Clunkmeister

Had a neat little charity event in Pilot Point, Tx. A cool little town.

Lots of progress here. Plenty of different shades of OD going on, which all disappears under a gloss coat. of course, we painted most of the markings, so why I cleared the entire thing is beyond me. after this we get dullcoat, then oils and powders. the stares and bars almost look too vivid, but they’re actually a very light grey.

Here’s a baby picture of my from almost 60 years ago. I was one of these little fellers.

We played with various lightening tones to break up the monotony without going att patchwork. I think it’s starting to look the part

I spent a ton of time on it as well. I started with 3D decals, stopped, and then redid it with individual Airscale instrument decals. Before Airscale brought their kit out. I didn’t go as far as Nigel, simply because I didn’t want to. But it looks good enough to me I used an ASK 3D seat, although I could have easily salvaged and doctored up the kit seat. My biggest change was to toss the kit engines and graft on the Resin2Detail engine faces. The kit parts a the same R2600s as in the B-25, and I’m no fan. My biggest goal here was to get a good sun faded blotchy brown hued exterior, and go from there.

My lovely and me, last weekend. And my lovely, alone, simply because I wanted to.

Been picking away at this little lovely. Obviously, I’ve obviously I’ve stuck my dauber in it, and made a right mess of it. But, onward and upward with this PTO kite

Peter, mine will be faded a bit more because I’m highlighting panel centers a bet.

Peter, I mixed my own. The Dark Earth started as that, and I doctored it up some. It’s Gunze. The green started as Tamiya XF-81 and I doctored it up some. Silver bottom is a Tamiya enamel, black is Gunze RLM66 doctored up with some Cowling Color, the white is Character white with some light grey added

It’s hard to believe, but in the 60s and 70s, those and the 106s were our first line of defense against Soviet bomber attack, and that was their one single job. Period. Launch from A, get to B as fast as possible, launch missiles, return to A, and repeat until the threat was gone or the world was on fire. They were NOT a dogfighter and didn’t take kindly to high G maneuvers. I remember reading a case of a Canadian 101 off the coast of BC or Washington State intercepting a US Navy patrol plane something or other that was acting as a Soviet bomber intruder. The 101 did the intercept, scored a “kill”, then, as fighter pilots are apt to do, did a fast high G pull up into a Victory Roll. The 101 immediately high sped stalled and snapped into an unrecoverable flat spin, and after trying their drogue shoot, the intrepid victors punched out and got to go swimming. The Navy crew’s wives were anal at happy because they were late for dinner after flying several hours top cover while a ship got close enough to launch a helo and fish them out. I bet the Canadian crew had to buy more than a few beers that night. Supposedly this caused the Air Force to install stick shakers on all the 101s to warn of an impending high speed departure. The 106 did not have this issue, but as is the case with all deltas, would scrub speed quickly when the turns got sharp. Both those planes worked best flown hot and straight.

Peter, TRUST Kotare on the spine. The prototype overlaps a bit on the sides and the kit does as well. The only clean up you’ll need is the bottom of the fuselage behind the wing.

That’s really looking the business, Peter! A lovely little kit isn’t it?

I don’t have a WIP unfortunately, but after being hit by a monsoon these last several days, I did lay some light passes of the base camo for Douglas Bader’s early kite ZD D. Tomorrow we break out the shades and get to work. This kit is an absolute joy to build. It’s positively marvelous.

Haha fixed

But I’m here and time to catch up

21st FG on, I believe, Iwo Jima? I saw a clip years ago of this ship starting up, and it’s stuck with me for decades. I’d sure like to take a stab at doing this kite, if anyone may know more. The cartoon image seems to be Mr. Death looking over his shoulder. Mr Death is a cartoon character from an old comic book….

Yeah, funny how that works, and it’s worked for Hasegawa for decades. Pull a kit off the market, reintroduce it with new box art and decal sheet, and call it new. the P-47 plastic has been brought back out multiple times, yet is still in short supply. Same with the P-40E.

I saw that on FB the other day. Any truth to this rumor?

Looking to find the tail number for my solo. It’s washed out some. My PPL Flight Test was in a Traumahawk C-GAKT, and my multi and multi IFR were in Twin Comanche CF-UBA. 160 howling hp per side. Perfectly cleaned up, it had about a 200 fpm climb on one engine, IF you were light and smooth on the controls, but that second engine was pretty much only guaranteed to get you to the scene of the crash, nothing more. But with both mills producing, it was a GREAT traveling machine with gobs of power. An extra 40 hp per side and it would have made takeoffs less of a white knuckle affair. You cleaned it up quick, and kept it low and fast till you could climb with a comfortable excess above Vse. John, I played with a 150 for a bit when I was working on my Commercial ticket. It was a nice little time builder. Honest and true.

And remembered an interesting tidbit. My primary flight instructor was Guy Gibson, who signed me off to solo a Citabria in 10 hours. No, not THE Guy Gibson, but still, it was Guy Gibson. 😄

Mechanically they were top notch with all ADs complied with and even the Hamilton STCs to pull off the horrible Curtiss Electric 4 blade paddles. That mod alone made all the difference. no more pulling circuit breakers to get the engines to hold sync. Set ‘em and forget ‘em. Or until you changed power settings. The guys who owned the company weren’t stupid. Shiny paint made no difference, and faded out quickly. Plus nobody admired the freighters bringing in their diesel and food. The people haulers got the exterior love, though.

I have a Valom kit on the way, and will use a set of Leading Edge decals that were given to me. The birds I flew were boring. One was natural tarnished aluminum, and the other was painted with a brush and roller.

Great build, John. Odd to see one in green, though. Brings back memories, and trust me, if it’s below freezing, DON’T step off the walkways. That wing IS slippery and you WILL slide all the way down to the trailing edge and shoot off the edge at about 400 mph. I did a beautiful plop on to my ass and still feel it to this very day.

Martin! Time to jump back on this.

Peter, it would take a group of skilled craftsmen less than a year to knock out a replica of the N.28. It’s gonna take them most of that time to fix the original, so when they have the fabric all torn off, now’s the time….