Atilla Aydemir sent us this photo of his fantastic looking F-4E Phantom II of the Turkish Air Force in 1/48 scale. Look at that exhaust and the titanium plates behind it! The kit is from Hasegawa and Atilla added detail from an Eduard set, resin exhausts and a pitot tube from Master. He used an Iwata CMB airbrush to freehand the camouflage. Phabulous !
This is a 1/48 scale Hasegawa P-40E Warhawk with an impressive Longhorn nose art. Look at the weathering of the spinner and propeller blades and the photo-etched gun sight; looks really realistic ! Atilla used an Eduard cockpit set and Tamita acrylic paints.
One of the many countries that flew the F-84F Thunderstreak is Turkey, but you don’t see that many kits of it in these colours. Atilla makes it look easy! He added two ore external fuel tanks, painted silver to the standard configuration. This is a 1/48 scale Hobbyboss kit with decals coming from the kit, from Tan Model’s RF-84F and Techmod for the numbers.
A 1/72 scale F-14D Tomcat from Hobby Boss in the colours of the Bounty Hunters. A comfortable kit to build, it looks pretty good, even built out of the box!
Dragon released a few decades ago an entire range of long-nose Focke Wulfs in 1/48 and this is the TA-152C-1/R14 variant, which is armed with a Torpedo. I really like the subtle eathering and realistic painting in this one! For this build, Mr Hobby colours were used. The scheme is RLM 81/82 for the top and RLM 76 for the lower fuselage and underside.
Hasegawa’s 1/32 scale Focke Wulf A-8 is converted into a Rammjager. For this Black 14, Atilla used an Eduard cockpit set and scratched the canopy glass armour plate, fuselage armour and added the 30 mm guns in the wings. Again, Mr. Hobby acrylic paints were used; RLM 74/75/76.
We have been involved in the design of some real jets and I can tell you, it is a real adventure! After you get a briefing of what the unit, team or CO, the design work starts, resulting in 5 to 10 initial liveries. These are the basis to what will become the final design, which will be refined until the crews flying the jets are 100% happy. Once the designs are approved, we talk with the paint shop crews on how to get the design on the real aircraft after which the hard work starts:painting, masking, more masking and more painting. This can take between 2 and 7 weeks! And when the aircraft is rolled out, it’s always a special moment! Here are some of the aircraft we’ve done so far:
F-16 Belgian Air Force Dark Falcon
This project was for the Belgian Air Force F-16 Demo Team and pilot Stefan Darte, callsign “Vador”. This design was done in collaboration with Johan Wolfs. The concept had some special features: Each year, the design on the vertical tail changed, following a specific theme. So, the jet had 3 different tails, one for each year that Vador flew it. The hardest part of this project was to get a green light for the all black radome.
In 2020, Florennes Air Base was preparing for the airshow to be held at the base the following year. We were asked to create a simple design for the occasion, making sure the newly developped guidelines would be underlined in the design. The three shades of blue were used in this design and the modified logo was placed on the ventral fins. Unfortunately, when the jet was painted, the Covid-19 crisis broke and the airshow was all but cancelled. And not many people got to see this special livery…
For the 105th anniversary of the Belgian Air Force’s 1 Squadron, another design was made, reminicent of the “black bird” schemes in which Mirages and earlier F-16s were painted. A freshly painted F-16 – FA-57 – got a themed vertical tail, tartan ventral fins, a black and golden upper front fuselage and special markings on the nose wheel door.
When the Alpha Jet was about to be withdrawn from service with the Belgian Air Force, we were asked to design a special livery that also included the 100thy anniversary of 11 Squadron, which was tradionally a night fighter unit. The unit’s logo is a bat. So, a special tail was designed and the wings received a special scheme, in line with the Dark Falcon F-16, which flew at the same time.
For each of these projects, we also designed the merchandising for these jets, including T-shirts, badges, posters, cards, books, caps and even beer mugs ! Each time, it was an unforgettable adventure of which we’re very proud! And please don’t go telling it around, but we’re working on a few more, see make sure to visit back here every now and then!
It was always a surprise what the next kit of Kitty Hawk would be, because they used to pick unexpected subjetcs. When the 1/32 scale Trojan was announced, I immediately thought of building a Zorro, a modified version of the aircraft that was used during the Vietnam war. No national markings, armoured plates behind the seats, a busload of weapons underneath the wings and an interesting 3-tone green camouflage over a black underside. Now, if you’re building this kit, you have to make sure to put a lot of weight into the nose, because the main landing gear is placed very close to the nose wheel. So, every available room there is: fill it up with weight!
The cockpit was detailed – armour plates, electrical wires for the instruments – the radio compartment opened and a lot of additional details to the engine. I enjoy adding scratched details, that’s why I like making photographs of details, I guess. And why I have a huge collection of Evergreen plasticard and lead wiring.
The kit itself is a really good base, with a decent fit. The only thing you have to take care of, is fill the ejector pins on the interior of the large engine doors. Putting on putty, sanding everything down. Not something I enjoy, I can tell you! But if you don’t these ejector pins take away all the work you’ve done on the engine.