The Royal Malaysian Air Force

What is, might be and never will be

by Victor Yong

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  Malaysian National Day 2004 

 

A note: 

Because my current place is rented, and I used to move once every 12 months, I’ve discovered the horrors of moving house with models (!), so I’ve decided to leave some parts off for easier storage; parts like nose probes, air data probes and fins like the Hornet’s GPS Antenna.  Ah, the sacrifices we must make…   

On to the models: 

There are 4 models, all in TUDM colours:  a 1/48th Hasegawa F/A-18D Hornet (what is), a 1/72nd Italeri Hawk 100 (what is), a 1/72nd Italeri Su-34/32 Strike Flanker (what might be), and a 1/72nd Hasegawa VF-1J Macross Valkyrie (what never will be).  All kits are built OOB.  

The Hasegawa Hornet goes together fairly easily with very few problems.  The weapons came from the Hasegawa Weapons Kits.  I used Model Master FS36118 Gunship Grey for the jet and Gunze FS36118 Gunship Grey for the centreline fuel tank.  Note the difference in colour.  The decals are the excellent ones from Jason Cheah’s F-4dableModels.

Click on image below to see larger image

Click on images below to see larger images

 

The Italeri Hawk 100 is a very nice kit, and goes together without any problems at all.  I decided to use slightly larger insignia then those on the real TUDM Hawks because I wanted the insignia to be more visible.  Decals are kit decals, with the TUDM insignia from ScaleNutz.  I used Gunze Medium Sea Grey BS381C:640 since it seems the closest match to the colour given.   Many thanks to Thomas Ng for kindly providing pictures of TUDM Hawks, and Aidy for supplying the colour of TUDM Hawks as BS381C:637 medium sea gray. 

Click on image below to see larger image

Click on images below to see larger images

The Italeri Su-34/32 Strike Flanker was another just for fun what-if idea.  I replaced the tails with ones from the 1/72nd Italeri Su-27 Flanker-B.  However, the base of the tails of the Strike Flanker are slanted slightly compared to those of the Flanker-B, so anybody who wants to do the same thing will be in for a lot of puttying to fill in the gap!  I didn’t have time to putty it up (besides, storage with those tails are a pain) so examine the tail picture closely for an idea of the gap.  The Strike Flanker is coloured in Gunze FS36118 Gunship Grey. 

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Click on images below to see larger images

In 2011, after the Zentraedi global assault, the survivors of the RDF contingent based in Peninsular Malaysia banded together with the remnants of the Malaysian government to fight off Zentraedi from the crashed Zentraedi warships.  Lacking guidance and support from RDF High Command in those early days (indeed, most of the RDF High Command were killed), the RDF Veritech squadron agreed to adopt TUDM colours to provide a symbol to rally the people.  When the RDF High Command was re-established, the contingent returned to RDF control, but the Veritechs were allowed to retain their TUDM colours as a special squadron.  

VF-1J was done on a whim.  I replaced the UN Spacy roundel with TUDM ones, and the number on the other wing with the letters “TUDM”.  However, I replaced the UN Spacy roundel with a TUDM one of the same size on the sides of the cockpit, but the results looked a bit weird to me, so I used smaller ones on the wings, and they certainly looked better!  I used Gunze Medium Sea Grey BS381C:640 and the decals are kit decals, with the TUDM insignia from ScaleNutz, and the plane numbers taken from leftovers from F-4dableModels’ TUDM Hornet sheet. 

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Victor

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Photos and text © by Victor Yong

Special thanks to Karen Wee and Grace Low.