This is my third article
submission to ARC. The marking are from the 111th FIS of the Texas ANG
(George Dubya's old unit back in the 70s). I picked up the extra decals
to reflect unit markings on the rear stablilizer Kursad at Kedi Decals.
This kit builds up nice, but not without some serious hair pulling
first. I found the fit along the top spine of the fuselage required some
serious gap filling. The same applied to the installation of the intakes and
rear burner. I may never see that many ejection pin marks again.
They were absolutely everywhere. I used standard FS16473 light aircraft
gray, black and titanium. Polly Scale acrylics were used throughout, the
exception of Tamiya Titanium on the intakes and rear fuselage area. The
kit decals weren't really all that bad, a touch of Micro Sol did the trick to
settle them down. You need to be extra careful with Kedi decals, as they
are super thin. My thanks to Kursad who game to the rescue to bail me
out on one I screwed up royally. I had to take one liberty on my Duece.
You will note the Dagger silhouettes on the canopy. I simply could not
resist using something that cool looking. Apologies in advance to Dagger
purists.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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You have the choice
of displaying your Dagger with the missile bay closed or open. This is
where some fiddly parts had me talking to myself. The rails are very
fragile and can snap with the least bit of pressure. Overall, the bay
looks a bit too toy like for my taste, but I guess it's what gives the Dagger
additional visual punch in your display case. Armament for the Dagger
usually included 6 AIM-4 Falcon air-to-air missiles, three of which were radar
guided and three of which were infared guided. Several other
configurations were possible, depending on the mission. This kit was built
OTB, but I suppose you can trick it out to the inth degree if you so
choose. I just added the Kedi decals and some homemade seatbelts. The
instrument panel is tucked pretty far out of your line of sight...so an
investment here seemed like a waste of good money. Overall, if you're
willing to devote extra time to pre-painting chores, the Revell offering will
make a nice edition to your collection.
Hope you like it...
Ivan
IPMS-St. Louis
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