Clunkmeister

It sure does, doesn’t it. Hubert would know more, but it was a Bréguet 941 that was licensed to McDonnell Aviation. It was a pretty decent STOL design from the early 60s with a wingspan of about 75 ft? It used the same ida as the Dash-7, but 20 years before the Dash-7. 4 large low speed props to augment airflow over the wing. It was practical and worked well, but just like the Dash-7, it was only economically viable in a very small number of places: London Center, Toronto Island, and similar. Places where space doesn’t allow runway expansion. The Dash-7 was well received but only sold what? 110? And number of those were to the US Army and RCAF, so they don’t count. the Bréguet had the same problem, but in the early 60s, there were no takers. I think they only sold 4 or 5.

Some French designs were no doubt peculiar, with the theme generally being towards flying solariums, but nobody can argue that the French, when they put their minds to it, deliver some extremely beautiful aircraft Peil Emeraude and Super Emeraude, the Robin series of light aircraft, Sud Caravelle, Concorde, Mirage lll and up, and on and on. And then there was this little cutie:

A bit of an update, y’all. I’m proceeding with the cockpit, and I want to point out some amazing things regarding this kit. A box arrived about 3 weeks after my kits arrived. In this box was a Mk.1a main gear set with new tail wheel as well. Apparently Peter received some reports of early completions of this kit getting decidedly splay legged on the shelf. The resin used for the gear and other high stress areas is a special much stronger resin, which didn’t hold up as well as hoped. So, Peter provided, at ZERO cost to purchasers of this kit, new redesigned gear legs with hollow legs to precisely insert small steel rods. That oughta hold it! Also, he sent along cockpit rear view mirrors. They are not in the kit from what I can see, so they are a brilliant addition. I can say this about this model: it is superbly engineered. There are rumblings of it being a difficult kit, but having dry fitted almost every component already, (the fit is spectacular), just test fit, trim edges as needed, and assemble. Approach it like a molded resin kit and you’ll be golden. There are quite a lot fewer parts than you may think, but Peter has printed critical areas as 1 piece parts. Some modelers don’t like that, but I do. I’m more a paint and finishing guy, and if the U/C can be done in 1 part, GO FOR IT! I love this kit so much, that if I hadn’t come off the worst year I’ve ever had in business, I’d have a dozen of these lined up in my model room. It’s THAT nice! The biggest challenge to a successful build is going to be getting the parts off the runners without damage. I already blew the turret guns part into a crumbly mess, my fault, not the kit. I dropped the spinner cone, looked for it, and didn’t see it, but sure felt and heard it when I stepped on it. Peter is very clear to purchasers: “I want these models to be successfully built”, he understands that a full 3D Print kit is new to many, and he will provide at no cost, replacement parts as needed. Not all of us are Peter Castle caliber builders, but we’re all competent enough, and everyone here should be able to competently build this model. Airscale started as my savior AM Company: almost every model I build gets Airscale panel updates. Then they did the updates for the Devastatingly nice Devastator. Now we have a Defiant. Then a car door Tiffie! I’m hoping a Blackburn Skua, a Hawker Henley, and maybe a Vickers Wellesley or Fairey Battle might come along. Oh, and an actual on-scale P-39. A properly proportioned P-39 would be truly glorious. This morning, I’m on the bench. I thought about being a real Smart Alec and rebuild an Airscale kit’s panel with Airscale instruments. 😂. But honestly, the panel is, as I said before, positively brilliant. The Defiant was a long, LONG time coming. But I’m definitely a Brit plane fanatic, so these are good times!

Truer words and all that…

The Goblin certainly looks like it’s been gobbling alright,… an entire truckload of marshmallow puffs and chugging Coca Cola by the 2L bottle. per day

If the British accidentally designed a good looking aircraft, (despite photographic evidence to the contrary, one did occasionally sneak past the Ministry of Ugly), the addition of a radar pod in the nose generally fixed the issue. (See Sea Hornet vs Mosquito). I expect early on, the British had the problem covered with the Defiant. The almost vertical heavily framed windscreen, and the bloated pimple of a gun emplacement left very little additional design work required to satisfy the quotient of ugly necessary for immediate serial production.

Underneath my seat. And I know where each and every wire goes! I now run aftermarket sparky box and pickup coil, so no chasing obsolete parts. The box is crammed in there in front of the battery, and nobody has a clue how much wiring is involved in a modern bike. Harley does it so neat, and me? Kinda looks like it was worked on by the Unabomber on an acid trip.

I guess we just can’t leave well enough alone. I love old cars and I love old bikes, and an old customizer’s touch was to install 59 Caddy tai.ights, so for me, why not? The Heritage Springer was ostentatious when new, looking like a brand new 1948 Harley in 1997, so I’ll just go one step further. Cheap brainless therapy, but it certainly looks different. Starting to look like a Tijuana Terror! A real “Garbage Barge”. That’s what we called loaded down bikes when I was young. We were tearing all that crap off them back then, and now as oldsters, we slam it all back on. That cheese grater rear bumper is a genuine 1948 Harley rear bumper. Yeah, it’s a bit much, but a sign of the times. NOBODY in the US leaves their Harley stock. Nobody. I think Europe is the same way. A Harley is a blank slate, and I think Harley makes more money selling bits for them than they do on the bike itself. There’s a fundraiser for a local musician who’s a recovering stroke victim, so she’ll be out and about after Sunday Worship. Took the time to set belt tension, align the rear wheel, and shine it all up. Saturday I’ll wire up the new lights, put the bags and seat Mack on, and go for a rip. Then, back on the bench

If you’re going to kill yourself on a bike, a Sportster is right up at the top of the list of bikes that’ll gladly help you so so. They haven’t changed much in 50 years, and still give you the chance to have a GREAT big engine in a tiny little bike. They were never fast from the factory, but Harley would gladly sell you everything you need to turn a fun bike into a holy terror. A 1250cc Sportster is the ONLY bike that has ever tried its level best to kill me graveyard dead, all while you having a stupid fun time doing so. They corner better than any American bike ever has, and around town, they have got to be the most fun motorcycle ever built. if a Sportster could have as good of highway manners as it does city manners, I’d own one. My ancient Springer is an 80 year old anachronism.

I expect they are “functional”, right?

They’re called murdercycles around here, because there have been several cases of a biker being involved in a fatal supposed single vehicle accident with no obvious cause. Bikes don’t “just crash” any more than cars or planes do. There’s always a reason. Cops think someone’s doing something. Running them off the road, laser pointer, who knows. But I ride in a small group, pay attention to those around me, and don’t ride stupid.

Mike, we look at your work and are all blown away by your work. Brilliant work, Sir! Like many here, I have this kit in my stash, waiting it's turn for me to do my typical hack job on it. I'm quite thrilled to see you building it, because I didn't know how to treat the thick airfoil portion compared to the thin warping areas. Now I know, and now I'll try. I even have the correct Aviattic fabric in stock. Yippee!

Martin, I agree, the Iron Sportster is one fun in town machine. But, it's utterly brutal on the highway and beats you to a bloody pulp. if I only needed to black around town, that Sportster is THE bike of choice for anyone who has any kind of beating heart. That Kawasaki? What a puffed up pile of junk. Same with Goldwings. They're cool, and a bit better thought than the Venture, which is just puffed up Marshmallow Man mobile

For WW2 stuff, how close is Tamiya XF-71? Tamiya claims it to be right. it doesn't seem grey enough to me, but what do I know? thought?

A bit of added wiring and busying up will do wonders here.

Time spent with proper nippers will yield beautiful parts. Cockpit detailing is outstanding.

I really, really need to do this. I need to take a brand new kit, fresh off the press, and be one of the first to give it a shot. The detail on this is absolutely incredible, and is exactly what we’d expect from the fertile mind of Peter Castle. Positively brilliant execution of a simple master plan: to bring the 1/32 community probably the only 1/32 scale Defiant we will ever see in our lifetimes. The prototype needs no introduction at all, as it is a bit of an infamous machine that first caught the Luftwaffe napping, and once it’s weaknesses were figured out, we’re slaughtered completely enough that Fighter Command yanked them from all daylight ops. it sprang from the drug addled minds of the glue sniffing planning board that gave us such gems as the Hawker Henley, the Blackburn Roc, and probably the Blackburn Blackburn Blackburn Blackburn Blackburn as well. The Defiant was rather an attractive machine, especially when put up against any of the aforementioned Blackburn and Hawker jobs. The kit is nice. Very nice. Superlative. And a quick initial check finds us with a real large scale crate.

I’m not the only one wondering what that big red monstrosity is. Good LORD it’s ugly! My old Harley is lost in comparison My wife really doesn’t like the look of the 1948 twilight. I wonder why?

One thing I’ve done in the last 3 weeks is to gather Sponsors for a cause many of us here really believe in here, and that’s the identification of and treatment for Veteran suicide prevention. I managed to convince enough businesses that I’m wholly capable of piloting this old relic of a motorcycle for 300 miles per Saturday for 1 month, that if I can do this, the donations per Saturday will come to $10/mile, or $3000 per day, just from my contribution. The cool thing is that the money is staying local and going directly to the caregivers and facilities, not disappearing into some corporate bank account where .02 on the dollar coughs down to the Veterans after all the greedy 10 million/year CEOs get their cut. In other words, we’re not falling into the Goodwill store trap. Doing the math shows this to be $12,000 for me giving up a month’s worth of Saturdays. From one person. For the cost of some oil and petrol, plus some food, of course. I’ve done 2 Saturdays already, and 2 more to go. The two pictures below are from last Saturday, and yesterday. The pic from the arse end was last Saturday, and yesterday is the front view. Joy tells me my bike looks like a Siberian Yak, with all the fringe hanging off, and she’s gonna give it a haircut afterwards. In no uncertain terms, NO!

I'm a sucker for the old stuff with an art deco look to it. Obviously I'm big into cosmetic enhancements, which is good because my two favorite colors are black, and chrome 😃 So a bit of extra chrome here and there, along with some gold leaf where needed, and away we go.

It’s a paper tiger in many ways. It benefitted from many months of (literally) buckets of parts in front of our Chesterfield sofa, all taking their turn as I mindlessly polished them out. Then reassembling it on the lift table until it started resembling a motorcycle. Dropping the engine onto its mounting plates was the biggest wake up call I’ve received in awhile. I used to be able to lift these old engines easily enough. This time, my neighbor had to help. Jeroen rides a moder Harley Softail with a modern Yarley V twin engine, and he’d run away and hide from me. This is pretty impressive on the straights, but in corners, this undampened front suspension will pogo you to death. It’s best to remember its roots. Modern Harleys are world class motorcycles, but this was absolute even in 1948

I was going for a 1948 FL Panhead, yes. But with modern niceties such as a Softail hidden rear suspension that looks just like an old rigid bone rattler hardtail frames of the 40s, plus an electric leg: I can’t kick them to life anymore with these knees. I lowered the rear and seat as much as I dared so I could get both feet on the ground with bent knees. My knees and right hip are SHOT due to arthritis, and I limp to the bike, but am a holy terror once onboard. Even throwing my leg over is agony. New knees this fall I hope. Like any lowered Harley, it’ll drag a board in a corner about 5 degrees before it drags a pipe and it goes out from under you, but you don’t ride an old open spring Harley to carve corners. It’s not a Duc or Guzzi. You ride it they did in 1948: 55-65 mph, sitting upright like a proper English gentleman, chugging along and smelling the summer fields. It’s crazy fun for what it is. I even got my Barbour style oilskin jacket, a Davida TT helmet, and some Halcyon aviators.

I just couldn't resist this, and it's positively brilliant! It's been a bucket list kit for 25 years

It’s literally built from spare parts, to resemble a 1948 Harley.

I put it on the dyno last week, and this old Frankenstein engine is putting out 89 hp and 130 lbs torque at the rear wheel. The torque curve comes right up off of idle and is flatline from 1250 rpm right up to 3200. These old air cooled Harleys aren’t horsepower machines, but they have HUGE flat torque curves the never seem to stop pulling. At 3200 rpm, they’re rattling your fillings, so I lay off at 2900 or so. They’ll rev to 5K, but it’s a useless exercise. Think old 1930s Straight 8, V12 and V16 cars and you have the idea. the engine will need compression releases, though, because the starter hates rolling it over.