Clunkmeister

An-225 in 1/72 for the WIN!!!

IL-76 series are beautiful aircraft.

Brilliant work, Wouter! I've seen the finished pictures, but for the first time I read all the way through the steps of construction. Your problem solving skills are extraordinary! Legendary perhaps?

OK, I get it. Yellowstone was neat, although the fact that were driving around on the floor of a 60 mile wide paper thin lava dome never quite left my conscience. The awesome power of nature sitting right underfoot is very apparent there. Come to think of it, one road we were on had the pavement turn liquid about 4 hours after we passed by. Apparently a fissure opened up and melted the roadway. the folks on the other side had to backtrack for a 100 mile detour to get around.

Old Faithful is in Yellowstone. That's not Jackson Hole, is it? We saw Old Faithful 5 years ago.

Sort of like Chattanooga being an inexpensive place to visit. Unless of course there's 10,000 rabid plastic model hoarders coming to town in August

Nope, McGeehee's catfish in Marietta, Ok. We found this place quite by chance a number of years back. They had a grass strip for small planes, and we dropped in to see what the fuss was about. We got fed like kings, so we made sure to come back at least once a year. A couple years ago their strip got flooded, then they turned it into a hayfield due to rising insurance costs. So now, you have to drive, and it's kind of out of the way to get there. Helicopters still drop in fairly often though, so they still get some air traffic, but when we flew in a couple times there must have been 40 planes there on a Saturday afternoon. Good times, and the best fried catfish within 1000 miles.

Well I was certainly late to the table on this one. Thanks for posting, Smitty! memorial day, as we know, is not to thank a Vet for his Service, but to pause and honor those who gave it all so the rest of us could live.

Umm, yeah. At first I didn’t know of what you were speaking. Oops.

Thanks Cees! I’ll break out the riveter then and add some square dimples.

Nice finds! Those early battleships are cool. Back when naval designers still thought in terms of broadsides, etc. the fully swiveling main battery was still an idea yet to be hatched.

I’m always looking for cool kits of important milestone aircraft, and here’s two more for the bench. Yes, I have a soft spot for civilian transports, and both these kits need plenty of kitbashing and scratching... just my thing. The big Farman has been on my list for a long time, and was a potential scratch build candidate. But then I find this Azur kit. Looking at it, it appears accurate enough in shape, but seriously rough moldings in the box. A scratchbuild might still be in the offing. And the little 247... a real bridge between Fokker, Stinson, and Ford airliners to the modern day. Sometimes I wonder if Hubert and I are the only ones who love this kind of stuff...

And then, wheels for my I-16 build.

Oh goody! Upon our return from exile, we have found some goodies in our mailbox. Wheels for my truck have arrived. From a super secret location in Soviet Canuckistan.

Inner gear doors appear mighty bare.... My Spidey-sense is tingling. There’s subterfuge afoot....

Good grief, Gazz! That look phenomenal! I’ve been building WW1 stuff for years, and even today, my stuff doesn’t come out that nice.

Nice choice!

I keep looking at those rough hand painted crosses and numbers over the Zimmerit. And we are always so precise....

All the beautiful structural tubing and oil tanks in the outboard nacelles is invisible when built, so like every other unneeded thing, I leave it out.

The bench is getting its familiar rubble look back as I go crazy on this thing.

More silliness. Correcting the radiator outlet ramp oops. Brought out the drill, followed by the Sprue nippers. The first one took an hour, the second took 15 minutes. Two down, two to go.

My CZ was on my hip, though. Copperheads and Cottonmouths are always an ever present threat. Also Timber Rattlers

Got back early enough to pay our respects to those who Served and didn’t return.

We drove 20 miles to the Red River and found the best fried catfish in Oklahoma. The view overlooking the Red River Valley.