Astro32

They should do a combi kit of the more famous DR-1s and call it Meet The Fockers. Imagine the legal trouble they'd land themselves in.

I might go for the Spud XIII. 24th I believe is the perfect scale for WWI subjects. Just call me Tater Salad.

Today I was tasked with finishing a prototype power supply that also got pipped for sale to a client. My only involvement in it last year was designing the power cable routing. There have been 24 revisions in the design since then, and I've never built one from the ground up, never mind a hacked & whacked prototype they suddenly sold to a client, AND is to be the Golden Sample for production of further units, and it was to be finished today. Four more revisions came down the pipeline today. It didn't happen. While on lockdown my equipment, tools, supplies, etc had disappeared from my bench, and I had to do what I was tasked with doing today in a part of the facility that's mostly alien to me. Scary part is I nearly succeeded, but I'll be well into tomorrow before I can power it up. Helluva homecoming. That's the kind of day I had! Rant over.

This time it's for real! We're restarting tomorrow! Of course I'll have a lot less time for building, but the saving grace for my sanity is that I've done more building in the last three months than I have in the last decade. Soon I'll be back to 12 - 16 hour days but I'm going to try harder to make the time to keep my projects going. Both my Komet and my '104 are close to finishing and I don't want to stop.

The Komet had an even more curved windscreen than the Uhu, yet it had a very thick armored glass panel behind it. I suspect that, given the aircraft's role as a nightfighter, it was as much for protecting the pilot's eyes from flash if the target exploded. As fitted that panel doesn't look very thick at all from the photos I've seen.

The above two videos are a treasure trove of details for the Wildcat.

Thanks so much!

Are there any known wartime photos of Komet W. Nr. 191659, the one that was captured by the British and flown by Captain Eric Brown before being shipped to the UK? I'm not sure if it's been repainted in it's wartime configuration, as it's displayed today. Thanks!

Today while working on my Komet, I remembered having a roll of copper snail barrier tape, so I tried it instead of my usual aluminum duct tape. I found that the copper is a little more forgiving, almost like lead foil. I recommend it for just about any area aluminum duct tape would be used. And it has a very good quality adhesive. Most nurseries or garden centers will have it. But these days it's a bit expensive since copper is in so much demand. And I'll sleep better knowing maruading snails won't attack my Komet.

The double-breasted Bearcat. A favorite of mine.

"I'm paying the rent. Now feed me, human." - Cat. Slight aside, but mice are involved: The best mouser I ever knew was my pet rat I named Ben, because he looked like the rat in the movie Willard which was a bit of a cult movie; wild rat colors but with white socks and belly fur. He was so determined, and smart, that he learned how to pick a miniature suitcase padlock I had on his cage door, in a futile effort to keep him in his cage at night. Somehow mice were getting into the house for whatever reason mice do that, and he knew......... he'd track that mouse effortlessly and dispatch it after a brief tussle. One particularly memorable hunt was when a mouse got into a dresser drawer. There was an epic amount of scuffles and thumps and a couple of screams before it was over. But after his midnight wanderings he'd get back in his cage and go to sleep.

My own love of aircraft of WWII is purely technical. Yes for me there's a bias, slightly, towards German technology, but it's certainly not ideological. My own mother, for example, from her family's flat in Glasgow, near the Clyde, watched an FW-190 make a bombing run on RN warships. The bomb it "pickled" went down the gangway of an RN cruiser but didn't go off. My grandfather mentioned later that if that bomb did what it was supposed to do, nobody would've survived in her neighborhood. But she described the Bf-110 as the most beautiful WWII plane she'd ever seen. Probably from other raids or from newsreels. My own father as a young RAF officer was tasked with recovering downed Luftwaffe aircraft all over southern England during the BoB and he had tremendous respect for the machinery he and his team recovered. From both sides of my family I was able to appreciate the technical aspects of the enemy. Yes, the politics are important. Got it. But where does one draw the line? I believe it's an individual thing. Personally I won't show the swastika on any of my builds out of respect for the friends I know whose parents, grandparents, or cousins were killed or enslaved by those morons. I've seen their serial numbers tatooed on their arms. But I cannot ignore, as an engineer, what was achieved during that time by any side. It's a difficult tightrope to walk on.

That's looking a fantastic build! My wallet is starting to twitch...... Those videos are fascinating to watch. Never realized just how sophisticated the '108 is until now. However when it was pointed out that an aux fuel tank AND the battery were added to the luggage bay, I sounded like C3P0 when they were flying into the asteroid field. What a dumb thing to do. Glad they're returning it to stock!