David Hingtgen

Watched trailer. Overall, loved it. Nitpicks: 1. Well at least they got rid of the F-14's ailerons, but still forgot the tailerons. Surprising, considering how heavily they featured and showed the Hornet's tailerons. (Namco seems to alternate every other game in if they "remember" that the Hornet has tailerons) But nobody ever gets the F-14's, despite the whole "if it doesn't have ailerons, and the spoilers can't be used when the wing's swept--how do you expect it to roll when the wings are swept?" Also, the nice long head-on shot in the beginning of The Final Countdown clearly shows the stabs moving differentially like crazy throughout the approach. 2. Going off of the above one---finally got tailerons on the Hornet again, but they're used too much. You can clearly see it during the "vertical climb, than a modified hammerhead" the Hornet does about midway through the trailer. The h.stabs go like 90 degrees apart from each other! When used differentially, they move a lot less than when together. This applies to all planes, not just Hornets. (I think it's a stability issue, you'd start inducing kind of a barrel roll, rather than a pure roll) Just waiting to see what "high-end" planes we get.

Yes it's a Blue Angels kit, and is thus molded in blue. (The wrong blue, BTW, it's very "teal") The odds are good that I actually won't go past this stage, as the decals are more brown than yellow, and there are NO other 1/72 Blue Angels decals available. It'll probably just be a collection of spare F-18 parts for other kits. Though it will give me a chance to test out various methods/sequence of assembly. I'll do an actual "decal on blue" test tonight and see how it looks. Better to find out now if the decals will look ok, than after I've built the kit! Rant time: my biggest gripes with Hasegawa/Fujimi decals: 1. "White" that is printed as ivory/beige, and thus unusable. (Especially annoying when "true white" decals are also printed on the exact same sheet). 2. Yellows that are way, way too dark. Orange/mustard may be opaque, but I'd much rather double-layer 2 sets, than have the totally wrong color.

F-16/F-17/F-18 story wouldn't be a bad parallel for the YF-22/YF-23. Though IMHO it's been too long. If the navy were to pick the YF-23, they'd have done so by now. Or maybe a certain someone tried to REALLY influence them to spend the money on Super Hornets instead. At this point, YF-23's might have been cheaper! Generally, re-engineering something costs way more than building from scratch---it took 5x as much work to make the P-51 RR-powered, than to design the plane itself---and making a Super Hornet took far far more work than making the original Hornet) Gotta wonder about Super Hornet design costs (plus a lot of time and money to fix the problems they found, which cut into its range). I personally do NOT like modifying planes much at all. Do not mess with a design, problems very often crop up. YOu can't just add 5 or 10% here and there, angle this, round that, and expect it to still work with all the original parts. Re-engining or adding canards is about my limit for "good mods to do". Feel free to add new parts, but don't start "re-sculpting" the basic components of the plane.

Hey, I'm only a few months out of college. Give me a year before I can afford my own place(finally!) And I often photograph on those vinyl placemats, for they are soft and won't damage models.

Hmmn, all pretty much the same angle, and taking pics at 3AM never gives good results. Sorry for the quality, but here's what a Hase 1/72 Hornet looks like in basic mock-up.

I took a few pics of my main dry-fit a few nights ago. Comments before the pics: 1. I say install the wings last. They fit great, and the fuselage side parts will determine exactly how they sit. If you do them early, it might force the later attachment of the fuselage sides to be like 1 mm too low. 2. V.stabs fit fine. 3. Overall, all the wings/fins line up amazingly well. One of the hardest things in most planes is to get everything lined up and square, with the right dihedral and all. The Hase F-18 kind of "self-aligns" if you just move everything as far as it'll go. Like, make the v.stabs as vertical as you can--and that'll be the right spot. Make the wings as "high" as you can, and that's the right spot. 4. Still haven't decided whether to attach the fuselage sides after the upper and lower fuselages are together, or to attach earlier to the lower fuselage. I'm leaning towards the latter, to assure the gear bays are correct. But I still wonder about the "upper edge of the fuselage side, to lower edge of upper fuselage" seam... 5. Maybe I'll do one side one way, and the other side the other, and see what's best. (I THINK it'll work that way)

Except that, like all-non Hasegawa F-14D's ever, in any scale, it's missing one of the key "I'm not an F-14A" features. The rear fuselage. Revell did something that's still "incredulous" to most of us modelers. It's clear they intended to do accurate F-14A/B/D's, based on parts breakdown/options. And like Hasegawa, they split the rear fuselage to allow for completely different back ends, rather than just "nozzle-swapping" like most kits. However, on the "F-14D-specific" sprue, they included the back end parts of an F-14A! And so it's just like most F-14D kits. We hope that when they come out with the new F-14A they include an F-14D back end with the F-14A nozzles, so you can buy 2 kits, swap parts, and everything's fine. Or they might "correct" the F-14A, and give an F-14A back-end with F-14A nozzles. Or in summary: if you're going with a Revell F-14D, you might as well just buy whatever F-14A you want, and swap nozzles with an F-16 kit. It'd be just as accurate, and nicer-looking, if you use all-Hasegawa parts. (If you're going for Shin's) I still don't know why most every review says it's accurate, when it's just as inaccurate as nearly every other kit out there. More like "accurate, except for 1 of the 3 main F-14D features". PS--most Hase 1/48 F-14D's come with VF-11 Red Rippers low-vis markings. Just to help you look. In 1/72, the current release is VF-2 Bounty Hunters---easy enough to find on-line, rare in shops. Basically--if you find a Hase F-14D, buy it. 90% of what they release is A's, then D's, with B's being the rarest. (I *so* should have bought that VF-101 F-14B I saw like 2 years ago at my local shop--now I'm desperately looking for that exact release, I want those decals) PPS--this is a great chance to correct an earlier statement. I had never actually owned a Fujimi F-14D, and just went by the 2 top F-14 sites and 3 best modeling sites. Well, they're all wrong. While Fujimi F-14D's DO include new rear fuselage parts. they're for the F-14B prototype, with F101 engines, not F110's. So it's still wrong for any real F-14A+, F-14B, F-14D. Closer than an A, but for the amount of work it takes to add in the new parts, totally not worth it. My current plan: Fujimi includes nice deeply scribed lines inside to slice off the entire back end of the engines. Exactly where the Hasegawa F-14D parts start. Yes, it'll be expensive, but I plan to make most of my F-14B's and D's by combining Hase engines and rear fuselages, with the other 90% of the plane from Fujimi kits. I will however try a 100% Hase F-14D, and see just how bad the fit really is on Hase's. If it's not "headache inducing" I'll probably build a few, to keep cost/waste down. Also, the pile of Fujimi F-14 kits I have is a factor. (Hey, Fuji F-14A's are cheap on Ebay--and I plan to order a few sprues of "replacement" parts from HLJ---I'm going to see how much I can order--if I can, I'll order like a half-dozen Hase F-14D "rear fuselage parts" sprues, and just do it like that)

If you gave the YF-23 new intakes, it could be a nice SR-71 successor. It is VERY sleek, very stealthy, with very powerful engines. Make the weapons bay a fuel tank, add a camera, and you've got a nice spy plane. Mach 3.2 continuous? No. Mach 2.8+? Definitely. Also, it could probably be navalised a lot easier than the F-22 ever could have been. The YF-23 already had the F-18's landing gear, and a HUGE wing for slow approaches. It was definitely big, but the tails are extremely low, no worry about hangar-deck height, versus the F-22's massive fins. Folding wings and/or nose are rarely a problem.

Yeah, but the military loves big, new, expensive, complex, technical projects that make an F-22 look cheap and low-tech in comparison. "Why build new fighters, when we could spend 100 billion trying to make a really fancy pen-light to burn-apart orbital missiles?"

The ABL-1 is flying. I don't know if it's flying with a WORKING laser yet, but there are most certainly USAF 747's out there with laser turrets in the nose. But they've definitely got a ways to go before an actual "shooting down a missile" test. A few years at least. Guidance/control/tracking system is everything, far more difficult than the laser itself. The big question is if the guidance system really can track a missile going that fast, long enough to destroy it---the laser isn't a "bolt" like in Star Wars, it needs several seconds of continuous contact to destroy the missile---NOT easy to do----a missile only a few feet across, miles away, moving at Mach 20---to KEEP a laser beam tracked on to it while it's moving (and the 747's moving as well). Heh heh--it's an iodine laser. "Kills germs, and ICBM's!"

I'm thinking there's a Kawamori aviation allusion there. VT-102. Capt Dagger. The F-102 is the Delta Dagger.

Yeah, but when they have the exact match for a wrong color, you won't know. Unless you really know that plane's colors.

My Blue Angels 1/72 F-18A arrived. Comments: 1. Well it's definitely going to be a Blue Angels bird! Molded in dark blue. Not even going to try to paint light grey over that! 2. I'm amazed in that they included a new nose-cone with faired-over gun ports, a new ILS? antenna, and a pipe for the smoke-generator, on a separate sprue. (Original parts still there, too, so I have a spare F-18 nose now) 3. Dry-fit of the main fuselage parts (4+nosecone) reveals a much better fit than I had been led to believe, based on comments on newsgroups, etc. Don't like how the rear fuselage rests ON the h.stabs, rather than between. Would have looked (and fit) even better, IMHO. Will try to sand a subtle curve on the rear fuselage, to better conform to the airfoil of the h.stabs. 4. I have read that the v.stabs are very poorly fitting, but haven't tried yet. And the C/D models have different stabs, and might fit differently. 5. The LEX fences (a 1990-esque modification, but fleet-wide) are included with the A model, FYI. 6. As yet unkown pair of holes in the "keel" of the main gear bay. Square, fairly large. 7. Sidewinders SUCK, Sparrows below average. Being Blue Angels that doesn't matter at all, but I wouldn't want them on a "real" Hornet. Perhaps later kits include AMRAAM's, the later F-16 kits do. 8. Cockpit is plain and featureless, even as 1/72 Hase's go. But I've never been good at 1/72 instrument panel painting, so decals are fine for me. But all the AMS people will certainly complain. And there's NO sidewall detail. 9. The rear canopy decking (where the 2nd seat would be in a B/D) fits VERY well, thankfully. As does the airbrake, if you just sand the underside a bit thinner. You could quite literally snap the airbrake in place (but then it's impossible to pry it out). I've read a suggestion that the kit fits better if you glue the wings to the upper fuselage, the fuselage sides to the lower fuselage, then all of that together. Wings---definitely. Fuselage sides---I'm not sure, I might try gluing them very last. Will need to do a more "finalized" dry-fit with nearly all the parts before I decide.

Oh, well for ballistic missiles we're much better equipped to shoot them down. ABL-1. (747-400F with a laser in the nose)

Well, if they go to surface-to-surface missiles, we need something that can go very fast at very low altitude, and be agile enough to intercept them. Sounds like the F-111. (Or a Tornado). F-8 would be good too, though no chance of that nowadays. I have no clue on the F-22's low-alt speed, but I'm guessing it's not very high.

Eh, Hasegawa often puts the wrong color for aircraft parts. Yes, they usually get camo colors right, but the "basics" are wrong. Like they say Barley or Aircraft grey for every aircraft interior, regardless. Well, that's right for many British plane, but every F-4/14/15/16/18 kit I've bought from them has been wrong in that regard. Should be Dark Gull grey. Does Gunze make Dark Gull? I'd be surprised if they didn't. Just commenting that Hase certainly isn't batting 1,000 for paint colors. I do believe that while Tamiya will often list a "mix" for any color they don't have, Hase simply lists "next closest thing" for any color Gunze doesn't have--even if other companies make the exact color. PS---every US jet since about 1950, has a Dark Gull grey (36231) cockpit. Navy, Air Force, F-4 to F-22. PPS--Akula--I've never heard of that brand. What's it used for/where can you buy it? But an "off white" sure sounds good to me, based on TV. (I am the kind of person who likes to paint based off of what you see on TV, regardless of what the artbooks show)

For Roy's yellow, "Blue Angels yellow" might be better--it's less "orange" than Insignia yellow is. (You can tell when they're side-by-side) Slightly lighter, as well. And pretty easy to find. It is very close to Insignia yellow, less than 20 numbers away in the FS system, but I think it's just that much closer to a pure bright yellow than Insignia yellow is. YF-19: never actually tried it myself, but there is a spray-only color from Testors that is a light tan, lighter than even radome tan or most desert sand camo. "Modern Desert Sand", FS33637. (I think it's a US color, as most every other desert camo color specifies a country---but yet it's definitely not Desert Storm etc color--so I don't know what they mean by "modern") Definitely worth a look if you're building a YF-19. "Panzer Interior Buff" is also a very pale beige color. (I myself hate mixing colors, and always worry about one batch matching another) If/when I get around to making a Hase YF-19, those 2 will certainly be the first colors I try.

The Navy and Marine F/A-18D's are very different planes. The Marine version is NOT a trainer. It is just like an F-14---the rear seat is for the WSO, nothing more. No 2nd set of controls. The Navy bought F-18D's for trainers, the Marines have a lot more stuff on their Hornets (dedicated all-weather night-attack versions) and thus need a second guy to operate it all. There are many Marine Hornet squadrons made up of nothing but the D-model. Mainly the VMFA(AW) squadrons. PS---don't forget the F-4D. (Another "not a trainer", though like all F-4's it has 2 seats). Of course, way early USAF F-4's had 2 pilots and no RIO! They soon realized the Navy way was better. Interestingly, there will be no F-22 trainers. 2-seat F-22B's were cancelled.

According to the book, the helmet is the same orange as the suit. You might want to send a PM off to Keith, MW's resident M7 expert. He could probably tell you off the top of his head. BTW, the pic above looks a lot more "right" to me than the book. I'm wondering if the white parts in the book were simply "uncolored" parts of the sketch. (it is not a "final" sketch, and the image above is directly from the tv series' commericial break interstitials)

I don't have a scanner, sorry. And as I said, it differs from what the final "actually on TV" colors are. I would go with a really "medium" orange. Honestly, I think it's supposed to be "goes well with her pink hair" orange. But here's the best pic I could find online: (And you'll note the color details are quite different from what I described from the "official" drawing)

My quick, simplisitic "5-year-old's view" of it: It's our front-line fighter. Not some obscure, small component of the military, for some little role. It is the FRONTLINE MAIN AIR_TO_AIR FIGHTER of the entire Air Force. That is not something you skimp on, or "skip". It's the Air Force's equivalent of the Navy's destroyers. You need a lot of them, and good ones, because it's the backbone of the force. Yes, it costs a lot--and it darn well should, because it's the main thing you're going to be using to project power for the next few decades. I mean, it'd be like skimping on the infantry's guns, or the Navy's propellers. An extremely important component of the overall plan. As for F-35's--the F-22's a lot bigger, in the future it will hold a LOT more stuff. Yes, right now the bay's like 2 inches too small for most JDAM's. That's because JDAM's are Vietnam-era bombs with a GPS glued on. Surely in a few years (or 30, when F-22's will still be around) we'll have new, smaller bombs designed for internal carriage. And then F-22's will be able to be stuffed full of them, and carry a lot more "boom-power" than the F-35, or any other smaller, lesser plane. (I am a big fan of big planes--they can simply do more. Radar, engines, avionics, etc, can only be made so small--a plane 25% bigger has room for like 50% more systems and maybe 75% more fuel--plus the inherently larger payload) As for props again---props can't go supersonic(generally). The short explanation is that you'll need to have the RPM's so high you'll have supersonic blades long before you have a supersonic plane, and that's BAD. Same reason helicopters don't go all that fast. Somewhat vaguely related to why jet engines need the air slowed down to subsonic speeds in the intake, at supersonic flight speeds. Rotating blades don't like supersonic air, period. Wing sweep isn't really that much of a factor--it wasn't done simply because we didn't understand it well. A P-51 with swept wings could go (drag-wise) a LOT faster, but the prop is the limiting factor at that point. And of course, you can always just go to a straight-wing with a supersonic foil, if you want to go fast. (Look at the F-104 and X-15---fast planes with straight wings--the other way to go fast) ::edit:: This has got to be the fastest-moving plane thread ever. Mike replied while I was typing. Anyways, I bring up his point a lot--an F-22 is basically a modified F-15. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary. It's overall shape and proportions are close to an F-15, and it looks *damn* close to the final 2 or 3 rejected F-15 designs. It is simply an "angled to be stealthy" F-15. And as I said earlier, the F-15 is about the most unstealthy plane we've got. Even with all the RAM you could slap on it, it'd still probably still have a bigger RCS than an F-16A or F-18C. (Which are similar--and the slightly stealthier F-16C and F-18E's are also equal to each other) ::edit 2:: Sorry, I don't really have a POINT to the above paragraph, I just like to mention it.

For all those, I used ultra-generic colors. Literally "light blue" and "dark blue" from Testors, for example. But I left the chest closed, so didn't paint the speakers. ::goes gets M7 animation book:: Flight suit is orangey-red, (though on TV it looks quite orange to me not far off from intl/safety orange, while the book is decidedly on the red side) with white collar/shoulders/gloves/boots. Small details on white parts are medium blue, except for the orange trapezoid one on the chest. Non-clear parts of helmet match the overall suit color. (You're actually going to try to paint this in 1/144? Have fun) Overall remember, this is a custom-painted girly-plane, it's not going to have FS matches for any of it.

Let's see. 1. Legios already brought up my main next point--"the war on terror" is not the only war that will happen in the F-22's lifetime. F-15's going to be 30 soon. You can darn well bet within 30 years from now, there will be some air-to-air battles going on, and the F-15 won't cut it. Not against the Su-49MKI_asd2-LL SuperDuper Flanker III. 2. And regardless of how many are built, we will have at least one or two squadrons of F-22's. Hopefully a lot more. But production F-22's are being built and delivered right now. Very slowly, but they are. Unless they REALLY want to chop the budget by cancelling mx/support, they won't scrap what's already built. 3. Yup, Washington treaty greatly affected warship construction and world politics for years. Battleships were the 1920's equivalent of carrier battle groups, in terms of politcal power.

A330-200? Interesting. PS--while the 767 tankers will/could be converted to tankers at Wichita, they will certainly be built at Everett. AFAIK, some will be new-builds, others will be conversions from pax ones. (AA and UA are dumping their 767-200's, could be a quick interim fix until purpose-built 767 tankers come about) F-22 not in service until 2006-2009? Doubt it. 27FS gets them in 2005, ready or not. Then the 71 and 94 squadrons. Heck, the F-15E wasn't really "fully operational" during Desert Storm! There's a big difference between being delivered, intial operating capability, and FULLY developed. There will be F-22's at Langley next year, and if something happens, they will fly, regardless of if they're only 80-90% functional, systems-wise. (Because 80% of an F-22's avionics is still a heck of a lot more than a perfect F-15C MSIP) Unless there's a problem to the point of "it can't fly nor shoot", F-22's will go to Langley soon. Just because it can't do the fancy wireless-AMRAAM-interlink-data with other F-22's is no reason to hold up the service entry. (just an example, it's the only nifty feature that could cause problems I can think of off the top of my head) Heck, the F-16C still doesn't have its major design feature functional yet (vs the F-16A), and it's been nearly 20 years! (Yup, the extended fin base is hollow, just waiting for a system that'll neve come). A-12: the one program Cheney cancelled that eveyone agrees was a good decision. (It should have been canceled at the first design sketch though, that's not a plane for carriers, and it's barely a plane at all) ::edit:: Anyone have current stats for actual in-service USAF F-15C numbers? Production numbers are worthless. A lot of out F-15A's are either with a few ANG squads, in the desert, or given to Israel. As well as a significant number of F-15C's. How many F-15C's do we actually have right now, in USAF front-line squadrons? I'm wondering if 339 (or now 276) might actually be able to do a fairly decent job at replacing them, assuming we are talking about using 100% of the F-22's to replace F-15C's and nothing else. (If for some reason we desperately needed more air-to-air planes quickly, late-model F-15E's with the CFT's removed would be equal if not superior to the F-15C for air-to-air)

If I could only have a gun-armed prop, give me an F4U. Mustangs beware. Anyways---new gizmos are so integrated into the airframe (because they have to be), it'd be VERY difficult to simply add them into the F-15. I mean, a lot of the F-22's antennas etc actually form part of the wing's leading edge. Also, the F-15ACTIVE could never pitch or roll as fast as the F-22. The F-22 is unstable. Not F-16 unstable, but unstable nonetheless. And has more widely-spaced engines. Finally--the F-15 would still rate a "0" on the stealthiness scale. Probably the least stealthy fighter we have. (At least the F-14's stabs cant outwards a bit, as do the intakes---both features probably help a little) The F-15 is a flying collection of right-angles.