The Little World

Not Bazza – this is not an Australian fighter. Baz, as in Hebrew. One of the couple of dozen of this type the IDF flies.

The tail markings were initially meant to be two red triangles inside and an eagle on the outer but the home printing proved difficult – they were impossible to actually cut out and drop onto the tail – I settled for the simpler stripes. The rest of it was easy – a little internet searching and some simple graphic design – I’ve got 6-pointed stars down to a fine art now.

Actually, any star is easy if you do a little mathematics – 4 and 5-pointed are just degrees of the compass and even the simple Photoshop Elements has ready-made 5-pointers that can be sharpened up for most purposes. Roundels are always easy and even a Maltese cross should be just a case of addition and subtraction of the shapes that already exist in the system.

I’ll admit I do struggle with Hebrew lettering and anything Arabic. I find myself pinching internet images and then tracing over them. Thank goodness nearly everyone uses Arabic numerals for their registrations, though some of the fonts can be elusive.

You might think that parking a fresh F-15 at the old Schmattarim museum is a bit unlikely, but I’ve seen pictures of real F-15’s at Hatzerim. They probably roll ’em out for the tourists but keep the tanks full and the nose pointed at the taxiway just in case. And don’t go tapping on the nose of anything slung under the wing to see if it’s real. It may be wide awake…