Clunkmeister

They should be all gone. We’ve taken steps to ditch the troll. I apologize for one sneaking past the firewalls, but on occasion it happens. If something happens down the road and if one of us aren’t around, please text me on my cell if you have my number. I’ll get it handled ASAP. My shop has been taking all my time lately, and with Joy battling her Lupus, I’ve not been around as much as I need to be.

I’m looking forward to seeing this come together. I’ve heard the Meng plastic is much softer than Wingnut’s plastic, and that Meng didn’t do as Wingnut did and spend the extra time needed to clean up the molds and remove small imperfections. Personally, I haven’t bought this kit, what with all the rumors of how it came about, but their larger scale version may be a go for me.

Acid flashbacks again. Poor Harv.

Ummmmmmmmm. NO!

I had started a thread in modeling discussion, but immediately shut it down when I saw this. Here’s what I posted over there: As I’m sure many know already, Kitty Hawk and Panda are ceasing production and will just sell off remaining inventory until it’s all gone. It comes as a shock to me personally, who has built many of their kits, and some multiple times. Glen gave a quick announcement on Facebook, and the Kitty Hawk Facebook page did as well. It’s certainly a blow to those who have worked tirelessly in recent years to give Kitty Hawk well researched designs with plenty of detail. Floyd Werner and his team have gone a long way towards giving the Modeler well researched modern US helicopter designs, and the series of Hueys, Little Birds, and the entire Sikorsky Hawk series have sold well and offer modeler builder some seriously state of the art helo kits. I’d certainly recommend buying what you want now, to avoid future internet price spikes.

Rog, the used vehicle market is screwy these days. There was a fire in one of the two factories that make computer chips for newer vehicles. As a result, new trucks are not being delivered to dealers. So the used market is going insane. I had opened up all the emoticons for reactions last year. I’ll look again to see if more were added as available.

Gaz, if you look at the pic taken behind the rear facing forward, off to the right, that’s a 57 Continental Mk.ll. Those cars were hand built and cost 10K in 1956-57, at a time the average car cost 3K. Basically, a 1950s version Deusenberg, Maybach-Zeppelin, or Bugatti.

It’s always cool to see the rood in action on these old Fords. The Continental tire isn't the coolest looking thing, but it provides a crumple zone if rear ended.

The metalwork is the Ace up the Sleeve. The car looks horrible, because the guy who had it, worked almost 18 years to bring it to this. The body was on a rotisserie and he had the body dipped and walnut blasted, welded in all new metal where needed, started doing his skim coats of filler to iron it smooth, then dropped dead of a heart attack. The chassis is completely finished. 245hp 312 Ford redone by Ted Eaton, a world renowned Y-Block guy, frame and suspension powder coated, I did the trans about 8 years ago. I put the body back on to move it. The metalwork is bloody flawless, but I know it looks hideous on the outside because he dropped dead after starting on smoothing the exterior. You see that bare section of floor? Whe entire car is like that

By this time next year, I should have turned this: Into this: Man I love a 57 Ford! Especially the Skyliner retractable hardtop. I’ve been working on mine for 8 years, and it’s about time for final paint, then the fun of installing the mechanism and adjusting the top. It’ll be the same colors as the one there copper and light tan. The car has a 245 hp 312 V8, auto trans, And full power everything.

Rog, here’s our Bel Air on Friday. I was ready to sell this pile of junk. It made me walk three miles that night. Just up and quit. Then I realized the gas gauge wasn’t working and I ran it dry! Ooooooooops! It runs real well when it has fuel in the tank

well, we shall change it for sure. There are two styles of ignition rings in the kit, and the horseshoe style is what they call for, although I’m not certain on that now, either.

Well, a bit of looking also finds a multitude of versions of the R1820 as well. Different cylinder designs postwar, and a multitude of ignition ring styles, etc. Prop governors changed depending on the prop used. The SBD used the 1820 as well, and various versions at that. Then we can get into the Ash-21 and M-71 versions.. The An-2 uses this engine, and the latest versions have been developed so thoroughly that they bear only a passing resemblance. One thing for sure, Wright painted the gearbox the wrong shade of grey through its decades of production. Wright used a totally incorrect much darker blue/grey on the gearbox, where it should have been the much lighter grey I used on mine. How dare they!

Hmmm. Kind of looks that way, doesn’t it? Quite honestly, I never checked any references while doing the engine other than blindly following the instructions. The plot thickens…

A few of the other chores. For a short fun kit, this sweet model is pretty darn decent

Ok, GREAT SUCCESS! Well, half success. Got the engine out with no damage, but I buggered the cowl, so I’ll use the redundant -2 cowl that comes with my -1 kit. That’s using the ol’ noodle! But as you can see, the seams are great, so we’ll get rid of them and then we’ll somehow fabricate something that looks like ducts for the oil cooler on the bottom, and carburetor air intake on the top. We’ll install the extra plug wires now as well. There also has to be better pics of the equipment on the gearbox. That square plastic blob looks mighty simplified. I need to look for some good reference pictures, because there’s no way on Earth that Wright racial didn’t have some form of baffling around it.

I think I’ll gingerly try to remove the engine from the rear, along with it’s bulkhead. I may regret it, but somehow, I doubt it. But that’ll give me the room I need to work the inside of the cowl correctly.

Yep, I have a secret weapon as well. A spare box of kit parts that I had to raid to replace missing parts in this kit, so I do have an entire new front section if needed. The quality of the rest of the build is decent enough to make a good case for the cowl needing to be fixed along with adding those ducts. Once I saw the missing ducts and loud, proud "LOOK AT ME, SEE THE LACK OF CARE BY THE BLIND, LAZY BUILDER" join lines, I just can't ever unsee them.

Hubert, Pappy Boyington had glowing reports on the early editions of the Buffalo, at least until the Navy loaded it all down with extra armor plate, arrestor gear, less powerful engines, and other junk. Boyington claimed the early Buffalo could outturn an A6M, which is quite the feat in and of itself. But they were slow and needed all the power they could get. The engines heated up and as a result, the pilots had to pull back on the loud-levers. The Finns figured it all out, they tore the Wrights apart and found a problem. A simple fix was installing one of the piston rings upside down, and that increased compression, lowered fuel and oil consumption, and gave it back it's lost power. They also took out all the extra, unneeded junk they thought they could do without. Extra armor plate, extra ammo, and all unneeded doodads. The Finns received only 44 Brewsters, and they fought the airplanes through the entire war, first on our side, then on the Germans side. They thought so highly of the aircraft that they actually went out and constructed a Brewster clone out of wood, to see if it would work out, but it came in way, way too heavy. One Brewster managed to rack up the highest number of enemy aircraft destroyed by one single airframe in all of aviation history. Probably totally due to how long lived they were with the Finns. I've come to the conclusion that many of our cast offs seem to do very, very well when given to nations or Units with absolutely nothing to lose. Chenault figured out the P-40 and how to fight Ki43s, A5Ms and A6Ms with it. The Soviets certainly figured out the hated P-39 and carved a huge slice through the vaunted Luftwaffe with it, and the Finns do really, really well with the despised Brewster.

I think I’ll gingerly try to remove the engine from the rear, along with it’s bulkhead. I may regret it, but somehow, I doubt it. But that’ll give me the room I need to work the inside of the cowl correctly.

Rob, it’s amazing what we allowed to pass when unconcerned. Duct work will nicely handle that issue as well. Sorry about all the sanding dust in the pics.

This has been on and off for a bunch of years now, not saying I’ll even finish it this go round, but we’ll see. A squirrel for a few days, I think. Of course, it’s the dreaded Special Hobby Brewster, and it hasn’t been a horrible build so far. I spent a lot of time on the cockpit, adding wiring, braces, cables and such, along with a multitude of Barracuda placards, and… they’re all invisible after the fuselage gets closed up. The fit on this thing is actually pretty decent, and as far as short run resin and styrene hybrid kits go, is pretty darn good. The engine was built a few years back and I had just slapped it together OOB. Since, I have installed one set of plug leads and will add the rear plug leads over the tops of the cylinders. One thing that stands out to me and now drives me nuts (I never noticed before, just slapped it together, is the inside if the cowl is absolutely devoid of engine baffling and the carb intake and oil cooler ducts are not provided at all in the kit. Just open air behind the cowl ring and the openings. The oil cooler and airbox are provided in resin on the rear of the engine and are visible through the wheel wells. No wonder the US Navy and USMC said they ran hot. So I have three options: 1. Ignore it. 2. Try to insert some shaped card stock to approximate a couple ducts, or. 3. Break the engine out and do it right, if I can avoid the dreaded crunch and tear gremlins. I think option 2 makes most sense . I also cut apart the elevators and stabilizer to hopefully give this old girl some proof of life by loosening up her stiff ways I’m playing with doing such to the rudder as well, but maybe not. Sorry about the dust. This build is old

Amazing work, Danny! I did a double take when I saw a Spitfire in British markings with wild nose art. It’s a stunner!

Hey Peter! I didn’t read all the comments yet, so maybe someone said something, but as you probably know from other build threads, the kit seems to develop big fit problems in the nose, and IF you cram in all the gun junk, it gets worse. A while ago, I taped together the nose on one in my stash and it fit well enough, but it seems like it was designed to be opened up. A bit of creative fitting, bracing, shimming, filling, sanding and rescribing will fix it. And as a bonus, it becomes extremely difficult to find room to cram in the nose weight IF you cram in the guns. I have one on the SOD, about half done, just ran out of gas. The rear fuselage is all chopped up and I’m reassembling the pieces. There’s plenty of work there. Mine will be VVS, of course. This plane was a serious Ace Maker in the hands of Russian pilots against the Luftwaffe. It took on all comers and won. Along with bombers and transports, the latest edition 109s and 190s fell in great numbers to its guns As I’m sure you know as well, despite what we have been led to believe, the Cobra was never a tank buster for the VVS. The US never supplied AP rounds VOR the 37mm, just HE, which were pretty much firecrackers against armor It was a dedicated air to air interceptor and general fighter and a so,utely shined in that role. One interesting bit of info that flies against decades of “expert” info. As the wall came down and the East regained their freedom, VVS historical info became available to the west. Cobra kills were compared to German loss records, and after the dust settled and all the numbers got added up, the lowly, much maligned P-39 Airacobra that apparently was a real slug in US hands, turned out to be the single highest scoring aircraft type from any service, at any time, in the entire history of manned aerial combat. Higher than the Bf-109, Spitfire, F6F, F4U Corsair and variants, P-51, P-47, Fw-190 and all its multitude of variants, higher than all others, even the superlative Fokker D.Vll from the second dreaded Fokker Scourge. Kind of hard to believe, but it’s true. Larry Bell’s mid engined laughingstock that the AAF tried and successfully succeeded in neutering right from the get go had the last laugh I’m looking forward to seeing this come together. It’s a mojo sucker, but it’ll be worth it when done, and Kitty Hawk kits, when finished, seem to do VERY well at contests.