An Amazing F-14 Tomcat Model

Check out this 1/144 scale F-14A Tomcat of VF-1 landing diorama.  Mind blowing, especially since it is a tiny scale and has extensive scratch building.  The afterburners are the highlight, no pun intended.

An Eggcellent Guide

There seems to be a strong streak of silly running through model builders, with an almost fanatical devotion to Monty Python quotes for example.  Another thing that makes modellers happy is books that feature an insane amount of detail about a given aircraft, tank, or ship. 

This is what happens when the two meet.

Demented silliness at its best and a tribute to the sillier kits that Hasegawa puts out: the eggplane.

A Suprising Newspaper Promotion

You would never see this in the USA these days.  The Daily Telegraph is giving away a voucher to pick up a free 1/72 Revell Spitfire Mk. II kit in the Saturday editon and another in the Sunday Telegraph for a 1/72 Revell Hurricane Mk. 1!  This warms my heart as it should any scale model builder and I hope parents take advantage of this opportunity across the pond.  Those two fighters were the backbone of the Royal Air Force in WWII, so a great chance at a history lesson is there besides teaching the joys of model building.

If such a thing were done here, it likely would cause a bunch of gray haired gentlemen to fight over the newspapers, I'm sad to say. The loss of hobbies where boys use their hands has been one of the more distressing changes in our society, as more passive forms of entertainment have taken over. You don't see that many youngsters building kits, they would rather be playing video games or watching movies.

As soon as my room is repaired and everything moved back in, I'll be eagerly getting back to finishing some kits myself.

Is a New Concorde Needed?

Ran into this photo gallery at the Telegraph depicting renderings of a proposed super sonic transport (SST) being developed by Supersonic Aerospace International.  It is a pretty bird aimed at the business class traveler, essentially a Mach 1.6 private jet that is quiet enough to be used at more airports than the old Concorde SST.  Given the immense costs of fuel used to fly any "super cruise" plane, I don't see a valid market for it during hard economic times.  Sure there are some sheiks out there who would love such a toy, but even they have felt the pinch the last year. Unless there is a huge turnaround in the global economy in the next decade, the timing of the aircraft will be poor.

Interestingly, Lockheed's Skunkworks designed the 'QSST', or Quiet SST, plane. The lack of afterburners should reduce takeoff noise considerably, but the F-22A Raptor pilots have found that it is more economical to use afterburners to reach supersonic speeds and then throttle back to cruise.  It will require a lot more fuel pushing through the so called "sound barrier" of denser air from what they've said.

You can visit the home page of SAI here and get more information.

It would make a great model kit though, look at those lines!