Oldbaldguy

Jumpy, most of the time.

Not from behind.

Early F-15 main wheels work pretty well. I think mine are Scott’s GT Resin. F-15 nosewheel might fit but it may be too small. I’m also looking at trying to make F-15 intake trunks fit. The engines are mounted aft of the main gear wells on a Viggie but I doubt if you can see that far back on the model so it all may come to naught.

Not a one-eyed modeler but I have a one-eyed cat.

Yep. Nothing but tissue paper - the same stuff you find in gift boxes and such. Places like Hobby Lobby has it by the truckload. Cut it to shape, glue it the frame with diluted white glue, spritz it with a little water once the glue is dry to shrink it up a bit, and - voilà - a durable, convincing and airworthy part waiting to be painted. You can even patch it just like the real thing if you need to.

Not fair! It should not be legal for one guy to be able to build the models you do AND take photos as great as these! And the Thunderbirds are sporting panel lines! Never would have believed it. The paint job on your Viper gives me a headache, however.

I think the root cause of your issue with the rigging around the cabane struts is the size of the radiator. From looking at the available photos, I’d opine that the top edge of the radiator does not extend as far as the centerline of the fuselage but stops more or less even with the windscreen frame on that side, leaving enough real estate in the 1:1 airplane for all the widgets and gizmos to pass through the sheet metal there. I easily could be wrong, but that’s the way it looks to me.

I think you’d have to push it up to 1/18 or greater in order to see the parts. Gorgeous airplane but tiny!

Gorgeous model. So wonderfully done. Ya just have to wonder why nobody has produced a Connie in 1/48 - 1/32 being most impractical. The possibilities would be endless considering all the liveries and variants the design went through over time.

Did you mean Bullpups or drops. A-5A had only two hard points. Only the RA-5C had four hard points. Four pylons on the bomber version takes you into what-if territory.

What a great looking airplane. So many, like the Connie, from the days before we let computers do the design work for us were absolutely elegant.

What????? Two doors per side?? Who knew? The first thing that popped into my head was, “Why??”

I too was struck by that photo because I saw a P-40 in that exact same situation parked beside a hangar in Fabens, Texas, in the mid 70s. For all I know, it could have been the same trailer, although Curtiss likely had more than one. The place was a veritable gold mine of warbird stuff with bits and pieces of airplanes lying around in the Texas dust, including what I swear was an almost complete Avro Anson. The guy had a Merlin powered 109 in his hangar for repair that had been groundlooped. Had I known then what I know now, I could have berated him for using an improper shade of gray on the upper part of the fuselage. I’m sure he would have been mortified.

I’d have to like a dog an awful lot to stare at his butt for a week.

I wonder how Curtiss formed the really complicated pieces you mention. Hydraulic press? English wheel? Hydro forming? I’ve even seen parts formed by being beaten with rubber mallets over or into a cement mold, but that seems like a lot of work for a production airplane.

Yep. Red cloth bags that slipped over the inlet. No idea how they were anchored to the airframe. Looks like the top part of the bag lines up with the reinforced boarding ladder attach point on the side of the intake. The guy’s gloves are leather and more creamy yellow than tan - I’ve got a pair somewhere. I don’t remember ever seeing a HATWING 1 helmet with a unique paint job. Each squadron had its own scheme and that’s what everybody wore. This one is obviously Heavy 7.

I’m planning to put guys in my Viggie as well. You are well ahead of me in the build process so it will be interesting to see how you go about it. Navy flight suits for that period were orange, BTW. Boots were brown.

If I remember my history and semantics, America shot back at Pearl but we didn’t strike back until Midway if you don’t count the Doolittle PR nuisance raid. Taylor’s art is always a joy, but the rest of the box is a bit of a shambles.

Powered by what???? I assume it’s RC?

While working up the details of your project keep in mind that wet, muddy, uneven ground wreaks havoc on spindly retractable landing gear, especially if the landing is a little fast, often ripping the gear right out of the airframe with all the damage that would entail. Frozen ground is like landing on a concrete runway. Taildraggers end up on their nose during roll-out due to sudden deceleration like heavy braking, wheels dropping into a rut or coming up against an obstacle, bogging down in wet ground or even landing in heavy snow which is draggy as hell. So, there is always a bigger story and a long chain of events that lead up to a nose over and you will need to know all of it to make your diorama look right.

Couple of takeaways here: Apparently Russians fly around the countryside randomly firing rockets at no discernible targets, Russians have never heard of lawn care on their airfields, and sometimes Russian pilots fly in their underwear. Okay, that’s three but you get the idea. Oh! And note the GoPro mount on the dude’s helmet.

Yeah, pretty sure we’re going to see what we want to see in this one.

Noted with interest that you acquire some of your modeling tools and supplies from the wine rack at Costco. Working my way to the bottom of a Kirkland Bordeaux this very minute. You never can have too many corks.

Yep. My first thought was good CGI. No visual cues that anything is going on, none of what you’d expect to see during an ejection if he was wearing a GoPro, no attempt to escape and evade assuming he was shot down. List goes on….

Went rummaging thru my spare parts horde yesterday while fondling the kit parts and scored an unused Aries J-79 set. In case anyone is interested, the Aries parts click right in like they were made for Dan’s kit and make a world of difference (No offense, Dan). There are some other aftermarket bits and bobs that I’m looking at as well to help things along. Will post more on that as I get farther along.