Beginnings of my 1:144 aircraft fleet

[jlspec]

Thanks

[Dauntless]

Hey guys, Amazon is carrying a few of the Amercom 1:144 bombers etc.(Altaya molds)
Some are pretty cheap compared to overseas shipping.
I see a JU-290 in there for a decent price.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/ ... rcom+1+144

[aferguson]

Just discovered something pretty cool. In the Wings of War gaming series (now superceded by Wings of Glory) the used to make a Balloon Buster set, which featured a large observation balloon and a Nieuport 17 equipped with rockets (which were used to attack balloons before incendiary bullets became available).

The set is in 1/144 and are super hard to find and very pricey now. I found a store in France that still has a couple in stock for a 'reasonable' price. You have to order and then they email you with the shipping options. I chose the cheapest (of course) and the total was just under 44 Euro. The cheapest option is 13 Euro for economy surface mail.

Here's a link if anyone is interested:

http://www.ludibay.net/wings-of-war-bal ... 11256.html

[Epap]

I finally got around to assembling my Hachette 1:144th scale Rita, which, unlike the first one ( all-yellow ) was done with a green upper surface over natural metal motif. Here's a picture:

[aferguson]

that looks good Epap. Where did you get it? I wouldn't mind picking one up.

[Epap]

that looks good Epap. Where did you get it? I wouldn't mind picking one up.

Thanks, AF.

I am a full subscriber to the series via a Japanese bookstore in San Francisco as these models are not sold by normal vendor channels in the U.S. Your best option, as this is not a current release, is to get a friend in Japan to buy one for you---if you have such a friend. Otherwise, it may be tough. My contact at the Kinokuniya book store is Mr. Sakai. His phone is 415-567-7625, but I'm not certain that he will be able to help you. The Rita goes by the name Volume 94, as you also get a booklet with the model. Hope this helps.

Ed

[aferguson]

Cool news. Corgi Showcase series just came out with a 1/144 Sea King helicopter. Looks very nice and the reviews i've read say it's excellent.

I got one from Ehattons for just over $11 shipped. Best deal by far i could find.

http://www.ehattons.com/59537/Corgi_Col ... etail.aspx

the pics on their site are of the prototype....the finished model looks better.

[aferguson]

Not sure if this will be of interest to anyone but Furuta makes a nice little Voyager space probe in their Choco series of egg toys. It so happens to be bang on 1/144 scale and makes for an interesting little model. It's nice the way it comes but can be detailed a bit with the addition of a couple of slim antennas made out of thin wire, if so desired.

It's actually surprisingly large compared to WWII fighters (at least surprising to me).

I got mine on Ebay for $3 shipped from HK.

For a little backround info: there were two Voyager space probes launched in the mid 70's. After visiting the outer planets of our solar system they are now both headed out into interstellar space. Voyager 1 is now the furthest man made object from earth at about 10.5 billion miles away and is travelling at just under 40,000 mph. It is expected to be exiting our solar system in the next few months. If it doesn't collide with anything it could be traveling through space for a billion years or more (although its power systems will be drained by 2025 so it will no longer be transmitting after that).

[Warbird Kid]

More than a few of those Futura Choco Egg planes are either close or spot on to 1/144th scale.

[JollyRoger]

More than a few of those Futura Choco Egg planes are either close or spot on to 1/144th scale.

Yes there are some Choco Egg planes that are in our 1/144 collection.
Heres some pics for size reference. We have a Bandai Wing Club F-86 , F-Toys F-100 and a Choco F-84 Thunderjet.
Then the Thunderjet with an F-Toys F-82
Next set of pics has 2 F-toys P-51B's, a 21st Century P-51D and Choco F-51D.

[aferguson]

i've got the f-84 too. It's decent and not likely to be made by anyone else. The Hawk 100 is also 1/144, although not overly exciting. There's a kiowa helicopter that's pretty close to 1/144......i think it'ss 1/138 or something. Hard to find in the olive drab colour, though.

On the subject of stuff like this, Bachmann mini planes made a Spirit of St. Lous. It's 1/140 and a fairly decent model of a plane that will be otherwise hard to get in this scale. The only drawback is that it has stickers instead of decals but, given the rarity of the subject matter i can live with it.

[tmanthegreat]

Cool! That F-Toys F-100 is in the livery of USAF Col. Harold Comstock's aircraft from the 27th TFW, 416th TFS when it was in Vietnam in the mid 1960s. I can tell by the markings and noseart. I knew Col. Comstock as he was friends with my father. Quite an amazing character who could talk for hours with stories from his days as a WWII fighter pilot in the 56th FG (Zemke's Wolfpack) all the way through flying F-100s in Vietnam.

[aferguson]

i just noticed that the Furuta P-51 is a Korean war bird. I recognize the markings. But the stars and bars should have read lines. What clued me in was the 'USAF' on the right wing. During WWII there wasn't any such thing as a US Air Force, it wasn't formed until 1947. Despite it's lower quality as compared to other P-51's in this scale i may pick it up just for the Korean war flavour.

[aferguson]

Blue Donkey: What's up with your site? The blogspot with all the news....i can't access it anymore. It's always been very slow to load but now my screen just turns white after several mnutes and that's it. I have to use alt, ctrl, del to close the browser.

I'd like to be able to access your site but that's now impossible.

[bluedonkey99]

Blue Donkey: What's up with your site? The blogspot with all the news....i can't access it anymore. It's always been very slow to load but now my screen just turns white after several mnutes and that's it. I have to use alt, ctrl, del to close the browser.

I'd like to be able to access your site but that's now impossible.

AF

They are both up and people have been posting daily and it hasn't been down for maintenance or anything?

Maybe its a local or ISP problem - If in doubt is always worth checking a site like http://isitup.org/
I have a similar problem that I can no longer access to the Pit-Road site from home, but works fine from work, or on my phone...?

BD99

[aferguson]

hm....no i didn't think it was a maintainance type issue. It's just so slow to the point it freezes completely. The only other site on the net that i have experienced the same problem is VMF214's web store and he told me about half the people experience the problem i do.

So maybe, lots of people are having trouble accessing your site and you don't realize it. It's mostly the blog page, with the latest news, that i'm having trouble with. The forums are slow to load but i can view them.

Maybe it's because all the news for the last long while is on the one page and there's so much to load that some computers freeze up. Is there any way to break the news up into separate pages, with maybe 20 items or so per page? That might solve the problem.

[bluedonkey99]

AF

If your having problems with the BBS then its probably a local issue? It fairly light on content until you get into some of the threads and even then the initial images are compressed and don't expand to the full resolution until you click on them. while I have had a few comments on the blog you can still count them on one hand over five years whereas the BBS forum apart from early on and i had not optimised the database and there were some timeouts no one has reported problems.

As for the main news blog I have tried this, at home, at work, on my mobile and on friends PCs. This covers a multitude of PCs from 1 year to 10 years old on WinXP,Vista,Win7 and Win8 on most of the browser types (firefox,chrome and IE) and I can't replicate any issues that you are encountering. Indeed with most rendering the site in a few seconds, even on my phone its pretty quick in full web mode.

The statcounter site that captures details of visitors to my blog (don't worry, nothing on the scale of the NSA and PRISM) indicates that most people have fairly new machines (prob, even better than my old clunker).

What is your broadband speed, maybe this is the deciding factor as all the above have broadband or cable running on reasonable speeds. I did have one guy who was still running on old school dial-up and therefore that was the reason why he had big problems.

The possible solution for you is to bookmark/shortcut the mobile option at
http://kampfgruppe144.blogspot.com/?m=1
as this will show the mobile version and then you can click through to the articles that interest you without incurring a heavy download penalty.

Anyway, we are digressing from this forum, please feel free to PM me with your info on your pc, software and comms - then maybe we can pin down the problem.

Regards
BD99

PS: do you have the link for VMF214's web store, maybe I could try his/hers too.

[aferguson]

Thanks for your efforts BD. The mobile option works great; i'll use that from now on.

As for my computer, it's about 4 years old....i have cable internet, XP, IE

Regarding the low number of similar complaints, that could just be because people can't get on your site to complain...i wouldn't have been able to tell you about it were it not for this forum

VMF's site is lycanhobbies.wix.com/lycanhobbies

[aferguson]

Thought i'd dust off this old thread.

Final F Toys set for the year has been announced. A real snoozer. Disappointing finish to an otherwise decent year of releases from F Toys. Here's hoping for 2014.

http://kampfgruppe144.blogspot.ca/2013/ ... s.html?m=1

[Warbird Kid]

Seriously.... very boring. They should have one rule...

ALWAYS DO AIRCRAFT THAT ARENT ALREADY IN 1/144TH SCALE!!!!!

[Dauntless]

Yeah how about a commemorative set with some hard to get bombers if they're going to repeat?

[bluedonkey99]

Dauntless

well they got half your request right, the other half very wrong with these colourfuil re-pops....

http://kampfgruppe144.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... hemes.html
BD99

[Epap]

Next up from Hachette is this 1:144th scale Emily:

[aferguson]

http://www.amazon.com/Bandai-Tamashii-N ... B002T1G1F6

....becoming tempted.

[Dauntless]

Looks cool. Dang sure is a lot of money though. I assume it's rare now, hence the price?

Dragon's 1:72 Saturn V is coming out this month. Half the price, but twice the size though.