Marcel Chmura The kit is looking very nice though from what I have seen on YouTube. Very nice molding. Having the 1/48 kit myself but tempted to go for this one either.

Patrick Hagelstein Oh! It surely does and I'm looking forward to building it. The only thing that differentiates this box from the 1988 boxing is the small 50 years Academy label in the left bottom corner. People might end up with the old kit instead of the new one.

Roland Revolvermann Wow, thats really a cleaver box art choice

Pierre I was really excited with this kit until I saw that youtube vid, a lot of the panel lines look wavy due to the nearby riveting... Hopefully he got an early shot and that'll be fixed with production kits. Should still be worth it given the price point.

Martin o Could you link the yt video Pierre? couldn't find it myself. Thanks

Treehugger The general box art here is the same as the kit in 1:48 scale (Academy 12253), the one with the weird front canopy glass. How they could screw that up in our time and age I have no idea (the one in 1:48 scale).

Looking at the review video, my impression is that the front canopy glass surface looks like it should have had more curvature to it (the kit in 1:72 scale).

Roland Revolvermann Is this one a down scaled version of the 1:48 or a completely new development ?

Patrick Hagelstein @ Pierre, I saw those rivets too. It looked like the rivets were pushed in after the panel lines were drawn. Could be that it was a pre-production kit as ScaleModelAircraft (Dusan Lekic) often builds Academy kits that only hit the shops months later. I am however, confident this kit will be nice. The later Academy kits are well buildable and very detailed for an 'easy kit'! This might not be the FineMolds or G.W.H. standard in terms of finesse but I think this kit will build into a very nice OOB Tomcat without fiddling and without a ton of unused options. Don't get me wrong, for a highly detailed very specific BuNo I'll go for either the FineMolds or G.W.H. kit but for a nice detailed 'just sit on my shelf in VF-??? markings Tomcat' I'll definitely look forward to this Academy kit.

Pierre Well, I guess we'll wait and see, I concur it could become the go-to quickbuild kit. I'm glad I didn't give in and pre-order either of the new Tomcats right now, makes me feel very wise and reasonable

Martin o I am just sad this is the only 72 tomcat with the windshield handled like this.

Patrick Hagelstein Perhaps one of the most awaited academies announced this year. The 1/72 F-14A is finally available. MMZ will be able to provide you with a preview of the final version. However, it is still a trial injection, so the details of the product may change slightly.

Originally designed for the Academy 1/72 MCP lineup, it was modified to the general version and the final product is a traditional plastic model, not MCP or Snaptite. However, there are some parts of the parts that indicate that this product started with MCP.

The above is the Google translation for the MMZ preview. Apparently the pictures on there are of testshots. (one can actually see some grime and stuff on the plastic)

Mark TAURONE I wonder if you can post a pdf of the instruction sheet?

Patrick Hagelstein Sure! I can get a scan in on Tuesday (after Veterans Day). Do you need the scan for the Hawk or the decals?

Mark TAURONE both would be great. I bought one on eBay, advertised as new, but mold and water damage to all paper

Mark TAURONE Thanks.

Patrick Hagelstein Mark, I have to apologize to you... When moving to my current stationing, I took a bunch of kits with me and left a bunch of kits back home. I left this kit back home, hence the 'On hold' status. I can therefore not provide you with the promised instructions. I saw you were looking into different Red Arrows Hawks though, just one thing I can say for now: Go with the Revell one! It's by far the most detailled of the bunch and builds into a very nice model. I'm building the Airfix one as a prototype to test my envisioned stand and smoke trail because the Airfix one is good enough for that.

Mark TAURONE Thanks. I have the Nishimi version but the paper items in the kit are water damaged, decal are ruined, instructions moldy. I'll make it work somehow.

Patrick Hagelstein Nishimi???

Mark TAURONE Fujimi sorry, tired brain.

Patrick Hagelstein Gotcha! I never built the Fujimi version but it looks to be a decent early model Hawk.

Spanjaard you can make some masks for those decals, and not worry about the exact hue anymore..... just an idea.

Patrick Hagelstein Could be an idea. Are there any laser cut Hornet masks that you know of by any chance?

Patrick Hagelstein Apart from the warning text next to the cockpit, the most prominent would be national markings, NAVY titles and intake triangles.

Patrick Hagelstein Mask - F-14 Tomcat National Insignia (Eduard XS542, 1:72)

Spanjaard, I'll wait for my ordered paint to arrive and see if it works. Otherwise, this might be an option. Thanks for the tip!

Spanjaard glad to help

Patrick Hagelstein

Jos Jansen Nice progress on that aggressor Patrick...lots of Hornets on SCM...

Pierre Nice work with that nose, will keep that in mind

Hans Robben It looks they are out of business for a while.

Patrick Hagelstein Too bad!.... I would love to test these intakes....

Stephan Ryll Ah one of the „Queens own" very nice idea Patrick

Patrick Hagelstein Thanks Stephan! I forgot that I ordered the sheet with Danny Coremans but had no plans for an F-15 yet. I found the GWH F-15J on eBay for a decent price, so will have a go at it a bit later. I was looking into a couple of AeroMasks and added the F-15C as well. It might become a 'thing' later on.

Jos Jansen Definitely a project to follow....you know lately I finished my Slobberin Wolfhound 1/48...so I am in!

Roland Revolvermann #Metoo

Thomas Bischoff Bicycle lanes look like this in switzerland
[img1]

Thomas Bischoff I guess the airbase in pic 1 is Meiringen?

Łukasz Gliński That's why I wrote "AFAIK" Been many times up there, but never rode a bike, maybe that's the reason Great link Alex

Spanjaard I would love to see something like that when I go biking to the office (used to se the airlines landing in Schiphol but it is not the same.... )

Patrick Hagelstein Guys, thank you so much for this treasure chest of valuable information! Great stuff to read upon! I definitely want to portray this Bug crossing a road, so I might need to extend my groundwork to include the barrier in order to point out that it's actually a traffic road.

Andy Ball do the cyclists have the right of way over the F/A-18? [joke...]

Patrick Hagelstein Always!!! I'm Dutch and in the Netherlands cyclists have ALWAYS right of way! Whether they have or not is just semantics.

Spanjaard many certainly believe that!

Patrick Hagelstein

Tzonglin Wu I think I find the difference that you told me in the 11th photo of this album. This F-16AM owns a very beautiful color scheme. I Look forward to your progress.

Patrick Hagelstein Yep, that was when I was still frustrated about the Kasl Hobby plug and didn't realize that Kasl was right....for a Block 20. This one is shelved but often smiles at me from where it sits in my modeling room. I really need to restart this one!

bughunter Very careful and clean work On your first picture you have only MRP-207, but this is only the bright color. I miss the MRP-206, as on this picture:
[img1]

Patrick Hagelstein Hi Bughunter, in the meantime I acquired the MRP-206 as well but I doubt if I have a use for it as this is the color for the lion rampant and that one is covered in the excellent Syhart decal set. I might only need it for some touch ups but then it's having my fingers crossed that the decals and MRP-206 exactly match. The other 'mistake' is the Eduard F100-229 engine set as this bird flies with an F100-220(E). The only external (for modelbuilding purposes) difference is the different spray ring but I highly doubt it will be that visible inside that burner can. Two reactions to this build in just a couple of hours.... I really need reconsidering this build and move it up in my building queu.

Hans Robben Patrick, the darker orange from MRP is unfortunately not a match for the Syhart decals. For VERY small touch ups it is OK though. Touch ups I did on mine are showing. I would recommend mixing it with some silver to match the Syhart decals better.

Patrick Hagelstein Thanks for this tip Hans!

Patrick Hagelstein https://cybermodeler.com/aircraft/f-16/f-16_all.shtml

Patrick Hagelstein Welcome too Harry!

Konrad Limmer Well is there any space left maybe in the second row !
Watching too!

Patrick Hagelstein Always! I'll just remove some more seat covers.

Clifford Keesler Count me in please.

Patrick Hagelstein Sure!

Patrick Hagelstein I noticed this kit has a more blueish grey plastic compared to the more common greenish grey Academy usually uses. Somehow this plastic is a tad harder and less susceptible to accidental cuts and gauches. And it could be me but the parts seem to have very small protrusions on inside surfaces as a matter of fact helping aligning the parts. Did Academy update the molds???

Donald Dickson II Another one to watch.

Patrick Hagelstein More than welcome Donald!

Markus Antonius lol.. probably some cheap ripp off

Patrick Hagelstein I'm afraid you're right.... Either way, that Hasegawa Leopard is actually not that bad! For a very early Leopard 2 it is very accurate in spite of the oversimplified running gear.

Markus Antonius i totally agree! it makes up for a nice represantation of the leo2... and much easier to get than the dragon kit.
btw. if you like leopards, try artitecs 1/87 scale resin kits.

Murad ÖZER who sent me here?

Jos Jansen As an ex Dutch tanker, I am not a fan of this version of the Leopard 2A6 NL ... I know the history how this decision came about. Aside from who made this misguided decision to paint a battle tank in orange, it will be a challenge for a model to copy this ...

Patrick Hagelstein Well Jos, I'm with you on some aspects. Back then I used to work not far away from our Leopard engineering office and they had this huge poster hanging in their office and it intrigued me to some extend. When I saw this vehicle (weren't there actually two vehicles? I see different license plates and different text fonts...) parked in The Hague for Veterans Day, I took pictures from a modeler's perspective for future reference. (No Leopard 2A6 project I was working on back then, only a 2A4 was in the works) Recently I was given a Tamiya 2A6 by a modelclub member and I wanted to do something 'extra' to it. At first I wanted to do a Hohenfels 2A5, all muddied up but when I saw this picture in my references, it reminded me of that orange tank. Being the only Dutch guy in my group and doing something 'extra', it sparked my interest. I agree with you that this isn't a prime example of how well our other tanks were kept back in those days but this is more of a 'shock and awe' experiment in my club. Back then in The Hague it was a rainy day and the water-soluble paint started to wear off already. In my pictures (which I will upload quite soon) you can see the paint running off already and it gave the vehicle a shabby look already. Especially because the front side skirts were folded down and stowed it gave the vehicle a haphazard look. Either way, looking into the references, it needed some more work than the Tamiya kit could offer and having the Border Models BT-002 coming in this weekend, I decided to go all out and portray it as it was that Saturday morning in June 2008. The Border Models kit is unbelievable when it comes to details but I still have to use parts of the Revell kit for the Dutch radio setup and the Dutch smoke dischargers. Other than that, I agree with you that this will be a challenge! The devil is in the details and the more I look, the more differences I see compared to the German kit versions....

Mark Norfolk What a difference the spray cans made! Does oven cleaner work on anything or just Testors? Looking v smart Patrick.

Patrick Hagelstein I remember using it on Tamiya spray paint back home and it worked a charm there too. Back then I sprayed the oven cleaner on the whole model and put it in a container. This time I needed to be a bit more precise, that's why I sprayed it in a little jar and brushed from that.

Patrick Hagelstein Youtube Video

Mark Norfolk Thanks

Patrick Hagelstein

Brian Y This project came out nicely!. I'd like to see more detail about your canopy masking method. The photo showing the raw masking tape was impressive.

Patrick Hagelstein Hi Brian! Glad you like it! I took it to my modeling club yesterday and put it in the display cabinet over there before I could take some pictures of the finished build. I'll take some more pictures over there next Friday.

Patrick Hagelstein With a well defined canopy frame, masking is actually quite easy. Cut a piece of Tamiya tape just a tad bigger than the window pane and line one side up to the edge of the frame. Burnish the rest down and hold the canopy into the light. With a fresh and sharp blade lightly trace the frame and make one clean cut per side. You'll see that the tape pulls off fine and leaves the window pane covered. Just burnish it down to be sure and spray ahead in light coats.

Spanjaard low viz

Hans Robben Blends in perfectly in a Dutch landscape, especially in 1988 .

Spanjaard zeker, on Koningsdag (Koninginnedag in 88 )

Patrick Hagelstein Ècht wèl!

Chris Greathouse How many tubes of glue to put that model together? Ha, thanks for the share. cool reference pics.

Hans Robben I remember being stationed in Germany for an exercise in 1988 and during the weekend we watched the soccer semi-final vs Germany in the middle of nowhere with our platoon, everybody dressed in the orange sport gear we were issued with. Good memories.

Patrick Hagelstein Chris, in the pictures you can still see the remnats of the duct tape they used.
Hans, that must have been some experience! I remember watching the games on a big screen in a Portuguese market square with my colleagues while attending an exercise in 2014. Too bad the German participants decided to paint four stars on their helicopters....

Hans Robben

Daniel Klink Very nice Pics Patrick Never knew there was a Low Visibilty Version of the 2A4

Jos Jansen Hans and Spanjaard, this miserable version (my personal opinion) of this powerful MBT was during the air force days in Leeuwarden in 2008 ... this A6 came from my Battalion (there is quite a story attached to it)...

@Patrick ... no hard feelings mate , it will be a challenge to copy this ... it is not duct tape, but velcro which was used for placing own troops' identification marks.
https://flickr.com/photos/124222809@N05/15984793776/

Patrick Hagelstein I know Jos! In the close ups (picture 23) you can actually notice the velcro. And no hard feelings for sure! When I saw the gimmick on TV I thought it was funny, seeing the real deal up close and personal, I was less thrilled as well... Looking at the pictures you can see that on that rainy day the paint was already wearing off and dripping off the tank. It looks rather scruffy and this beauty/beast deserves better! I will portray my build as earlier on that day with the paint still 'intact' with only some minor scuffing in some places. I chose the Border Models Leopard 2A6 because it comes with an empty engine deck, which comes in handy because this particular vehicle was devoid of any tooling or hoses apart from the rearranged towing cables. As a matter of fact, may I ask you a question as a subject matter expert? I know our 2A4s had the big non-skid patches with the circular patch on the air intakes (I need to alter that on my upcoming 2A4NO build), did the 2A5s and 2A6s still have those large patches or were the patches reapplied during the depot visit to rebuild the 2A4s to 2A5/6s?

Andy Ball I love subtle weathering... great balance and restraint on top of a superb paint job!

Patrick Hagelstein Thanks Andy! If you need any tips, just holler Urban.

Urban Gardini Yes, I'll do so if there's something that arises in my mind...

Guy Rump Great weathering and a lovely model all round

Patrick Hagelstein Thanks Guy!

Łukasz Gliński Well done

Alec K Looks great Patrick. I will have to refer to your salt technique when I build mine

Patrick Hagelstein Glad to be of help!

Patrick Hagelstein Danke Stephan!

Łukasz Gliński Nice progress fighting against these decals.

Holger Kranich Dammit! How could i miss this? Awesome Patrick!

Patrick Hagelstein The struggle is real, Łukasz.... Thanks Holger, welcome aboard!

Alec K Decals can be a real pain. Looking great

Slavo Hazucha Discovered this only now... - great job I love the way you made the surface & propeller suffer

Christian Bruer Nice progress Patrick it all comes out very nice.

Patrick Hagelstein Why should I be any milder than the Pacific coral sand and sun?

Jos Jansen Great Patrick....

Holger Kranich Great kit obviously!
In my opinion the lift Spoilers are part of pre flight check at the last Chance.

Murad ÖZER following

Patrick Hagelstein Whauw!!! Thank you guys! This combined information helped me a lot in my decision making. I'll definitely go ahead and modify the wings in only spoilers up position as that is how I want to portray the plane: taxiing out to take off and doing the preflight checks along the way. More pictures to follow soon!

Donald Dickson II Rio works. As long as you dont eject me into the canopy.

Patrick Hagelstein Luckily Maverick gets a new chance somewhere in 2020.

Daniel I'll take a seat in the tower with a nice big mug of coffee. And no, the pattern is full.

Patrick Hagelstein

Donald Dickson II That preview is freaking awesome. Gotta see it!

Patrick Hagelstein Martin, I pre-ordered it through LuckyModel.com https://luckymodel.com/scale.aspx?item_no=GW-L7203

Martin o Thanks Patrick! Ordered there. Was the shipping fast?

Patrick Hagelstein It said between 7 and 11 days and I think it arrived in little over a week. Pretty fast and cheaper then elsewhere.

Patrick Hagelstein Yesterday I fondled with the wing (couldn't resist....) and the wing has the right curvature in it! All along all the different slat, spoilers and flaps over different sprues! Amazing! And the construction pegs are Gundan sized, no worries about misalignment.

Martin o Thats nice to hear. I am planning to use the wings for my heavy maintenance project.

Holger Kranich It´s taking shape, Patrick. And when i am allowed to say: Incredible!

Stephan Ryll Very nice progress Patrick

Patrick Hagelstein I'm working my Corsair and Hellcat club projects off my workbench to get start working for my own fun again!

Murad ÖZER oooh man, Patrick i sincerely hope this won't remain as an idea, Deutsche Phantom and a very special livery at that, can only mean one word: EPIC!

Patrick Hagelstein That was quick Murad! Welcome aboard! Currently I'm building the 1/72 version of this very bird but that is going to be a kit bashing massacre as I'm combining the Academy F-4J, Revell F-4F and ESCI F-4E into the Mother of all Phantoms. The 1/48 inflight version will be my Zen moment in between of that one.
F-4F WTD 61 (Academy/Revell/ESCI) | Project by Hagel (1:72)

Holger Kranich Hi guys! I had the pleasure to see her live! She´s a beauty!

Murad ÖZER i'm officially jealous!

Patrick Hagelstein I just filed an official jealousy form as well.

Christian W This looks quite interesting!

Patrick Hagelstein Hi Christian! Thanks! Sadly it's on a back burner for now as I have some modelclub 'commitment' going on now. But I can see the box from my workbench, so it still has my attention.

Christian W This is what I do with my "mid term projects" too If they are in sight, the always give me bad feelings about how ling they still sit and wait.

Patrick Hagelstein So true....

Greg Baker I'm a little scared of this picture...

Patrick Hagelstein Me too!...

Patrick Hagelstein But it surely gets some attention!

Spanjaard amazing reference pictures Patrick, thanks a million!!!!
i only wonder why they piled those bombs underneath her.... did ever a Tomcat carry such a load????

Patrick Hagelstein No, those are WWII era bombs. There is a lot of restauration work going on. I guess those bombs were just placed there to create some room elswhere.

Spanjaard That is what I thought . Too many planes, too little space and time.... Just like us, and our stash

Patrick Hagelstein Good one Spanjaard!

Holger Kranich Very nice and detailed piccies!!! Priceless !

Patrick Hagelstein Enjoy!

Martin o some of those pictures are quite rare to see. would you mind uploading some of those to imgur in full resolution? thanks for this album in any case

Patrick Hagelstein Sure! I took those last year with a phone. I need to find them in my archives again... Might be something for the weekend....

Martin o haha no rush Interested mainly in the gear wells. Won't start on the next cat until the CV is finished

Patrick Hagelstein Exactly!!!

Markus Antonius THE perfect Tomcat in 72nd? Let's cross fingers...

Patrick Hagelstein I'm with you Markus!

Patrick Hagelstein Hobby.dn.ua has it on pre-order! I'm tempted to jump in but might wait what prices will be here in the US.

Patrick Hagelstein Just visited Lucky Model and looking at their pre-order sprue shots it seems this will only be in air defense mode, so without the BRU-32s and with only the LANTIRN pylon, not the LANTIRN itself. Does that mean we have to wait for another Bombcat boxing???

Martin o tbh seems kinda weird to me putting bombs on a tomcat anyway I can send you the LANTIRN I have from the Fujimi box

Patrick Hagelstein True, it's weird but then again in the heydays of it's career there wasn't too much to fire at from a long distance. Somehow the Afghani and Iraqi warring factions didn't have that many long distance interceptors or cruise missiles to fire at fleet battle groups. It's not that I'm in need of the LANTIRN itself but I think it's weird looking at the Moxing.net sprue shots with LANTIRN and Bombcat sprues in it and then looking at the 'actual' sprues where they are not included.

Martin o ah yes, right. that makes sense

D Zirkzee The Bulldozer is certainly an interesting and different subject...

Patrick Hagelstein It is! Especially as it isn't available as a separate kit (yet). The thing is, I already bought that specific Abrams kit.

Bart Goesaert the dozer does exist as a separate kit, but in resin so far... these are nice kits...

Patrick Hagelstein True! they really are!

Dallas Hanson Gah... No way I'm building a second one... this first one is already straining what remains of my sanity... months just to get the truck chassis done! Good Luck, better you than me!! XD

D Zirkzee Dallas Hanson, why is that? Is it a bad kit or complicated?

Dallas Hanson D ZirkZee ... Complicated would be one way to explain it... very detailed and intricate kit, at least in the Hobby Boss kit... the frame alone was assembled from nearly a dozen pieces, and I have yet to run the hydraulic and brake lines...

Patrick Hagelstein Thanks! Now I have to get the main kit built and get these colors applied.

Kerry COX Alclad, once you get used to it and how it works, will give you a fantastic result.
A most impressive build.

Patrick Hagelstein Thanks Kerry! This means a lot coming from the Bare Metal Master himself! This is only the test album though; I'm using my intended methods and materials on scrap parts to see if my plans work out as I want them to. This way I can dip the parts in alcohol and start over without ruining the actual plane.

Kerry COX This is what make a good/great modeller.
Experiment as much as you can.
Alclad really surprised me when I first used it, but it was the blunders and ignoring all the tips on how to get it's wonderful results that has me using it as often as I can and getting fantastic results.
I was so tempted to alclad chrome my F-100D. !
I did it with my British Electrics 'Lightning II' and except for the PE bits I screwed up, it was a real treat to see just how smooth and neat the whole model looked.
The thing I discovered was once the base gloss black was down, you can spray the metal paint straight over the top. As it does not need to be dry before the metal coat goes on, and, sprayed like your dusting the finest thinnest paint you have ever used, all from a good distance from the model, almost like a 'puff' application.
Don't spray the metal paints like 'regular' paints.In fact, the lightest of coats and many of them.
But I am not here to tell you what to do.
The fun part comes when you see the layers build up to a rich level of reflection.
Just don't paint any areas where your fingers have left behind any fingerprints, as these will just leap out of the black base and ruin everything.
Happy days mate.

Patrick Hagelstein Took some time to answer your post... You're absolutely right! The thinner the coat, the more reflective it gets. I used Mr. Color GX2 for the gloss black but I might come back with the the Alclad II Black Base once I go for real. I kept the metals until the very last, just to not have to handle the model after the Black was on. I like the Alclads too but think I'll use some RAF Aircraft Silver to brighten up the colors a bit more as they seem a little dark to me. They will darken up more after applying the soot and weathering.

Kerry COX That will be interesting to see the final result Patrick.

Murad ÖZER here

Patrick Hagelstein And welcome too!