A little work in progress

[Captain Canada]

Great stuff !

I had a diecast Buck Rogers fighter as a kid. I used to carry it in my binoculars as a 'mothership' and when I opened the binocs it would launch.

It's funny how good the old school Battlestar fighter looks. The newer one just looks cheesy to me ?

[DogfighterZen]

Wow... haven't seen anything from buck rogers for quite a while... i love that fighter! That sure brings back memories!

[Thorvic]

That's a point, those are all Starfighters we grew up with as kids from the late 70's early 80s , how come apart from the Space Above & Beyond Hammerheads that we haven't had anything since on TV or Film that's really caught our interests. Only the new Star Wars Ep VII ships are updated versions of the originals, most of the Star Wars prequel stuff was forgettable or uninspiring apart from Obi Wans Jedi fighter in Ep II. Has CGI special effects killed the creativity to some extent because they don't look real ?

[zenrat]

Good point Thorvic.  I did like the insectoid craft in Lexx.  When was that made?
Maybe its because Space Opera has gone out of fashion?
Other than in Anime of course.
Which reminds me, the 1/72 Van Ship & Vespa kit is being re-released.

[Snowtrooper]

It's worth mentioning that the spaceships in the Original Trilogy, Battlestar Galactica original series (from which the reboot's Viper Mk2 is derived), and Buck Rogers were all based on the art of late great Ralph McQuarrie. He had previously worked as an illustrator for Boeing, maybe that's why even the most fantastic of his concepts were somehow "tangible".

---

As for later space operas with starfighters, there was Wing Commander. The ship design in the games was pretty cool because it heavily borrowed directly from the aforementioned classics, but in the film, however, the Terran starfighters were too plainly sawed-off BAC Lightning cockpits with minuscule fuselage and wings, as if a few square metres of plywood had ruined the film's budget. Oh well, even sleek starfighters wouldn't have saved that film - dumping the compressed plot of the entire franchise into a single movie, making sure only the most worn tropes were used, and adding poor man's Jedi Knights on top of that did that already. Or the fact that it's an incoherent mess of ideas: at times, space battles are fought as a not-submarine battle, but seconds later it's the Age of Sail all over again and spaceships exchange broadsides at point-blank range. For some reason, pilots are again used as cannon fodder (well Space: Above and Beyond was also guilty of this) and supposedly, a few jerrycans can carry enough fuel to completely refuel a spaceship that's an aircraft carrier IN SPAAAACE.

[Martin H]

Back to a few whiffs.

First up is a Eurofighter Typhoon F-2 of 5 squadron RAF. This is what 5 sqn should be flying! not that glorified biz jet called the Sentinal!


Its an Italeri kit built oob, with a pair of asraam's added from a Hasegawa weapon set. The squadron markings (bars and Sheild) are home made.


It would normaly be wearing a two letter code, but ive left it off as thou its an airframe thats just been allocated to the squadron.


And to follow........ We have ...................A Phantom!

This is my take on a 1969 McDD project to improve the toom even more. By fitting it with the wings and some of the systems from the then upcoming F-15. I decided to finish it as an F-4G rather than an E as Ive wanted to do a spoof wild weasle for a while.

The base kit is the Bilek boxing of the Italeri F-4E/G kit, with the wings taken from an Italeri F-15E kit. The main gear bays were also taken from the base kits scrapped wings.


The toom has been ongoing since easter. The Typhoon was started about 3 weeks ago. Both have been fun builds to keep me occupied 

[DogfighterZen]

Both look very nice!

[Weaver]

That's a point, those are all Starfighters we grew up with as kids from the late 70's early 80s , how come apart from the Space Above & Beyond Hammerheads that we haven't had anything since on TV or Film that's really caught our interests. Only the new Star Wars Ep VII ships are updated versions of the originals, most of the Star Wars prequel stuff was forgettable or uninspiring apart from Obi Wans Jedi fighter in Ep II. Has CGI special effects killed the creativity to some extent because they don't look real ?

Babylon 5's Starfuries were pretty good. So good, in fact, that NASA sent a team to have a chat with the designers because there were considering something similar for manned maneuvering vehicles. These were also the first spacefighters that I can remember that flew somewhat like real spacecraft, in that they would cheerfully fly backwards and/or stop dead in space. The BSG reboot picked up on this very nicely.

[Weaver]

Like the Typhoon and the Phantom Martin! 

[NARSES2]

Like the Typhoon and the Phantom Martin! 

Very much so, shows grey can look good 

[Captain Canada]

Nice work. :ove the look of that Phantom....took me a sec to figure it out in the first pic !

Good point about the sci-fi stuff Geoff. Makes sense to me.

[Martin H]

Update time. And this time there's a much larger number of builds than normal.

First up is a Lightning I started back in January.......



A Sea Lightning FAW-1. of 899 squadron Fleet Air Arm, operating off HMS Eagle circa 1964.
This is a real mash up. The wings are the Freightdog VG set. The aft fuselage is an Airfix F-6, the forward fuselage is an old Airmodel Vacform conversion suitably hacked up to fit the new tool Lightning. It also has the extended belly tank from the Freight dog Lightning FGA set. And the canopy is a Pavla vac form replacement (intended for the Sword T4/5 kit)
My original Sea lightning (see the first page of this thread) served as a refernce for this build before it moved to its new home in the What if? sig display case at the Midland Air Museam at Coventry airport.

The next three pics show the airframe before and after the model was "bolted" togeather.




Next up a Trio of Fujimi Spey Phantoms.
These are intended for a Project Cancelled sig theme concerning the proposed east of Suez Mounting bases.

Firts pic the group shot.


First up an FG1 of 74sqn.

According to records held by the national achives at Kew. 74 was put forward as one of the units to be considered to take on the then soon to be ex Royal Navy Phantoms. In the end they went elseware and 74 had to wait untill the RAF brought a batch of ex USN F-4J's to get its hand's on Tooms.

Second. Another FG1. This time of 43sqd.

Any one who knows their RAF squadron historys will know that 43 realy did operate the FG1. And this model is almost 100% real world. Apart from she is rigged for carrier operations 
Again thanks to documents at Kew, 43sqn was ear marked to be the RAF carrier airgroup re-enforcement squadron. Ie to augment the FAA's front line toom fleet when needed.
My intension is to eventully mount this model on a base showing it sitting on a catapult. despite its lack of aircrew sitting in the cockpit.

The final toom (for this update at least)

An FGR2 operated by 60sqn based at RAF Aldabra circa the mid 1970's.
In reality the last fighters flown by 60 sqn where Javalins based in Singapore. They then moved onto Helicopters and for a while flew Pembokes as the RAF Germany comms squadron. However they were considered as a possible Phantom squadron when the mounting base project was under consideration.

And finaly two that arnt British.



Yeap! Argintine Kfir's!

Firsts up the bog standard Kfir C2.

This an Italeri kit built and painted OOB, with suitable markings taken from an FAA Mirage III sheet from Condor decals.

The idea being that the FAA might have been able to aquire a batch of C2's to replace some of the Daggers that where lost over the Falklands.
The serial is taken from a Mirage III and was intended to confuse any British spies keeping an eye on the FAA post Falklands 

And last but by no means least.

A Kfir R2. The IDF converted a small number of Kfir C2's into reconassance birds.

Lets say that my fictional FAA Kfir purchase included a pair of R2's as well.
This is a Hasegawa kit fitted with a resin nose conversion from AML. The real R2's wore the same two tone grey scheme as their C2 stable mates. So this one is in the same scheme as the Italeri C2 build. Again the markings are from the Condor decal Mirage III sheet,

[NARSES2]

Particularly like the Sea Lightning Martin, great work 

[Weaver]

Very nice work: that Sea Lightning looks great.

As I understand it, the Kfir was one of the types that the FAA actually did try to acquire post-'82.

[JayBee]

Oh deary deary me Martin.

The complete Inspector Morse collection.