Oldbaldguy

Coffee is the drink of the day so far - even I have limits. Besides, it’s early yet. I’ve come to realize that 3D printing is the way of the future for scale modeling, but do you think SH would have gotten into the market if companies like Reskit were not so successful? Bound to happen sooner or later but, for some reason, I always thought of the printed aftermarket industry as being separate from but necessary to the big kit manufacturers. I very much like the idea of successful cottage industries - they keep the big guys on their toes.

After perusing the latest offerings from The Brothers Sprue, I noted with interest that Special Hobby has entered the 3D printed aftermarket, uh, market. I don’t know that the benchmark Ukrainian companies should be quaking in their boots just yet, but it appears that large scale competition for their market niche is afoot. Good for us, I suppose, assuming the parts are of equal quality and as accurate. Of course, that remains to be seen.

Which begs the question of where they got all that old stuff because there was a lot of it. Where did all those Hueys come from? I knew there were a handful of restored Hueys giving rides at airshows along with that one Cobra, but there were a lot more of ‘em in that flyover than I’d have thought possible.

Excellent point. Any idea what the endstrength is these days? I understand the Royal Navy has become almost a shadow of itself. Is the Army in the same boat, as it were?

It’s Saturday evening where I am and I just mixed a bottle of dry Riesling with the bottom of a bottle of something red of dubious parentage, the results of which will make themselves known before morning. I’m watching a bit of The Donald’s salute to the US Army in our nation’s capital. My observations are these: Somewhere in recent history someone forgot to teach American soldiers how to march. I’ve never in my life seen so many route step MFers wandering along in a close-order gaggle in my life. When did we lose the bubble on that? That Austrian dude from two centuries ago must be rolling in his grave. Or was he French? Don’t care. Anyway, the takeaway here is that, beyond all the political drama, the kids participating in this gala event may not be able to stay in step but they are having a ball. No GI worth his salt does not like to show off for the home folks and you can see it in the faces of our kids driving their testosterone powered bullet launchers down the road in front of a president who actually showed up for the event. They are grinning, waving, thumbs-upping and having a great time. God bless them all. I was part of that as a younger man and would do it again in less than a heartbeat if needed. It’s what American soldiers do. Break break: OMG! Trump himself is just now giving the oath of enlistment to a bunch of new Army recruits. This is epic and one for the history books. Sorry, I’m speechless - keyless?, digitless? - at the moment. Anyway, the party is on and the US Army is 250 years old and not one person there cares if the restored armor is the correct color of OD or has aftermarket tracks. GBUSA and GBA.

Is it just me or is anyone else having trouble loading LSP forums? Takes forever and often goes nowhere. Seems to me it worked fine until somebody fixed it.

The entire line of all the versions of the elusive double-wide Spad in high fidelity 1/32 at a decent price. Only in America.

If I had been that airplane, I would have refused to fly. Even a SLUF has limits to the “ugly” part.

Ninety percent done; ninety percent to go, as they say.

The issue would be finding a museum good enough for it.

You are definitely getting better at this.

Pretty much all aircraft structures leak and will allow water ingress in the form of condensation, rain, snow accumulation, etc. Even critters like mice can get in and make a home. Smart money finds a way to vent moisture out before it does appreciable damage. While metal skinned surfaces tend to not have drain holes because they vent in a different way, most fabric covered structures have weep holes or something similar located at the lowest point when the airplane is on the ground so that they can drain. This means there are multiple holes in the bottom skins at the lowest point of any bay that can trap water. Vents are pretty simple - just grommets that are installed as part of the covering/finishing process with the centers punched out with a soldering iron or something similar. Airplanes operating from water have a more aggressive solution called seaplane grommets that have a bit of a scoop shape that causes a Venturi in flight that literally sucks moisture out of the structure. Any metal structure is subject to destructive rust or corrosion from trapped water. Trapped water will rot any wood structure if it is exposed to it long enough. This is why airframes are chromated and wood structures are coated with varnish or other sealants. Even so, there has to be a way to get moisture outside where it should be before it accumulates inside and does its worst. That’s what these drains do.

I know next to nothing about Lancasters, mainly because AVRO forgot to put tailhooks on them. But I do know a bit about assembly line practices which makes me think that the aft canopy section was installed after the fuselage was painted - it was simply plopped in place fully built and riveted on after the paint dried, meaning the most logical option of all the above is that the area under all that glazing is whatever color the adjacent camo is. I think this was/is a pretty common practice that avoids devoting unnecessary man hours to masking and piddling. I know Grumman did that during the war and likely many others as well. Expediency is the key in wartime production. Were there exceptions? Likely, but on the whole, I’d bet most were camoed under the glass.

Well, at this point it certainly looks like a T-28. I feel your pain ref all that white paint - I’ve never had much luck with it either.

Ha! Jari’s photo of the Scooter passing gas is noteworthy for a couple of other reasons. One: Lookit the amount of distortion you get from looking through the side window of the Whale. Absolutely mind bending. Two: I’m finishing up a Scoot used as a dedicated tanker with a buddy store and did not know if these airplanes had tanker green rotating beacons on the bottom as well as the top. Looks to me like the bottom beacon on the port gear fairing is green! So now I know and another mystery bites the dust.

Yeah, but we always get carried away on topics like this when somebody asks for a list. Comes from an attention deficit due to senility. Group build pickings would be slim if it was limited to fixed wing. Even tho there are no low winged birds in nature, man seems to favor having our wings on the bottom so that’s how we build ‘em.

Modern or classic? All the above plus Vigilante, Whale, Buff, A-7, B-24 if you stretch the definition a bit, Savage, B-47, B-36, B-66, C-119, C-130, C-141, C-5, Caribou, Jaguar, Dornier, F-14, F-15, F-18, O-1, O-2, all the classic L birds, the Grumman twins, Skyvan, some Pipers, Cessnas, Stinsons, Champs and homebuilts, every balsa sailplane I ever built, a couple of hundred others I don’t have time to list and ALL helicopters. The list of high wingers is long and distinguished but not many get made into models because we seem to get stuck in ruts of what we think an airplane looks like. And yes, helicopters are airplanes. Oddly, I have only three high winged models on the shelf and one of those is a helicopter. A high wing group build could be welcome and would be wide ranging indeed.

As mentioned above, the box art is gorgeous, altho it is not clear to me why an airplane assigned to a photo squadron would be carrying depth charges. Additionally, period photos show these airplanes in what looks to be pretty good shape so it will be interesting to see how much weathering you end up doing. No idea what it is about Ducks - big, one too many wings, butt ugly and it floats - but everyone loves the things, me included. Can’t wait to see where you go with this.

Well. It’s Friday night and I discovered a somewhat squatty bottle of Pinot noir previously unknown to me in my stash. I stuck it in the freezer for an hour or so in case it was not drinkable and later found the cold concoction to be quite palatable, going well with my bangers and tater tots (being fresh out of haggis as we are). Since all know that any vino is brain food, it got me to thinking and a very serious question popped into my head while watching the spousal unit dice fresh peaches: Why is there a dearth of lady LSPers on this site? Are there no XX modelers afoot these days? We had Maru for a while but now it’s just us guys sitting around being guys. Since females are arguably half the world’s pop, why do they not join us here to ***** about things that don’t fit or RLM colors that make their tails look fat? Am I missing something here? We are a cordial bunch without a chauvinist bone among us, if I am allowed to say that, so it is not likely something we said. Secondly, I wonder what the average age of our vaunted membership might be. I’m guessing we are mostly old farts screaming rapidly toward the century mark. If true, this does not bode well. Whippersnappers are required to carry on the tradition. Without them we wither and die. Without them we have no one to whom we can pass our bottomless pits of knowledge about the most groaning bits of aeronautical trivia. Without new guys and gals, we are lost. So do we have any? If there are youngsters among us, please raise your hand - I’d like to make your acquaintance. Damn, but this is good wine - I wonder where I got it because this bottle is nearly void.

This is Memorial Day weekend in my country. This guy is a prime example of why we remember: Wings if gold; balls of steel. Not ten percent of military age men walking around today would do what this guy did, not to mention his rolling out of the rack the next day to go do it again. Probably wore the same flight suit. Douglas made some truly great airplanes - I don’t think they ever made a dud. The Scooter is a small airplane and this one is shot to shyte but someone forgot to tell it it was too hurt to fly so it just kept on keepin’ on. To paraphrase a line from “The Bridges at Toko Ri”, where do we find such men and such airplanes? Every model we build should be a tribute to them and their machines.

For what it’s worth at this late stage, John, I witnessed both T-28s and Buckeyes with gun pods mounted at NAS Key West. No idea if they had gunsights installed but you’d think they would have.

I’m not sure NAA ever built an ugly airplane. The F-86 is such an elegant looking jet - its MiG counterpart looks so industrial and tractor-like in comparison. Your build is doing this aging kit justice which is what I think the Hasegawa folks had in mind all along with their early LSPs - they gave us an 80% solution with the idea that we would do the rest, being ardent modelers and all. Was wondering, however, if the gizmo by the stick that you said is an oxygen hose might not be the relief tube instead? It has the look of one and would be in more or less the right place for a properly equipped fighter pilot.

I’d vote for that 1/24 Stoof but that’s just me.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that MRP works better on smaller than LSP builds? Just like everyone else, I love the stuff because it is soooooo easy to use and the colors are great, but it seems like I have to work really hard to get a good finish when trying to cover serious acreage. A typical 1/48 kit is a breeze with the stuff, but trying to get an even coat of any light color on a 1/32 kit is almost more than I can do. I don’t have that problem with anything else. Maybe I’m not holding my mouth right.

Very nice. Amazing the equipment that was long surplused out of the inventory that became common use in SEA at the time.