Reviewed by Rodger Kelly
 

HyperScale is proudly sponsored by Squadron

Black Knight Rule! That’s what the BKR on the knight’s shield stands for, and rule they do; both in a professional sense and in the way they mark their aircraft.

Cam Decals 32-095 provides the markings for Bureau No 161272 whilst it was the Black Knights CAG bird aboard the USS Kitty Hawk as a part of CVW-5 in 1998, and what a colourful bird it was. In line with the then standard squadron procedure of naming their mounts, this aircraft was christened “Jimmy”. Unfortunately, I don’t know the reasoning for the name but I guess that someone out there does and I’d appreciate some feedback on this. Other names included El Diablo, Reaper, Thumper, Animal, Strange Magic, Tina Rose, Drake, and Mi Evy

The drab TPS scheme of light and dark Ghost Grey has been brought alive by the painters of VF-154. As well as painting both sides of the vertical stabilizers in semi-gloss black they have also added their “knight” in the form of a white outline to them. All other markings are befitting that of the CAG bird status including full colour stars and bars, white with red outline airwing identifiers, red outlined nose modex, and red outlined ventral strakes. CVW-5’s symbol of five “checkmarks” is also reproduced in the five colours of the Airwing. 1998 saw CVW-5 celebrating 25 years of being based in Japan and this anniversary symbol is also provided in colour. I have included a close-up (below) of this symbol that I took when the USS Kitty Hawk visited us in 1999.

The sheets (there are two of them in this set) have been printed by Microscale, enough said. All of the decals are in perfect register and are sharp and clear with an absolute minimum of carrier film. The main sheet carries the majority of the decals whilst the second, smaller sheet provides walkways, slime lights and the myriad “no step” stencils borne by the Tomcat.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

The A-4 sized instruction sheet is simple but adequate and provides placement detail as well as painting notes and a recommendation to use the magnificent Tamiya kit as a canvas for these sheets.

The instruction sheet and decals are packed in a plastic Zip-loc bag with a cardboard header sheet that bears a full colour rendition of “Jimmy”.

If you want to find out more about the Black Knights, visit their home page at:

http://www.navy.mil/homepages/vf-154/

As well as providing the history of the squadron it also contains some excellent close-up reference photos.

Highly recommended.
 

Thanks to CAM Decals for the review sample.

CAM Decals are available online from their website at http://www.camdecals.com

CAM Decals 59 page 2002 color catalog of decals and resin parts is also
now available through the CAM Decals website

Review Copyright © 2002 by Rodger Kelly
This Page Created on 10 September, 2002
Last updated 22 July, 2003

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