Obscureco 1/72 F7U-3/3M Detail Set

 Obscureco Aircraft (http://www.obscureco.com/) has produced yet another detail set that will be of interest to U.S. Navy airplane modelers, OBS72030. It includes a full cockpit including an early and late ejection seat pan; the top of the fuselage behind the ejection seat including the canopy actuator; the nose gear wheel well; and a refueling probe. It replaces the equivalent "okay" parts provided in the otherwise excellent Fujimi F7U-3 kits with much more accurate and detailed resin ones.

The two-page instructions provide a detailed, step-by-step assembly guide and detailed color information.

Chris Bucholtz

Obscureco is in the process of updating their website so this kit may not yet be listed but it is available to order. The price is $20 plus the shipping cost provided here along with other purchasing information: http://www.obscureco.com/purchasing.html

Roden 1/72 North American AJ-1 Savage

13 November 2022: Illustrations of the inflight refueling system are provided here: http://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2022/11/north-american-aj-savage-carrier-based.html

 23 October 2022: Illustrations of the hardware required to fold the wings and vertical fin of the AJ are provided here: http://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2022/10/aj-savage-wing-and-fin-fold.html

22 October 2022: The kit out-of-the-box does not provide for open bomb bay doors. Many modelers would have no trouble separating the doors and assembling them in the open position. The configuration is illustrated here: http://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2022/10/aj-savage-bomb-bay-doors.html

4 August 2022: I've added a post summarizing the configuration of the different AJ Savage canopies here (at this point, the kit has the No 1 canopy that was on a few early AJ-1s):

http://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2022/08/north-american-aj-savage-canopies.html

3 August 2022: Totally unexpected:

I got a preview of the instructions and pictures of some of the tooling a month ago. It looks very good: lots of interior detail (and a Mk 4 bomb, around which the Savage was designed). One nit of confusion with the -2 configuration, easily remedied, is the nose landing gear door configuration (I had previously alluded to another one but incorrectly, as it turned out). While you're waiting, here is some reference material to peruse:

 https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2021/03/north-american-aj-savage-model-kits.html

https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2011/07/aj-savage-notes.html

https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2013/04/aj-2-savage-cockpit.html

https://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2011/07/getting-it-right.html 

https://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2013/01/aj-savage-bombardier-station.html

More later...