TimW

Well....since my J got burned to a crisp in the Great Hobby Room Fire of 2020, I'll be ordering a D model at some point. Sheesh! Tim W

Yeah...maybe I'll get a new J and a D...

They are doing a thorough job of photographing things. And luckily for me, the vast majority of my stash was not in the war room itself, so I have detailed info on what was ruined. Packing up the other stuff so they can do restoration work etc--that's going to be a challenge.

No hard feelings on my part--they did what they had to do to ensure safety. Now I have an excuse to get another Frogfoot and really pimp it out.

Insurance is on it--they've been great so far. My guess is a smoldering cigar butt--but that means something that was probably in there Saturday took 2 days to ignite? Plus, when i dispose of any cigarillo butts etc. I wet them just to be sure. Hard to know what happened for sure now, as the ashtray was soaked so if there were butts in there they are gone now. Friend of mine smoked a couple during a wargaming session Saturday but there's nothing to suggest they were (1) still lit or (2) got tossed in bucket. The bucket melted to slag, taking some 28mm WWI minis with it. Luckily my other wargaming stuff survived (mostly). The house damage guy came out this morning...the clean up/repair guys are already on site. I have to make sure none of my surviving display stuff gets damaged. The firefighters already shot down my Trumpeter Su-25. Total wreck.

Well....some of you may have heard (or may not) that I got home Monday to the not terribly reassuring image of fire engines outside my home. Something in the trash bucket in my hobby room ignited. No idea what, no idea how. But it pretty much destroyed my works in progress, including the B-24. On the plus side, the firefighters put it out in minutes--I credit my 15 year old boy for reacting exactly correctly when he realized what was going on and calling 911, getting outside and getting help from the neighbors. So while the fire damage was not extensive, the heat damage was. The B-24, both of my 1/200th Battleships, a 1/72 Canadian Corvette, several 1/16 figures, two WNW biplanes (DH-9A and Salmson 2A2), a 1/16 T-34 diorama, a dio of IDF paras in a halftrack and a recently finished Normandy diorama...well, they all look like Salvador Dali paintings now. I'm glad the damage was not worse and I'm glad nobody was hurt. That comes first and foremost. But hours and hours, never mind thousand of dollars in kits, paint, AM, etc--all poof. I'm still trying to get my mind around this. Not sure when I'll be modelling again--insurance guys and the clean up/repair people will be busy for a time, so at least I'll get a brand new war room out of it. Anyway. "Going My Way," lost to enemy action... Tim W.

Interesting! I'll check it out. Didn't have luck with the turrets, though. Tim W

Main gear bays. I'll get some pics, hopefully this week.

Could have been me--if those outer walls of the landing gear bay are not aligned just so, it causes problems. You really have to watch what you are doing. Did you find the tabs all worked? Some of them were too big for the slots, I found.

And I'm also finding the various bits that go in the main landing gear wells also DO NOT FIT properly. This is disappointing. Really makes me wonder how much engineering actually went into this kit, which otherwise fits together OK. There are some major WTFs with fit. More to come... Tim W.

Yeah, I know...wasn't done by 12/31. But I'm still working on it, so I suppose there will be updates in the WiP folder! Happy New Year, everybody! Tim W.

Long overdue update....discovered some interesting things putting the fuselage together--or should I say "trying" to put it together. First, all the aft bulkheads are TOO BIG! This includes the smaller ones at the bottom of the fuselage toward the turret. The platform the tail turret goes on? Too big. You can't get the fuselage together with those parts as they are molded. I had to trim a bunch off all the edges and sand them down. Pics to come, but this was a major disappointment. How do you screw up something so basic? Also having some fit issues forward, but they are less dramatic. I have to admit, not something I've seen before in a kit like this. Tim W.

I do love a SEAC bird!

So it's a Polikarpov R-1, which was copied without a license. This is with the kit markings, from a Avaiotriad stationed in the Soviet Far East. Starting the rigging, still lots to do.

Very cool!