Oldbaldguy

Holy cow! That looks sooooo much better than any decal!

Maker’s Mark works pretty well in situations like this. I’ve also had pretty good success with gin and tonic and the occasional bottle of rye. Moonshine may be too harsh, however.

I do like very well done profile artwork.

Airplanes break all the time - even my simple bugsmashers would do things I’d have rather they hadn’t whenever they felt like it. Happens to everyone sooner or later. I think the issues here are a couple-fold. The airplane diverted initially because of weather? Just how bad was it that the driver could not find the boat? Then it broke before departing in better conditions (I assume.). They couldn’t fix it so they left it wherever it is/was for at least three weeks while they ruminated over a way to relight the pilot light. What? They left a hundred million dollar lawn ornament parked outside in a monsoon while they thought about it? How many F-35Bs does the crown own these days? Not many, I’ll wager. How many are airworthy? Apparently, not many. It’s not that the F-35 is a bad airplane, it’s that it is not a cheap or easy airplane to maintain. If you have to check your bank balance every time yours needs an oil change or if your 18 year old mechanic can’t swap out a battery or a circuit card, then maybe you should have bought something else. If the Royal Navy had hundreds of these things ready to go, I don’t think this incident would have caused such interest, but they don’t. Therein lies the rub.

I have one of these waiting in the wings. So tell me, was the kit worth your time and effort or would you have been better off putting the hours into something else? So far, I have yet to convince myself to start mine.

To all my Brit friends and acquaintances out there, I like my tea and drink it properly: loose, not bagged; kettle howling with delight; milk in the mug first because, yes, it matters and, yes, I can tell; and always drunk with my favorite munchie, graham crackers, which actually are flat, square cookies not crackers at all and certainly not biscuits fergawdssake. All was well and good at three in the afternoon until recently when I discovered that my graham crackers no longer break neatly into four parts like they once did. Nowadays they shatter into amorphous pieces of eight, more or less, yet another sign of decay in, arguably, the greatest country in recent history. Not that long ago, graham crackers snapped cleanly at the divide leaving one to dunk and enjoy neatly to one’s heart’s content. These days, one might as well try to dunk a slice of pizza. I suppose I could blame my president but my heart is just not in it. Besides, I kinda like the guy. The real culprit, I think, is the massive corporation that owns nearly everything that comes from the ground this side of the Suez Canal. My guess is that their bean counters have fired all the experienced graham cracker bakers and replaced them with others who do not know exactly what a graham cracker should be and who are more comfortable baking things on a hot flat rock. Or so it would seem. I am very disappointed, as all of us civilized folk should be. Cleanly snapped graham crackers are as American as apple pie and Oprah Winfrey. And now they are not. On a completely different note, we have suffered foul weather in our state of Texas that has claimed close to one hundred lives. Torrential rains resulted in a flash flood that raised the level of a river system 26’ in less than an hour. I repeat, 26 feet in less than an hour. At four in the morning, people were swept away almost without knowing it. Into the breach stepped a young United States Coast Guard rescue swimmer on his first rescue mission. I have no idea how many actual rescues he was involved in that morning but, being the only triage specialist in the area, he evaluated and treated a whopping 165 flash flood victims solo - by himself - before being relieved. He is barely more than a child himself but he was everything to nearly two hundred souls who had next to nothing left. I raise my glass and so should you no matter where you are. Semper Paratus, because that is how it is done.

Those racks are very Art Deco. Right in there with the Cord automobile and the Chrysler Building.

This build is absolutely grand, but I feel like I have to ask: Do you ever build boring, static models like the rest of us? Where do you get your ideas? And secondly, do you know what color the AOA vane usually is, assuming it is painted at all? Great presentation - all my Scooters are lined up in a neat row while yours is screaming across the room looking for targets.

You’d think the military services of Great Britain these days are a Monty Python screen play, altho Monty Python might be more believable in this case. Just because we in the US have been known to plow ahead with doggy combat airplanes from time to time does not mean other countries have to do the same. But then, who builds two fleet carriers using electronics supplied by Lucas and motors left over from Jensen Healey for billions that lack the ability to launch and recover anything other than helicopters. I have no idea who makes decisions for the Royal Navy but I think Jack Mawbry would have tossed him over the side, given the opportunity. If I remember correctly, during WW2 and even the Falklands dust-up, the RAF carried the day more often than the Royal Navy who, in the former, lost capital ships before the paint dried and then had to rely on container ships and small boys as combatants during the latter. And in these days of hypersonics, effective drones, very accurate medium ranged missiles, local terrorists and all the other stuff we’ve come up with lately, why does anyone need a single seat nuke lorry other than to give good folks like us something else to build? It fair boggles the brain.

Four different types with an air/sea rescue mission but only one floats? How did that work exactly?

This is great. Nothing better than a BIG Navy bomber. The Nav did carrier trials with one of these, BTW. Added a tailhook and everything. I think what they learned was eventually rolled into the AJ Savage line.

I do love the base. Looks like he’s on the deck and hauling ass like any good Scooter pilots should.

My extended family and I love his channel and watched everything he ever did. He was a true naturalist and very good at telling a story, sharing often very striking images and editing his work to make it enjoyable. His curiosity was insatiable and he took us to one unknown, inaccessible place after another. Nobody did it better. His death was a tragedy that should never have happened on several levels. Seems like we’re seeing a lot of that these days. I highly recommend his work.

It appears these racks and their fairings evolved somewhat during the war. A very brief search revealed a couple of versions of the same pylon. One is the one you have plans for and the other is simpler, more streamlined and has a fuel line going thru the fairing and into the wing - less drag, fuss and bother, etc. The one you are modeling has nothing going thru the fairing. In its case, the fuel line from the drop to the wing is outside the fairing and very visible. If you model drop tanks using this bomb rack, you also must model the fuel lines from the tank to the wing, so you might want to think about that. It also appears that some tanks had reinforcement pads built into their skin for the sway braces to rest against. I am certain that the braces with large pads were interchangeable with the smaller version originally intended for bombs. The ordnance guys simply cranked the braces up and down with a ratchet or wrench once the store was hung to keep it from flopping around in flight, so it is likely that part - or maybe just the larger pads - was as expendable as fuse safety wires and supplies were replaced over time by improved versions from the lowest bidders as the war went on. I’d think it is also likely that the version of the rack your airplane carried would be dependent on when during the war you modeled it, if that makes sense - later in the war, later improved pylons. Not sure this answers your question, but it is something else to think about.

I wonder if the people who designed and built airplanes like these ever considered how difficult they have made our lives all these years later?

You obviously missed the part where I said I am old and cheap…

It is Saturday night and I am live in Spartanburg. Fairly recently I have come to realize that my two favorite things in life are wine and model airplanes in no particular order. Because I am old and cheap, most of my stash has come to me via eBay. You may laugh or even scoff, but there are some good buys there if you are a careful and aware buyer. For example, there is a sizable cardboard box on one of my shelves that contains ten or so 1/48 Skyraiders of different labels - none of which I bought new - and pretty much every Skyraider AM Steel Beach ever released, all bought from an auction site. To me, that is epic. With one or two exceptions, every other kit and nearly all the AM I own came to me the same way. There is no secret to this. Anyone can similarly gorge their stash for minimal bucks with some awareness, due diligence and patience. So, I’m good on the model end of the equation; it is the wine part that has me flummoxed. How does one buy decent wine from on auction site? I mean, how does one know? Does one ask the seller to pull the cork and check it for oaky aromas or to pour a glass and tell you if the vintage has legs? Probably not - it just does not compute. Furthermore, while I think most people are more or less honest, I lose my amiable blind trust when Bubba offers up a case of the good stuff at a reasonable price alongside four pairs of XXXL bibbed overalls in used but serviceable condition and a commemorative dinner plate from Graceland, if you know what I mean. Therein lies the rub. Can one buy decent pinot noir from an on line auction site in the same way one snatches a Paul Fisher kit for pennies on the dollar? Truthfully, I doubt it. I will drink most anything, but even I have limits. Something else I have noticed: I am much more willing these days to pay more for either of my vices than I once did. Back in the days when I was broke and had babes to raise, I neither imbibed nor modeled - a couple of bucks for either was three dollars more than I had. Nowadays I scoff at the Three Buck Chuck red blends on twenty shelves in the market and those half started old Monogram kits I once drooled over. While I still can’t imagine spending $350 for a bottle of wine or an equal amount spent on a peerless 3D kit, thirty, forty, maybe fifty dollars a bottle is not too bad nor is a hundred or more out of the question for a box of hardened petroleum product that I am required to assemble later. Life is what it is, no matter what it is, so I am good with my vices. And like a US Marine colonel of some renown once told me in the strictest of confidence, it is supposed to be fun and that is all that matters. So there we have it: my contribution to your weekend, courtesy of the red, white and blue, a bottle of red of unknown provenance, and a smattering of Tanqueray. Go forth and enjoy; it is all good and you can do neither once you part the veil. At least as far as I know.

If you didn’t know, you’d think…. At least, I would.

I’ve often wondered why I would go to the trouble of painting and detailing things and places on a model that no one will ever see - we all do that. Sometimes I do it because the quality of the model - like this one - is such that it deserves all the attention I can give it. Other times, it is because I know it is time well invested because I always learn something in the doing, even if no one else ever sees it. I am a smarter, better, more skilled modeler for it which pays dividends later when I’m trying to make something out of nothing that everyone will see. Like the man said, practice makes perfect. In our game, even the practice is fun.

Wait. What? Colors fade and paint schemes vary in detail? Who would have thunk it?

Be nice to watch you do something other than the same old thing. Bearcat? P-39? P-40? F-86? Maybe a B-36?

Context? On this site? Only if it involves RLM Whatever or the rivet pattern on a Fleeber-Grunch Flying Squirrel.

After cursory consideration of an airplane I know nothing about, I have a couple of observations: First, the Stuka is not a crude, poorly configured airplane at all, but a war machine designed to do a fine job of doing its job. It does not appear to be any more draggy than its peers unless it wants to be. Secondly, there appear to have been more than one type of canopy put on the thing. One is squarish with lots of glazing; the other is more streamlined with softer lines. Apparently neither were popular subjects for photographers. From what I can see on line, the rounder version of the canopy is a rat’s nest of internal structure consisting of steel tubing frameworks and rigid aluminum strips, and typical external framing where needed. Accurately modeling all this stuff will be hard without company drawings or detailed photos. I suppose the steel tube structures would come easily enough via Evergreen, but the internal aluminum strips might be a pain in the heinie. Were it me, I’d use strips of adhesive paper tape often found in craft stores. It sticks well, is close to the right thickness, comes in different colors, can be painted, leaves no footprint when removed or repositioned and is much friendlier to use than just about anything else. But that’s just me.

There is also a really grainy photo extant that you most likely have already seen that shows a Cripes airplane (I think) with two of these mirrors and the tripod-like mount is very evident. They look pretty sturdy, like something off a car.

I don’t know….. I think I would have somehow mashed it together and then unlimbered my pellet rifle. I find an hour or so of knocking parts off from a distance to be much more palliative than the sound of a model hitting the bottom of the bin.