Joe Hegedus

Different airplanes used different methods of attaching the rigging. In the case of the F4B, using eyelets for the wing rigging is inaccurate, as the flying and landing wire attachment points were inside the wing skin - the rigging entered the wing a distance from the struts and was attached to the structure internally, so all that is visible is the wire (actually a pretty substantial steel rod with an airfoil cross section) entering a small hole in the wing surface. The wires that brace the horizontal stab to the fin, however, appear to be attached to the fin via eyelets.

Yes, I agree.

The 3 pieces to the right appear to be the lower wing - a one-piece bottom section that includes the fuselage belly, and a top half for each side. I wonder if CP has any plans to offer a P-12E; that wouldn't take much more than a new pair of fuselage halves (if they want to include the Panama conversion), a tail skid, and a new bottom to the upper wing that doesn't have the floatation bag panels.

I’m in for one, but someone needs to do some VX-23 decals for it! Preferably CF-5, since that is the jet that most of the projects I worked used. Maybe some GBU-53 SDBIIs and BRU-61 for the bay, as well.

I don't recall ever seeing a secondary seal under the cap on the bottles I've purchased.

It’s possible. Not necessarily common, but I have seen jets parked with the flaps up.

The F-5E canopy is shorter with different framing than the canopy on the F-20. At least, the canopies on the second and third F-20s. The first one (the red and white bird) used an F-5E canopy. but the second and third jets had one that had more glass for better all-around visibility. The Monogram kit canopy is about 3/16" longer than an F-5E canopy, but if one were building the red and white jet, one could conceivably use some sheet styrene and filler to fill in the gap between the F-20 upper deck and the F-5 canopy frame.

Looks like a wing tank for an FJ-2 or -3 Fury.

I got your message, but as I said, I won’t be able to do anything before Saturday as I am away on a business trip until then.

I can help you out, but not before Saturday. Shoot me a message and I will pull them out when I get home.

Word. The designation system seems to be kinda like the Pirate’s Code - more sort of guidelines, and loose ones at that anymore!

Not arguing with you on this, but the images in the linked article clearly show blue bands for the warhead and motor sections. Also, the word “INERT” is stenciled on both the warhead section and motor. It is clearly marked as a NAIM-147B though. Seems to be some inconsistency here.

So it didn’t get damaged by the drogue during refueling. The small degradation in performance due to extra drag was likely negligible for the missions being flown, and the reduced maintenance to keep the doors in good order was probably worth it.

I would expect that the AIM-147 would be similar in dimensions and weight to the AGM-78 Standard ARM that was used on the F-105G, F-4G, and A-6B. Probably not exactly, but in that ballpark.

For normal stateside ops, I don't think you'd ever see a live missile on a jet unless they planned to shoot it (Air defense alert jets excepted). There just isn't a reason, and missiles have flight hour limitations so they don't want to put more time on them than absolutely necessary. Similar to bombs; unless they plan to drop it, they're not going to load a live weapon. Even for inert bombs, unless they plan to drop for training or whatnot, it's likely not going to be on the jet. Again, test activities are an exception here since some tests require external stores to be carried, even if t