V-22 Osprey

              Cobra ,, how have you been?  I 've been gone for a few months with my nose to the grind stone at work. At any case Did they get all the nasty snakes out of the V-22? I haven't been able to read any articles or catch any progress reports on that aircraft in months. Hope all is well at your camp

have a great weekend, As you can tell, I write like crap, At any rate ,, The best

                                                                                  Davey5

                                                                           dhi69@aol.com

Dave,

Been doing pretty good. Just about finished with Primary, I check on Tuesday and then head into Instruments on Friday.  Three months to AH-64s!

As far as the V-22 goes, one came in to Ft. Rucker today for the USAF helicopter flight class graduation.  It was from the joint USMC/USAF training squadron.  Before my preflight briefing, I had a few spare minutes, so a buddy and I went over and walked through it and talked to the crew a bit. Interestingly, the pilots were USAF, but CE and FE were both USMC.  Guess the Marines don't want Zoomies breaking their toys.   

Like I said, neat to look at, but give me an Apache any day!

shaun68 wrote:

Now that it looks like the Osprey has been given the go-ahead for service, is the 1/48 Italeri kit a realistic option for this helo, or does the kit represent a demo/development model?

The BuNo 165435 is build number 15, either one of the baseline or Low Rate Initial Production aircraft.  Although it was at HMX-1 as depicted in the decals, it may be at Pax River by now.  I think the latest one out of the factory was #73 or 74.  While there have been changes, I don't think they're anything You'll have to mod the Italeri kit to reflect. And as of now, they're being delivered without IFR probes, not sure why.  Personally, I'm waiting on a CV version.  Hard for this Jarhead to admit, it just looks a lot more interesting with the radar and all the ECM gear, not to mention the dark grey paint.  Oh, and sand off the panel lines on the fuselage, there are none on the real bird.

shaun68 wrote:

Now that it looks like the Osprey has been given the go-ahead for service, is the 1/48 Italeri kit a realistic option for this helo, or does the kit represent a demo/development model?

I have this same kit too but haven't started on it. I've seen a couple of these (the real ones) flying out of Pax River NAS in Maryland.

We had a four ship flyover at the Veteran's Day parade in Jacksonville NC last November.  I always stop and watch whenever they're out flying around the Camp Lejeune area. 

I've got the 1/48 Italeri kit in progress (but with a twist!).  I used a 1/72 by the same company to kitbash an escort for the troop carriers, too.

As for accuracy?  I don't think there's been a lot of changes to the basic design shape, more software and internal workings have been updated.  I could be wrong, though.