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Oldbaldguy

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Everything posted by Oldbaldguy

  1. Oldbaldguy
    Love your firewall! What a difference!!
  2. Oldbaldguy
    Well, the red surround lasted literally only a couple of months early in the war - something like July to September 1943 - before units were told to paint over the red with insignia blue to cut back on friendly fire incidents. Even though the photo is black and white, I don’t see any evidence of red around the national insignia in the photos of old number 17. Personally, I don’t put much stock in the accuracy of aircraft profiles because, having done a boatload of ‘em myself, artistic license always creeps in somewhere, so the one you reference may not be 100% accurate. So, if you are modeling the airplane as it existed in July and August of 1943, go with red surrounds. Anything later: blue.
  3. Oldbaldguy
    A trip to your local Hobby Lobby store might be in the offing if there is one near you. They have all sorts of crafty sticky, tape-y things in different aisles all over the store. No telling what you might find.
  4. Oldbaldguy
    Ya know, whatever tape they used at the time would have been pretty thick. The idea was to cover over the seams and joints which were already pretty tight, so it’s not likely you would have seen much detail at all through the tape. Admittedly I haven’t really looked, but it seems to me that none of the tape seen in photos is very dirty or weathered. I can’t see it lasting very long in the blast of air behind that prop once it was soaked in avgas. Sort of put down the tape, fill the tank, tape comes off during the next flight, put down the tape, fill the tank, tape comes off ad infinitum. It likely didn’t stick around long enough to get dirty, no pun intended. This was a stop-gap effort, not a final solution, so precision was not high on the list of priorities, especially if they were using whatever was at hand until Vought cooked up a fix.
  5. Oldbaldguy
    I vote for the diamond tread tire and wheel combo and the tailhook. The hook because it’s a Navy airplane and was born with it, and the wheels because they are epic and should not be wasted. Kill markings, tank tape and such? Don’t care.
  6. Oldbaldguy
    If the “tape” is there to prevent a gas from seeping/leaking out, how did they get it to stick to an already dirty surface once the adhesive comes in contact with 100+ octane avgas that is documented as hot enough to strip paint? And if the tank were leaking enough for it to be an issue for the pilot, wouldn’t the mechs just fix the tank? I agree with Jay: Something about this doesn’t add up. Sadly, none of the guys who put the stuff on are around to tell us exactly why they did it.
  7. Oldbaldguy
    I wonder if this stuff was hunnert mile an hour tape or was it readily available fabric tape that was glued/doped to the airplane’s skin? Wouldn’t make much difference either way for you because they would be about the same thickness once applied, but it would be nice to know because the two would not wear/weather the same way. And was it used to keep the gas in or rainwater and such out? More than one airplane has crashed because water leakedinto in the fuel.
  8. Oldbaldguy
    Having spent most of my life around US naval fighters that get bigger and bigger with each new one, I forget just how small many of the European navy jets were. Vampires, Sea Hawks, Etendards are tiny!
  9. Oldbaldguy
    The airplane was designed around the Continental O-200 engine. Whatever is in this one, it ain’t no O-200. It looks a bit like an auto engine conversion, what with the big gear reduction and all, but it might be a one of the new generation aircraft motors like a Rotax or something similar. I simply don’t recognize it. Seems to run well at any rate.
  10. Oldbaldguy
    Cool airplane. Good story. Most likely somebody on the crew pissed it off and the airplane was getting even. Don’t think it doesn’t happen!
  11. Oldbaldguy
    The older I get, the less I like any kind of change. I don’t like this one at all.
  12. Oldbaldguy
    And some of those Connie’s were camoed in SEA colors as well. Very attractive paint scheme.
  13. Oldbaldguy
    Didn’t somebody do an F-104 in 1:18 as well? And are the Soviet era jets in the background of some of the 1:1 photos above airworthy or static displays?
  14. Oldbaldguy
    Yep. In one of the vids the guy was talking about his CG envelope and, with him in the airplane, it was pretty narrow and hovered around the aft limit. Not at all sure how he computed that because I had a hard time following his explanation, but there’s no doubt that’s why the battery ended up so far forward. I agree that it seems a bit unorthodox. These little 50% stand-off scale WAR homebuilts were popular back in the early seventies. WAR offered plans for a Corsair, a P-47 and an FW-190. The structure is mostly wood with foam and fiberglass used to fill it out to a specific shape. They are small, short coupled taildraggers designed for 100hp engines. A number were built but they never really caught on. It will be interesting to see how/if this one flies.
  15. Oldbaldguy
    I dunno….. I think Jay’s Corsair looks more like a Corsair than this one. Probably would fly better too.
  16. Oldbaldguy
    Welcome to the Great Circle of Life. It’s fun as hell. You might want to wait a bit before buying him his first LSP, however.
  17. Oldbaldguy
    I think I did that already. Just another exercise in problem solving. That, and a big enough hammer.
  18. Oldbaldguy
    Absolutely! You can count on there being scratches in the paint anywhere there are Dzus fasteners. The older ones require a large flat blade screwdriver and often demand two-handed pressure to close them, causing the screwdriver to slide out of the groove with a vengeance and gouge the paint if not done exactly right. Personal experience and all that. There were a couple on one of my planes that my mech simply refused to mess with, leaving me to scratch my paint instead of him.
  19. Oldbaldguy
    There you go with those big words again, M. You know most of ain’t that smart and I can’t find my dictionary, so…
  20. Oldbaldguy
    I wonder if, in their wildest dreams, these little jets ever thought they would get this much love.
  21. Oldbaldguy
    I dunno….. I don’t think he was being as out of line as some might want to believe. That particular word has evolved since the 40s and has seen so much varied use over the years that it has become a common use descriptor in today’s lexicon in much the same way that coke has come to mean any soft drink. Not sure he making one of those dreaded political statements we are often warned about as much as he was commenting on the other site’s not being as user friendly as it once was. Poor word choice maybe, but we’re all guilty of that from time to time. Just a thought. Not interested in starting a pissing contest; just having the guy’s six a bit.
  22. Oldbaldguy
    With everybody and their second cousins flying F-35s or about to, it’s hard to imagine them being as close-hold as, say, the B-2 or the F-117 when it was new. I’d think the airframe itself is less spy-worthy than all the computer magic that makes it work.
  23. Oldbaldguy
    Check airliners.net, YouTube, google images, etc. I found lots of interior shots in just a couple of minutes. Some interiors are more or less stock while others have been spiffed up a bit. Pretty nifty airplane.
  24. Oldbaldguy
    Well. Not sure you need us anymore. Looks like you nailed it right out of the gate.
  25. Oldbaldguy
    Astounding. On these overwater legs, does the sim show cloud shadows on the water? Cloud shadows on open ocean will really mess with your head if you are looking for an island. Speaking of which, you should turn off the GPS and autopilot and hand fly it between some of these over the horizon islands.
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