Clunkmeister

Damn! That’s brutal. Everytime I see a fast moving civilian helicopter around here, I say a silent prayer. CareFlight is VERY busy around here. I’ve seen sled dogs struck by propellers of taxiing airplanes, and it’s an absolutely brutal scene.

Looking awesome as usual, Peter. Nice, nice, nice! I DO love your choice of pilots. I met Tex Hill many years ago, and he was as salty as they come. He has a Middle School named after him in San Antonio, and he’s a real Texas Legend, much like Happy Jack Ilfrey.

I meet a lot of “Vets” these days who like to “add on” to their Service Records” and tell me they were an operator. Every single time, I look them square in the eyes and say “for AT&T or Southern Bell?” Lying sacks of crap.

You guys funny! I laid a quick coat of Sea Blue on the top. That’s it. Now we do the all important middle color

And, just for Harv… Some airplane porn, just for him..

Martin sure knows how to slap a guy down with massive trauma and self loathing, and then shock him back to life again. Honestly, I’d rather build 100 Anigrand and Amodel bubbly resin kits than a Trumpeter P-40. Especially now with all the great options out there for P-40s… AND, to get me cussing right at first, he wrapped the box for shipping using transparent blue cellophane. I started the death wishes the moment it showed up on my doorstep. I figured it was payback for the Chernobyl Boy incident in Phoenix.

The prop is friction fit on. Because it looks bloody awesome!

Not ready for public consumption yet…. Hopefully in a couple days we’ll do the Intermediate Blue, then start fading it out

In the paint shop. Stay tuned

And ignore the Helldiver in the background. It’s in the paint shop.

But wait, there’s more… Martin said that friends don’t give friends Trumpeter… He then quotes Isaiah 64, which immediately got my attention. Then there is Unicorn Cat… standing watch over a Wingnut kit

I have received a Christmas gift from my good friend Martin.

Only one oil leak? What about the oil gusher back on the sideways fan thingy back on the long pointy end?

Well, they’re shot full of holes of various calibers, so I’d expect they don’t help. 🤣 I did read that the holes were added to cure a buffeting problem while diving. So they obviously did something for airflow.

No it was an original design. T-37, Tutor, and Jet Provost all came out around the same time and all followed similar schools of thought. The prevailing train of though on jet training back then was a side by side arrangement and straight wings. I do remember reading that the goal in designing the Tutor was to mimic the P-51 in size, performance, and handling, but with pure jet power. When the design was started, the P-51 was seen as an ideal stepping off point into the cockpits of high performance jets. The Tutor used a single GE J85 turbojet, which was also used in the F-5 series as well as the T-37. The J85 was and is the biggest drawback to the Tutor, and is by far the leading cause of airframe loss. I used to do supply runs to Moose Jaw, Sk, home of 2 FTS, and there were always 100 Tutors on the line and another 50 in the shop, split in two behind the wing with their engines pulled and being rebuilt. I once had an old CF-5 jock tell me that if it wasn’t for the second engine, the RCAF would have lost their entire CF-5 fleet within 10 years of introduction. The Tutors were less stressed, not having an afterburner and all, but every year it seemed like they lost one or two due to engine failure.

They ARE the centerpiece of a dive bomber, aren’t they?

A lot of naysayers out there on the web over this release, but for the most part, these folks are the ones crying for an obscure 109 sub variant or such. This kit should do very well for Kinetic, although I’d much rather see it in 1/32

It’ll be small in 1/48, smaller than we’re used to, but it’s been a glaring omission from the list of modern jet trainer kits.

Thanks y’all! I’ve been working on the flaps, and found out that they’re a ton of work, but building the PE, or heavily reworking the kit flaps with really help the look of the thing.

Since we allow 1/48 in our midst on LSM, this is an interesting, long overdue, and very welcome announcement from Kinetic Models. A brand new tool CT-114 Tutor in 1/48 scale should be in our midst hopefully in 2023. The list of Nations that flew the Tutor is low: Canada and Malaysia, but to those on this side of the Pond, it’s been an extremely common sight over North America since the 1960s. Anyone who has seen the RCAF Snowbirds perform has seen the Tutor, and since the 1960s, it was the RCAF advanced trainer until replaced by the Texan ll and the BAE Hawk.

Rigging isn’t a hard thing. It’s simply one line at a time. Start in the center and work outward. Not many people agree with my take on rigging: to me, it’s structural and it needs to be tough and capable of supporting the weight of the model. I’ll forever shout the benefits of scale sized mono line.

Many of the issues with the aircraft weren’t the fault of Curtiss per se. Curtiss wanted to lengthen the rear fuselage a few feet to aid stability, but the Navy absolutely refused to allow it, citing space concerns, yet the Navy absolutely insisted that the aircraft needed to meet performance numbers that dictated it’s size. Ironic considering the size of the Grumman Avenger….. Then, the Navy would change mission specs halfway through development, etc, etc. Plus with the wartime rush, once the design was finalized, it was rushed into Service long before it had been fully debugged. If development time hadn’t been wasted screwing around with changing design specs, the aircraft would have had more time for testing and modifications. But what finally emerged was tough, reliable, and capable, if less stable due to the Navy’s refusal to allow the tail to be lengthened. Greece and France both flew them quite successfully after the War ended, and even took them to war again.

That you won a model of one of those shaky, vibrating death trap flingwing whirlybirds is only fitting. 🤣

Exactly, Peter. There are a few very nice kits that can be built OOB with no issues. Tamiya, Hasegawa, some Trumpeter, and even some ROG come to mind. To me, most of the others have various buildability issues. Short run kits just amplify it to some extent.

I’m starting to really, really like MRP paint.