54t 11 1/2 in (16,77 m) incl. pitot

Wingspan: 33 ft 7.25 in (10,25 m)

Height: 16 ft 9 in (5,11 m)

Wing area: 350 sq ft (37,55 m²)

Empty weight: 13,810 lb (6.264 kg)

Gross weight: 21,035 lb (9.541 kg)

Max takeoff weight: 28,000 lb (12.701 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Wright J65-W-18 turbojet with 8,600 lbf (34 kN) dry thrust and 10,500 lbf (47 kN) with afterburner

Performance:

Maximum speed: 695 mph (1,119 km/h, 604 kn, Mach 1.1) at 35,000 ft (10,668 m)

Cruise speed: 577 mph (928 km/h, 501 kn)

Range: 810 mi (1,304 km, 704 nmi) combat radius with two droptanks

Service ceiling: 49,000 ft (15,000 m)

Rate of climb: 16,300 ft/min (83 m/s)

Wing loading: 86 lb/sq ft (423 kg/m²)

Armament:

No internal guns;

6× underwing hardpoints for a total ordnance load of up to 6,000lb (2,727 kg), including

a pair of 191.5 US gal (727 l) or 375 US gal (1.429 l) drop tanks on the inner stations

and a mix of AIM-4 Falcon (up to six), MB-1 Genie (up to two) and/or pods with

nineteen 2.75”/70 mm FFAR unguided missiles each (up to four) on the outer stations

The kit and its assembly:

This fictional missing link between the RF-84F and the F-105 was conceived for the Fifties Group Build at whatifmodellers.com, an era when the USAF used a wide variety of interceptor aircraft types and technical advancements were quick and significant – in just a decade the interceptor evolved from a subsonic machine gun-toting aircraft to a guided weapons carrier platform, capable of Mach 2.

The F-96B (I re-used Republic’s dropped designation for the swept-wing F-84F) was to display one of the many “in between” designs, and the (R)F-84F was just a suitable basis for a conversion similar to the T-33-derived F-94, just more capable and big enough to carry the nuclear Genie missile.

The basis became Italeri’s vintage RF-84F kit, a rather simple affair with raised panel lines and a mediocre fit, plus some sinkholes. This was, however, heavily modified!

Work started with the implantation of a new tandem cockpit, taken wholesale from a Heller T-33. Fitting the cockpit tub into the wider Thunderflash hull was a bit tricky, putty blobs held the implant in place. The canopy was taken from the T-33, too, just the RF-84F’s original rear side windows were cut away to offer sufficient length for the longer clear part and the cockpit side walls had to be raised to an even level with the smaller windscreen with the help of styrene strips. With these adapters the T-33 canopy fitted surprisingly well over the opening and blended well into the spine.

The camera nose section lost its tip, which was replaced with the tail cone from a Matchbox H.S. Buccaneer (actually its air brake), and the camera windows as well as the slant surfaces that held them were PSRed away for a conical shape that extended the new pointed radome. Lots of weight in the nose and under the cockpit floor ensured a safe stance on the OOB landing gear.

The rear section behind the air brakes became all-new; for an afterburner I extended and widened the tail section and implanted the rear part from a B-66 (Italeri kit, too) engine nacelle, which received a wider nozzle (left over from a Nakotne MiG-29, a featureless thing) and an interior.

To balance the longer nose I also decided to enlarge the tail surfaces and replaced the OOB fin and stabilizers with leftover parts from a Trumpeter Il-28 bomber – the fin was shortened and the stabilizers reduced in span to match the rest of the aircraft. Despite the exotic source the parts blend well into the F-84’s overall design!

To add supersonic credibility and to connect the design further with the later F-105 I modified the air intakes and cut them into a raked shape – quite easy to realize. Once the wings were in place, I also added small splitter plates, left over from an Airfix BAC Strikemaster.

As an interceptor the armament had to be adapted accordingly, and I procured the quartet of IR-guided Falcons as well as the Genie duo from an Academy F-89. The large drop tanks were taken OOB from the Italeri kit. The Genies were mounted onto their massive Scorpion pylons under the outer wings of the F-96B, while the Falcons, due to relatively little space left under the wings, required a scratched solution. I eventually settled for dual launchers on small pylons, mounted in front of the landing gear wells. The pylons originally belong to an ESCI Ka-34 “Hokum” helicopter kit (they were just short enough!), the launch rails are a halved pair of F-4 Sidewinder rails from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. With everything on place the F-96B looks quite crowded.

Painting and markings:

The machine would represent a late Fifties USAF type, so that the paint options were rather limited if I wanted to be authentic. ADC Grey was introduced in the early Sixties, SEA camouflage even later, so that bare metal became a natural choice – but this can be quite attractive! The model received an overall coat with acrylic “White Aluminum” from the rattle can, plus some darked panels all over the hull (Humbrol 56 for good contrast) and an afterburner section in Revell 91 (Iron Metallic) and Humbrol’s Steel Metallizer. The radome became deep black, the anti-glare panel in front of the windscreen olive drab (Revell 46). Light grey (Revell 75) was used for some small di-electric fairings.

Interior surfaces (cockpit and landing gear wells) were painted with Zinc Chromate primer (I used Humbrol 80), while the landing gear struts became silver-grey (Humbrol 56) and the inside of the covers as well as the air brakes were painted in bright red (Humbrol 19).

Once basic painting was done the model received a black ink washing and was rubbed with grinded graphite to emphasize the raised panel lines, and the material adds a nice dark metallic shine to the silver base coat.

Another challenge was to find suitable unit markings for the Fifties era in the decal vault, which would also fit onto the model. After a long search I eventually settled for rather simple markings from a 325th FIS F-102 from an Xtradecal sheet, which only features a rather timid fin decoration.

Finding other suitable standard markings remained demanding, though. Stars-And-Bars as well as the USAF taglines were taken from the Academy F-89 that also provided the ordnance, most stencils were taken from the OOB Italeri sheet and complemented by small markings from the scrap box. The biggest problem was the creation of a matching serial number. The “FF” code was originally used for P/F-51D Mustangs during the Korea War, but after the type had been phased out it might have been re-used? The letters as well as the serial number digits were created from various markings for USAF F-100s, also from an Xtradecal sheet.

Once the decals had been applied the model was sealed with semi-gloss acrylic varnish, except for the radome, the anti-glare panel as well as the walking areas on the wings as well as parts of the afterburner section, which were coated with matt varnish.

A rather straightforward conversion, even though finishing the project took longer than expected. But the result looks surprisingly natural and plausible. Lots of PSR was needed to modify the fuselage, though, especially the tail section was not easy to integrate into the Thunderflash’s hull. Sticking to the simple NMF livery paid IMHO out, too: the livery looks very natural and believable on the fictional aircraft, and it suits the F-84’s bulbous shape well.

DB Cargo 185 253 passes Lintorf with freight 48973 (Rotterdam/Moerdijk - Kijfhoek - Herzogenburg - Sankt Pölten) with Ermewa and GATX Zans/Zacns tank wagons marked 39/2055 (styrene) on July 9, 2019, 13:33.

The big Army laser cannon that Kaneda busts out at the end of Akira, a landmark 1988 animated feature film. The Kaneda fig isn't anything special, he's just there to pose the weapon.

I took a Brickarms Heavy Laser Cannon prototype (with Viewfinder), drilled out the barrel and filed down the front of the viewfinder in order to insert trans-clear and trans-blue styrene rods, respectively. The battery pack is scratchbuilt from styrene, a cotter pin, insulated wire and craft ribbon. Then painted. I treated the trans styrene and viewfinder display with Future after dullcoating the entire thing.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

At the end of WW2, Sweden was in search of a new fighter offering better performance than the J21 could offer. The latter was an indigenous fighter/attack aircraft from SAAB that first took to the air in 1943 and dated back to a requirement from 1941. The J21 was designed as an unusual twin boom pusher configuration, where the propeller was mounted in the rear of the fuselage, pushing the aircraft forward. The advantages of a pusher design were that the view forward was unobstructed and armament could be concentrated in the nose, while the heavy engine was placed close to the center of gravity for better handling and agility. A major drawback was the difficulty in escaping from the aircraft in an emergency, though, as the pilot could get drawn into the propeller blades. SAAB deliberated between systems that would eject the pilot, or jettison the propeller or even the whole engine, via a system of explosive bolts, and eventually installed an early, explosives-powered ejector seat developed by Bofors for this purpose.

However, the SAAB 21 had its share of trouble (overheating an unreliable DB 605 engine), and in 1944 a new requirement for a more powerful and conventional fighter was issued. Selecting the Rolls Royce Griffon as the powerplant, SAAB initially looked into adapting the engine to the J21. However, this proved impractical, so SAAB started work on a clean-sheet design.

The last J27A was, after serving with fighter units primarily in southern Sweden, already retired from frontline duties in 1955. Some aircraft, though, were kept in service as target tugs, liaison aircraft for the air staff and for dissimilar air combat training. The last machine was finally decommissioned in summer 1961.

General characteristics:

Crew: One

Length: 9.90 m (32 ft 5 in)

Wingspan: 11.84 m (38 ft 9 1/2 in)

Height: 4.19 (13 ft 9 in)

Wing area: 22.2 m² (238.87 ft²)

Empty weight: 3,250 kg (7,165 lb)

Loaded weight: 4,150 kg (9,149 lb)

Max. take-off weight: 4,413 kg (9,730 lb)

Powerplant:

1× license-built Rolls-Royce Griffon 83 liquid-cooled V-12 engine, 2,340 hp (1,745 kW),

driving a six-bladed contraprop

Performance:

Maximum speed: 435 mph (700 km/h) at 20,000 ft (6,100 m)

Cruise speed: 495 km/h (265 knots, 308 mph)

Range: 1,100 mi (1,770 km)

Service ceiling: 40,000 ft (12,190 m)

Rate of climb: 3,800 ft/min (19.3 m/s)

Armament:

4× 20 mm Bofors cannon (license-built Hispano Mk.II cannon) with 200 rpg in the outer wings

Underwing hardpoints for 8-12 × 3inch "60 lb" rocket projectiles

or 2× 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs

or a pair of 45 gal (205 l) or 90 gal (409 l) drop tanks.

The kit and its assembly:

This is a “real” what-if model, or at least the attempt to build a phantom aircraft from single parts! The SAAB 27 is a bit of a mystery, because valid information is sparse, especially concerning details about its shape. You find some drawings or profiles, but IMHO these are based on guesswork and rather vague. The J27 is frequently described as a “Swedish Spitfire with a P-51 radiator” or a “Swedish Super-Spitfire”, but that leaves much to be desired, because the similarity is only superficial. Hence, this model here is rather a free interpretation of what a service J27 could have looked like.

For long time I fought with two building options: either convert a Fairey Firefly (Airfix’ Mk. 5 would have been my bet), or use a Spitfire Mk. 22. After long considerations I settled for the latter one, because I feared that the Firefly would result in a rather massive aircraft, and the Airfix kit itself is vintage and worth a building fight on its own.

So I used an Airfix Spitfire Mk. 22, but from this (very nice!) kit just a few things were taken, because I wanted a more individual look. Only the fuselage, cockpit interior and landing gear survived, and I even inserted a 2.5mm wide “wedge plug” around the cockpit and wedge-shaped inserts at the fuselage halves’ seams in order to add some beef to the sleek (if not spindly) Spitfire. I think it’s hard to notice, but the overall proportions look good. At the tail and the front end, the original fuselage width was kept, though.

Reason behind this was the P-51 radiator’s width (leftover from a Matchbox kit) that was considerably wider than the Spitfire fuselage. Furthermore, the thicker/more massive wings from a P-47 (from an early MPM kit) also called for a more massive body.

For the new wings, some adaptations to the Spitfire wing roots had to be made, though, e.g. a bulged mid-wing section under the fuselage. The Thunderbolt parts also had the benefit of wells for a landing gear that retracts inwards. I also used P-47 landing gear parts, even though the struts were shortened at their bases by 3mm and the covers accordingly. For the sake of a different look (the Spitfire wheels are very characteristic) I used different main wheels from a Revell G.91R. The landing gear cover arrangement differs from J27 sketches (as far as I can tell, it must have been similar to the P-51's), but I stuck with the P-47 parts because they match well with the rest of the aircraft.

The contraprop belongs to a late mark Seafire, left over from a Special Hobby kit. The propeller was in so far modified that I added a metal axis and a styrene tube adapter for the fuselage, so that both propeller parts can (theoretically) spin. OOB, the Special Hobby solution is simply to be glued onto the nose, fixed, despite being constructed in two separate parts?

Furthermore, the carburetor intake was changed: the Spitfire’s scoop at the wings’ leading edge was replace by a Firefly-style lip intake right behind the propeller.

The whole tail section was reconditioned, too. Descriptions of the J27’s tail are corny, but “more square than a Spitfire’s”. Instead of simple cosmetic surgery I thoroughly replaced the OOB fin with a Supermarine Attacker’s (Novo kit) with some mods to the outline, which fits well in size and is …more square!

The new tail is a bit taller and has a fin fillet, making it look very P-51-ish, but that’s O.K. for me. At least it’s different from the round Spitfire shape.

I also exchanged the stabilizers, the round Spitfire parts gave way to differently shaped pieces from a Hobby Boss La-7. Their shape is similar to a P-47’s, but they are smaller and match J27 illustrations well.

The canopy was also changed. Through the widened fuselage around the cockpit the tight OOB Spitfire hood would hardly match, anyway. The bubble layout remained, and I adapted a bigger Matchbox P-51 canopy to the new fuselage contours, and moved forward as far as possible.

Painting and markings:

The Swedish Air Force as operator was settled, as well as early post-WWII markings. But I did not want the standard, uniform olive green/blue grey livery, so I painted the upper surfaces with camouflage scheme made from two green tones: a medium green tone (Humbrol 102, Army Green, ~FS 34096) and a bluish, dark green (Humbrol 91, RLM 70 equivalent), applied in bands – somewhat inspired by a scheme carried by some SAAB 32 Lansen in the early 60ies.

The underside was kept in the typical Swedish blue-grey, for which I used Humbrol 87. The waterline was placed very low so that the upper camouflage was also taken to the radiator flanks under the fuselage and wings.

The cockpit was painted in very dark grey (Humbrol 32), while the landing gear and the wells were kept in Aluminum (Humbrol 56).

As a 2nd squadron machine, the code letter became blue, as well as the two-part spinner, latter’s paint was mixed, based on the squadron code letter decal’s tone on the tail.

The roundels and the 'R' codes come from an RBD Studio aftermarket sheet from Sweden, further decals like the yellow ‘9’ code, the squadron’s ‘Bonzo’ dog mascot emblem as well as most stencils come from a Heller SAAB 21.

A complex build, yet the model aircraft looks so innocent… Anyway, the goal was IMHO achieved: this J27 model just looks like a “Swedish Spitfire with a P-51 radiator”, and at first glance you cannot be certain if this is a modified Griffon Spitfire or a P-51D. Both is true, to a certain degree, but also not correct, because the changes are more fundamental and the wings are completely different from either. So, the mission’s been accomplished. ;)

And I feel inclined to tackle a J23, too, a Bf109/P-51B design hybrid that was designed as a conservative alternative to the pusher J21.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Lockheed XFV (sometimes erroneously referred to as the "Salmon", even though this was actually the name of one of its test pilots and not an official designation) was an American experimental tailsitter prototype aircraft built by Lockheed in the early 1950s to demonstrate the operation of a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) fighter for protecting convoys.

As a historic side note, the FV-2’s detachable wing tip gun pods had a longer and more successful service life: they were the basis for the Mk.4 HIPEG (High Performance External Gun) gun pods. This weapon system’s main purpose became strafing ground targets, and it received a different attachment system for underwing hardpoints and a bigger ammunition supply (750 RPG instead of just 250 on the FV-2). Approximately 1.200 Mk. 4 twin gun pods were manufactured by Hughes Tool Company, later Hughes Helicopter, in Culver City, California. While the system was tested and certified for use on the A-4, the A-6, the A-7, the F-4, and the OV-10, it only saw extended use on the A-4, the F-4, and the OV-10, esp. in Vietnam where the Mk. 4 pod was used extensively for close air support missions.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length/Height: 36 ft 10.25 in (11.23 m)

Wingspan: 30 ft 10.1 in (9.4 m)

Wing area: 246 sq ft (22.85 m²)

Empty weight: 12,388 lb (5,624 kg)

Gross weight: 17,533 lb (7,960 kg)

Max. takeoff weight: 18,159 lb (8,244 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Allison T54-A-16 turboprop with 7,500 shp (5,600 kW) output equivalent,

driving a 6 blade contra-rotating propeller

Performance:

Maximum speed: 585 mph (941 km/h, 509 kn

Cruise speed: 410 mph (660 km/h, 360 kn)

Range: 500 mi (800 km, 430 nmi) with internal fuel

800 mi (1,300 km, 700 nmi) with ferry wing tip tanks

Service ceiling: 46,800 ft (14,300 m)

Rate of climb: 12,750 ft/min (75.0 m/s)

Wing loading: 73.7 lb/sq ft (360 kg/m²)

Armament:

4× 20 mm (.79 in) Mk. 11 machine cannon with a total of 1.000 rounds, or

48× 2.75 in (70 mm) rockets in wingtip pods, or

a pair of 200 US gal. (165 imp. gal./750 l) auxiliary tanks on the wing tips

The kit and its assembly:

Another submission to the “Fifties” group build at whatifmodellers-com, and a really nice what-if aircraft that perfectly fits into the time frame. I had this Pegasus kit in The Stash™ for quite a while and the plan to build an operational USN or USMC aircraft from it in the typical all-dark-blue livery from the early Fifties, and the group build was a good occasion to realize it.

The Pegasus kit was released in 1992, the only other option to build the XFV in 1:72 is a Valom kit which, as a bonus, features the aircraft’s fixed landing gear that was used during flight trials. The Pegasus offering is technically simple and robust, but it is nothing for those who are faint at heart. The warning that the kit requires an experienced builder is not to be underestimated, because the IP kit from the UK comes with white metal parts and no visual instructions, just a verbal description of the building steps. The IP parts (including the canopy, which is one piece, quite thick but also clear) and the decals look good, though.

The IP parts feature flash and uneven seam lines, sprue attachment points are quite thick. The grey IP material had on my specimen different grades of hard-/brittleness, the white metal parts (some of the propeller blades) were bent and had to be re-aligned. No IP parts would fit well (there are no locator pins or other physical aids), the cockpit tub was a mess to assemble and fit into the fuselage. PSR on any seam all around the hull. But even though this sound horrible, the kit goes together relatively easy – thanks to its simplicity.

I made some mods and upgrades, though. One of them was an internal axis construction made from styrene tubes that allow the two propeller discs to move separately (OOB, you just stack and glue the discs onto each other into a rigid nose cone), while the propeller tip with its radome remained fixed – just as in real life. However, due to the parts’ size and resistance against each other, the props could not move as freely as originally intended.

Separate parts for the air intakes as well as the wings and tail surfaces could be mounted with less problems than expected, even though - again – PSR was necessary to hide the seams.

Painting and markings:

As already mentioned, the livery would be rather conservative, because I wanted the aircraft to carry the uniform USN scheme in all-over FS 35042 with white markings, which was dropped in 1955, though. The XFV or a potential serial production derivative would just fit into this time frame, and might have carried the classic all-blue livery for a couple of years more, especially when operated by an evaluation unit. Its unit, VX-8, is totally fictional, though.

The cockpit interior was painted in Humbrol 80 (simulating bright zinc chromate primer), and to have some contrasts I added small red highlights on the fin pod tips and the gun pods' anti-flutter winglets. For some more variety the radome became earth brown with some good weathering, simulating an opaque perspex hood, and I added white (actually a very light gray) checkerboard markings on the "propeller rings", a bit inspired by the spinner markings on German WWII fighters. Subtle, but it looks good and breaks the otherwise very simple livery.

Some post-panel-shading with a lighter blue was done all over the hull, the exhaust area and the gun ports were painted with iron (Revell 91) and treated with graphite for a more metallic shine.

Silver decal stripe material was used to create the CoroGuard leading edges and the fine lines at the flaps on wings and fins - much easier than trying to solve this with paint and brush...

The decals were puzzled together from various dark blue USN aircraft, including a F8F, F9F and F4U sheet. The "XH" code was created with single 1cm hwite letters, the different font is not obvious, thanks to the letter combination.

Finally, the model was sealed with semi-gloss acrylic varnish (still shiny, but not too bright), the radome and the exhaust area were painted with matt varnsh, though.

A cool result, despite the rather dubious kit base. The Pegasus kit is seriously something for experienced builders, but the result looks convincing. The blue USN livery suits the XFV/FV-2 very well, it looks much more elegant than in the original NMF - even though it would, in real life, probably have received the new Gull Gray/White scheme (introduced in late 1955, IIRC, my FV-2 might have been one of the last aircraft to be painted blue). However, the blue scheme IMHO points out the aircraft's highly aerodynamic teardrop shape, esp. the flight pics make the aircraft almost look elegant!

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Jagdtiger was until 1945 the heaviest armored vehicle to see service in World War Two. The design process started out with a demand for a heavy assault gun back in 1942 when the war was still in Germany’s favor and the army needed a heavily armored and armed vehicle to smash enemy fortifications. However, by the time the Jagdtiger, based on the Tiger II tank, came along two years later, the original need for the vehicle had vanished and it was put to work as a heavy long-range tank destroyer instead.

A total of 95 standard Jagdtiger and less than 50 Jagdtiger Ausf. M (their definite number remains uncertain due to the fact that most early Sd.Kfz. 187s were built from unfinished standard Jagdtiger hulls) were eventually produced and delivered before more effective tank hunter designs, based on the Einheitspanzer vehicle family and armed with more reliable weapons, were introduced. These quickly replaced the heavy Tiger-based interim designs.

Specifications:

Crew: 6 (Driver, Radio operator/hull machine gunner, Commander, Gunner, 2 Loaders)

Weight: 68.5 tons (150.881 lb)

Length: 9,94 m (32 ft 6 3/4 in) overall

7,80 m (25 ft 6 1/2 in) hull only

Width: 3.625 metres (11 ft 10½ in)

Height: 2,87 metres (9 ft 4 ¾ in)

3,22 metres (10 ft 6 ¾ in) with retrofitted gun barrel suspension

Ground clearance: 56,5 cm (22¼ in)

Suspension: Longitudinal torsion bars

Fuel capacity: 860 Liter (190 imp gal, 230 US gal)

Armor:

20–180 mm (0.79 – 7 in)

Performance:

Maximum road speed: 38 km/h (24 mph)

Operational range: 120 km (75 mi) on road

80 km (50 mi) off road

Power/weight: 11,68 PS/ton

Engine:

Simmering-Pauker X-16-80 16 cylinder 36.5 liter gasoline engine with 800 hp (575 kW)

Transmission:

Maybach eight-speed OLVAR OG40-1216B gearbox

Armament:

1× 88 mm 8.8 cm L/100 KwK. Pak. 45/1 with 50 rounds

1× 7.92 mm MG 34 or 42 machine gun in the hull with 800 rounds

The kit and its assembly:

This fictional tank was inspired by Trumpeter’s 1:72 models of the (real yet rare) Jagdtiger with the lighter 88 mm gun and the Porsche running gear. I thought about combining both into a late but fictional production model, but then also considered a more powerful variant of the main gun with a longer barrel – something that had been on the real-world drawing board, and ModelCollect offers one or two fictional Heer ’46 tanks with such a long weapon. An indirect inspiration for the gun and its eventual design on the model was the United States Department of Defense and Canada's Department of National Defence’s mutual HARP (High Altitude Research Project) project, in which light loads were literally fired into space/lower orbit with the help of guns instead of rockets. The ever bigger guns frequently featured lengthened and stiffened barrels to achieve and resist the massive firing pressures needed to reach altitudes with an apogee of up to 110 miles (180) km. Or even more than 300 miles (500 km) with a 40-lbs payload and rocket assistance!

To mount such a long barrel on a tank chassis, a gun position at the rear would make most sense to avoid a massive overhang and a wacky weight distribution. Therefore, the Jagdtiger’s casemate was moved accordingly, creating a more obvious (and challenging) what-if project.

Even though the Trumpeter Jagdtiger kit was used as base, my build is actually a kitbashing of two of them: the combination of the Porsche suspension and the respective hull from one kit with the 88 mm gun and its differing mantlet from another. Since the casemate and the engine cover were integral parts of the upper hull, both had to be cut off, switched and PSRed into their new places. Before the parts were cut off, though, internal stiffeners (simple sprue material) were added between the sloped rear side walls to ensure the upper hull’s stability and alignment. The change of the sections was quite easy; the engine deck cover was easy to re-mount, the casemate called for some PSR to hide the seam at the intersection with the hull. Anything else almost fell into place, just the gun mantlet had to be modified to create enough space for it over the armored fan casings of the engine bay cover.

The 88 mm gun barrel was taken OOB but lengthened with styrene tube plug by 35 mm (1.4 in) to achieve the intended L/100 length on the model instead of the original L/71. Reinforcement ribs along the barrel, made from thin styrene profiles, changed the look and underlined the science fiction aspect of this build. Finally, as a weird extra, I furthermore added a cable suspension construction that was used to stabilize the ultra-long barrels of the experimental HARP guns, too. This was also constructed with styrene bits and steel towing cable plastic dummies from an Revell 1:72 Panzer IV kit. Looks odd, but definitively different and whiffy!

The only other changes/additions are an antenna mast with a long-range “Sternantenne”, and I added mudguards (0.5 mm styrene strips) along the hull, which were dented for a more natiral look.

Painting and markings:

This was not easy to settle upon. Jagdtiger generally left the factories only with an overall primer coat with Oxidrot (RAL 3009), which was frequently stretched due to material shortages, so that the color could range from a deep reddish brown to a dull pink. Camouflage was added later, most of the time in field shops at the operating units.

To stick with this practice I initially gave the model and the still separate major components an overall coat with RAL 3009 (from above) and 8017 (from below) with rattle cans. Once thoroughly dried, Panzergrau (RAL 7021, Humbrol 67) was added in shaggy vertical streaks with a flat brush, so that a lot of the primer would still show through, esp. on vertical surfaces. The rationale behind this outdated color on a 1946 vehicle: the Jagdtiger would be primarily operated in a defensive role from prepared positions, the dark color would conceal it in the shadows, e. g. under trees, between or even inside of buildings. In real life, this concept had been revised through the much lighter Hinterhalt standard camouflage, but for the Jagdtiger and its special role it would IMHO still make sense?

When the dark grey had been applied and dry, I found the overall look of this massive vehicle a bit too murky, so I decided to add some more camouflage to break up the outlines and make the Jagdtiger look a bit more interesting. The choice fell on irregular vertical stripes, and as a personal twist I used RAL 7003 (Moosgrau; Revell 45) – a light olive-green grey tone, very close to the Luftwaffe’s RLM 02, that I have already used on other Heer ’46 builds together with RAL 7021 and 7028 (Dunkelgelb).

The running gear remained all-dark grey, though, and the main wheels' steel rims were painted with Revell 91. The black vinyl tracks received a treatment with grey and burnt umbra acrylic artist paint, and later some dry-brushing with grey and silver, too.

The camouflage stripes were applied with thinned acrylic paint over the dark grey base and around the decals that had been applied in the meantime and protected with clear varnish, as if the camouflage had been painted around the existing markings. Then the Moosgrau was wet-sanded vertically to create the impression of wear wand weathering. This also let a bit more of the red primer underneath shine through.

The model received an overall washing with highly thinned dark red-brown acrylic paint, dry-brushing with a dark earth tone, a treatment with water colors (mud and rust traces), and was finally sealed with matt acrylic varnish before assembly. As a final step, mineral artist pigments were dusted into the running gear, the tracks and the lower hull areas to simulate dust and more mud.

A succesful conversion, and I have earmarked the engine/casemate switch for another whiffy tank project on my agenda - after all, there's still a complete Jagdtiger kit left. However, the resulting "new" vehicle looks like a modernized Elefant SPG, with sloped armor and somewhat "streamlined". The modified gun was IMHO a good move, and the barrel suspension system adds weirdness to the whole thing - and despite the VERY long gun barrel, my Sd.Kfz. 187 looks quite plausible, also in the grey/grey livery which turned out more subtle than expected.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Tiger-class cruisers were the last class of all-gun cruisers completed for the British Royal Navy. They came from an order of 8 Minotaur-class cruisers in 1941-2; work on the second group of three ships was effectively suspended in mid-1944. HMS Cerberus was originally one of these conventional cruisers for the British Royal Navy. Cerberus started out as HMS Superb and was the last of the Minotaurs to be built. The ship was completed to a slightly different design to that of the previous members of the class, with a foot more beam than her immediate predecessor HMS Swiftsure.

With Superb, the first Type 275 sets, modified versions of the lock and follow radar, were introduced to also control anti-aircraft fire of the twin 4-inch mounts. Construction on Superb’s unfinished sister ships was halted after the end of the war and they were later scrapped or converted into the new Tiger-class automatic gun cruisers.

Back in Great Britain, Cerberus was immediately decommissioned again and tied to a mooring buoy in Portsmouth harbor. After the hostilities in the Southern Atlantic had ended, Chile showed a faint interest in acquiring the Tiger-Class ships, but this did not get past the discussion stage. Cerberus existed in a slowly deteriorating condition until mid-1986 and, following competitive tendering, she was sold for scrap to Desguaces Varela of Spain. She was towed to Spain and scrapping started in October 1986.

General characteristics:

Class and type: Tiger-class light cruiser

Displacement: 11.170 tons standard, 13.530 tons deep load

Length: 622.1 ft (189.9 m) overall

Beam: 64 ft (20 m)

Draught: 21 ft (6.4 m)

Complement: 985

Propulsion:

4× Admiralty-type three drum boilers (400 psi),

driving 4× Parsons shaft steam turbines, producing 80,000 shp

Performance:

Speed: 31.5 knots (58 km/h)

Range: 2,000 nautical miles (3,704 km) at 30 knots (55.6 km/h)

4,000 nautical miles (7,408 km) at 20 knots (37.0 km/h)

6,500 nautical miles (12,038 km) at 13 knots (24.1 km/h)

Sensors and processing systems:

Types 278, 903 (x4), 965M, 992Q radars, Types 174, 176 and 185 sonars

Armament:

2× 6-inch (1 × 2)

1× Sea Dart SAM missile system (1 × 2)

2× Oerlikon 20 mm cannons

3 × Raytheon Phalanx CIWS 20 mm close-range Gatling guns

SeaGnat launchers for chaff or flare decoys

Up to six aircraft; initially only helicopters (Westland Wessex, then Sea King),

but later Hawker Sea Harrier VTOL aircraft could be operated, too

The kit and its assembly:

Well, I am treading on hazardous terrain with this one, but I like the challenge. I have built some ships in the past, including some of Matchbox’ waterline models in 1:100, but that was decades ago. But for the current “in the navy” group build I found a ship model to be a suitable submission.

I have never built Matchbox’ HMS Tiger before, though, but I found the concept of a WWII cruiser turned into a quasi-modern heli carrier so absurd that the ship lent itself as basis. My initial idea was to create a fictional Royal Navy Tiger-class ship, but with Sea Harriers on board, part of Task Force 317 that took part in the Falklands conflict. For that purpose I had already stashed away a Revell HMS Invincible, primarily for the Sea Harriers, which are not available as aftermarket sets (e .g. from Trumpeter – you only get AV-8Bs, and the difference is quite visible).

However, for a what-if model, OOB is never enough – with the Invincible kit at hand I quickly considered some transplants and detail changes, and finally I wanted to enlarge the landing deck for more traffic and operational security. This called for a hull extension, and this is where the real adventure began.

I found a straight hull section around the hangar area, and with an L-shaped cut the ship was cut in two pieces. A 3cm 1.5mm styrene plug, together with internal stiffeners, was implanted, and the landing deck replaced with a tailored piece of 0.5mm styrene sheet.

The section between the hangar and the command structure was totally changed with parts from the Invincible’s kit, including a twin funnel that replaces Tiger’s separate funnels. The masts were also modified – the rear mast come from the Tiger, but made slightly taller, while the front mast comes from Invincible, but it was shortened.

The Invincible kit was furthermore used a donor bank for the modified armament and the aircraft models (4 Sea Harriers, 2 SeaKings, (one of them an AEW.2 with a retracted radome) and a Lynx).

Painting and markings:

Since I like subtle what-if models, I stayed close to the paint scheme of the real HMS Tiger: all upper structures in a uniform light grey (I assume it is RN “Light Weatherwork Grey”, BS 381C 676? But I am absolutely NO expert when it comes to ship camouflage and the respective authentic tones!) with a black waterline, together with deck surfaces in very dark grey (black?) and sea green. I used, after an unsuccessful experiment with FS 16473 (ADC Grey, from Modelmaster), which turned out to have a weird, greenish touch, Humbrol 127 (FS 36375), Revell 9 (Anthracite) and Humbrol 88 (Royal Navy Deck Green).

Due to the small scale of the model I added only a VERY light black ink washing for more contrast between the single structures and surfaces and to point out details on the hull. The whole painting process turned out to be nightmare, because there are so many edges and small parts – I know now (again) why I am not a fan of small-scale ship models!

The quick ID marker for British aircraft was created with black decal sheet material – very simple and effective. The landing deck markings come partly from the HMS Tiger OOB sheet, but some more white stripes were added. The tactical codes on the flanks and on the landing deck were created with single letters in black and white in various sizes. While the font is not exactly RN-like (it should be more squared), it works well.

Finally, the model received a coat with matt acrylic varnish from the rattle can, and final details were added, like the lifeboats (which received, according to real life pictures, different liveries in bright red and a dull dark blue), a crane and the aircraft – the Sea Kings and three Sea Harriers were painted in Dark Sea Grey while one Sea Harrier and the Lynx received a dark blue/white “peacetime livery”, in order to add some highlights to the flight deck.

Well, the first 1:700 ship model after years, and probably the last one for the next decades. This is not my home turf, but I am happy that I used the group build to motivate myself enough to tackle it. I am not 100% satisfied with the outcome, but that’s due to the many conversions and my lack of ship building experience. In the end, I can live with HMS Cerberus, since I was able to turn my ideas into model hardware – and overall the ship does not look bad or implausible at all?

Detail of her installation at the Renwick Gallery. Thousands of styrene index cards assembled into ten towers.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

In 1948, a swept wing version of the F-84 was created with the hope of bringing performance to the level of the F-86. The last production F-84E was fitted with a swept tail, a new wing with 38.5 degrees of leading-edge sweep and 3.5 degrees of anhedral, and a J35-A-25 engine producing 5,300 pound-force (23.58 kN) of thrust. The aircraft was designated XF-96A and flew on 3 June 1950. Although the airplane was capable of 602 knots (693 mph, 1,115 km/h), the performance gain over the F-84E was considered minor. Nonetheless, it was ordered into production in July 1950 as the F-84F Thunderstreak. The F-84 designation was eventually retained because the fighter was expected to be a low-cost improvement of the straight-wing Thunderjet with over 55 percent commonality in tooling.

A handful F-96Bs were camouflaged during the late Sixties with the USAF’s new SEA scheme, but most aircraft retained their original bare metal finish with more or less colorful unit markings. Due to its limited capabilities and the introduction of the Mach 2 McDonnell F-4 Phantom, the last F-96B was retired from ANG service in 1971.

General characteristics:

Crew: 2

Length: 54t 11 1/2 in (16,77 m) incl. pitot

Wingspan: 33 ft 7.25 in (10,25 m)

Height: 16 ft 9 in (5,11 m)

Wing area: 350 sq ft (37,55 m²)

Empty weight: 13,810 lb (6.264 kg)

Gross weight: 21,035 lb (9.541 kg)

Max takeoff weight: 28,000 lb (12.701 kg)

Powerplant:

1× Wright J65-W-18 turbojet with 8,600 lbf (34 kN) dry thrust and 10,500 lbf (47 kN) with afterburner

Performance:

Maximum speed: 695 mph (1,119 km/h, 604 kn, Mach 1.1) at 35,000 ft (10,668 m)

Cruise speed: 577 mph (928 km/h, 501 kn)

Range: 810 mi (1,304 km, 704 nmi) combat radius with two droptanks

Service ceiling: 49,000 ft (15,000 m)

Rate of climb: 16,300 ft/min (83 m/s)

Wing loading: 86 lb/sq ft (423 kg/m²)

Armament:

No internal guns;

6× underwing hardpoints for a total ordnance load of up to 6,000lb (2,727 kg), including

a pair of 191.5 US gal (727 l) or 375 US gal (1.429 l) drop tanks on the inner stations

and a mix of AIM-4 Falcon (up to six), MB-1 Genie (up to two) and/or pods with

nineteen 2.75”/70 mm FFAR unguided missiles each (up to four) on the outer stations

The kit and its assembly:

This fictional missing link between the RF-84F and the F-105 was conceived for the Fifties Group Build at whatifmodellers.com, an era when the USAF used a wide variety of interceptor aircraft types and technical advancements were quick and significant – in just a decade the interceptor evolved from a subsonic machine gun-toting aircraft to a guided weapons carrier platform, capable of Mach 2.

The F-96B (I re-used Republic’s dropped designation for the swept-wing F-84F) was to display one of the many “in between” designs, and the (R)F-84F was just a suitable basis for a conversion similar to the T-33-derived F-94, just more capable and big enough to carry the nuclear Genie missile.

The basis became Italeri’s vintage RF-84F kit, a rather simple affair with raised panel lines and a mediocre fit, plus some sinkholes. This was, however, heavily modified!

Work started with the implantation of a new tandem cockpit, taken wholesale from a Heller T-33. Fitting the cockpit tub into the wider Thunderflash hull was a bit tricky, putty blobs held the implant in place. The canopy was taken from the T-33, too, just the RF-84F’s original rear side windows were cut away to offer sufficient length for the longer clear part and the cockpit side walls had to be raised to an even level with the smaller windscreen with the help of styrene strips. With these adapters the T-33 canopy fitted surprisingly well over the opening and blended well into the spine.

The camera nose section lost its tip, which was replaced with the tail cone from a Matchbox H.S. Buccaneer (actually its air brake), and the camera windows as well as the slant surfaces that held them were PSRed away for a conical shape that extended the new pointed radome. Lots of weight in the nose and under the cockpit floor ensured a safe stance on the OOB landing gear.

The rear section behind the air brakes became all-new; for an afterburner I extended and widened the tail section and implanted the rear part from a B-66 (Italeri kit, too) engine nacelle, which received a wider nozzle (left over from a Nakotne MiG-29, a featureless thing) and an interior.

To balance the longer nose I also decided to enlarge the tail surfaces and replaced the OOB fin and stabilizers with leftover parts from a Trumpeter Il-28 bomber – the fin was shortened and the stabilizers reduced in span to match the rest of the aircraft. Despite the exotic source the parts blend well into the F-84’s overall design!

To add supersonic credibility and to connect the design further with the later F-105 I modified the air intakes and cut them into a raked shape – quite easy to realize. Once the wings were in place, I also added small splitter plates, left over from an Airfix BAC Strikemaster.

As an interceptor the armament had to be adapted accordingly, and I procured the quartet of IR-guided Falcons as well as the Genie duo from an Academy F-89. The large drop tanks were taken OOB from the Italeri kit. The Genies were mounted onto their massive Scorpion pylons under the outer wings of the F-96B, while the Falcons, due to relatively little space left under the wings, required a scratched solution. I eventually settled for dual launchers on small pylons, mounted in front of the landing gear wells. The pylons originally belong to an ESCI Ka-34 “Hokum” helicopter kit (they were just short enough!), the launch rails are a halved pair of F-4 Sidewinder rails from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. With everything on place the F-96B looks quite crowded.

Painting and markings:

The machine would represent a late Fifties USAF type, so that the paint options were rather limited if I wanted to be authentic. ADC Grey was introduced in the early Sixties, SEA camouflage even later, so that bare metal became a natural choice – but this can be quite attractive! The model received an overall coat with acrylic “White Aluminum” from the rattle can, plus some darked panels all over the hull (Humbrol 56 for good contrast) and an afterburner section in Revell 91 (Iron Metallic) and Humbrol’s Steel Metallizer. The radome became deep black, the anti-glare panel in front of the windscreen olive drab (Revell 46). Light grey (Revell 75) was used for some small di-electric fairings.

Interior surfaces (cockpit and landing gear wells) were painted with Zinc Chromate primer (I used Humbrol 80), while the landing gear struts became silver-grey (Humbrol 56) and the inside of the covers as well as the air brakes were painted in bright red (Humbrol 19).

Once basic painting was done the model received a black ink washing and was rubbed with grinded graphite to emphasize the raised panel lines, and the material adds a nice dark metallic shine to the silver base coat.

Another challenge was to find suitable unit markings for the Fifties era in the decal vault, which would also fit onto the model. After a long search I eventually settled for rather simple markings from a 325th FIS F-102 from an Xtradecal sheet, which only features a rather timid fin decoration.

Finding other suitable standard markings remained demanding, though. Stars-And-Bars as well as the USAF taglines were taken from the Academy F-89 that also provided the ordnance, most stencils were taken from the OOB Italeri sheet and complemented by small markings from the scrap box. The biggest problem was the creation of a matching serial number. The “FF” code was originally used for P/F-51D Mustangs during the Korea War, but after the type had been phased out it might have been re-used? The letters as well as the serial number digits were created from various markings for USAF F-100s, also from an Xtradecal sheet.

Once the decals had been applied the model was sealed with semi-gloss acrylic varnish, except for the radome, the anti-glare panel as well as the walking areas on the wings as well as parts of the afterburner section, which were coated with matt varnish.

A rather straightforward conversion, even though finishing the project took longer than expected. But the result looks surprisingly natural and plausible. Lots of PSR was needed to modify the fuselage, though, especially the tail section was not easy to integrate into the Thunderflash’s hull. Sticking to the simple NMF livery paid IMHO out, too: the livery looks very natural and believable on the fictional aircraft, and it suits the F-84’s bulbous shape well.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Cessna Model 336 and 337 “Skymaster” were American twin-engine civil utility aircraft built in a unique push-pull configuration. Their engines were mounted in the nose and rear of its pod-style fuselage. Twin booms extended aft of the wings to the vertical stabilizers, with the rear engine between them. The horizontal stabilizer was aft of the pusher propeller, mounted between and connecting the two booms.

The type’s versatility, low noise level, high travel speed and good loitering time in the operational area at low speed proved to be vital assets for these public service operators and justified its relatively high maintenance costs. A handful of the modernized Spectrum SA-550 machines were still in active service after the Millennium, primarily in the USA.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1 + 3 passengers (up to 5 passengers possible in special seat configuration)

Length: 32 ft 6½ in (9.94 m)

Wingspan: 38 ft ¾ in (11.62 m)

Height: 9 ft 2 in (2.79 m)

Wing area: 201 sq ft (18.81 m²)

Aspect ratio: 7.18:1

Airfoil: NACA 2412 at root, NACA 2409 at tip

Empty weight: 2,655 lb (1,204 kg)

Max takeoff weight: 4,400 lb (1,996 kg)

Fuel capacity: 92 US gal (77 imp gal; 350 l) normal,

128 US gal (107 imp gal; 480 l) with auxiliary tank

in the cabin instead of two passenger seats

Powerplant:

1× Pratt & Whitney PT6A-27 turboprop engine, delivering 550 shp (410 kW) and

driving a four-blade McCauley fully-feathering, constant-speed propeller, 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) diameter

Performance:

Maximum speed: 199 mph (320 km/h, 173 kn) at sea level

Cruise speed: 144 mph (232 km/h, 125 kn) at 10,000 ft (3,000 m) (econ cruise)

Stall speed: 69 mph (111 km/h, 60 kn)

Range: 1421 mi (2.288 km, 1.243 nmi) at 10.000 ft (3.050 m) altitude and economy cruise

Service ceiling: 19,500 ft (5,900 m)

Rate of climb: 1,200 ft/min (6.1 m/s)

Takeoff distance to 50 ft (15m): 1,545 ft (471 m)

Landing distance from 50 ft (15m): 1,650 ft (500 m)

The kit and its assembly:

This build is the combination of ingredients that had already been stashed away for a long time, and the “Red Lights” Group Build at whatifmodellers.com in early 2021 was a good motivator and occasion to finally put everything together.

The basis is an ARII 1:72 Cessna T337 model kit – I had purchased it long ago with the expectation to create a military Skymaster from it, but I was confused by a fixed landing gear which would make it a 336? Well, without a further concrete plan the kit preliminarily landed in The Stash™…

However, the ARII model features the optional observation windows in the doors on the starboard side, in the form of a complete(!) fuselage half, so that it lends itself to a police or firefighter aircraft of some sort. This idea was furthermore fueled by a decal sheet that I had been given from a friend, left over from a 1:72 Italeri JetRanger, with three optional police helicopter markings.

The final creative element was the real-world “Pelican” conversion of six O-2As for the US Navy, as mentioned in the background above: the front engine was replaced with a longer nose and the engine configuration changed to a pusher-only aircraft with a single powerful turboprop engine. This looked so odd that I wanted to modify the ARII Cessna in a similar fashion, too, and all these factors came together in this model.

My Arii Cessna 337 kit is a re-boxing from 2009, but its origins date back to Eidai in 1972 and that’s just what you get: a vintage thing with some flash and sinkholes, raised (but fine) surface details and pretty crude seams with bulges and gaps. Some PSR is direly necessary, esp. the fit of the fuselage halves is cringeworthy. The clear parts were no source of joy, either; especially the windscreen turned out to be thick, very streaky (to a degree that I’d almost call it opaque!) and even not fully molded! The side glazing was also not very clear. I tried to improve the situation through polishing, but if the basis is already poor, there’s little you can do about it. Hrmpf.

However, the kit was built mostly OOB, including the extra O-2 glazing in the lower doors, but with some mods. One is a (barely visible) extra tank in the cabin’s rear, plus a pilot and an observer figure placed into the tight front seats. The extended “Pelican” nose was a lucky find – I was afraid that I had had to sculpt a nose from scratch with 2C putty. But I found a radome from a Hasegawa RA-5C, left over from a model I built in the Eighties and that has since long fallen apart. However, this nose fitted almost perfectly in size and shape, I just “blunted” the tip a little. Additionally, both the hull in front of the dashboard and the Vigilante radome were filled with as many lead beads as possible to keep the nose down.

The kit’s OOB spatted, fixed landing gear was retained – even though it is dubious for a Cessna 337, because this type had a fully retractable landing gear, and the model has the landing gear covers actually molded into the lower fuselage. On the other side, the Cessna 336’s fixed landing gear looks quite different, too! However, this is a what-if model, and a fixed landing gear might have been a measure to reduce maintenance costs?

The propeller was replaced with a resin four-blade aftermarket piece (from CMK, probably the best-fitting thing on this build!) on my standard metal axis/styrene tube adapter arrangement. The propeller belongs to a Shorts Tucano, but I think that it works well on the converted Cessna and its powerful pusher engine, even though in the real world, the SA-550 is AFAIK driven by a three-blade prop. For the different engine I also enlarged the dorsal air intake with a 1.5 mm piece of styrene sheet added on top of the molded original air scoop and added a pair of ventral exhaust stubs (scratched from sprue material).

Another addition is a pair of winglets, made from 0.5 mm styrene sheet – an upgrade which I found on several late Cessna 337s in various versions. They just add to the modernized look of the aircraft. For the intended observation role, a hemispherical fairing under the nose hides a 180° camera, and I added some antennae around the hull.

However, a final word concerning the model kit itself: nothing fits, be warned! While the kit is a simple affair and looks quite good in the box, assembling it turned out to be a nightmare, with flash, sinkholes, a brittle styrene and gaps everywhere. This includes the clear parts, which are pretty thick and blurry. The worst thing is the windscreen, which is not only EXTRA thick and EXTRA blurry, it was also not completely molded, with gaps on both sides. I tried to get it clearer through manual polishing, but the streaky blurs are integral – no hope for improvement unless you completely replace the parts! If I ever build a Cessna 337/O-2 again, I will give the Airfix kit a try, it can only be better…

Painting and markings:

The choice between the operator options from the JetRanger sheet was hard, it included Sweden and Italy, but I eventually settled for the LAPD because the livery looks cool and this police department not only operates helicopters, but also some fixed-wing aircraft.

I adapted the LAPD’s classic black-and-white police helicopter livery (Gloss White and Black, Humbrol 22 and 21, respectively) to the Cessna and extended it to the wings. At this point – already upset because of the poor fit of the hardware – disaster struck in the form of Humbrol’s 22 turning into a pinkish ivory upon curing! In the tin, the paint and its pigments looked pretty white and “clean”, and I assume that it’s the thinner that caused this change. What a crap! It’s probably the third tin with 22 that causes trouble, even though in different peculiarities!

The result was total rubbish, though, and I tried to rub the paint off as good as possible on the small model with its many windows, the fixed, delicate landing gear and the wing support struts. Then I overpainted the areas with Revell 301 (Semi-matt White). While this enamel yielded the intended pure white tone, the paint itself is rather gooey and not easy to work with, so that the overall finish turned out worse than desired. At least the black paint worked properly. The demarcations were created with black decal stripes (TL Modellbau), because the tiny model left little room for complex masking measures – and I did not risk any more painting accidents.

Since the aircraft would be kept shiny and clean, I just did a light black ink washing to emphasize surface details and did a light panel post-shading on the black areas, not for weathering but rather to accent surface structures. No further weathering was done (and necessary).

The markings/decals come – as mentioned above – from an Italeri 1:72 JetRanger, but they were augmented with some additional markings, e. g. grey walkways on the wings and “L-A-P-D” in large black letters under the wings, to distract from the poor finish of the white paint around them…

Finally, the kit was sealed overall with Italeri semi-gloss acrylic varnish, just with a matt anti-glare shield in front of the windscreen, which received thin white trim lines (generic decal stripes).

A challenging build due to the Arii kit’s rather poor basis, the massive rhinoplasty and the crisp paint scheme. However, I like the result – what-if models do not always have to be armed military vehicles, there’s potential in other genres, too. And this mono-engine “Pelican” Skymaster plays its role as a “flying eye” in police service credibly and well. However, this was my first and last Eidai kit…

Well, 'tis my favorite time of the year again, and for the first holiday of the season I thought I'd revisit the bizarre case of demonic possession that ushered in The Fall of the House of Aurora. It's a story that never fails to make me scream in horror, "WTF WERE THEY THINKING?!!"

I covered it briefly (well, as briefly as I cover anything) in my 2011 Halloween 'toon, and there are a dozen-and-one (or maybe a hundred-and-one) sites on the ol' www where you can get the details, and, if you want to pop over to Amazon, Aurora designer Andy Yanchus and co-author Dennis Prince have written a 256-page tell-all about the entire sordid affair. But none of the foregoing will stop me from retelling the story here.

For the main attraction in their 1971 lineup, Aurora decided to build on (and hopefully relive the financial good times) of their earlier "Famous Monsters" kits by coming out with smaller (1/13th scale) monster kits with diorama-like "movie set" bases and backgrounds. Called "Monster Scenes", they featured a mad doctor called Dr. Deadly, who looked like he probably failed to get a job in the concentration camp medical experimentation field because he didn't meet SS ethical standards; a Frankenstein monster (who was pretty much Mr. Country Club Republican compared to the rest of the crew); a licensed rendition of Warren Comics' Vampirella, whose well-molded contours raised the eyebrows of the sort of whiny-butt do-gooder Liberals and fire-and-brimstone Bible-thumpers who go through life raising their eyebrows at such things just to show how much better they are than you; and an equally well-endowed babe in a ripped halter top and a pair (also ripped) of what Catherine Bach would immortalize a few years later as "Daisy Dukes", who was marketed as "The Victim"--and, as if that wasn't enough to unleash the wrath of the Politically/Morally Correct, the rest of the kits in the line featured a variety of mad lab machines and medieval torture devices for her to be a victim of.

And, rest assured, the aforementioned wrath of the More Socially Concerned Than You/Holier Than Thou crowds was indeed unleashed. Proving that when the issue involves sex in America, politics can not only make strange bedfellows but some downright perverted ones, feminist sweathogs on the Left and religious nutcakes on the Right met Concerned Parent Groups in the middle, so that all of them could get their guts completely tied in knots together over the idea that some kid, somewhere, somehow, might be getting some enjoyment out of life, and hit the street to show their righteous indignation. The street they hit was the one in front of the corporate headquarters of Nabisco, which had just purchased Aurora, and whose management, having no idea that "Monster Scenes" were hitting the shelves (and the you-know-what was hitting the fan) even as the ink was drying on the contract, found themselves waking into a firestorm of controversy and condemnation rather than the sweet deal they thought they were getting into with one of America's most profitable toy companies. Which, of course, led to them to cancel production of the "Monster Scenes", fire the entire Aurora management staff without so much as a "Ho, Ho, Ho!" just before Christmas, and cravenly cave to the do-gooders demands and concentrate on producing "educational toys".

Which, of course, led to Aurora, one of the pioneers and best-known names in the plastic model industry, permanently closing its doors, because what normal child wants "educational toys"? I recall seeing somewhere once a picture of either a N.O.W. cow who was at the protest because she was too ugly to be on a date or a Missionary Position Mom With A Mission, holding a placard saying "Sadistic Toys Make Twisted Boys". Where do people get such bizarre ideas, anyway? While you might--rightly--accuse Aurora of woefully misjudging the general public's potential reaction, you can't say they didn't know their market: if that poor satchel-butt had had even a glimmer of an inkling of the slightest hint of a clue, if she'd ever had a thought in her head that a preacher, principal or political commissar hadn't hammered in there, she'd have known that "Twisted Boys WANT Sadistic Toys".

Still, Aurora should have guessed what was going to happen (after all, even if it wasn't anything like the Schweinfurt-Regensburg barrage they flew into with "Monster Scenes", they'd gotten flak enough a few years earlier over their model of a French Revolution guillotine which actually decapitated its victim). So, I can only continue to be amazed that they went through the whole process, from initial concept skull session to units on the retail shelves without SOMEBODY saying, "Hey, wait a minute, let's think this through..."

But this year's 'toon deals with less of a "WHAT TF...?" aspect of the story than one that begs the question "Why tf...?" For the full details, you can check out Andy Yanchus' "Vampirella's Salacious Sink Mark" at www.monsterscenes.net/vault.htm, but for those who don't want to venture further afield, I'll give the down'n'dirty details here.

For those of you not in the hobby, sink marks are a bane of the plastic modeler's existence, the sort of thing that made us reach for our Crucifixes and garlic and wooden stakes until we found out that Testor's Contour Putty and Squadron Green Stuff work a hell of a lot better. They are round or elongated oval dimples in the surface of a plastic model part, caused by uneven rates of cooling of the styrene during the molding process. The uneven rates of cooling are caused by the differing shapes and thicknesses in the part, and the worst offenders in this regard are the locator pins and sockets that are designed to help get the parts aligned during assembly and keep them aligned while the glue dries. Like all Aurora figure kits, Vampi's body was molded in two parts, a front half and a back one, and, like most (or probably all) of their figure kits, one of her sets of locator pins and sockets were in her crotch--so I'll give you three guesses where her elongated oval sink mark sunk!

As Mr. Yanchus relates, viewing of the initial test run parts caused some smirks and giggles among the guys in R&D (one can easily imagine all the wink-wink, nudge-nudge-ing that must have been going on), some laughter among the gals in the office (again, one can envision all the "Honestly, MEN...!"-type eye rolls), and--there's one in every crowd--sent one "challenging individual" (as A.Y. calls her) in the marketing department into a FemiNazi tizzy. And, of course, after the laughter died down, it also caused a revamp of the process.

Which brings us to the "Why tf...?"

Why at this point did they decide to come down with a case of the galloping scruples and go to the time and expense of re-engineering? Given everything else about the whole "Monster Scenes" story, it seems nothing short of astounding that they actually saw this flaw in the molding process as a problem to be fixed instead of as a fortuitous happenstance to be capitalized upon. I mean, when you're selling a line of model kits with names like "Gruesome Goodies" and "The Pain Parlor", with box art blurbs saying "Rated X...for Excitement!", and putting ads for them in comic books with the screaming headlline, "Kids--Build Your Own Torture Chamber!", would it have outraged the public (or jammed the corncob any tighter up Ms. Snitsworth-in-Marketing's rectum) to have put a blurb on Vampi's box about her being "Authentic In Every Detail--From Her Fearsome Fangs To Her Cunning...Camel Toe!"?

Somehow, I doubt it. I suspect the most that would have happened is that it would have made us young pervs even more eager to trundle down to our local hobby shop or five-and-dime as fast as our chubby little legs would carry us to (ahem) snatch one.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Saab 35 Draken ('The Kite' or 'The Dragon') was a Swedish fighter-interceptor developed and manufactured by Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (SAAB) between 1955 and 1974. Development of the Saab 35 Draken started in 1948 as the Swedish air force future replacement for the then also in development Saab 29 Tunnan dayfighter and Saab 32B Lansen night fighter. It featured an innovative but unproven double delta wing, which led to the creation of a sub-scale test aircraft, the Saab 210, which was produced and flown to test this previously unexplored aerodynamic feature. The full-scale production version entered service with frontline squadrons of the Swedish Air Force on 8 March 1960. It received the designation Flygplan 35 (Fpl 35; 'Aeroplane 35') and was produced in several variants and types, most commonly as a fighter type with the prefix J (J 35), standing for Jaktflygplan (Pursuit-aircraft), the Swedish term for fighter aircraft.

Another factor for the quick withdrawal was the disappointing performance of the type’s primary weapon, the Rb 05 missile: Its manual joystick steering in the cramped Draken cockpit (to be operated while the pilot was expected to fly at low altitude and evade enemy fire!) presented a number of problems, and the Rb 05’s ultimate accuracy was, even under ideal conditions, on the order of just 10 meters (33 ft), greater than desired. Targets like tanks or even ships were hard to hit with this level of scattering, combined with imminent danger for the pilot, and the air-to-air mode was even less effective. On the more modern Saab 37 the Rb 05 was therefore replaced by the Rb 75, a license-produced version of the American TV-guided AGM-65 Maverick “fire and forget” weapon. TV and laser seeker heads for the Rb 05 to improve the weapon’s accuracy and handling had been planned since the early Seventies, but were never realized.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 15.35 m (50 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 9.42 m (30 ft 11 in)

Height: 3.89 m (12 ft 9 in)

Wing area: 49.2 m² (530 ft²)

Airfoil: 5%

Empty weight: 8,175 kg (18,006 lb)

Gross weight: 11,500 kg (25,330 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 13,554 kg (29,845 lb)

Powerplant:

1× Svenska Flygmotor RM6C (license-built Rolls Royce Avon with Swedish EBK67 afterburner)

turbojet engine, 56.5 kN (12,700 lbf) thrust dry, 77.3 kN (17,240 lbf) with afterburner

Performance:

Maximum speed: 2,150 km/h (1,335 mph, 1,168 kn) at 11,000 m (36,089 ft), clean

1,430 km/h (888 mph, 777 kn) w. two dop tanks and two 454 kg (1.00 lb) bombs

Range: 1.120 km (605 nmi; 696 mi); clean, internal fuel only

Ferry range: 2,750 km (1,480 nmi; 1,710 mi) with four external 500 l drop tanks

Service ceiling: 20,000 m (66,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 199 m/s (39,200 ft/min)

Wing loading: 231.6 kg/m² (47.4 lb/ft²)

Thrust/weight: 0.7

Takeoff roll: 800 m (2,625 ft)

Armament:

2× 30 mm akan m/55 ADEN cannon with 100 rounds per gun

9× hardpoints with a total capacity of 4,500 kg (10.000 lb)

The kit and its assembly:

Even though the model depicts a what-if aircraft, the Draken’s proposed “Gustav” attack variant based on the J 35 D interceptor was real – even though I could not find much detail information about it. So, I took some inspiration from the contemporary Danish Saab 35XD export version, which probably had similar features to the Gustav? Another inspiring factor was a pair of Rb 05 missiles (from an Airfix Viggen) that I had bought with a spare parts lot some time ago – and an attack Draken would be the perfect carrier for these exotic (and unsuccessful) missiles.

For a low-budget build I used one of Mistercraft’s many recent re-boxings of the vintage Revell Draken from 1957(!), and this kit is nothing for those who are faint at heart. It is horrible.

The kit probably depicts a late J 35 A (already with a long tail section), but even for this variant it lacks details like the air scoops for the afterburner or a proper landing gear. The Draken’s characteristic tail wheel is also missing completely. Worst pitfall, however: there is NO interior at all, not even a lumpy seat! The canopy, the early model with struts, is disturbingly clean and crisp, though. The overall fit is mediocre at best, too – there are only a few visible seams, but any of them calls for filling and PSR. It’s a very toyish kit, even though the general outlines are O.K.

And the Mistercraft instructions are really audacious: they show all the parts that are actually NOT there at all. Suddenly a seat appears in the cockpit, a fin fairing from a J 35 D or later, or the tail wheel… And the decal sheets only roughly meet the aircraft you see in the painting instructions - there are three sheets, totally puzzled together, including material for aircraft not mentioned in the instructions, but that’s a common feature of most Mistercraft kits. But: how much can you taunt your disappointed customers?

So, this leaves lots of room for improvements, and calls for a lot of scratching and improvisation, too. First measure was to open both the air intakes (which end after 2mm in vertical walls) and the exhaust, which received an afterburner dummy deep inside to create depth. Next, I implanted a complete cockpit, consisting of s scratched dashboard (styrene sheet), the tub from an Italeri Bae Hawk trainer’s rear cockpit (which comes with neat side consoles and fits quite well) plus a shallow vintage ejection seat, probably left over from an early MiG from a KP kit or one of its many later reincarnations. As an alternative, there’s a Quickboost resin aftermarket set with a complete cockpit interior (even including side walls, IIRC intended to be used with the Hasegawa Draken) available but using it on this crappy kit would have been a waste of resources – it’s more expensive than the kit itself, and even with a fine cockpit the exterior would still remain sh!t.

Since I could not find any detail about the Gustav Draken’s equipment I gave it a laser rangefinder in a poor-fitting S 35 E (or is it a Danish export F-35?) nose that comes as an optional part with the vintage Revell mold – which is weird, because the recce Draken was built between 1963 and 1968 in 2 series, several years after the kit’s launch? Maybe the Mistercraft kit is based on the 1989 Revell re-boxing? But that kit also features an all-in-one pilot/seat part and a two-piece canopy… Weird!

Once the hull was closed many surface details had to be added. The afterburner air scoops were created from plastic profiles, which are aftermarket roof rails in H0 scale. Styrene profile material was also used to create the intakes behind the cockpit, better than nothing. The OOB pitot on the fin was very robust, and since it would be wrong on a J 35 D I cut it off and added a fairing to the fin tip, a shortened/modified ACMI pod, which bears a better pitot alternative at its tip. The pitot on the nose was scratched from heated styrene, since the kit offers no part at all.

Under the rear fuselage the whole tail wheel arrangement had to be scratched. The shallow fairing consists of a section from a Matchbox EA-6B drop tank, the wheel and its strut were tinkered together with bits from the scrap box and profile material. Not stellar, but better than OOB (= nothing!).

The landing gear struts were taken from the kit but beefed up with some details. The main wheels had to be replaced, the new ones come from a KP MiG-21, IIRC.

The ordnance consists of a pair of Rb 05’s from an Airfix Viggen, a pair of OOB drop tanks and MERs from a Matchbox A-7D, together with fourteen streamlined bombs from the same kit – twelve on the MERs and single bombs on the outer pylons. AFAIK, Sweden never used MERs on their aircraft, but the bombs come pretty close to some small bombs that I have seen as AJ 37 ordnance. Most pylons are OOB, I just added a single ventral station and two outer hardpoints under the wings. The Rb 05s received a prominent place under the air intakes on Sidewinder launch rails.

Painting and markings:

Finally a good excuse to apply the famous and complex “Fields & Meadows” paint scheme to a Draken model! However, this “combo” actually existed in real life, but only on a single aircraft: around 1980 a J 35 B (s/n 35520), aircraft “20” of F18, was painted in this fashion, but AFAIK it was only an instructional airframe. You find some pictures of this aircraft online but getting a clear three-side view (esp. from above!) as a reliable painting benchmark is impossible. However, a complete paint scheme of this aircraft is provided with one of Mistercraft’s Revell Draken re-boxings (not the one I bought, though), even though it is mismarked as a J 35 F of F10 in the instructions. One of the common Mistercraft errors, err, “surprises” (*sigh*).

Finding suitable model paints for the elaborate scheme is not easy, either, and after having applied it several times I stuck to my favorites: Humbrol 150 (Forest Green, FS 34127), 75 (Bronze Green), 118 (US Light Tan, FS 30219, a bit light but RAF Dark Earth is too somber) and Revell 06 (Tar Black, RAL 9021) on the upper surfaces and Humbrol 247 (RLM76) underneath.

A large ventral section was, typical for the J 35, left in bare metal, since leaking fuel and oil would frequently eat away any paint there. The section was painted with Revell 91 (Iron) and later treated with Matt Aluminum Metallizer (Humbrol). As per usual, the model received an overall light black ink washing and some post-shading in order to emphasize the panels, correct the splinter camouflage and dramatize the surface. Some extra weathering was done around the gun ports and the jet nozzle with graphite.

Internal details like the cockpit and the landing gear were painted with the help of Swedish Saab 35 reference pictures. The cockpit tub was painted in a dark, bluish green (Humbrol 76) with grey-green (Revell 67) side walls.

The landing gear and its respective wells were painted in a bluish grey (Revell 57), parts of the struts were painted in a bright turquoise (a mix of Humbrol 89 and 80; looks quite weird, but I like such details!). The wheel hubs became medium grey (Revell 47). The Rb 05 missiles were painted in white as live weapons, so that they stand out well from the airframe. The drop tanks received the same blue-grey as the underside (Humbrol 247). MERs and launch rails were painted in a neutral grey (RAL 7001) and the bombs became olive drab (RAL 6014, Gelboliv) with yellow rings and golden fuzes.

Decals/markings were puzzled together from a Moose Republic Saab 32 sheet (unit code number and emblem) and the spares box, including the red tactical tail code from an Italeri 1:72 Gripen and roundels from a Hasegawa Draken. Stencils were taken from the kit’s OOB sheet and also from the Hasegawa Draken sheet. Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

What a horror trip! The paint scheme itself was/is challenging enough, but modding the crappy vintage Revell kit into something more presentable was already a fight in itself. However, I like the outcome. “Fields & Meadows” suits the Draken with its huge and flat upper surface well, and while the Gustav conversion did not take much effort the “mud mover” ordnance under this Mach 2 fighter really looks strange and makes you wonder what this is. A nice what-if model, despite its blurriness!

Some background:

The Nakajima A6M2-N (Navy Type 2 Interceptor/Fighter-Bomber) was a single-crew floatplane. The Allied reporting name for the aircraft was 'Rufe'.

The last A6M2-N in military service was a single example recovered by the French forces in Indochina after the end of World War II. It crashed shortly after being overhauled, though.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1 (Pilot)

Length: 10.10 m (33ft 1⅝ in)

Wingspan: 12.00 m (39 ft 4⅜ in)

Height: 4.30 m (14ft 1⅜ in)

Wing area: 22.44 m² (251.4 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,912 kg (4,235 lb)

Loaded weight: 2,460 kg (5,423 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 2,880 kg (6,349 lb)

Powerplant:

1× Nakajima NK1C Sakae 12 air cooled 14 cylinder radial engine,

delivering 950 hp (709 kW) at 4,200 m (13,800 ft)

Performance:

Maximum speed: 436 km/h (235 knots, 270.5 mph) at 5,000 m (16,400 ft)

Cruise speed: 296 km/h (160 knots, 184 mph)

Range: 1,782 km (963 nmi, 1,107 mi)

Service ceiling: 10,000 m (32,800 ft)

Climb rate: 6 min 43 s to 5,000 m (16,400 ft)

Armament:

2 × 7.7 mm Type 97 machine guns in forward fuselage

2 ×20 mm Type 99 cannons in outer wings

Underwing hardpoints for 2× 60 kg (132 lb) bombs

The kit and its assembly:

This is a real world model, despite the weird looks (see below), and an entry for the Arawasi blog's "Japanese Aircraft Online Model Contest 005 - Japanese Seaplanes & Flying Boats" contest in summer 2017. Even though whifs were allowed to enter, I used the opportunity to build a kit I had originally bought for a few bucks and stashed away in the donor bank: a vintage LS Model Nakajima A6M2-N.

The mould dates back to 1963(!), and the kit was re-issued several times, also under the ARII label. You get a tiny box, with only two sprues moulded in a pale baby blue, and the number of parts is minimal. It's truly vintage and pretty toylike at first sight. Consequently, you have to face some real old-school issues, e. g. moulded markings for the roundels on the wings, general mediocre fit of anything and lots of sinkholes and flash. Then there are toylike solutions like the single-piece propeller or separate, moveable ailerons with bulging joints.

The cockpit interior is non-existent, too: there's just a blank place for a dashboard (to be cut out from the printed BW instructions!), and a spindly pilot figure which is held in mid air by some pins. Furthermore, the kit was designed to take a small electric motor in the nose (sold separately) to drive the propeller. Wires, as well as respective internal ducts, and an AA battery holder are included.

Sounds scary? Well, maybe, if you just build it OOB. But all these flaws should not keep the ambitious modeler away because the LS Model kit is (still) a sound basis to start from, even though and by today's standards, it is certainly not a match-winner for a rivet counter-esque competition.

For its age and the typical solutions of its time, it is actually surprisingly good: you get very fine engraved surface details (more delicate than many contemporary moulds!), a pretty thin, three-piece clear (yet blurry) canopy and, as a bonus to the elevons, separate flaps – a unique detail I have never come across before! Proportions are IMHO good, even though the cowling looks a bit fishy and the engravings are rather soft and shallow. Anyway, on the exterior, there’s anything you can ask for to be found, and as another bonus the kit comes with a beaching trolley, which makes display and diorama fitting easier.

Thanks to the kit's simplicity, the build in itself was pretty straightforward and simple. Cleaning the parts and checking fit was the biggest issue. Upon gluing the old styrene showed signs of serious reaction to the dissolving effect of modern glue: it took ages for the material to cure and become hard again for further work!? Weird…

The many sinkholes and overall displacements were corrected with some NC putty/PSR, the protruding elevon/flap joints sanded away as good as possible, and due to the wobbly nature of the kit’s styrene I added blobs of 2C putty inside of the wing halves as stabilizers.

Some mods and improvements were made, though. After cleaning the OOB propeller from tons of flash the piece turned out to be pretty usable, and it was put on a metal axis. A styrene tube adapter was added behind the relatively flat engine dummy, so that the prop can spin freely – for the later beauty pics, because no CG effect beats IMHO the real thing.

A cockpit interior was created from scratch and donor parts, using the new Airfix A6M model's cockpit as benchmark. It’s not an exact replica, because not much would later be visible, but I wanted, as a minimum, “something” inside. A better pilot figure was used, too, and strapped to the new seat with thin strips of adhesive masking tape as seatbelts.

Under the wings, the hardpoints were simulated with some bits of styrene and wire as shackles, but left empty Under the stabilizer fin I added a lug(?), made from thin wire, too.

The elevons were fixed in place, the seams to the wings filled with white glue in order to conceal the gaps as good as possible. The movable flaps remained, though, adding life to the model. The dolly was also taken more or less OOB, since it fits well. I just improved it with some sinkhole fillings and some other details, including cushions on the float stabilizers, made from paper tissue soaked with thinned white glue, and a towing bar.

Painting and markings:

The reason why I settled for an A6M2-N is mostly the weird paint scheme which can be applied, while still being a real world model: a lilac livery!

As far as I could find out, the A6M2-Ns initially carried an all-over IJN Grey livery, which was later, in late 1942, modified with dark green upper sides for a better concealment on the ground, and the Hinomaru received white edges for better contrast.

Anyway, during the Aleutian campaign and more or less in between these two major standards, several aircraft must have received a special camouflage with lilac upper surfaces, and this model depicts such a machine, based on various profiles but no color picture as reliable reference.

The sources I consulted, as well as pictures of finished A6M2-N models, show a wide variety of shades and paint scheme layouts, though. Upper colors range from pale pink through more or less bright shades of purple to a pale, rusty-reddish brown (maybe primer?), while the undersides show a wide range of greys or even light blue. Some depictions of Aleutian A6M2-Ns as profile or model even show a uniform wraparound scheme! Choice is yours, obviously...

Because of the corny information basis, I did my personal interpretation of the subject. I based my livery more or less on a profile by Michele Marsan, published in Aerei Modelismo Anno XII (March 1991). The unit information was taken from there, too – the only source that would provide such a reference.

My idea behind the livery and the eventual finish was that the machine once was fully painted in IJN Grey. Then, the violet upper color was added in the field (for whatever reason?), resulting in a slightly shaggy look and with the light grey shining through here and there in areas of higher wear, e. g. at the leading edges, cockpit area and some seams.

Painting started with an initial coat of aluminum under the floats, around the cockpit and on the leading edges. Then the undersides and some areas of the upper surfaces were painted with IJN grey. The latter is an individual mix of Humbrol 90 (Beige Green/RAF Sky) and a bit of 155 (Olive Drab, FS 34087). On top of that I added a thin primer layer of mauve (mix of ModelMaster’s Napoleonic Violet and Neutral Grey, Humbrol 176) on the still vacant upper surfaces – both as a preparation for the later weathering treatments (see below).

The following, basic lilac tone comes from Humbrol’s long-gone "Authentics" enamel line. The tin is probably 30 years old, but the content is still alive (and still has a distinctive, sour stench…)! I cannot identify the tone anymore with certainty, but I guess that it is 'HJ 4: Mauve N 9', one of the line’s Japanese WWII tones which was later not carried over to the standard tones, still available today.

Anyway, the color is a dull, rather greyish violet, relatively dark (a bit like RAF Ocean Grey), and it fits well as a camouflage tone on this specific model. Since there’s no better alternative I could think of except for an individual mix or garish, off-the-rack pop art tones, I went with it.

After overall basic painting was done and thoroughly cured, weathering started with a careful wet sand paper treatment, removing the salt grain masks and revealing some of the lower IJN Grey and aluminum layers. While this appears messy, I found that the result looks more realistic than artificial weathering applied as paint effects on top of the basic paint.

The engine cowling was painted separately, with a mix of black and a little dark blue. The propeller received an aluminum spinner (Humbrol’s Matt Aluminum Metallizer), while the blades received aluminum front sides (Revell acrylics), and red brown (Humbrol 160) back sides. Two thin, red stripes decorate the propeller tips (Decals, left over from an AZ Model Ki-78, IIRC).

As a standard procedure, the kit received a light wash with thinned black ink, revealing the engraved panel lines, plus some post-shading in order to emphasize panels and add visual contrast and ‘drama’.

Decals and markings were improvised and come from the spares box, since I did not trust the vintage OOB decals - even though they are in so far nice that the sheet contains any major marking as well as a full set of letter so that an individual tail code could be created. Anyway, the model's real world benchmark did not carry any numeric or letter code, just Hinomaru in standard positions and a horizontal, white-and-red stripe on the fin.

The roundels actually belong to a JSDAF F-4EJ, some stencils come from a leftover Hobby Boss A6M sheet. The fin decoration was created with generic decal sheet material (TL Modellbau). Similar stuff was also used for the markings on the central float, as well as for the yellow ID markings on the inner wings' leading edges. I am just not certain whether the real aircraft carried them at all? But they were introduced with the new green upper surfaces in late 1942, so that they appear at least plausible. Another argument in this marking‘s favor is that it simply adds even more color to the model!

The cockpit interior was painted in a light khaki tone (a mix of Humbrol 159 and 94), while the flaps' interior was painted with Aodake Iro (an individual mix of acrylic aluminum and translucent teal paint). Lacking good reference material, the beaching trolley became IJA Green, with some good weathering with dry-brushed silver on the edges and traces of rust here and there (the latter created with artist acrylics.

Close to the (literal) finish line, some soot and oil stains were added with graphite and Tamiya's 'Smoke', and the kit finally received a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri); to the varnish on the engine cover a bit of gloss varnish was added, for a sheen finish.

In the end, quite a challenging build. Not a winner, but …different. Concerning the LS Model kit as such, I must say that - despite its age of more than 50 years now - the A6M2-N model is still a worthwhile offer, if you invest some effort. Sure, there are certainly better 1:72 options available (e. g. the Hasegawa kit, its mould was created in 1995 and should be light years ahead concerning detail and fit. Not certain about the Revell/Frog and Jo-Han alternatives, though), but tackling this simple, vintage kit was fun in itself. And, based on what you get out of the little box, the result is not bad at all!

Beyond the technical aspects, I am also pleased with the visual result of the build. At first glance, this antiquity looks pretty convincing. And the disputable, strange lilac tone really makes this A6M2-N model …outstanding. Even though I still wonder what might have been the rationale behind this tone? The only thing I could imagine is a dedicated scheme for missions at dusk/dawn, similar to the pink RAF recce Spitfires in early WWII? It would be plausible, though, since the A6M2-Ns were tasked with nocturnal reconnoitre and ground attack missions.

Some background:

The Type-R13EX Phantom was an experimental unmanned labor developed by Schaft Enterprises’ Planning Section 7. The exact purpose of the labor remains unclear, it might only have been a singular prototype for innovative weapon and A.I. technology, so that it is most possible that the type or its systems were primarily intended for military service, even though the Type-R13EX as such was not adopted for serial production. Its silhouette is reminiscent of the military Brocken labor, which could mean that the Phantom's body was based on the Type 7B/2B. However, the difference lies in mobility, since the Phantom was slower due to having thick armor and carrying on his torso the complex mechanism necessary to carry out his attacks.

However, just a few months later, the Phantom appeared once more at a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) training ground at Oshima, where it engaged a number of light military labors in combat. The JGSDF labors were unable to repel the Phantom, and Patlabor units that arrived on scene shortly after were barely able to fend it off. This was the final appearance and known deployment of the Phantom before the debut of the Griffon.

The kit and its assembly:

It has been a while that I built a humanoid mecha, and the mysterious Phantom labor (or better: robot) from the Patlabor anime TV series was still missing in my collection. I have already built this kit, even though as a heavily modified fictional German police labor.

The kit was built almost OOB – it is a rather simple mecha/action figure kit which can probably built without using any glue. As such, the detail level is not very high, but the Phantom Labor is a rather sleek design with a very organic and clean shape. Therefore, I just added some bits and pieces to the “interior”, in the opening under the head/face and around the removable EMP generator block in the torso, which can be plugged between the hips and the torso to depict the “open” body. Most details were made from styrene profile, but I also used sprue material, paper tissue dipped in white glue, soft iron wire and plastic-coated steel wire to create the hydraulic pistons under the chin (which can hardly be seen, though, just from certain angles).

Another option is to display the heat exchanger arrangement on the Phantom’s back in open and closed position – the open module is well detailed. However, I made a mistake when I assembled the latter, because I did not read the instructions properly (which could be better drawn, some illustrations, e .g,. the assembly of the upper arms, leave you guessing). The kit's designers want you to fix the "reactor" part to the back of the mecha, and then you can alternatively put the closed heat exchanger onto/over it, or mount the three opened covers to it. I found this construction weird and intuitively glued the reactor piece to the open covers, only to find out later that the closed cover section needs the recator piece underneth to hold onto the Phantom's back and cover some gaps. Luckily I had the reactor piece left over from my first Phantom Labor build, thanks to the thorough conversion I did with it, so that I had a suitable donor part to mend the mistake. Phew... O.o'

A unique (if not odd?) design feature of Bandai’s Patlabor IP models are the silicone sleeves over an endoskeleton for arms and legs. When you follow the instructions, they are easy to mount, though, just be careful when you want to paint them: only acrylic paint is recommended, since any solvent-based paint might react with the silicone. I have also heard of many builders having problems over time with the silicone, but – with some of these kits that I have built now 20 or more years on display – I never had any issues of problems?

However, on this specific kit (bought as “used” but still NIB; not certain about its production date or age, but I assume it's from the initial 1990 run and not a re-issue from 2014 or later) I found the sleeves to be disturbingly thin and their inside surfaces stuck together. "Opening" them was a tedious and delicate task, even though the silicone/rubber material was still intact and not melded together. The parts were still sealed in their plastic bags, but a single IP sprue (the light purple material) was quite brittle (while the others were fine), too. I can only guess that the kit had been poorly stored before I bought it, probably in an attic where it was exposed to excessive summer heat that vaporized and extracted some of the plastic/silicone softeners?

The kit goes together easily and can be assembled as a snap-fit kit without glue, even though the silicone sleeves require some manual skill to trim them properly. However, apparently design with robustness in mind the extremities’ fit is not too good and requires PSR on every seam for a proper finish. Another problem: the shoulder sections with the additional guards are designed in a matryoshka fashion, with three flexible layers of parts over each other, so that you have to finish each layer individually (PSR and paint) before you can add the next. On the other side you can assemble, paint and finish many segments of the model separately, to be completed as final step.

Painting and markings:

I stuck to the mecha’s appearance in the TV series, which features quite dark colors and yellow highlights around the hull. The basic color appears to be a little controversial, as it is described as “cobalt blue”, but on TV the color rather reminds of a purple tone, and the kit is molded in a similarly colored plastic. Maybe (as often) a translation issue?

Another problem: there are no clear painting instructions - you have to refer to the box art illustration (which only shows the front of the mecha in dubious light conditions) and pictures of the finished model on the box' sides, but these are very small and are not truly helpful. The instructions themselves are disappointing, too: the product designers decided to use a poster format, which shows the box art on one side (looks cool, but it's not helpful!) and only a tiny b/w picture of the model with vague color indications. This leaves the builder guessing about many painting details. You can find some screenshots of the Phantom Labor online, or you can try to find videos of the TV series' episodes where it appears, but in the end there's a lot to be guesstimated or made up.

To keep the Phantom mysterious and give it a less comic-esque look I decided to stay true to its impression on TV but add effects like weathering and post-shading – similar to my Dorvack PA models.

For the purplish basic color I used a rather exotic tone: Humbrol’s vintage “HJ4” from the brand’s long-gone Authentic range, the infamous and highly dubious WWII “Mauve N.9” (a.k.a. “IJN Purple”) that some A6M2-Ns were supposed to have carried. This is a kind of purple, but a rather greyish and dull tone that looks more like a military/camouflage tone than decorative/flashy. The mauve tone is less bluish than the Phantom's “authentic” tone on TV, but it looks fine to me and offers enough contrast to the darker sections, which were painted in Humbrol 112 (Tarmac, also sold as Field Blue?), which is a very dark blue-grey, very similar to FS 35042 (USN Dark Sea Blue) but less greenish. The color of some areas, like the "hood" behind the head unit, had to be guessed, and I outlines some surface details on the back with black to add contrasts.

The skull-like head unit was painted in a very light grey instead of pure white, to avoid too much contrast to the rest of the mecha. The silicone sleeves were treated with thinned grey and black artist acrylic paint with very fine pigments to avoid long-term chemical reactions with the softener in the rubber material.

The technical innards, the reactor on the back and the EMP generator in the torso, were painted in a bare metallic finish. I used Humbrol 56 as basis and then layered some washings with black ink and thinned black acrylic paint over it, plus dry-brushing with brighter aluminum and rubbing the parts with graphite, which adds a dark metallic shine and a more natural look.

The lenses on the head and in the torso were laid out with silver and then "filled" with clear acrylic paints in various shades.

The parts also received a black ink washing to emphasize edges and engravings, as well as dry-brushing/post-shading with lightened/dulled-down basic tones to make the model looks less toyish, and the give the Phantom Labor a slightly worn look. Unfortunately, the kit only comes with stickers instead of decals, but since these comprise onyl some small Schaft Enterprises logos and black inserts for louvres on arms and legs, which I had painted, anyway, so that I left the model without markings. Finally, all parts (except for the silicone sleeves) received a coat with matt acrylic varnish, and the model as finally assembled/completed.

It took a long time that I eventuelly tackled and finished the Phantom Labor kit to complete my collection of Patlabor mecha - only the Type Zero police prototype is still missing and a respective kit already waiting in the The Stash. Thanks to me experience with a former build of this kit, I knew what I had to expect, even though the mistake with the optional parts for the heat exchanger on the back bugs me, but I am happy that I had a spare part to save the situation. The dubious IJN purple tone turned out to be lighter than expected, esp. when you see screenshots of the "real" Phantom Labor in direct comparison, but on the other side the color does not look bad or wrong - the overall impression is IMHO O.K., and the bigger contrast to the dark blue-grey sections on the body make the model look more interesting than the orginal all-murky livery.

Krachenvogel - Box art pic.

Category: Model Kit.

Name: Krachenvogel.

Series: S.F.3.D aka Ma.K (Maschienen Krieger).

Scale: 1/20 scale.

Size (after completed): 27.2cm x 18.3cm x 10.6cm.

Origin: S.F.3.D Original created by Kow Yokoyama.

Brand: Wave.

Material: Styrene Plastic.

Release Date: Dec 2020.

Condition: Unassembled.

Description: This new model kit of a Krachenvogel utilizes a new mold for a better look and increased stability. Injection molded plastic parts are used for the blade antenna, sensor and arm-mounted Panzerschreck, which were formerly metal parts.

*Note: Pics not by us. It's just for reference.

This is a Model Kit collected by my BB.

More in My Collection Corner.

"Hôtel de Michelin"

500mm x 500mm x 870mm

19.6" x 19.6" x 34.2"

styrene foam / wood clay /stone clay /copper line /epoxy putty/plastic /aluminium foil /dry flower/ Japanese ash/ glass

Available

All images copyright TOKYO GOOD IDEA Development Institute Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

www.tokyogoodidea.com

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

Cunliffe-Owen Aircraft was a British aircraft manufacturer of the World War II era. They were primarily a repair and overhaul shop, but also a construction shop for other companies' designs, notably the Supermarine Seafire. But the company also undertook contract work for the Air Ministry, Lord Rootes, Shorts and Armstrong Siddeley worth £1.5 million, and undertook design and development work.

The Marlin’s FAA front line career ended in late 1954 with the introduction of the Fairey Gannet. By that time, Cunliffe-Owen had already been, due to huge losses in the Post-War civil aviation market, dissolved since 1947.

General characteristics:

Crew: two

Length: 39 ft 7 1/2 in (12.10 m)

Wingspan: 47 ft 3 in (14.40 m)

Height: 13 ft 4.5 in (4.07 m)

Wing area: 35.40 m² (381.041 ft²)

Empty weight: 10,547 lb (4,794 kg)

Max. takeoff weight: 16,616 lb (7,553 kg)

Fuel capacity: 409 imperial gallons (1,860 l; 491 US gal)

Powerplant:

1× Bristol Centaurus 57 18-cylinder radial engine, 2,825 hp (2,107 kW)

driving a 5-bladed Rotol VH 65, 14 ft (4.3 m) diameter propeller

Performance:

Maximum speed: 540 km/h (293 kn, 335 mph)

Maximum range: 900 mi (783 nmi, 1,450 km)

Combat radius: 349 mi (303 nmi; 562 km)

Service ceiling: 31,600 ft (9,630 m)

Rate of climb: 2,600 ft/min (13 m/s)

Time to altitude: 7.75 minutes to 10,000 feet (3,048 m)

Wing loading: 158.9 kg/m² (32.5 lb/ft²)

Power/mass: 240 W/kg (0.147 hp/lb)

Armament:

2× 20 mm (0.79 in) Hispano autocannon in the outer wings

2× 0.50 in (12.7 mm) M2 Browning machine guns in a dorsal, remote-controlled

Frazer-Nash FN95 barbette

1× 1,850 lb (840 kg) 18” Mk. VXII torpedo or 2 × 2,000 lb (910 kg) bombs under the fuselage,

or up to 2.000 lb of bombs in an internal bomb bay

Alternatively, up to 16× RP-3 rocket projectiles, bombs or 2× 90 gal (408 l) drop tanks

on underwing hardpoints; total ordnance load of up to 3,000 lb (1,361 kg)

The kit and its assembly:

This converted Aichi B7A2 was inspired by a whiffy Royal Navy skin for this type for a flight simulator, found at warthunder.com and created/posted by a user called byacki. The aircraft was otherwise unchanged, but the result looked so convincing that I earmarked the idea for a hardware build.

This time has come now: the 2018 “RAF Centenary” Group Build at whatifmodelers.com was a neat occasion to tackle the project, since I already had stashed away a Fujimi kit for this build.

In fact, Cunliffe-Owen submitted a competitive proposal for the Spearfish’s requirement, but details concerning the respective aircraft remain obscure, so that the B7A2 fills this gap well. The Fujimi kit itself is VERY nice, well detailed and goes together like a charm. In order to stay true to the original inspiration I did not change much, but the Fairey Spearfish of the late WWII era had some influence.

First of all, the engine was changed into a Bristol Centaurus – a very simple rhinoplasty, since the B7A2’s front fuselage diameter turned out to be ideal for this swap! The original nose was cut off just in front of the exhaust stubs, and a Centaurus from a PM Model Sea Fury was mounted in its place – even though it had to be “squashed” a little in order to fit properly (achieved through the use of a screw clamp and 2C putty inside to stabilize the new shape). Inside of the new cowling, a styrene tube was added for the new five blade propeller, also form a Sea Fury, which received a metal axis.

Another addition is the gun barbette, a common feature among Admiralty Specification O.5/43 designs (the Fairey Spearfish carried one, too). I was lucky to find a leftover chin turret from an Airfix B-17G in the pile, which fitted well in shape and size. The casing ejector openings were faired over and then the turret was mounted upside down in a round opening at the end of the cockpit section. Cockpit floor and canopy were modified accordingly and the result does not look bad at all! Inside of the cockpit the OOB bucket seats were replaced by bigger alternatives – the Fujimi parts look like 1:100 scale!

The OOB torpedo was retained and I added some unguided 3” rockets under the aircraft’s wings, left over from my recent Sea Hawk trainer build. Another addition is a radar pod under the port side wing (a modified cardboard drop tank from a WWII P-51D), and the main wheels were changed – from a Matchbox Me 262, because they feature more details than the OOB parts. The tail wheel was modified, too: instead of the B7A2’s fixed wheel, I implanted the front wheel from a PZL Iskra and added covers, for a retractable arrangement.

Painting and markings:

Well, a conservative choice, and since I wanted to stay true to the original CG design, I stuck to classic RN colors in the form of Extra Dark Sea Grey (Humbrol 123) for the upper surfaces and Sky (Tamiya XF-76 IJN Green Grey, which is a very similar, yet slightly darker tone) for the undersides, with a high waterline. A personal twist came through Korean War era “invasion stripes”, which were carried for easy identification esp. by propeller-driven aircraft in order to avoid friendly AA fire from the ground. The stripes were created after basic painting with white and black generic decal sheet material (TL Modellbau): large white bands (32 mm wide) as foundation, with single black bands (each 6.4 mm wide) added on top. Application around the radar pod and on the slightly tapered fuselage was a bit tricky, but IMHO still easier than trying to mask and paint the stripes.

Other markings were puzzled together from a PrintScale Fairey Firefly sheet, from different Korean War era aircraft.

As per usual, the kit received a light black ink wash in order to emphasize the engraved surface details, and then the panels were highlighted through dry-brushing. Lightly chipped paint was simulated with dry-brushed silver and light grey, and gun and exhaust soot were created with grinded graphite.

Finally, everything was sealed under a mix of Italeri’s matt and semi-gloss acrylic varnishes, for a sheen finish.

I am astonished how natural the Japanese B7A2 from late WWII looks in Royal Navy colors – even without my minor modifications the aircraft would look very convincing, even as a post-war design. It’s really an elegant machine, despite its bulk and size!

The Centaurus with its five blade propeller, the missiles under the wings and the gun barbette just add some more muscle and post-war credibility. I could also imagine this elegant aircraft in WWII Luftwaffe markings, maybe with an engine swap (BMW 801 or Jumo 213 power egg), too?

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Saab 35 Draken ('The Kite' or 'The Dragon') was a Swedish fighter-interceptor developed and manufactured by Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget (SAAB) between 1955 and 1974. Development of the Saab 35 Draken started in 1948 as the Swedish air force future replacement for the then also in development Saab 29 Tunnan dayfighter and Saab 32B Lansen night fighter. It featured an innovative but unproven double delta wing, which led to the creation of a sub-scale test aircraft, the Saab 210, which was produced and flown to test this previously unexplored aerodynamic feature. The full-scale production version entered service with frontline squadrons of the Swedish Air Force on 8 March 1960. It received the designation Flygplan 35 (Fpl 35; 'Aeroplane 35') and was produced in several variants and types, most commonly as a fighter type with the prefix J (J 35), standing for Jaktflygplan (Pursuit-aircraft), the Swedish term for fighter aircraft.

Another factor for the quick withdrawal was the disappointing performance of the type’s primary weapon, the Rb 05 missile: Its manual joystick steering in the cramped Draken cockpit (to be operated while the pilot was expected to fly at low altitude and evade enemy fire!) presented a number of problems, and the Rb 05’s ultimate accuracy was, even under ideal conditions, on the order of just 10 meters (33 ft), greater than desired. Targets like tanks or even ships were hard to hit with this level of scattering, combined with imminent danger for the pilot, and the air-to-air mode was even less effective. On the more modern Saab 37 the Rb 05 was therefore replaced by the Rb 75, a license-produced version of the American TV-guided AGM-65 Maverick “fire and forget” weapon. TV and laser seeker heads for the Rb 05 to improve the weapon’s accuracy and handling had been planned since the early Seventies, but were never realized.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 15.35 m (50 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 9.42 m (30 ft 11 in)

Height: 3.89 m (12 ft 9 in)

Wing area: 49.2 m² (530 ft²)

Airfoil: 5%

Empty weight: 8,175 kg (18,006 lb)

Gross weight: 11,500 kg (25,330 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 13,554 kg (29,845 lb)

Powerplant:

1× Svenska Flygmotor RM6C (license-built Rolls Royce Avon with Swedish EBK67 afterburner)

turbojet engine, 56.5 kN (12,700 lbf) thrust dry, 77.3 kN (17,240 lbf) with afterburner

Performance:

Maximum speed: 2,150 km/h (1,335 mph, 1,168 kn) at 11,000 m (36,089 ft), clean

1,430 km/h (888 mph, 777 kn) w. two dop tanks and two 454 kg (1.00 lb) bombs

Range: 1.120 km (605 nmi; 696 mi); clean, internal fuel only

Ferry range: 2,750 km (1,480 nmi; 1,710 mi) with four external 500 l drop tanks

Service ceiling: 20,000 m (66,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 199 m/s (39,200 ft/min)

Wing loading: 231.6 kg/m² (47.4 lb/ft²)

Thrust/weight: 0.7

Takeoff roll: 800 m (2,625 ft)

Armament:

2× 30 mm akan m/55 ADEN cannon with 100 rounds per gun

9× hardpoints with a total capacity of 4,500 kg (10.000 lb)

The kit and its assembly:

Even though the model depicts a what-if aircraft, the Draken’s proposed “Gustav” attack variant based on the J 35 D interceptor was real – even though I could not find much detail information about it. So, I took some inspiration from the contemporary Danish Saab 35XD export version, which probably had similar features to the Gustav? Another inspiring factor was a pair of Rb 05 missiles (from an Airfix Viggen) that I had bought with a spare parts lot some time ago – and an attack Draken would be the perfect carrier for these exotic (and unsuccessful) missiles.

For a low-budget build I used one of Mistercraft’s many recent re-boxings of the vintage Revell Draken from 1957(!), and this kit is nothing for those who are faint at heart. It is horrible.

The kit probably depicts a late J 35 A (already with a long tail section), but even for this variant it lacks details like the air scoops for the afterburner or a proper landing gear. The Draken’s characteristic tail wheel is also missing completely. Worst pitfall, however: there is NO interior at all, not even a lumpy seat! The canopy, the early model with struts, is disturbingly clean and crisp, though. The overall fit is mediocre at best, too – there are only a few visible seams, but any of them calls for filling and PSR. It’s a very toyish kit, even though the general outlines are O.K.

And the Mistercraft instructions are really audacious: they show all the parts that are actually NOT there at all. Suddenly a seat appears in the cockpit, a fin fairing from a J 35 D or later, or the tail wheel… And the decal sheets only roughly meet the aircraft you see in the painting instructions - there are three sheets, totally puzzled together, including material for aircraft not mentioned in the instructions, but that’s a common feature of most Mistercraft kits. But: how much can you taunt your disappointed customers?

So, this leaves lots of room for improvements, and calls for a lot of scratching and improvisation, too. First measure was to open both the air intakes (which end after 2mm in vertical walls) and the exhaust, which received an afterburner dummy deep inside to create depth. Next, I implanted a complete cockpit, consisting of s scratched dashboard (styrene sheet), the tub from an Italeri Bae Hawk trainer’s rear cockpit (which comes with neat side consoles and fits quite well) plus a shallow vintage ejection seat, probably left over from an early MiG from a KP kit or one of its many later reincarnations. As an alternative, there’s a Quickboost resin aftermarket set with a complete cockpit interior (even including side walls, IIRC intended to be used with the Hasegawa Draken) available but using it on this crappy kit would have been a waste of resources – it’s more expensive than the kit itself, and even with a fine cockpit the exterior would still remain sh!t.

Since I could not find any detail about the Gustav Draken’s equipment I gave it a laser rangefinder in a poor-fitting S 35 E (or is it a Danish export F-35?) nose that comes as an optional part with the vintage Revell mold – which is weird, because the recce Draken was built between 1963 and 1968 in 2 series, several years after the kit’s launch? Maybe the Mistercraft kit is based on the 1989 Revell re-boxing? But that kit also features an all-in-one pilot/seat part and a two-piece canopy… Weird!

Once the hull was closed many surface details had to be added. The afterburner air scoops were created from plastic profiles, which are aftermarket roof rails in H0 scale. Styrene profile material was also used to create the intakes behind the cockpit, better than nothing. The OOB pitot on the fin was very robust, and since it would be wrong on a J 35 D I cut it off and added a fairing to the fin tip, a shortened/modified ACMI pod, which bears a better pitot alternative at its tip. The pitot on the nose was scratched from heated styrene, since the kit offers no part at all.

Under the rear fuselage the whole tail wheel arrangement had to be scratched. The shallow fairing consists of a section from a Matchbox EA-6B drop tank, the wheel and its strut were tinkered together with bits from the scrap box and profile material. Not stellar, but better than OOB (= nothing!).

The landing gear struts were taken from the kit but beefed up with some details. The main wheels had to be replaced, the new ones come from a KP MiG-21, IIRC.

The ordnance consists of a pair of Rb 05’s from an Airfix Viggen, a pair of OOB drop tanks and MERs from a Matchbox A-7D, together with fourteen streamlined bombs from the same kit – twelve on the MERs and single bombs on the outer pylons. AFAIK, Sweden never used MERs on their aircraft, but the bombs come pretty close to some small bombs that I have seen as AJ 37 ordnance. Most pylons are OOB, I just added a single ventral station and two outer hardpoints under the wings. The Rb 05s received a prominent place under the air intakes on Sidewinder launch rails.

Painting and markings:

Finally a good excuse to apply the famous and complex “Fields & Meadows” paint scheme to a Draken model! However, this “combo” actually existed in real life, but only on a single aircraft: around 1980 a J 35 B (s/n 35520), aircraft “20” of F18, was painted in this fashion, but AFAIK it was only an instructional airframe. You find some pictures of this aircraft online but getting a clear three-side view (esp. from above!) as a reliable painting benchmark is impossible. However, a complete paint scheme of this aircraft is provided with one of Mistercraft’s Revell Draken re-boxings (not the one I bought, though), even though it is mismarked as a J 35 F of F10 in the instructions. One of the common Mistercraft errors, err, “surprises” (*sigh*).

Finding suitable model paints for the elaborate scheme is not easy, either, and after having applied it several times I stuck to my favorites: Humbrol 150 (Forest Green, FS 34127), 75 (Bronze Green), 118 (US Light Tan, FS 30219, a bit light but RAF Dark Earth is too somber) and Revell 06 (Tar Black, RAL 9021) on the upper surfaces and Humbrol 247 (RLM76) underneath.

A large ventral section was, typical for the J 35, left in bare metal, since leaking fuel and oil would frequently eat away any paint there. The section was painted with Revell 91 (Iron) and later treated with Matt Aluminum Metallizer (Humbrol). As per usual, the model received an overall light black ink washing and some post-shading in order to emphasize the panels, correct the splinter camouflage and dramatize the surface. Some extra weathering was done around the gun ports and the jet nozzle with graphite.

Internal details like the cockpit and the landing gear were painted with the help of Swedish Saab 35 reference pictures. The cockpit tub was painted in a dark, bluish green (Humbrol 76) with grey-green (Revell 67) side walls.

The landing gear and its respective wells were painted in a bluish grey (Revell 57), parts of the struts were painted in a bright turquoise (a mix of Humbrol 89 and 80; looks quite weird, but I like such details!). The wheel hubs became medium grey (Revell 47). The Rb 05 missiles were painted in white as live weapons, so that they stand out well from the airframe. The drop tanks received the same blue-grey as the underside (Humbrol 247). MERs and launch rails were painted in a neutral grey (RAL 7001) and the bombs became olive drab (RAL 6014, Gelboliv) with yellow rings and golden fuzes.

Decals/markings were puzzled together from a Moose Republic Saab 32 sheet (unit code number and emblem) and the spares box, including the red tactical tail code from an Italeri 1:72 Gripen and roundels from a Hasegawa Draken. Stencils were taken from the kit’s OOB sheet and also from the Hasegawa Draken sheet. Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

What a horror trip! The paint scheme itself was/is challenging enough, but modding the crappy vintage Revell kit into something more presentable was already a fight in itself. However, I like the outcome. “Fields & Meadows” suits the Draken with its huge and flat upper surface well, and while the Gustav conversion did not take much effort the “mud mover” ordnance under this Mach 2 fighter really looks strange and makes you wonder what this is. A nice what-if model, despite its blurriness!

Pox Walkers - Warhammer 40K

The base was made from scratch with styrene, cork, epoxy putty, popsicle stick, static grass and painted at the end.

You can also watch a small showcase video on this link.

Some background:

The VF-1 was developed by Stonewell/Bellcom/Shinnakasu for the U.N. Spacy by using alien Overtechnology obtained from the SDF-1 Macross alien spaceship. Its production was preceded by an aerodynamic proving version of its airframe, the VF-X. Unlike all later VF vehicles, the VF-X (sometimes referred to as VF-X1) was strictly a conventional/non-transformable jet aircraft, even though it incorporated many structural components and several key technologies that were vital for the transformable VF-1’s successful development that ran in parallel. Therefore, the VF-X was never intended as an air superiority fighter, but rather a flight-capable analogue test bed and proof of concept for the VF-1’s basic layout and major components. In this role, however, the VF-X made vital contributions to systems’ development that were later incorporated into the VF-1’s serial production and sped the program up considerably.

The fighter remained active in many second line units and continued to show its worthiness years later, e. g. through Milia Jenius who would use her old VF-1 fighter in defense of the colonization fleet - 35 years after the type's service introduction.

General characteristics:

Accommodation: One pilot in a Marty & Beck Mk-7 zero/zero ejection seat

Length 14.23 meters

Wingspan 14.78 meters (at 20° minimum sweep)

Height 3.84 meters

Empty weight: 13.25 metric tons

Standard T-O mass: 18.5 metric tons

Power Plant:

2x Shinnakasu Heavy Industry/P&W/Roice FF-2001 thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, output 650 MW each, rated at 11,500 kg in standard or in overboost (225.63 kN x 2)

4 x Shinnakasu Heavy Industry NBS-1 high-thrust vernier thrusters (1 x counter reverse vernier thruster nozzle mounted on the side of each leg nacelle/air intake, 1 x wing thruster roll control system on each wingtip);

Performance:

Top speed: Mach 2.71 at 10,000 m; Mach 3.87 at 30,000+ m

Thrust-to-weight ratio: empty 3.47; standard T-O 2.49; maximum T-O 1.24

Armament:

None installed, but the VF-X had 4x underwing hard points for a wide variety of ordnance, plus a ventral hardpoint for a Howard GU-11 55 mm three-barrel Gatling gun pod with 200 RPG, fired at 1,200 rds/min or other stores like test instruments

The model and its assembly:

Another submission to the “Prototypes” group build at whatifmodelers.com in July 2020. Being a VF-1 fan (and have built maybe twenty o these simple Arii kits), adding a VF-X was, more or less, a must – even more so because I had a suitable Valkyrie Fighter kit at hand for the conversion. As a side note, I have actually built something quite similar from a VF-1D many years ago: a fictional, non-transformable advanced trainer, without knowing about the VF-X at all.

Thanks to the “Macross - Perfect Memory” source book, the differences between the transformable VF-1 and its early testbed were easy to identify:

- Fixed legs with faired ducts from the intakes on (thighs)

- Ankle recesses disappeared

- Less and slightly different panel lines on the back and on the nose

- ventral head unit deleted and a respective fairing installed instead

- Levelled underside (shoulder fairings of the folded arms were cut down)

- Leg attachment points on the nose deleted

- No small, circular vernier thrusters all around the hull

- Some new/different venting grills (created mostly with 0.5mm black decal stripes)

Beyond the changes, the VF-1A was basically built OOB. Thankfully, the VF-X already features the later VF-1’s vectored thrust nozzles/feet, so that no changes had to be made in this respect. A pilot figure was added to the cockpit for the beauty pics, and after the flight scenes had been shot, the canopy remained open on a swing arm for static display. For the same reason, the model was built with the landing gear extended.

As a test aircraft, the underwing pylons and their AMM-1 ordnance were left away and the attachment points hidden with putty. I also omitted the ventral gun pod and left the aircraft clean. However, for the flight scene pictures, I implanted an adapter for a display holder made from wire.

In order to emphasize the test vehicle character of the VF-X, I gave the model a scratched spin recovery parachute installation between the fins, using a real world F-22 testbed as benchmark. It consists of styrene profiles, quite a delicate construction. For the same reason I gave the VF-X a long sensor boom on the nose, which changes the Valkyrie’s look, too. Finally, some small blade antennae were added to the nose and to the spine behind the cockpit.

Painting and markings:

To be honest, I have no idea if there was only a single VF-X prototype in the Macross universe, or more. Just one appears in the TV series in episode #33, and lack of suitable information and my personal lack of Japanese language proficiency prevents any deeper research. However, this would not keep me from inventing a personal interpretation of the canonical VF-X, especially because I do not really like the original livery from the TV series: an overall light grey with some simple black trim and “TEST” written on the (fixed) legs. Yamato did an 1:60 scale toy of the VF-X, but it was/is just a VF-1 with a ventral fairing; they added some shading to the basic grey – but this does not make the aircraft more attractive, IMHO.

When I looked at the original conceptual drawing of the VF-X in the “Macross - Perfect Memory” source book, however, I was immediately reminded of the F-15 prototypes from the Seventies (and this program used a total of twelve machines!). These featured originally a light grey (FS 36375?) overall base, to which bright dayglo orange markings on wings, fins and fuselage were soon added – in a very similar pattern to the VF-X. I think the VF-X livery was actually inspired by this, the time frame matches well with the production of the Macross TV series, too, and that’s what I adapted for my model.

In order to come close to the F-15 prototype livery, I gave “my” VF-X an overall basic coat of RAL 7047 “Telegrau 4”, one of German Telekom’s corporate colors and a very pale grey that can easily be mistaken for white when you do not have a contrast reference.

The cockpit received a medium grey finish, the ejection seat became black with brown cushions; the pilot figure is a 1:100 seated passenger from an architecture supplies, painted like an early VF-1 pilot in a white/blue suit. The jet nozzles/feet were painted with Revell 91 (Iron) and later treated with grinded graphite for a more metallic finish. The landing gear became classic white (I used Revell 301, which is a very pure tone, as contrast to the RAL 7047 on the hull), the air intake ducts and the internal sections of the VG wings were painted with dark grey (Revell 77).

For some diversity I took inspiration from the Yamato VF-X toy and added slightly darker (Humbrol 166, RAF Light Aircraft Grey) areas to the hull and the legs. Next, the panel lines were emphasized through a thinned black ink wash, but I did no panel post shading so that the VF-X would not look too dirty or worn.

Onto this basis I applied the orange dayglo markings. On the wings and fins, these were painted – they were applied with spray paint from a rattle can, involving lots of masking. The leading edges on wings and fins were created with grey decal sheet material, too. At this stage, some surface details and more fake panel lines were added with a soft pencil.

The orange cheatline under the cockpit is a personal addition; I found that some more orange had to be added to the nose for visual balance, and I eventually went for the simple, trimmed stripe (TL Modellbau material) instead of trying to apply decal sheet material around the jagged air intakes (F-15 prototype style). The black “TEST”, “VFX” and “U.N. Spacy” markings were designed at the computer and printed on clear inkjet decal paper. Even though the “real” VF-X does not feature the UNS “kite” insignia, I decided to add them to the model. These come from the OOB sheet, which also provided most (slightly yellowed) stencils.

Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

A rather different VF-1 project (and it is – to my astonishment – #28 in my 1:100 VF-1 Fighter mode collection!!!), with more changes to the basic model kit than one might expect at first sight. VF-X and VF-1 differ considerably from each other, despite identical outlines! However, I like the outcome, and I think that going a different route from the canonical grey/black livery paid out, the bright orange markings really make this VF-X stand out, and it looks IMHO more like a testbed than the “real” aircraft from the TV series.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The Jagdtiger was until 1945 the heaviest armored vehicle to see service in World War Two. The design process started out with a demand for a heavy assault gun back in 1942 when the war was still in Germany’s favor and the army needed a heavily armored and armed vehicle to smash enemy fortifications. However, by the time the Jagdtiger, based on the Tiger II tank, came along two years later, the original need for the vehicle had vanished and it was put to work as a heavy long-range tank destroyer instead.

A total of 95 standard Jagdtiger and less than 50 Jagdtiger Ausf. M (their definite number remains uncertain due to the fact that most early Sd.Kfz. 187s were built from unfinished standard Jagdtiger hulls) were eventually produced and delivered before more effective tank hunter designs, based on the Einheitspanzer vehicle family and armed with more reliable weapons, were introduced. These quickly replaced the heavy Tiger-based interim designs.

Specifications:

Crew: 6 (Driver, Radio operator/hull machine gunner, Commander, Gunner, 2 Loaders)

Weight: 68.5 tons (150.881 lb)

Length: 9,94 m (32 ft 6 3/4 in) overall

7,80 m (25 ft 6 1/2 in) hull only

Width: 3.625 metres (11 ft 10½ in)

Height: 2,87 metres (9 ft 4 ¾ in)

3,22 metres (10 ft 6 ¾ in) with retrofitted gun barrel suspension

Ground clearance: 56,5 cm (22¼ in)

Suspension: Longitudinal torsion bars

Fuel capacity: 860 Liter (190 imp gal, 230 US gal)

Armor:

20–180 mm (0.79 – 7 in)

Performance:

Maximum road speed: 38 km/h (24 mph)

Operational range: 120 km (75 mi) on road

80 km (50 mi) off road

Power/weight: 11,68 PS/ton

Engine:

Simmering-Pauker X-16-80 16 cylinder 36.5 liter gasoline engine with 800 hp (575 kW)

Transmission:

Maybach eight-speed OLVAR OG40-1216B gearbox

Armament:

1× 88 mm 8.8 cm L/100 KwK. Pak. 45/1 with 50 rounds

1× 7.92 mm MG 34 or 42 machine gun in the hull with 800 rounds

The kit and its assembly:

This fictional tank was inspired by Trumpeter’s 1:72 models of the (real yet rare) Jagdtiger with the lighter 88 mm gun and the Porsche running gear. I thought about combining both into a late but fictional production model, but then also considered a more powerful variant of the main gun with a longer barrel – something that had been on the real-world drawing board, and ModelCollect offers one or two fictional Heer ’46 tanks with such a long weapon. An indirect inspiration for the gun and its eventual design on the model was the United States Department of Defense and Canada's Department of National Defence’s mutual HARP (High Altitude Research Project) project, in which light loads were literally fired into space/lower orbit with the help of guns instead of rockets. The ever bigger guns frequently featured lengthened and stiffened barrels to achieve and resist the massive firing pressures needed to reach altitudes with an apogee of up to 110 miles (180) km. Or even more than 300 miles (500 km) with a 40-lbs payload and rocket assistance!

To mount such a long barrel on a tank chassis, a gun position at the rear would make most sense to avoid a massive overhang and a wacky weight distribution. Therefore, the Jagdtiger’s casemate was moved accordingly, creating a more obvious (and challenging) what-if project.

Even though the Trumpeter Jagdtiger kit was used as base, my build is actually a kitbashing of two of them: the combination of the Porsche suspension and the respective hull from one kit with the 88 mm gun and its differing mantlet from another. Since the casemate and the engine cover were integral parts of the upper hull, both had to be cut off, switched and PSRed into their new places. Before the parts were cut off, though, internal stiffeners (simple sprue material) were added between the sloped rear side walls to ensure the upper hull’s stability and alignment. The change of the sections was quite easy; the engine deck cover was easy to re-mount, the casemate called for some PSR to hide the seam at the intersection with the hull. Anything else almost fell into place, just the gun mantlet had to be modified to create enough space for it over the armored fan casings of the engine bay cover.

The 88 mm gun barrel was taken OOB but lengthened with styrene tube plug by 35 mm (1.4 in) to achieve the intended L/100 length on the model instead of the original L/71. Reinforcement ribs along the barrel, made from thin styrene profiles, changed the look and underlined the science fiction aspect of this build. Finally, as a weird extra, I furthermore added a cable suspension construction that was used to stabilize the ultra-long barrels of the experimental HARP guns, too. This was also constructed with styrene bits and steel towing cable plastic dummies from an Revell 1:72 Panzer IV kit. Looks odd, but definitively different and whiffy!

The only other changes/additions are an antenna mast with a long-range “Sternantenne”, and I added mudguards (0.5 mm styrene strips) along the hull, which were dented for a more natiral look.

Painting and markings:

This was not easy to settle upon. Jagdtiger generally left the factories only with an overall primer coat with Oxidrot (RAL 3009), which was frequently stretched due to material shortages, so that the color could range from a deep reddish brown to a dull pink. Camouflage was added later, most of the time in field shops at the operating units.

To stick with this practice I initially gave the model and the still separate major components an overall coat with RAL 3009 (from above) and 8017 (from below) with rattle cans. Once thoroughly dried, Panzergrau (RAL 7021, Humbrol 67) was added in shaggy vertical streaks with a flat brush, so that a lot of the primer would still show through, esp. on vertical surfaces. The rationale behind this outdated color on a 1946 vehicle: the Jagdtiger would be primarily operated in a defensive role from prepared positions, the dark color would conceal it in the shadows, e. g. under trees, between or even inside of buildings. In real life, this concept had been revised through the much lighter Hinterhalt standard camouflage, but for the Jagdtiger and its special role it would IMHO still make sense?

When the dark grey had been applied and dry, I found the overall look of this massive vehicle a bit too murky, so I decided to add some more camouflage to break up the outlines and make the Jagdtiger look a bit more interesting. The choice fell on irregular vertical stripes, and as a personal twist I used RAL 7003 (Moosgrau; Revell 45) – a light olive-green grey tone, very close to the Luftwaffe’s RLM 02, that I have already used on other Heer ’46 builds together with RAL 7021 and 7028 (Dunkelgelb).

The running gear remained all-dark grey, though, and the main wheels' steel rims were painted with Revell 91. The black vinyl tracks received a treatment with grey and burnt umbra acrylic artist paint, and later some dry-brushing with grey and silver, too.

The camouflage stripes were applied with thinned acrylic paint over the dark grey base and around the decals that had been applied in the meantime and protected with clear varnish, as if the camouflage had been painted around the existing markings. Then the Moosgrau was wet-sanded vertically to create the impression of wear wand weathering. This also let a bit more of the red primer underneath shine through.

The model received an overall washing with highly thinned dark red-brown acrylic paint, dry-brushing with a dark earth tone, a treatment with water colors (mud and rust traces), and was finally sealed with matt acrylic varnish before assembly. As a final step, mineral artist pigments were dusted into the running gear, the tracks and the lower hull areas to simulate dust and more mud.

A succesful conversion, and I have earmarked the engine/casemate switch for another whiffy tank project on my agenda - after all, there's still a complete Jagdtiger kit left. However, the resulting "new" vehicle looks like a modernized Elefant SPG, with sloped armor and somewhat "streamlined". The modified gun was IMHO a good move, and the barrel suspension system adds weirdness to the whole thing - and despite the VERY long gun barrel, my Sd.Kfz. 187 looks quite plausible, also in the grey/grey livery which turned out more subtle than expected.

A general view of Barry No 1 dock with 09015 in the Powell Duffryn Styrene siding on 21st June 1995. My red Vauxhall Nova is parked on Neptune Road, the wasteland to the right is now an Asda car park and where the tanks are is a row of houses on Clos Y Rheilffordd.

Some background:

The Type-R13EX Phantom was an experimental unmanned labor developed by Schaft Enterprises’ Planning Section 7. The exact purpose of the labor remains unclear, it might only have been a singular prototype for innovative weapon and A.I. technology, so that it is most possible that the type or its systems were primarily intended for military service, even though the Type-R13EX as such was not adopted for serial production. Its silhouette is reminiscent of the military Brocken labor, which could mean that the Phantom's body was based on the Type 7B/2B. However, the difference lies in mobility, since the Phantom was slower due to having thick armor and carrying on his torso the complex mechanism necessary to carry out his attacks.

However, just a few months later, the Phantom appeared once more at a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) training ground at Oshima, where it engaged a number of light military labors in combat. The JGSDF labors were unable to repel the Phantom, and Patlabor units that arrived on scene shortly after were barely able to fend it off. This was the final appearance and known deployment of the Phantom before the debut of the Griffon.

The kit and its assembly:

It has been a while that I built a humanoid mecha, and the mysterious Phantom labor (or better: robot) from the Patlabor anime TV series was still missing in my collection. I have already built this kit, even though as a heavily modified fictional German police labor.

The kit was built almost OOB – it is a rather simple mecha/action figure kit which can probably built without using any glue. As such, the detail level is not very high, but the Phantom Labor is a rather sleek design with a very organic and clean shape. Therefore, I just added some bits and pieces to the “interior”, in the opening under the head/face and around the removable EMP generator block in the torso, which can be plugged between the hips and the torso to depict the “open” body. Most details were made from styrene profile, but I also used sprue material, paper tissue dipped in white glue, soft iron wire and plastic-coated steel wire to create the hydraulic pistons under the chin (which can hardly be seen, though, just from certain angles).

Another option is to display the heat exchanger arrangement on the Phantom’s back in open and closed position – the open module is well detailed. However, I made a mistake when I assembled the latter, because I did not read the instructions properly (which could be better drawn, some illustrations, e .g,. the assembly of the upper arms, leave you guessing). The kit's designers want you to fix the "reactor" part to the back of the mecha, and then you can alternatively put the closed heat exchanger onto/over it, or mount the three opened covers to it. I found this construction weird and intuitively glued the reactor piece to the open covers, only to find out later that the closed cover section needs the recator piece underneth to hold onto the Phantom's back and cover some gaps. Luckily I had the reactor piece left over from my first Phantom Labor build, thanks to the thorough conversion I did with it, so that I had a suitable donor part to mend the mistake. Phew... O.o'

A unique (if not odd?) design feature of Bandai’s Patlabor IP models are the silicone sleeves over an endoskeleton for arms and legs. When you follow the instructions, they are easy to mount, though, just be careful when you want to paint them: only acrylic paint is recommended, since any solvent-based paint might react with the silicone. I have also heard of many builders having problems over time with the silicone, but – with some of these kits that I have built now 20 or more years on display – I never had any issues of problems?

However, on this specific kit (bought as “used” but still NIB; not certain about its production date or age, but I assume it's from the initial 1990 run and not a re-issue from 2014 or later) I found the sleeves to be disturbingly thin and their inside surfaces stuck together. "Opening" them was a tedious and delicate task, even though the silicone/rubber material was still intact and not melded together. The parts were still sealed in their plastic bags, but a single IP sprue (the light purple material) was quite brittle (while the others were fine), too. I can only guess that the kit had been poorly stored before I bought it, probably in an attic where it was exposed to excessive summer heat that vaporized and extracted some of the plastic/silicone softeners?

The kit goes together easily and can be assembled as a snap-fit kit without glue, even though the silicone sleeves require some manual skill to trim them properly. However, apparently design with robustness in mind the extremities’ fit is not too good and requires PSR on every seam for a proper finish. Another problem: the shoulder sections with the additional guards are designed in a matryoshka fashion, with three flexible layers of parts over each other, so that you have to finish each layer individually (PSR and paint) before you can add the next. On the other side you can assemble, paint and finish many segments of the model separately, to be completed as final step.

Painting and markings:

I stuck to the mecha’s appearance in the TV series, which features quite dark colors and yellow highlights around the hull. The basic color appears to be a little controversial, as it is described as “cobalt blue”, but on TV the color rather reminds of a purple tone, and the kit is molded in a similarly colored plastic. Maybe (as often) a translation issue?

Another problem: there are no clear painting instructions - you have to refer to the box art illustration (which only shows the front of the mecha in dubious light conditions) and pictures of the finished model on the box' sides, but these are very small and are not truly helpful. The instructions themselves are disappointing, too: the product designers decided to use a poster format, which shows the box art on one side (looks cool, but it's not helpful!) and only a tiny b/w picture of the model with vague color indications. This leaves the builder guessing about many painting details. You can find some screenshots of the Phantom Labor online, or you can try to find videos of the TV series' episodes where it appears, but in the end there's a lot to be guesstimated or made up.

To keep the Phantom mysterious and give it a less comic-esque look I decided to stay true to its impression on TV but add effects like weathering and post-shading – similar to my Dorvack PA models.

For the purplish basic color I used a rather exotic tone: Humbrol’s vintage “HJ4” from the brand’s long-gone Authentic range, the infamous and highly dubious WWII “Mauve N.9” (a.k.a. “IJN Purple”) that some A6M2-Ns were supposed to have carried. This is a kind of purple, but a rather greyish and dull tone that looks more like a military/camouflage tone than decorative/flashy. The mauve tone is less bluish than the Phantom's “authentic” tone on TV, but it looks fine to me and offers enough contrast to the darker sections, which were painted in Humbrol 112 (Tarmac, also sold as Field Blue?), which is a very dark blue-grey, very similar to FS 35042 (USN Dark Sea Blue) but less greenish. The color of some areas, like the "hood" behind the head unit, had to be guessed, and I outlines some surface details on the back with black to add contrasts.

The skull-like head unit was painted in a very light grey instead of pure white, to avoid too much contrast to the rest of the mecha. The silicone sleeves were treated with thinned grey and black artist acrylic paint with very fine pigments to avoid long-term chemical reactions with the softener in the rubber material.

The technical innards, the reactor on the back and the EMP generator in the torso, were painted in a bare metallic finish. I used Humbrol 56 as basis and then layered some washings with black ink and thinned black acrylic paint over it, plus dry-brushing with brighter aluminum and rubbing the parts with graphite, which adds a dark metallic shine and a more natural look.

The lenses on the head and in the torso were laid out with silver and then "filled" with clear acrylic paints in various shades.

The parts also received a black ink washing to emphasize edges and engravings, as well as dry-brushing/post-shading with lightened/dulled-down basic tones to make the model looks less toyish, and the give the Phantom Labor a slightly worn look. Unfortunately, the kit only comes with stickers instead of decals, but since these comprise onyl some small Schaft Enterprises logos and black inserts for louvres on arms and legs, which I had painted, anyway, so that I left the model without markings. Finally, all parts (except for the silicone sleeves) received a coat with matt acrylic varnish, and the model as finally assembled/completed.

It took a long time that I eventuelly tackled and finished the Phantom Labor kit to complete my collection of Patlabor mecha - only the Type Zero police prototype is still missing and a respective kit already waiting in the The Stash. Thanks to me experience with a former build of this kit, I knew what I had to expect, even though the mistake with the optional parts for the heat exchanger on the back bugs me, but I am happy that I had a spare part to save the situation. The dubious IJN purple tone turned out to be lighter than expected, esp. when you see screenshots of the "real" Phantom Labor in direct comparison, but on the other side the color does not look bad or wrong - the overall impression is IMHO O.K., and the bigger contrast to the dark blue-grey sections on the body make the model look more interesting than the orginal all-murky livery.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

The TIE/LN starfighter, or TIE/line starfighter, simply known as the TIE Fighter or T/F, was the standard Imperial starfighter seen in massive numbers throughout most of the Galactic Civil War and onward.

The TIE Fighter was manufactured by Sienar Fleet Systems and led to several upgraded TIE models such as TIE/sa bomber, TIE/IN interceptor, TIE/D Defender, TIE/D automated starfighter, and many more.

The TIE/E played a central role in the Empire's campaign against rogue Grand Admiral Demetrius Zaarin, and mixed Defender and Escort units participated in several other battles, including the Battle of Endor. The TIE Escort continued to see limited use by the Imperial Remnant up to at least 44 ABY, and was involved in numerous conflicts, including the Yuuzhan Vong War..

The kit and its assembly:

Another group build contribution, this time to the Science Fiction GB at whatifmodelers.com during summer 2017. Originally, this one started as an attempt to build a vintage MPC TIE Interceptor kit which I had bought and half-heartedly started to build probably 20 years ago. But I did not have the right mojo (probably, The Force was not strong enough…?), so the kit ended up in a dark corner and some parts were donated to other projects.

The sun collectors were still intact, though, and in the meantime I had the idea of reviving the kit’s remains, and convert it into (what I thought was) a fictional TIE Fighter variant with three solar panels. For this plan I got myself another TIE Interceptor kit, and stashed it away, too. Mojo was still missing, though.

Well, then came the SF GB and I took it as an occasion to finally tackle the build. But when I prepared for the build I found out that my intended design (over the years) more or less actually existed in the Star Wars universe: the TIE/D Defender! I could have built it with the parts and hand and some improvisation, but the design similarity bugged me. Well, instead of a poor copy of something that was more or less clearly defined, I rather decided to create something more individual, yet plausible, from the parts at hand.

The model was to stay a TIE design, though, in order to use as much donor material from the MPC kits as possible. Doing some legwork, I settled for a heavy fighter – bigger than the TIE Interceptor and the TIE/D fighter, a two-seater.

Working out the basic concept and layout took some time and evolved gradually. The creative spark for the TIE/E eventually came through a Revell “Obi Wan’s Jedi Starfighter” snap fit kit in my pile – actually a prize from a former GB participation at phoxim.de (Thanks a lot, Wolfgang!), and rather a toy than a true model kit.

The Jedi Fighter was in so far handy as it carries some TIE Fighter design traits, like the pilot capsule and the characteristic spider web windscreen. Anyway, it’s 1:32, much bigger than the TIE Interceptor’s roundabout 1:50 scale – but knowing that I’d never build the Jedi Starfighter OOB I used it as a donor bank, and from this starting point things started to evolve gradually.

Work started with the cockpit section, taken from the Jedi Starfighter kit. The two TIE Interceptor cockpit tubs were then mounted inside, staggered, and the gaps to the walls filled with putty. A pretty messy task, and once the shapes had been carved out some triangular tiles were added to the surfaces – a detail I found depicted in SW screenshots and some TIE Fighter models.

Another issue became the crew – even though I had two MPC TIE Interceptors and, theorectically, two pilot figures, only one of them could be found and the second crewman had to be improvised. I normally do not build 1:48 scale things, but I was lucky (and happy) to find an SF driver figure, left over from a small Dougram hoovercraft kit (from Takara, as a Revell “Robotech” reboxing). This driver is a tad bigger than the 1:50 TIE pilot, but I went with it because I did not want to invest money and time in alternatives. In order to justify the size difference I decided to paint the Dougram driver as a Chiss, based on the expanded SW universe (with blue skin and hair, and glowing red eyes). Not certain if this makes sense during the Battle of Endor timeframe, but it adds some color to the project – and the cockpit would not be visible in much detail since it would be finished fully closed.

Reason behind the closed canopy is basically the poor fit of the clear part. OOB, this is intended as an action toy – but also the canopy’s considerable size in 1:50 would prevent its original opening mechanism.

Additional braces on the rel. large window panels were created with self-adhesive tape and later painted over.

The rear fuselage section and the solar panel pylons were scratched. The reactor behind the cockpit section is actually a plastic adapter for water hoses, found in a local DIY market. It was slightly modified, attached to the cockpit “egg” and both parts blended with putty. The tail opening was closed with a hatch from the OOB TIE Interceptor – an incidental but perfect match in size and style.

The three pylons are also lucky finds: actually, these are SF wargaming/tabletop props and would normally be low walls or barriers, made from resin. For my build, they were more or less halved and trimmed. Tilted by 90°, they are attached to the hull with iron wire stabilizers, and later blended to the hull with putty, too.

Once the cockpit was done, things moved more swiftly. The surface of the hull was decorated with many small bits and pieces, including thin styrene sheet and profiles, steel and iron wire in various strengths, and there are even 1:72 tank tracks hidden somewhere, as well as protective caps from syringes (main guns and under the rear fuselage). It’s amazing how much stuff you can add to such a model – but IMHO it’s vital in order to create some structure and to emulate the (early) Star Wars look.

Painting and markings:

The less spectacular part of the project, even though still a lot of work because of the sheer size of the model’s surface. Since the whole thing is fictional, I tried to stay true to the Imperial designs from Episode IV-VI and gave the TIE/E a simple, all-light grey livery. All basic painting was done with rattle cans.

Work started with a basic coat of grey primer. On top of that, an initial coat of RAL 7036 Platingrau was added, esp. to the lower surfaces and recesses, for a rough shading effect. Then, the actual overall tone, RAL 7047, called “Telegrau 4”, one of Deutsche Telekom’s corporate tones, was added - mostly sprayed from abone and the sides onto the model. Fuselage and panels were painted separately, overall assembly was one of the final steps.

The solar panels were to stand out from the grey rest of the model, and I painted them with Revell Acrylic “Iron Metallic” (91) first, and later applied a rather rich wash with black ink , making sure the color settled well into the many small cells. The effect is pretty good, and the contrast was slightly enhanced through a dry-brushing treatment.

Only a few legible stencils were added all around the hull (most from the scrap box or from mecha sheets), the Galactic Empire Seal were inkjet-printed at home, as well as some tactical markings on the flanks, puzzled together from single digits in "Aurebash", one of the Imperial SW languages/fonts.

For some variety and color highlights, dozens of small, round and colorful markings were die-punched from silver, yellow, orange, red and blue decal sheet and were placed all over the hull - together with the large panels they blur into the the overall appearance, though. The hatches received thin red linings, also made from generic decals strips.

The cockpit interior was a bit challenging, though. Good TIE Fighter cockpit interior pictures are hard to find, but they suggest a dark grey tone. More confusingly, the MPC instructions call for a “Dark Green” cockpit? Well, I did not like the all-grey option, since the spaceship is already monochrome grey on the outside.

As a compromise I eventually used Tamiya XF-65 "Field Grey". The interior recieved a black ink in and dry-brushing treatment, and some instruments ansd screens were created with black decal material and glossy black paint; some neon paint was used for sci-fi-esque conmtraol lamps everywhere - I did not pay too much intention on the interior, since the cockpit would stay closed, and the thick clear material blurs everything inside.

Following this rationale, the crew was also painted in arather minimal fashion - both wear a dark grey uniform, only the Chiss pilot stands aout with his light blue skin and the flourescent red eyes.

After an overall black ink wash the model received a dry brusing treatment with FS 36492 and FS 36495, for a weathered and battle-worn look. After all, the "Vehement" would not survive the Ballte of Endor, but who knows what became of TIE/E "801"'s mixed crew...?

Finally, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish, and some final cosmetic corrections made.

The display is a DIY creation, too, made from a 6x6" piece of wood, it's edges covered with edgebonder, a steel wire as holder, and finally the display was paited with semi-matt black acrylic paint from the rattle can.

A complex build, and the TIE/E more or less evolved along the way, with only the overall layout in mind. Work took a month, but I think it was worth the effort. This fantasy creation looks pretty plausible and blends well into the vast canonical TIE Fighter family - and I am happy that I finally could finish this mummy project, including the surplus Jedi Starfighter kit which now also find a very good use!

An epic one, and far outside my standard comfort zone. But a wothwhile build!

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

Some background:

With the end of the conflict in Africa in early 1974, the Portuguese Armed Forces went through a reorganization and shifted their focus back from counter-insurgency to honoring Portugal's commitments to NATO and preparing for a possible conflict in Europe against the Warsaw Pact. The Portuguese Air Force's F-86F Sabre and G.91 fighters were considered to be outdated in both the air defense and ground attack roles to face Soviet forces in the European operations theater. Furthermore, only a few Sabre fighters were actually in service due to problems with the engines and lack of spare parts.

The last Saab 35 in Swedish service was retired in 1999, the last Saab 35 Draken was withdrawn from military use in Austria in 2005 – 50 years after the type first flew. However, several aircraft still fly today in private operators’ service.

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 15.35 m (50 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 9.42 m (30 ft 11 in)

Height: 3.89 m (12 ft 9 in)

Wing area: 49.2 m2 (530 ft²)

Airfoil: 5%

Empty weight: 7,865 kg (17,339 lb)

Gross weight: 11,000 kg (24,251 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 11,914 kg (26,266 lb)

Powerplant:

1× Svenska Flygmotor RM6C (license-built Rolls Royce Avon with Swedish afterburner)

turbojet engine, 56.5 kN (12,700 lbf) thrust dry, 78.4 kN (17,600 lbf) with afterburner

Performance:

Maximum speed: 2,450 km/h (1,520 mph, 1,320 kn) at 11,000 m (36,089 ft)

Maximum speed: Mach 2

Range: 1.120 km (605 nmi; 696 mi); clean, internal fuel only

Ferry range: 2,750 km (1,480 nmi; 1,710 mi) with four external 500 l drop tanks

Service ceiling: 20,000 m (66,000 ft)

Rate of climb: 199 m/s (39,200 ft/min)

Wing loading: 231.6 kg/m² (47.4 lb/ft²)

Thrust/weight: 0.7

Takeoff roll: 800 m (2,625 ft)

Armament:

2× 30 mm AKAN M/55 ADEN cannon with 100 rounds per gun

4× hardpoints with a capacity of 2,900 kg (6,393 lb); typical interceptor ordnance:

2× 500 l ventral drop tanks and 2× AIM-9 Sidewinder under the wings

The kit and its assembly:

This what-if model came as a spontaneous idea when I browsed through the WWW for inspiration. I stumbled upon the history of the Portuguese Air Force and the fact that it did not operate any dedicated interceptor for 15 years – this task was taken over by the PAF’s A-7s(!) until the F-16 arrived in the Nineties This gap offered a lot of whiffing potential, and I had actually considered to build a whiffy FAP Mirage III for some time, since I knew that this was, together with the F-5, the favored type. However, there was also serious consideration of the Saab 35 as potential fighter alternative, too!

I found this idea so weird/exotic that I decided to build a Draken in FAP colors. The kit is the Hasegawa model, in a Revell re-boxing. I also considered the vintage Revell Saab 35 (a mold from 1957!), but after I saw the kit in a current re-boxing from Polish company Akkura, I took the chance of a reasonably priced Hasegawa kit instead. While the Akkura kit is crisply molded, it would take a lot of work to create a satisfactory “modern” Draken from it. I also had a Heller kit in store (my personal favorite), but I did not want to “sacrifice” it for this project.

The Hasegawa/Revell kit was basically built OOB. The kit is a simple, straightforward affair, with fine recessed engravings and good fit, but it’s IMHO far from extraordinary. It also has its flaws: the dashboard is totally blank, any instruments have to be created by yourself or taken from the decal sheet. There are ejection marks on the wheels and the landing gear covers, and the fit quality of some areas (e .g. the seam between the fuselage and the afterburner section) calls for PSR. The two-piece canopy is thin, very clear and fits well, the landing gear is sufficiently detailed – including the interior of the main landing gear wells.

For the FAP version I did not change much; I just replaced the seat (which OOB looks fine, I just wanted “something else”), added a radar warning antenna to the fin’s tip and chaff dispensers around the tail section, all carved from styrene profiles.

Unfortunately, the Revell re-boxing just comes with a pair of launch rails and underwing pylons, but no AA weapons at all. That’s acceptable for the anniversary machine that you can build from the kit, but leaves the other option, a grey, Swedish J35 H, without any ordnance.

The drop tanks on my build are OOB, together with their ventral hardpoints, and I added a pair of decent AIM-9J Sidewinders from a Hasegawa air-to-air weapon set for a suitable interceptor ordnance. The launch rails were recycled from the kit: they are actually missile rails with attachment points to mount them under the air intakes. The rails were separated and then attached to the OOB underwing pylons, this worked very well.

Painting and markings:

The livery was not an easy choice. Initially I favored a uniform pale grey livery with blue squadron markings, inspired by the late F-86s of FAP 51 squadron, but found this, despite being a plausible look for an interceptor, to look quite boring. For the same reason I rejected an Austria-style “Hill II” scheme or a light-grey USN-inspired “Compass Ghost” livery. The Hellenic “Ghost” wraparound scheme was another potential option, but I recently used something similar on another whif build (the Catalonian L-159 ALCA), and it would not have a typically Portuguese Cold War look.

Keeping in style with the FAP’s livery fashion during the Eighties, I rather settled upon a USAF SEA scheme, which was carried by many PAF aircraft during the Eighties, e .g. the A-7P, the G.91, and their replacement from 1993 onwards, the Alpha Jet. Instead of a wraparound version for ground attack aircraft, I rather gave the Draken light grey undersides.

The camouflage pattern itself was improvised, since I did not want to copy an existing delta wing aircraft (e.g. the USAF’s F-102 or F-106 SEA pattern, or the Belgian Mirage Vs). The basic colors are Humbrol 75 (Bronze Green; the authentic tone is FS 34079, but this lacks IMHO contrast to the lighter green), 117 (FS 34102) and 118 (FS 30219) from above, and Humbrol 28 (FS 36622) underneath.

A large ventral section was, typical for the J 35, left in bare metal, since leaking fuel and oil would frequently eat away any paint there. The section was painted with Steel Metallizer (ModelMaster) and later treated with Matt Aluminum Metallizer (Humbrol).

Internal details like the cockpit and the landing gear were painted with the help of Swedish and Austrian Saab 35 reference pictures. The cockpit tub was painted in a dark, bluish green (Humbrol 76) with grey-green (Revell 67) side walls. A piece of paper tissue covers the cockpit’s back wall, since the kit leaves a visible and rather ugly seam there, which is only partly hidden behind the seat.

The landing gear and its respective wells were painted with Humbrol 56 (Aluminum Dope), parts of the struts were painted in a bright turquoise (a mix of Humbrol 89 and 80; looks quite weird, but I like such details!). The front wheel received a dark green mudguard (Humbrol 30), the same color was also partially used on the extended emergency current generator. Missiles and launch rails were painted in gloss white (Humbrol 22).

As per usual, the model received a light black ink wash and some post-shading in order to emphasize the panels and dramatize the surface. Some extra weathering was done around the gun ports and the jet nozzle with graphite.

For markings I used the contemporary A-7Ps as benchmark: they were minimal, there were even no squadron markings or other decorations, and I think they even lacked roundels on their wings!

I gave the Draken slightly more markings: The small FAP roundels come from a PrintScale A/T-37 sheet, the fin flashes are from a TL Modellbai sheet and the tactical codes belong to a Japanese T-4 trainer. Most stencils were taken from the Revell OOB sheet, which also includes decals for the reddish sealer around the cockpit windows.

I didn’t want to leave the Draken without any squadron marking, though, so I gave it a blue band on top of the fin, as a reminiscence of the FAP 51 squadron’s markings, the former final F-86 operator which became 201 squadron in the early Eighties. These were simply done with layered white and blue decal stripes.

Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri), except for the black radome, which received a sheen varnish coat.

A relatively simple whif project, since the model was mostly built OOB with just minor cosmetic changes. However, despite its exotic operator, the USAF South East Asia scheme suits the Draken well, the whole thing looks disturbingly convincing!?

It’s also a kind of tribute build for “Sport16ing”, apparently a great fan of my what-if builds who frequently re-posts pictures and background stories (with kind permission to do so!) at deviantart.com.