Old Dog

I see the exhaust collectors on the Hercules engines referred to as copper a lot of places, yes they often obtain a coppery bronze color but this is just the effect of heat on the steel, the sort of thing you see on custom chrome headers where it starts out blue where it comes out of the exhaust port then as it gets farther away becomes a bronze color. These exhaust manifolds get hot enough to glow cherry red and it often gave the Beaufighters away when used as night fighters and resulted in them being given a special coating. Copper is too soft and would melt or fail at the temperatures hot enough to heat steel cherry red.

Sprue Brothers carries the line and has most items in stock, I don't know how quickly they stock new products.

I would assume these aircraft are equipped with an IFF system so they can squawk an ID code to controllers in friendly airspace when needed. I would think the airspace around Japan is crowded enough that it would be needed.

That's not a model, its a work of art !

Kermit weeks testing the fire suppression system in one of his hangers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6AWUgrggIQ Looks like it got quite deep !

Quite the work of art

Regulators use a needle valve in conjunction with a spring and diaphragm to regulate the pressure. The needle valve can be easily clogged with any foreign material such as rust or corrosion debris from inside you compressor tank, assuming you compressor has one. They are generally made from corrosion resistant materials but I have seen some that used a brass seat for the needle valve that can corrode over time due to moisture. They can be taken apart and cleaned but if you aren't confident in doing that they can easily be turned into junk. Your best move is to just replace it. A filter between the tank and regulator is a good idea if the tank is as old as yours.

I take them regularly, my PC physician recommended trying them a number of years ago. My issue then was primarily stiffness in my hands. Do they work ? Well my hands haven't gotten any better but they haven't gotten any worse either. The only way I could find out for sure would be to go off of them for a period of time and see if they get worse. Not ready to do that yet. I suspect how well they work depends a lot on your issue and your body. Not recommending, just relating my experience.

Without looking it up I'm not sure what the magnification is or if the number marked on the lens is the diopter. The one one I use most has a 5 marked on it. I also have a 7 and a 10. as mentioned above the higher the number the closer to your face the focal point will be. You can buy the lenses separately and change them. The older versions just had plastic push pins to hold the lenses on but the most recent one I purchased had screws, which are less like to pop out but more laborious to change. All my comments are referencing the Donagal Optical Optivisor and not one of several imitation ones that are available.

I was in a modeling slump for most of 2018, at least as far as model aircraft was concerned, most of my modeling efforts were directed towards my model railroad hobby and I found it difficult to spend any time building planes. I also hadn't complete a 1/32 scale aircraft since the early part of 2017 so towards the end of last year I decided to see if I could get back in the groove. I looked through the stash with a couple of prerequisites, low parts count, simple paint jobs (I really hate masking) and kits I felt I would be satisfied build OOB or with a bare minimum of after market. I decided on two, hoping that I would manage to push at least one of them through to completion. Those two were the Pacific Coast Models Re.2005 and the Hasegawa J2M3 Jack. Although the Re.2005 was a short run type kit test fitting looked good so I started it first. The cockpit nearly go the best of me. No matter what I did I couldn't get it to fit to my satisfaction. I finally came to the realization precious little of it can be seen through the tiny cockpit opening. The PE instrument panels hides up under the cowl and about all you can see is the seat and chain link harness. The only other thing that was fiddly was the landing gear which took several tries to get the stance some where close to correct. In any event I managed to get it finished and though it's not one of my better efforts it looks OK in the display case. I also think my photography skills have atrophied, either that or the auto focus on my nearly 20 year old digital camera is failing. Anyway here is the archer... These aircraft were only in service for a short time so I kept the weathering to a minimum. The Jack was a joy to build and any issues I had were of my own making. Since these were used primarily for home defense and the fact that I wanted for once a japanese aircraft that didn't looking like a stripping job gone bad, I left it fairly clean and pristine. I had a PE set for this but used very little, the PE IP looked way to one dimensional too me so I ended up using the kit panel with the kit decal. I does have a wash on it but it was too light for the camera to pick up These two seem to have gotten my juices flowing again and as soon as I finish up some micro scale kits on the shelf of doom I hope to start another large scale kit. Thanks for looking !

What he ^^^ said ! Makes my paint jobs look like something a third grader would do.

I have always used lacquer thinner 50/50 and have not had any issues, maybe I'm just lucky. One tip if when spraying you get what looks like cob webs from the tip it's a sign you need more thinner.

Interesting but it begs the question of when was the fabric areas last recovered ? If it was part of a cosmetic restoration perhaps the process was simplified as in no stitching or original style rib tapes.

Nice ! Thanks !

Most excellent ! Great attention to detail !