A little History...

Revell is the brand name today of two famous manufacturers of scale plastic models. The original US company merged with Monogram, but now trades only under the Revell name. European Revell Germany separated from the US company in 2006.

About 1980, as the modeling hobby was weakening in America and sales of plastic kits was plummeting, Revell was purchased by French toy company, Generale du Jouet, which hoped to take advantage of Revell's European division and presence. Still, Generale du Jouet was having financial troubles of its own, and by 1983 Revell was again spun off.

In 1986, after declining profitability in a new era of video games and cable television, Revell was purchased by Odyssey Partners of New York and folded into Monogram Models of Morton Grove, Illinois (which Odyssey had purchased earlier that year). Its plant in Venice was closed and all its usable assets were transferred to Monogram's Number 2 plant in Des Plaines, Illinois. The new company then moved to Northbrook, Illinois. Due to Revell's world-wide name recognition, it has become the primary brand name used on many of its kit lines, and after years of seeing both names on the logo, the Monogram name is now again portrayed separately. The company now is headquartered in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, United States.

Its major American competitors in the plastic model kit market include AMT-Ertl, Lindberg, and Testors.

The 14 kits in our pile average 25 to 35 years in age. (according to the copywrite dates on the instructions sheets...)

The Notes:

Paint color: Have you seen lately what the price of Testor's Model Masters FS color paint is? Jeeeze, just wanted a little bottle, not buy the whole factory. Bottom line is for this project anyway, they done priced themselves out of the bidding. $3.95 per half ounce... Fergit it. So, off I went to Wally World, (walmart) and bought me some automotive primer rattle cans. I found a light gray no name brand for $1.12 per can, that when rung up came out to be only .96 cents per can. I've painted the bottom of 7 planes so far with the first can. Testor's, you listening? Then I picked up what looked like a medium gray in Rust-oleum brand, but it turned out to be the same color as the no name brand stuff. I bit more expensive, like $3 bucks a can, but it'll do fine for plane bottoms when I run out of the cheap stuff. Krylon make a superb dark gray primer for again about $3 bucks a can that very closely matches the Testor's FS Gun Ship Gray, (my favorite color for everything airplane) So I got a couple of cans. Now, I know that all these planes were not painted dark gunship over light ghost, but it looks cool, and it's what we have in stock, so there...

Missing Parts: All of these kits were purchased on E-Bay for an average price of less than $20 (USD) including freight per kit. All of the auctions were described as, "I think all the pieces are in the box, but I don't really know anything about these model kits, so all items are sold as is." This is not really dishonest, as most of time, all the parts are in the box. Sometimes however, not so much. As of this writing, canopies have been the missing part of choice... (4 planes in). We'll see how this works out as the remaining 10 kits are built... So, as it turns out, (all 14 planes completed) the first F-15 was missing it's canopy, so oh well... The first Tomcat was missing it's decals, (bought some kewl ones online...) and radome, (that's NOSECONE in non-airplane speak... made one outta balsa...) and all four of the other Tomcats were missing the sidewinder fins. Not the end of the world, anyway...

More On Paint: Rust-oleum Brand Cammo Paint... Comes in 3 colors, for shootin' your favorite deer huntin' jeep, turned out to be pure genious for F-4 Phantom Viet Nam era cammo. The colors are a dark tan, dark green, and a very dark brown. What I did, was to paint the F-4 bottoms with the gray primer, then all the top parts with the dark tan. Assembled to planes, then brush painted FS OD Green and FS Dark Green (Testors Model Master Paint) to finish the scheme. Of course I got to do it 3 times, and try to keep em close to the same paint job... (bragging, not complaining...)

Decals... The decals were pretty much what you'd expect from kits of the vintage variety. Most were usable, but many cracked while being applied. Fortunately where the Tomcats were concerned, there were two sets of decals per kit depicting two different VF numbers, and then adding in the Aeromaster Decals that I ordered to replace the missing VF-84 decals in the first Revell Tomcat kit, I had plenty of markings to go around. I ordered the USS Kennedy's Tomcats #2 pictured below. Having never used after market decals before, I was happier than a pig in poop over the quality of the product. The paper doesn't even roll up on these things when you get them wet. Just plain easy to use and gorgeous on the plane...

F/A-18, F-14: USS Constellation, 2001 #2: VMFA-323, VF-2

F-14: USS Kennedy's Tomcats #2: VF-11, VF-143

Anytime Babe!! F-14 Tomcats, Pt 9: VF-11, VF-51

Photo Etched Parts...
Where do I begin. Let's just say that this ain't 1/32 scale, and the P E parts are not manageable by me and my ten thumbs. But, as little as it costs to punch out and include on of these little metal mostrocities in the kit, they outta give you two or three of em so you can afford to mess some up trying to make it work. Also, as long as it takes to bend up a sheet metal box and paint and mount it in the cockpit, (and have it be a quarter the size of a dime, I could make one out of balsa in about 4 seconds... As little detail as is on the fancy little piece of sh*t... just sayin'...

More soon...

Some Space Physics Jargon

A charged particle in a uniform magnetic field will circle around the field direction, as seen from a viewpoint looking down the field lines; it is free to travel in the direction along the field lines, so its combined motion will be a spiral like a spring coiled around a cylinder. Because the Earth's magnetic field is not uniform, the motions of charged particles are more complex, but generally they be broken down into three components. The figure above shows the motion of a charged particle near the Earth; the blue curve is a line of the magnetic field, represented as a simple dipole (like a bar magnet). Locally, the particle gyrates around and travels up or down the field line, just as in a uniform field; this is the first component of its motion. The angle between the particle's velocity vector (red arrow in the figure) and the local magnetic field direction (blue arrow) at any given point along the field line is called the pitch angle, which at the point in the figure from which the red and blue arrows are drawn is 40 degrees. Because the Earth's magnetic field is not uniform, however, it can be seen that as the particle travels farther from the equatorial plane (toward higher latitudes), and therefore closer to Earth where the magnetic field is stronger, the spiral pattern of its motion tightens up; that is, the pitch angle increases. When the particle reaches a latitude called its mirror latitude (or, equivalently, the altitude identified as its mirror altitude), the pitch angle hits 90 degrees and the particle is traveling only around the field line, not along it any further; the particle then turns around and heads toward the mirror latitude in the other hemisphere. This is the second component of charged-particle motion, a bouncing between the hemispheres.