Clunkmeister

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.

Tony, let me know when you get it. I’d like to slide over and get a feel for it all.

Haha. Yep. Alexey stays in contact, though. I recommend smaller orders. It won’t take as long.

To me, in the 50s, this has always been the epitome of high style. 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner. It makes that Bel Air look positively dumpy slide the hardtop back into the trunk and you have the ultimate cool car. I’d lose that goofy Continental spare wheel though, factory option or not, it looks stupid

Rog, your Ford Falcons down under were some serious performance cars. Here, a Falcon was basically a wimpy 6 cylinder granny mobile. There were a few Falcons that got 260 and some even got 289 V8s with factory 4 barrel carbs and a 4 speed stick shift, and THOSE cars ran like scalded arse cats. Oh, and if the Bel Air can ever get squared away and reliable, you’re welcome to take it for a spin when you show up around these parts, assuming you learn to drive on the correct side of the road, that is. I absolutely refuse to put a modern powertrain in the Bel Air. It’s got it’s original 283 Chevrolet V8 and a Powerglide automatic, which motors it down the road in high style.

You haven’t called, ya goober. Joy’s in bed, her Lupus is kicking her butt. Plus fighting a cold. We’ll come up there one of these weekends, maybe do a car show/cruise.

And a 64 GTO tri power 4 speed stick…. Unrestored original car. This was one seriously nice Goat. And this sweet little Deuce sedan has a 10 gallon fuel tank. At our fuel stop, it took 10.5 gallons. And of course, the damned Chevy was a NO START but a big drooler and leaker, so it stayed put. We refer to this one as the Exxon Valdez.

A couple weeks ago, we went on a 200+ mile tour with a bunch of other old car geeks, ran around to 6 small towns, paraded through towns, then ended the day with Texas BBQ. It wasn’t without incident, as I always seemed to be stuck behind the slowest car. We made sure he go the “Best of slow” award. Over that dam, I let that 312 breathe and run, and it quickly buried the needle. There were some odd noises coming from the passenger seat…. It certainly has way more engine than it does brakes or suspension.

Good to see the Fox is out of hibernation.

Trying to make something cool from this heap. We have cunning plan….

I paid with PayPal…. As Andrey to send you an invoice. His work is phenomenal, but just understand that his stuff is handmade and he’s a 1 man band, so delivery takes a long, long time. I’d say best to order in smaller amounts. The last big order I placed took 9 months. Communication was great, but Andrey told me up front it would be several months. Shipping from Ukraine wasn’t bad, a couple weeks. AMUR Reaver is like that too: awesome product, but it’s handmade and coming from Russia. About the same time as Ukraine for shipping What DOES take forever is shipping to Australia. GOOD GRIEF!

This is one of those moments when you say OK to 1/48. It’s one heckuva kit from what I’ve heard!

ZM is impressing me. Revell is astonishing me. Tamiya is making me scratch my head.

I do like that they’re offering a wing fold option for the Helldiver. That’s one thing that was missing from the resin kit.

I’ll certainly be comparing this to the resin version, a d have one on pre order as well. If this is any kind of a decent kit, it’ll be crazy popular in the USA.

I’m joining this watch party a bit late, so I’m way, way up in the nosebleed section where the air is rare. Got my oxygen mask on though, so I’m good. Stunning build so far, Gazz, especially the strengthening of the struts. My one Roden Albatros D.l resulted in me scratching struts from brass and aluminum tubes and wire. It worked well, especially after bracing with mono line. I’m going to try your method though. It looks much less tedious.