Clunkmeister

Carl, I’m so incredibly disappointed in you, man. I’ve truly lost faith! THAT BENCH!?! I’ve never once seen you with such a criminally clean bench in all my days. It’s bleeding well spotless! How dare you! I find you guilty and hereby sentence you to permanent bench time until that bench is suitably cluttered with only a 10” spot left to build. 😂😂😂

Yeah I don’t see ZM ever doing a P-38, but I admit, I was surprised when Tamiya released theirs in 48. It would be amazing in 32, a d would certainly light my fire for Tamiya in a big way.

Yeah it was certainly a tool used to keep the colonials in line

I think so, yes. They were all over the Empire, keeping His Majesty’s Loyal Subjects toeing the line. Quite honestly, I’m sure I know more than a few gentlemen my age or older from various parts of Asia Minor who most likely despise the sight of them as symbol of the heavy hand of The Crown. But, that’s politics. What I’m interested in is how it’s a great kit of an little, (ok, Never) modeled subject. And typical of what comes out of our two closely related Polish resin kit manufacturers, it is a gorgeous model. Łukasz has also really embraced 3D printing as a way to get crisper details from the multitude of small parts on a typical biplane kit. His approach I’d brilliant. It makes precise assembly easier for a modeler with limited skills with these, and reduces parts count greatly as well. Not really the right place for it, but a little blurb is doable. The Wapiti was basically meant as a “Better DH.9a”. A new half metal, half wood fuselage, air cooled radial engine, and wings and tail were standard wood parts nicked right off the DH.9a. Later production switched from wood to metal as well. The Air Ministry had specifically requested that proposals for the new design use as many standard “off the shelf” DH.9a components as possible. So it was evolutionary, not revolutionary. And as with the DH.9a, it needed long range, a good bomb carrying capability, defensive armament, and provision to carry spare wear items as required, such as wheels, spark plugs, oil and filters, magnetos, etc, along with basic hand tools to conduct repairs in the field. Finally gone was the critical but fragile radiator, pipes, etc for the Liberty V12. I can understand the wisdom of that choice.

This thing is HUGE! I’m looking forward to try my hand at this.

I have as well, and the price is right. That Squadron review’s music was kinda strange.

Back on the bench! Hoo Rah!

A bit of picking away at this kit.

I thank you greatly for that comment. Sincerely. I’m glad some people enjoy it I try to write stuff a little differently than most, in other words, I ramble on. As an ex professional aviator, I have a passion for aircraft, especially oddball aircraft. I truly love adding a bit of historical fact, and even if the absolute facts are a bit murky, I’ll fudge the difference and state what was most likely. The absolute fact that the design team of what became the Aichi Type 99 or D3A followed the same engineering research papers as were used by Reginald Mitchell for what became the Spitfire is incredibly fascinating, and is an absolute fact. And very few people know that. The two types have much in common with each other despite being developed on the other side of the world from each other, and for quite opposite uses. I urge you to try one of these kits. It’s a fun build so far. My attention to detail is a bit odd. I firmly go by “if you can’t see it, it doesn’t matter” train of thought. I build closed up, ready for flight. I’ll open canopies, attach weapons, load belts into gun breeches, etc, but the access panels are closed. Mr Zoukei Mura must hate me 😂. I build what I can see, and ignore what I can’t.

Everything’s a bit of a battle, but a great reward awaits. notice the convenient handhold for priming?

It appears that for now at least, we’re being spared the smoke in Texas. I’ve heard they’ve got half the Canadian and US bomber crews running 24/7, and fire crews from all Provinces and 35 States. It’s not for a lack of action, that’s for sure. Some crews, teams, and bombers have to be retained for local fires. I expect Australia will send some as well. Bot the US and Canada send crews there during our winters.

I’m not sure we’ll ever see a P-38 from a mainline Japanese manufacturer for one simple reason. Hint: he went to school at Harvard and took a road trip across this great land. And he never wanted to go to war with America.

Thanks, Kevin. I’m loving this kit more and more every day. Infinity has a real winner here, and as long as the loudmouths who love to bash on short run kits get ignored, this kit will do great. I’m going to say that this may be one of the easiest building short run kits out there. The worst part being the wing to fuselage joint, but if you take your time and don’t allow the fuselage bulkheads to expand anything, this won’t give anyone with a few kits under their belts any issues at all.

I found this interesting article online, and it may be a simple way to tart that hub up, at least until a good resin replacement part comes along. https://airplanes3d.wordpress.com/2016/05/28/modeling-hamilton-standard-counterweight-propeller/

A few more thoughts on this Infinity kit for those who are not following my ongoing build of this kit. This kit is literally head and shoulders over any of the previous Infinity kits. It’s turning into a semi relaxing, extremely rewarding build of a very intelligently thought out, planned, and engineered short run kit. Yes, because it IS short run, there will be parts clean up, mating surface trueing, and even a bit of parts thinning needed. Flash IS present, especially on some smaller parts and the control surfaces. There are mold mating lines that need careful scraping off, and of course there are no assembly guide pins. So slowly, go carefully, text fit, test fit, test fit 3 steps ahead while building an assembly, read my build thread and I give a few alternate build sequences that may help, and I believe that because I am almost finished the airframe, I can safely say that this kit is quite achievable by any modeler with a few mainline kits under their belt. This kit may be a great candidate for a modeler’s first short run kit, it’s that decent. For the most part, things fit, and fit better than any short run kit I’ve ever built, except the Special Hobby Buffalo, and that’s only almost an equal to this. It doesn’t have separate control surfaces, so it loses points from me there. The only reason I’d say do the Buffalo first is the included resin parts, and the smaller size. You need to buy any resin you want to add to the Infinity kit, although it’s not really needed. Plus, on the Infinity kit, and this is a BIG plus, ALL control surfaces are separate. No cutting, filling, manufacturing, filling, sanding, filling, sanding, scribing needed. 😂

Ok, one more little tidbit tonight. Several days ago, I assembled the controllable pitch prop hub. It’s a two piece affair, with a barrel added afterwards. I thinned and carefully trued the mating surfaces to give circular blade openings, and lined up the clamps and NBW moldings before committing to glue. It came out marvelous, especially after adding the very prominent hub barrel on the front end. The prop blades needed sanding, thinning, and edge clean up, but to me, look more or less correct for the D3A1 variant. The very last A1s and all the improved A2s used a prop spinner to hide oth oh-so-Golden-Age looking Hamilton controllable pitch hub unit. I SIMPLY PRESS FIT THE BLADES IN PLACE FOR THESE PHOTOS My thoughts on the hub are as such: I didn’t have a lot of hope here, as styrene can only do so much. Tamiya, Kotare, or ICM high pressure molding could certainly achieve a much better result, but for Short Run, this is pretty bloody decent. The three hub clamps with their respective NBW hardware actually look decent. As long as you carefully clean up the flash and then true the mating surfaces. The mechanisms bob weights are a bit of a miss. The representation is there as simple discs, but al look at any of our gorgeous Golden Age racers, especially ships like the Northrop Gamma will show you that there is much more to be achieved here. I’m going to valiantly attempt to procure a miracle courtesy of my #11 blade, a jewelers loupe, (ok, my Optivisor), a couple good pictures, and a solid set of my tongue. Failing that, I’ll try some brass. This is one area where a resin cast multiple part assembled unit will absolutely SHINE. And maybe PE bobweights? To me, the prop hub is one of the coolest parts of this plane. It completely fits with those beautiful elliptical surfaces. Don’t get me wrong, the kit part looks great from 4 ft away, and will work perfectly fine for a shelf display model, but I’m a true Golden Age Racer guy at heart, (My first short run kit was a Williams Bros. Wendell Williams that I super detailed back in the late 70s) and to me, these links to an earlier era need to be see, hopefully up close and in all their glory. That’s precisely why I used the resin extra cost kit for that glorious 14 cylinder radial and exhaust, even though the kit parts would be kinda OK, even though everything from the sides and rear will be invisible.

What I’m going to explore in a future build is making some open cowl flaps. But I expect the aftermarket may be well on their way already.

And last but not least for tonight. One of the D3A Val’s signature features: those huge wheel spats attached below that gorgeous elliptical wing. The Aichi Type 99 was designed and developed using the exact same aerodynamic theories and formulae that Reginald J. Mitchell used when designing what would become the Spitfire. The prevailing thought at the time was that a smooth elliptical wing designed to a set curvature would give maximum lift, least drag, and allow for decent wing area and extremely high maneuverability. The Spitfire achieved all of that, as did the Type 99. The Japanese aircraft obviously wasn’t designed for speed, but it proved to be extremely nimble, and surprised more than a few unsuspecting Allied pilots who got drawn in by the mild looking plodding bomber. Given the availability more power to allow for up gunning and up armoring, the D3A was seriously considered as what could have been a very nasty fighter bomber. But as built, it would have needed a lot of work to make mud moving a survivable affair. The plane just wasn’t built for it. The wheel spats, with some careful edge cleanup sanding and wheel opening thinning, went together great. But a bit of putty was needed in the seams as I didn’t want to thin myself into an Evergreen outward expansion. But even with the putty, no panel lines were harmed in the production of this exposé

OK, now, the other nicely done thing I found today. Take the time to fit, sand and fiddle with the stabilizer halves. They need a bit of thinning, and some clean up, but the method of attachment is brilliant. A stub spar is glued into the fuselage. The instructions have you mount it during fuselage assembly, but you CAN save it for after it’s together. One less thing to get in the way when aligning the halves. I found this out when I dutifully inserted it into one half, slipped the other half over it, and then, while taping the halves in alignment, it dutifully gravity dutifully slid it out to plop down on to my bench. 😙 The fuselage has some nice scale-like flange fillets between the fuselage and stabilizers. The stab halves fit INSIDE the fillets, AND, if you carefully fit them on, they’ll butt up against the flanges, giving a wonderful scale effect. Of course ai went a bit far in a couple spots, and will gently and very carefully fill with Evergreen. This is a VERY nice bit of design engineering that I can happily applaud. And, if done as I say, not as I did, it’ll thrill you with its precise scale accuracy. But remember, you’re still working with thick Short Run plastic, so make sure you thin the edges as normal. That goes for all flying surface edges. Edge thickness is often way over scale, but can be a bit wavy on the mating edges. I try to always always keep a full sheet of 220 taped to my bench for sanding big parts.

If you look here, you can see how the oil cooler comes together on the fuselage bottom, you can see how this front bottom area is critical. Mine is nowhere near perfect, Athena there are plenty of gaps between the firewall and the fuselage sides, which resulted from me goobering up the first firewall. 😡 Totally due to me getting ahead of myself and cementing it into place slightly out of line. That in turn cocks up the engine, and borks the oil cooler alignment. (I hate autocorrect, it autocorrected to Culo, not cool for all y’all Spanish speakers.) How does Apple get Culo from Cooler? 😵‍💫 Me partí el culo cuando me contaron el chiste. You can see how important it is to take the time to assure the wing bottom and firewall all line up. Maybe consider attaching the firewall when you do the wing. It may save you from my almost trainwreck. And a close up inside, as seen through the exhaust openings, where you can see how it slips in, right up to its lip.

Well, the fun continues. When you build this kit, it quickly becomes apparent that the designers and engineers have put a lot of thought into this kit, and it’s assembly method. The engine plugs into the firewall, as does the multiple component oil cooler and it’s housing. The cowl then plugs into the oil cooler, and allows the builder to adjust the cowl angle precisely. The instruction drawings seem to suggest that you attach the engine into the cowl first, and then mount it as an assembly. DON’T DO THAT. Instead, first attach the oil cooler to the fuselage bottom. Then, attach the complete engine. After that is on correctly and two your satisfaction, finally mount the cowl TO THE OIL COOLER HOUSING, NOT ThE ENGINE. ****** Take the time to make sure the engine is sitting correctly and with a proper thrust line by slightly sanding the keyed ring mount on the rear of the accessory section as necessary. Don’t assume anything, because that firewall may not be 100% in line. It’s completely invisible afterwards and simply serves as an engine mount. If you follow my way, and I’m ASSUMING that you’re test fitting the entire time here, (right?), you’ll have a very precise assembly with absolutely perfect alignment, in one of the most visible areas of the model. This preciseness can be a real rarity for short run kits without the intrepid builder embarking on a boatload of extra curricular work. The assembly sequence I mentioned to follow is too dang easy, almost Tamiya precise, which, for sadists like me, truly sucks. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Yes, a couple of the pics are old, taken during test fitting, and the cowl lip has since been cleaned up.

I read that as well. The industry is fickle. BUT, nobody makes the basic stuff we all need like Barracuda does. Plus, Corsair and Mustang placards. Nobody else would have dreamed up those. And they sell them by the crate, I’m sure.

Well, with Trumpeter dropping a brand new 1/32 kit on the market, (Devastator), the cynic in me is expecting the anticipated trainwreck, and Roy will have his hands full pumping stuff out for this kit. I can say already that the main wheels are, (only one guess allowed) yep, rubber, so there’s #1. Then apparently the bombs look closer to the Inspector Clouseau of La Sûreté Territoriale de Paris’s round gunpowder filled black mortar bombs with a sputtering fuze that he’d always dig up than standard US Navy GP aerial bombs,… soooooo…..

Looking awesome, Bill! I built the radials for mine a couple years back, and stopped…. I’m not surprised about having to sand the back of the panel, it seems on every kit, adding PE or 3D fronts really screws it all up. But hey, that’s the challenge, right? Im glad PE’s around for these, as Quinta’s getting real hit and miss these days. Damned war! 🤬

Well here we are again. Still a press-fit, but a bit better engine look, IMHO. Nothing a few minutes of airbrush time and a steady hand couldn’t fix. I’m really liking my new Grex.