Moving now to the F-5E/N Tiger II, here are a couple of colorful schemes. For kits, you have Monogram or Italeri/ESCI, neither one of which has been in production for a while.

The VFA-127 plane is one of many that was used in the filming of 'Top Gun' several years back and the unit liked the scheme so kept it, flying it to several shows.

The other is an F-5N. This is one of about 30 ex-Swiss AF F-5Es that were purchased when the Swiss offered them for sale. This plane is ex-J3023 and has a flatter 'shark' nose and longer leading edge extensions. Since the Swiss planes were all relatively low air time and in great shape, there should be enough F-5s around for quite some time. One thing is that I've not heard of VFC-111 so it must be a renaming of VFC-12/13s Key West det. A full upper/lower painting diagram is provided for this one.

August 2007