DocRob

I browsed through my photos from a visit in Chino, California some years ago and found fewer pics than I thought, sorry Peter. These are from a -J: ...and these are from a -L Cheers Rob

Nice loot Carl, I'd be interested, how the new cutting tool works, I tried different tools for cutting curves, but none have worked satisfactory. I own one with a rotating blade, which is angled, to drag it, but it only works fluidly with larger radii. Cheers Rob

Easily done. Martin. The Speakers are Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Grand. I own them since my Berlin days and they are a statement to musicality. The three bass cone layout guarantees a tight and fast bass of the kind I like it. Not seen on the pic is another important hearing equipment, two Eames Lounge Chairs, which keep long hearing sessions comfortable, in fact, they are like an exo-skeleton. My setup is pure stereo, no room-dang-Dolby-server stuff. We make concessions to good sounding equipment, but the room has to be liveable at least. No egg cartons on the wall . Cheers Rob

No need to be jealous, other than you have lots of spare time for seeking after the right fitting components, spending a lot of time adjusting the equipment, experimenting with about everything. It adds a new world of challenges to modelling . Buying is only one little part of the journey. Cheers Rob

Since yesterday, I'm a bit distracted from modeling. After a four month odyssey, my new tonearm and cartridge for my good old Transrotor Fat Bob turntable arrived. The old setup sported a Transrotor modified Rega tonearm and an Audio Technica VM-760 moving magnet cartridge. A good combo, but I always had the feeling, it's a bit of a letdown for the Transrotor, especially the arm. Old setup with dust on the needle : The new setup, which I mounted and adjusted yesterday, has a Sorane SA 1.2 tonarm and a Pasemation PP-200 moving coil cartridge, booth oozing Japanese building and engineering perfection. The combination is a dreamtime on paper, which means by compliance and low frequency resistance and the first hearing sessions showed, it's also in reality. I'm blown away by the clarity and separation of instruments. It's not like jumping into hyperspace from the good old setup, but every aspect of music reproduction is a bit better, which makes the whole hearing experience completely leveled up. Some month ago, I also made an update with my phono pre-amp, substituting my good old Lehmann Black Cube with the Aurorasound Vida Prima. A quirky retro reminiscent device, which no wonder is also build by a Japanese producer. This also was a great step forward, leaving the slightly Teutonic sounding Lehmann behind in terms of musicality. Except the German build Transrotor, my entire phono setup is now Japanese equipped, and I'm no longer a searcher, but found my dream team for playing my precious vinyls. Cheers Rob

So far, there are two WIP's out there, Ernie. Best way to evaluate a kit I guess. I never build a Spitfire and have only 1/48 Eduards in stash and may help myself to one of these. That counts as a maybe with a strong 'yes' bias. Cheers Rob

Who else could have managed to fabricate a well engineered, good fitting and well detailed P-38 than Tamiya. I was a bit surprised, to see you start this WIP, but now I understand. Stress relief is important, when the mojo is flowing less viscous with some demanding builds. At last we are building for fun, aren't we? I just finished the same kind of stress reliever with the fantastic SBS resin kit of the Caudron racer, but not knowing the company before, I was not prepared to see such a well designed product and having these amount s of fun with it. Your pilots workplace looks great and the P-38 is one of my favorites, so I'm eager to see your progress Peter. I have two of these in stash, a -J and your -f and look forward to build them. Now I will have a nice template for doing so. I have some more pics, if you like, I will have to look for them, but this as a teaser. Cheers Rob

Wow, looks absolutely fantastic Martin. Take care that there are no oil stains on your Jeep, the grade of realism your Spit shows, she must be leaking like a real one . Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, as reward, I ordered this beauty today among some other well needed supplies. Cheers Rob

Thank you Hubert, it tied the room together, like the Dude said in 'The Big Lebowski' . Cheers Rob

Post Scriptum to a finished build. Hubert addressed, what was gnawing with me all the time. The prominent fasteners of the engine cowling in their high shine appearance. After trying different methods, I found one working satisfactory but it was delicate. I adhered strips of Bare Metal Foil over the area, pushed and turned a sharpened toothpick into the holes and then carefully removed the foil with the toothpick still pushed into the hole, tell me about finger gymnastics . Now I can put this build onto the shelf and find my sleep without having to care about this brainbug. Cheers Rob

Toothpick was the keyword Hubert, but I already found the solution before your last post, but pondering about your initial fastener post. I adhered a tiny strip of Bare Metal Foil onto the fastener row and inserted a sharpened toothpick into each fastener hole and ripped off the surrounding foil with tweezers and a scalpel, while holding the toothpick in place. This way, I worked fastener for fastener along the rows and it worked. Pics tomorrow, when I finish side two. Sometimes a little kick ass helps to ignite the lame brain, thanks for that . Cheers Rob

Don't think, I haven't thought about that Hubert, but I like, when someone put the finger into the wound . I considered brush dotting, tried to punch small dots of foil, dummy tried a marker, but all lead to nothing or destruction. I've not given up on the fasteners and when I find a solution, i will show it. Cheers Rob

Good point Peter, when I painted my Ford GT Mk. II, I had rubbed trough the paint easily, using the Tamiya polishing compounds. I had to respray the body, a thing I really hate to do. Cheers Rob

A member on MSW dug these photos up. Especially the color pic showing a big difference in shininess between the blue paint and canopy, indicating a not very glossy paintjob. Cheers Rob

Thank you Gary, I thought about your Focke racer, while doing mine. I will keep your ideas about buffing compounds in mind for when time comes. For the Caudron, I looked at pictures and found the paintjob shouldn't be too shiny. I don't think, it was polished to the max, but these photos might have been retouched, who knows. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, the green one is still in the shopping cart and it will not race to my place . I pondered for a while, because it's 1/72, but I guess, it's about the same size like the Caudron. I don't have a display shelf, it's more of a storage and these racers don't eat up a lot of space. Cheers Rob

Nope Hubert, this one - Gee Bee R6H QED 1/72 scale Plastic Passion SBS-PP04 | SBS Model - online shop, models, armor accessories Cheers Rob

I couldn't resist, as racers seem to let me go fast . Decals went on beautifully and luckily there are only four of them. I glued in the propeller blades and went through the painful task of denting all the chrome cowling holes with a toothpick. I will need some finishing touches, but then the beautiful Caudron is done. The kit was near perfect and an absolut fun to build. This will not be my last racing plane, there is another green one in the pipeline. Cheers Rob

I finally added the undercarriage, which is a mix out of brass casted wheel struts, resin struts and three PE pars per side plus the resin wheel of course. Assembling the struts was easy, but the photoetched parts were a bit difficult to position, though the manufacturer etched some marks, where the gluing points are, luckily. Tomorrow I will add the prop blades and decals and the blue beauty will be eye candy in my display shelf. Cheers Rob

There is a review of the 1/48 incarnation of the Seahawk in the Modelling News, interesting and include some nice pics. The Modelling News: Review: 1/48th scale Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk from Halberd Models Cheers Rob

All the best and speedy recovery Bill. I don't understand all the specifics you had to go through, but I had my share of pain in the back some years ago, albeit not with the legs being effected. I trained a lot over the last year to strengthen my core, where especially surfing, swimming, yoga and dedicated training helped a lot as well as stopping to play baseball. Now, I'm more or less pain free in the back, a status, I would have thought impossible to achieve some years ago. Why am I telling this, it's to show, there is a perspective often, to acquire new life quality after the valley of pain. If I have health issues, I tend to think of the ones which went by and are forgotten now and this makes it easier to deal with. Cheers Rob

You spotted it, Sherlock . The color on the canopy is a shade darker than the rest, hence the different primer used. Light grey for the fuselage and gloss black for the canopy, because I needed the black for the aft framing. The Royal Blue was very translucent, which seem often to happen with gloss blue colors. I figured the same with Tamiya's LP gloss blue, which behaved similar and didn't have the same good opacity like the other LP colors. The reasons, why I used Bare Metal foil were, I wanted to try it and the process looked more straightforward to me. For painting Polished Aluminum, I'd needed some gloss black priming, then chrome paint, then masking with cutting the mask on the model, which is harder to do, because the very fine panel line is hard to detect under Kabuki. Also, I don't like to mask over high shine metal painted surfaces, if I can avoid it, which would have been needed for the following gloss blue paintjob. The metal foil was applied direct onto the gloss blue and then cut in the then visible panel line. Even then , I needed two attempts. For the canopy framing, I needed some attempts on my cutting template and lifting the foil, without ripping it to pieces. Foil of 0,5mm width doesn't have a lot of stability. Cheers Rob

The SU facing the Tiger's. More cats than models on your bench lately, Carl and that's hard to believe . Cheers Rob

The sparse IP was added to the cockpit part. It's made from a PE board over acetate film dials and I glued them with Pledge, to risk no fogging and have shiny 'glass' dials. The canopy was a bit adventurous, masked with the supplied and well fitting Kabuki masks and Kabuki tape from the inside, then sprayed gloss black for the rear framing. These parts got over masked after drying and the rest of the canopy was airbrushed with the blue fuselage color. Photos show, that the rear vertical spars were metal colored and to replicate this, I applied 0,5mm strips of Bare Metal Foil onto the frames. Lastly, I painted the exhausts silver, but that will be retouched with a metallic black on top, that only a silver base will show. The canopy is only loosely fitted on the pics. Well, I think it starts to look fast now. Cheers Rob