Clunkmeister

Some meatballs and stripes courtesy of the trusty DSPAIE circle cutter. Thats about as fancy a mask cutter as I’ve ever used.

The few minutes spent on it makes all the difference.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

Well, I’m relieved. It appears my source had a case of fumblethumbs. Nobody’s immune from that!

Will I need my decal stretcher?

In 1/33 scale. Thats how I received the notice, so maybe this is one of those “almost fits” sheets? But I hope Dr Eli is up and feeling better.

Peter, come to think of it, YOU’D look real good in a 1:1 scale T-Bird. They’ve come WAY down in value these last few years

Yep. Against my grain it is, but this will be part of an in depth review so yes, it’s 100% OOB. However, I just HAD to attack that oh-so-wrong windscreen, so what you see here is the Windscreen, Cloudy Edition. I’m up to 8000 grit so far.

Mighty cool. A buddy had his 57 out tonight.

PW, please send me your address. Thanks!

They are both great kits, and although the Val is a bit more of a technical and involved build, they both build up nice.

Hah yep. But I’m trying to do a 100% OOB build, and this makes it pretty tough to do.

I asked them why they chose the F-14, and duhhh, the answer I got was “because Maverick flew one”. It being a first class build didn’t hurt, either. But they loved that little Zerstorer. I think most here would agree.

Honestly Carl, it’s simply a matter of sanding (trueing) the surfaces until you’re happy with them. If you build resin, you’re already familiar with the process. Generally, on a flat wing you can use a 8 1/2 x 11” piece of sandpaper and drag the entire part across, but pay attention that you don’t put too much pressure on one area. Go slowly, evenly, and carefully. Once you’re close, finish with sanding sticks. But check your progress regularly. You DON’T want to go too far. You’ll be surprised at what you find. On short run kits, most likely you’ll see the sandpaper hitting the trailing edges about 1/2” inside the edge. Seeing that for the first time is a sobering experience, and ignoring it will cause unfixable gaps on the trailing edge. All the clamping in the world won’t help you there. Your only hope is to fix the problem first. By trueing the surface. After that, thinning the trailing edges is simply a matter of going a little bit farther until you’re happy with the thickness.

Got this in the mail today, a gorgeous prop hub, 3D printed by Mike Swinburne. HUGE improvement over the soft kit part. This may be a new Bareacuda piece…

Come on, Trumpeter, seriously? Time to peel it off, mask and paint.

A bit of progress. I found a few little spots I had to fix. If carrying a torpedo, the bomb ai er doors are closed. The fit is terrible and some sanding and fitting is needed.

Stunning result, Rob! You have every reason to be incredibly proud.

The Let’s Get Wet GB has officially come to a close, and by absolute unanimous consent, the winner is PanzerWomble with his insanely amazing Zerstorer. Second place was also unanimous. GusMac with his Tomcat. That’s is a GREAT build! PanzerWomble will choose between either a Trumpeter Devastator and an Infinity Val. The unchosen kit will go to GusMac. Personally guys, I do like the idea of the kids choosing. They seriously look at what they like, and it takes everything else off the table. And a bit of a prize at the end makes it all worthwhile to me. I’ll wait to hear from PW, and I already have Gus’s addy. Thanks for doing this, folks! It makes me feel great to see the level of participation we have gotten to. Again, thank you VERY much, and as soon as y’all are ready, we can do it again! E

I revisited my control surfaces today. I had way too thick trailing edges, a d the halves were starting to separate, so off they came, they got split, and on to the sanding board they went. MUCH better now.

Hubert, obviously you’re not going to finish this in time, but you, sir are receiving a very honorable mention in your gracious attempt to give this a good start. So much so that assuming you continue right along with this build, once I’m finished my LSM obligated review build and the couple or 3 I have almost finished, I’m going to join you with a build of the same kit. You have absolutely inspired me here.

GB rules state that an RFI must be posted before midnight CDT. That’s Central Daylight Time. It’s now 21:29. Mickey’s big hand is on the 6 and Mickey’s little hand is halfway between the 9 and 10. There is a new, unopened Trumpeter TBD Devastator, and a sold out everywhere Infinity Val riding on this, guys.

I had seen that as well, but I missed the big one in the middle. Duhhhh. Japanese instrumentation is a mystery to me, although some stuff is pretty much the same anywhere. We can straight up say this looks like a GREAT kit

Hahaha. The dreaded LSM forever GB. Nope, no such luck. Tomorrow it ends, y’all. C’est la vie. So ist das nunmal wenn man ein devoter Diener ist To jest to droga to jest Y esa es la forma en que es Trying to show some flavor of internationalism, and yes, I meant how I said it in German 😂🤣🤣😂🤣😇

Yep, and you’d read about how even US submarines, destroyers, and MTB’s would watch their fish thump into the side of their target with no more than a clang. The perfect alert! The air dropped fish were even better. They had to be dropped at the perfect altitude and airspeed to give the enemy a nice, fat, juicy target, many would fail to run once in the water, others would detonate upon impact with the water, others would veer off course and fail to track, others would run deep and cruise right under their target without even a magnetic detonation. The wood box fins on the Midway fish were an ad hoc way to possibly improve accuracy. So I’m not sure it had anything to do with the aircraft itself. The Brits used slow biplanes through most of the war, with great success. The Japanese used a slow, unarmored, fixed gear monoplane with great success as well. And they both had decent fish. We didn’t.