Oldbaldguy

Just for the record, the Navy gray over white scheme was flat (or eggshell, depending on how fresh it was) light gull gray over glossy white, as everyone knows. The white was glossy to better reflect heat from nukes going off all around them as they pressed toward their targets. The idea was to limit flash burn-thru of thin skins. That never explained the continued use of dark national insignia and other heat absorbing markings, however. Heavy 7’s tail stripe was regular medium blue and not the light blue you see on the decal sheet and the stripe eventually continued down the trailing edge of the vertical stab to emulate the number 7 and had 13 stars. The GL tail code came from parent unit Heavy Attack Wing One. All HATWING 1 squadrons had their own tail code - Heavy 3 was GJ, Heavy 5 was GK, Heavy 7 was GL, Heavy 9 was GM, etc. When the squadron was permanently assigned to an air wing as a unit (and not on board as a det), the GX code shifted to the Air Wing code while on the ship. Depending on which cruise (Both were on the Enterprise) Heavy 7s A5As carried either AE or AF tail codes. The only other squadron to take A5As to the boat for a cruise was Heavy 1, tail code AG, on the Independence.

Of course there is yet another option. One of my military instructors in college said exactly one thing that I’ve always remembered. He said that once he cracked the cover, he read any book to the very end no matter how bad it was. Why? Because somebody went to considerable trouble to write it, something he had never done, so he felt like he owed it to them for their effort. HKM went to all that trouble to make a frikkin’ Mosquito kit for us so why not build it?? No kit is perfect but how many people know that? Consider it a challenge. Break out the glue. Do what you want. The world hangs in the balance of headier stuff than a nanometer error on a model kit.

This model is really something special, but why so many “On” buttons on the bottom?

I think the cast of BoB did a much better job of it than any all-American cast could ever have. To this day, it’s very hard for me to accept Damion Lewis as anyone but Winters. And then there is Helen Mirren’s Irish character in 1923. Epic stuff, that. Pretty cool how really good actors can so easily learn another language - like English and English or vice versa.

My wife and I watched Broadchurch a while ago. Had nae idea wha David Tennant sed for ha’ the show.

Maybe less Foghorn and more his dog Beauregard. As you well know, there is Hollywood Southern and real Southern. The closest Hollywood ever came to real Southern, I think, was Fred Gwynne as Judge Haller in My Cousin Vinny: “Two whuts? You said ‘Two yoots.’ “

And then there are the volumes one can speak using variations on just one or two curse words. And we haven’t even scratched the surface of military-speak. This thread may be bottomless.

The American Southland is a wonderful place. In the days before the most recent yankee invasion (wherein you are as likely to see a car tag/number plate from Manitoba as Mississippi), we found ourselves in either of two camps: We spoke what I self-categorize as Wiregrass Southern or we spoke the warm, gentle, flowing language of well-to-do Southerners. There once was a lot of both here and I have experienced both sides of the track. Still do. South Carolina Southern is different from South Georgia Southern, for example, just as Upstate Carolinian is distinguishable from whatever they speak on the coast of South Carolina and the list goes on. What I have found over the years is that the differences rise up from the dirt - it is a geography thing and not a country of origin or DNA thing, which fascinates me. My mother in law was a fluent wiregrass speaker who could butcher the spoken word like no one else. Born and bred in Middle Georgia, she lived in May-retta (Marietta), worked at the Bell Bummer Plant (Bell Bomber Plant) during WW2, and drank Cocoalers (Coca Cola). Her best friend was May-ree (Mary), my wife Elaine was Eeee-lane and it took her most of the day to say her son’s name, Howard. She was famous for much more, some of which could curdle milk, but you get the idea. Born, raised and educated in the same neck of the woods as my mother in law and working maybe 15 minutes away at the time was a lovely dark-haired woman with the most beautiful, warm, deep, rich, smooth Southern accent I have ever heard. Ever. Listening to her was bourbon for my ears. I would have been happy to sit for hours just to hear her read the telephone book. She was first generation Lebanese-American, so go figure. So, there you have it. Be sure to tell everyone I said hey and y’all come back now, hear? And stay away from that moonshine cause it’ll make you smack your mammy. Oh, and watch out for them deer!

The English language is a remarkable piece of kit. It is structured, adaptive and evolving all at the same time. Because we are truly a nation of immigrants and always have been, American English is the most transformational English of all. We can Americanize anything from any language and put it into common use without a second thought, but we also are a bit lazy when it comes to the rules of the road. Linguistic shortcuts are a way of life with us, even if they sometimes make us sound as dumb as a box of rocks. For example, several years ago I watched a YouTube video of an English television personality who, as she was nearing retirement, found herself in the back seat of a Tornado on an orientation flight. She was small and could barely see over the canopy sill but was a professional to the very end. As they were ripping along some river just after takeoff, she peeked over the edge and said, “Oh. I see we are flying quite lowly, aren’t we?” I was stunned. It was definitely pucker time for this lady, but her message was understated and her grammar unimpeachable. Had she been an American in that same situation, her response would have been a string of squeals, expletives, hyperbole and incomplete sentences. In either case, English being what it is, we would have understood the message but the mechanisms to get us to shared understanding would have been as dissimilar as football and football, if you know what I mean.

It is without question ZEE. Who in the world would build a GeeBee Zed??

Pretty sure your mystery cable thingers are limit straps to keep the rear portion of the gear door from doing something it’s not supposed to when fully open during opening and closing cycles. The actuator takes take of the front part of the door; the strap was likely a cheap and easy way to take care of the back.

Who’s da man?!

It’s hard to build an ugly Scooter, but yours are aces. Just gorgeous.

Oooo! Nice! Gust lock looks fine from here.

As has been said, sometimes it takes a village. Preferably one with a hairdryer.

As was mentioned, hairdryer on low heat/low speed. Maybe fashion a device to focus the hot air onto a small point. Might want to experiment and practice on some of your detritus first.

Are you using heat at all while In the blocks to perhaps relieve localized stress and/or encourage a permanent correction?

Very likely. The rear part of the canopy would be nothing more than a big draggy air scoop with the slider open - all that captured air has to go somewhere or it starts doing weird and unexpected things.

Tankless, diaphragm compressor. No regulator. Not sure they were a thing back then and if they were, I could not have afforded one. It’s the weak, pulsating flow at the tip of the brush that has me thinking it’s a goner. Ditto at the outlet with the hose off. May have to put it down as a kindness.

Not sure if this is the right place, but: I’ve had my compressor since about 1980. Big old Paasche thing. It teakettles along just fine, but lately I’ve noted that my paint jobs are not up to my usual level of mediocrity. The airflow seems to pulsate while I’m spraying and the flow at the tip seems pretty weak. MRP sprays just fine but nothing else wants to go thru no matter how much I thin it. Takes forever to siphon a cupful of Grex, for example. Stripped and cleaned the brush, but nothing much changed. So, is this fixable or is time to get a new compressor?

The great thing about threads like this one is that they are hardcore reality checks for posers like me. I think all my finished models look like these until I put my glasses on and then, well, you get the idea.

You know what? You may be onto something here. I know this is only prep work but, without doing anything else, I think this would be a pretty darn effective camo scheme and colors for airplanes these days.

The difference in the angle is based on what datum - waterline, center line of the fuselage, what? I ask because I don’t understand how you come to the 2.5 degree difference without the model being complete - a datum has to start and stop at two fixed points to be viable. I would counsel that you take a deep breath and back away for a day or two before trying to coerce parts into doing something they don’t want to for the sake of a perceived error that only you can see. Two and a half degrees would move the centerline of the struts a total of how many tiny increments at the axle? Will you - or any of us - be able to discern said difference with the gear doors on? Once on its wheels, what dimensional difference would there be at the tip of the spinner if you don’t commit some sort of intervention? Seems to me there needs to be a serious cost/benefits audit before you break out the hammer.

These are pretty darn cool. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in what we are building that we forget there were modelers hunched over the bench long before we were.

Not sure how this fits in, but if we are sharing war stories: Seems a museum of sorts moved onto my home drome while I still had a hangar and airplane there. They had three T-28s and two were more or less airworthy. They were painted gull gray over white with Marine markings and seemed to me to be in a perpetual state of mild embarrassment since any respectable Trojan would be painted some shade of red and white or not at all. The museum needed to send their airplanes to airshows around the South to show their colors and to keep their tax exempt status, etc, but they were short of pilots to do the job. I considered it - VFR only, there and back, no pax, the venue bought the fuel, etc. The head pilot guy would do the check out and you’d get to fly local proficiency flights as often as your wallet could stand it. Well, I went straight to my neighbor who had flown F-14s for a living to see if he wanted to join in. While discussing the ins and outs of such an endeavor he related to me that he had flown T-28s on his way to his Wings of Gold and on one flight the instructor forced him to fly several touch and go’s with full left rudder trim dialed in. The stress on his right leg from having to hold full right rudder left a lasting mark and he said he could not walk after the session was over. When he challenged his instructor about the point of it all, the guy slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well, Nugget, now you know you can do it.” And that was that. We never did fly the museum’s T-28s. I observed the level of care and feeding the beasts got and what I saw scared me. My neighbor decided he’d already been there and done that and had no need to revisit it. I demurred as well but there are times when I catch myself wondering what it would be like to show up at some far away airshow in another man’s warbird like I owned it.