The Airacomet is finally here!!!!!!!

Saw one at my local shop about a week ago, looks fairly basic as bernndye said, but nice. True Details will be all over this one soon for wheels. I'd like to see a conversion for the funky drone control bird!

Fade to Black...

I bought both versions a couple of days ago and the kits certainly have potential. Cutting Edge has a great looking resin interior kit for it, but it costs almost as much as the Hobbycraft kit. I hope someone does a decent resin wheel set as the rubber tires are a bummer. Any rumours on aftermarket decals (Eaglestrike, Aeromaster, Cutting edge, etal) ?

Just wondering, why don't you like rubber tires? They are great on auto models.
Lee

QUOTE: Originally posted by midnightprowler Just wondering, why don't you like rubber tires? They are great on auto models. Lee

Yeah.. what's wrong with them? i have an unbuilt Academy lightning with this feature and I think it will look good before i started seeing rants about it.

I don't understand this aversion to real rubber tires either. I've heard that they
deteriorate and look bad but, that hasn't been my experience. I've got models that
have been sitting on their rubber tires for 15 years with no problems. I also do not understand the fascination with "bulged" resin tires. The only bulged tires you see on aircraft are either underinflated or, they are for tundra flying in the far north. I claim no special expertise on aircraft other than being born and raised
around them in the Air Force, 9 years as a Navy flier, and several years as a aircraft restoration crew chief at the Travis AFB Air Museum. "nuff of my ranting.

Aircraft tires are not black, the rubber manufacturer doesn't add any pigment to them. So they are mostly a gray to dark gray in color. Some aircraft's tires are white even. As for bulgded tires, look at the tires on your car, even when empty there is a buldge on the bottom of the tire. It's just something used to simulate weight and therefore give the apperance of accuracy.

Oh yeah, and then there's the fact that aircraft modeleres have to paint EVERYTHING! And you know that you can't use enamels on vinyl/rubber.

My car's tires are properly inflated. There is no noticable bulge. A better way
to show aircraft weight is with compressed oleo struts. Most modern A/C tires
are at least 26 ply tires and are inflated to around 120psi with dry nitrogen.
True, no tire is really "black". Natural rubber is more brown. My choice for tire color on WWII thru today's US airplanes would be a dark charcoal gray.The XB-70's tires are silver because they are impregnated with metal to better withstand airframe heating due to it's high speed. No offense to bernndye---this just looked like a good way to stimulate discussion.

none taken

By my experience, when it comes to rubber tires in model kits, car modelers get some good stuff: nice tread detail, well reproduced manufacturers marks...

By contrast, I've seen rubber tyres in some aircraft kits be nothing more than o-rings you could buy at a plumbing supply shop. So for us aviation modelers, rubber tires in a kit isn't always such a good thing.

As for tire colours, I usually paint the sides gunship grey with a touch of black mixed in and work my way into intermediate blue with a touch of neutral gray for the tread area.

By the way, the XB-70 wasn't the only aircraft with metal impregnated tires. The sidewalls of SR-71 tires were also silver coloured.

I really dont like the way rubber tires look. I had bought a 1/48th Tigercat by AMT/ERTL.
When I had opened the box to take a look see, the tires basically ate the plastic. Now thats a chemical reaction...!!!!
I called the co to explain what had hapened. They sent me a new one and guess what, it was worse than the first.
To date I have 8 Tigercats that cant be built due to the chemical reaction between the rubber tires and the plastic. One of these days I'm gonna do one, one of these days...... LOL
Also I agree to what Bernndye had said about the tires not being a pure black but more of a scale black(dk dk grey) .
Flaps up, Mike

Once I was talking with a pilot who has told me that if an aircraf has bulged tires - it means they should be inflated. Bulged tires one can see only in bigger planes, such as full-loaded bombers. Regards - Alex

Not always so. A F-4's normal take off weight is around 52,000 to 56,000 pounds. The tires always bulged on them. In South East Asia we loaded them up to around 62,000 pounds and the tires really bulged. Back in the mid 60's the tire pressure on the F-4, fully loaded was 300 PSI. It made the tire too hard and was causing problems with cracking the tire. Once we dropped the pressure to 265 PSI they started lasting longer. Even an aircraft at basic weight will have some bulge on the tire.

One of my favorite examples of an aircraft with the "eternal bulge" is the Spitfire. Many seemed to have a bulge of some sort, with the RAAF examples in the Pacific exhibiting this almost to the extreme. The bulges were sometimes hard to actually see, but at times it looked as if the tires were starting to go flat!

Fade to Black...

Meteor Products already has a nice detailed cockpit under their Cutting edge label.

www.meteorprod.com

Another aircraft that often displays a bit of bulge in its tires is the Sepecat Jaguar. I saw one a couple of years ago and it was totally clean with the exception of a chaff pod and it still had slightly bulged tires. It is my understanding that this aircraft has low pressure tires as standard equipment for operations from rough strips or even grass.