HubertB

I realised that the pics I posted in this thread of my R-985 design were incomplete, without the cylinder heads. Of course the engine was designed with them. But the pics I had at the time were without them. Sorry about it. The design is detailed enough to support a rescaling to 1/24. If you have a 3D-printer, I can send you some files, of course for your own use only. Hubert

The fit issues of the front canopy are visible on your pics, John, but the whole looks pretty good nevertheless. I think you should get an award for getting through a build and kit that are definitely a challenge from the very first minute. There are not many modellers who can claim such an achievement. Hubert

My "Sandbox" GB entry is now finished, and I should resume work on other projects, and deal with a few SOD queens waiting for me. The priority is of course to finish the Fisher 1/32 Cutlass. However, I thought I could show a little time-filling project I started when I was waiting for the putty on the wing-slats of the Cutlass to dry. When I saw, this one, I just fetched it in a split-second. It is typically in my area of predilection : off-beat subject, civilian, and resin, to boot. So, Brengun has released kits of the Rutan Quickie in 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32 scale. The Quickie is one of the many amazing brain-children of the creative Burt Rutan, conceived in the mid 70's. It features many of the pet-ideas of Burt Rutan : light weight, canard or staggered wing configuration, amateur construction, inexpensive to build, power, and run. In typical Rutan fashion, the Quickie is powered by a stock Onan engine, probably well known to US owners of houses, as my understanding is this engine was primarily conceived to power small lawn-mowing tractors, delivering between 18 and 22 hp acoording to the versions; On this engine, the Quickie can cruise at some 125+ mph, a testament to the fine aerodynamics and light weight of Rutan products. The Brengun kit is a typical resin kit, in a diminutive box - at least for a 1/32 builder- Inside the box, a few resin parts, a vac-formed canopy, a small PE fret, an acetate film for the IP instruments, and a small decal sheet. About 30 parts overall, so it should be fairly quick, as befits its name ... Unfortunately, the bottom of the fuselage is marred by dozens of those pesky pinholes you find on resin kits which have not been pressure-cast. And you know what the issue is: when you fill and sand some pinholes, you reveal new ones Any way, this is where I stood last Saturday : You can notice on the pics that I have scratched a new back for the instrument panel. Brengun's kit is based on the Quickie built by a gentleman colled Terry Crouch, from Indiana, who received an award by the EAA at Oskosh in 1995 for the quality of his Quickie build. One characteristic of Terry Crouch's Quickie is the overall neat construction, and it shows also on the back of the IP. Check this videao at about 40' to see what I mean Brengun's resin part for the back of the Ip was just not neat enough to emulate Mr Crouch's work so I did a new one. After a first layer of primer, still some pinholes to fill on the bottom fuselage ... But this is where I am at tonight. The seat has been reclad with some Evergreen strips, and painted. An additional layer of blue is needed to blend the colors of the seat. The detail parts have been painted as well The instrument panel has been painted and wired ... You may notice the switches on the left of the PE IP, done with 0.2 mm nickel silbver rod, and inserted in the holes I drilled for them ... The main components have been primed and sanded a few times already, the vacformed canopy cut, trimmed to fit, masked and painted And in the meantime, I have been working on my "Terry Crouch" figure. It is in fact an absolutely fantastic figure from Reedoak, of a "civilian pilot". Here is my current wip of the Quickie pilot. I had great fun painting the Hawaian shirt TBC, and hopefully finished before the year end. Hubert.

Only the Greeat Omniscient Squirrel knows ... Hubert

Nice progress, Carl. FYI, the paint job of the Wright R-1820 was pretty standardised: - grey reduction gear crankcase - NMF cylinders. I believe they were made of steel (but maybe not on the late marks as used on the Seahawk) and the top of the cylinders showed heat discoloration. - aluminium cylinders heads - enameled black baffles. Hubert

Whatever your difficulties in building this one, they don’t show on the finished product, and it’s a testament to your skills, Rob. So, In one word about your Mac Laren : AWESOME ! Hubert

Ok, I’ going to rephrase my offer. The winner will have a pick of ANYONE of my stash (excluding the Fisher kits, the HPH DC-3, and the really battered boxes), wherever he/she is located, or, alternatively, to his/her choice, an order worth of 100 € in a local zone modelling shop. The value of some kits in my stash may exceed the cap Ernie mentioned, but it is time anyway to accept that I won’t be finishing all of them. Some are real collectibles fetching high resale value, but I hope the recipient will be happy for the gift and build his / her kit rather than pick it for resale. I hope this will please the LSP crowd. Hubert

It all depends on Carl …. But …

How about suggesting / asking / commanding Santa about this one ? Plus Sergei Andreyi is such a nice guy. That he produces such gems whilst living in Zaporijia is nothing short of a miracle. Hubert

No bombs, but a radar pod … Hubert

It is indeed a lovely kit. But I have some SOD queens I need to take care of before I start a new kit. Tomorrow, I’ll post a WiP of a quicky project I’d like yo finish before the end of the year … Hubert

Hubert

I was wondering when I’d start mine Hubert

Hubert

Then we need 12 GBs a year, with 20 winners in each case, for 20 years … at least Hubert

Looking good . Will you finish your « Now what ? » bridge dio, or did it just burn you out ? Hubert

Looking sharp, Rob. I keep forgetting the trick of using the hair dryer for decals. Not that you don’t remind it with each and every of your builds 🤣. I tell you : getting old is 😱 Hubert

Thank you for the nice comment, Rob. Everyone keeps reminding me it’s a competition, when I see a GB as just an occasion to have some modelling fun with my buddies on an « imposed » theme. I like to pose my models with a figure, to give a sense of scale. For instance Patricia was thinking that my Potez was of a larger scale than my other finished kits, when it is just a fairly big aircraft. For my bases, I buy some (cheap) frames in the local Chinese shops that abund in Portugal. For the Potez, I bought a 50x40 cm frame (the wingspan of the Potez is almost 45 cm), and initially thought that, whereas 50 cm was Ok, I could probably reduce the width of 40 cm to 37/35 cms. I finally decided it was too much hassle to modify the frame, for a marginal gain in the end. And the addition of the windsock, even in a corner, implied to keep some « breathing » space. Plus, you are right, the feeling I got from looking at the pics of various Sahara raids of the time was one of space, which I wanted to find a way of conveying. My only interrogation is whether the 4th figure, the Beduin watching over « Cleopatra » - this one is for Martin - after she unloaded her fuel drums is really necessary. It was an interesting painting. exercise, but I could always remove it. What are your views ? Anyway, thanks again for watching and commenting so generously. Hubert

Indeed …

Thank you for the kinf words, guys. Actually, I rushed to take pictures yesterday before the dusk, and I felt the pics I took were sub-par, with a bluish tint to everything. Plus the mast of the windsock was too thin to prevent the windsock taking a bend under its own weight. So I have corrected the mast with a beefier tube, going higher, and took new pics this morning, in a less "rushed" setting, and I feel they are much better now. So, without further ado, here are the (many)pics of this morning ... One closing note to this build. The desert sand is essentially AK "Desert soil" and "Desert sand", plus some "Sandy soil". But I also used some of the "sand" I brought back from my trip in Marrakech in September. It is actually some curry I bought specifically for this on the souk. Not only does it give a realistic color to my desert setting, but it also has a very nice smell permeating through my workspace Hubert

So, this is my entry in the Sandbox Group Build. This is quite a first, as it is the first time EVER that I complete a kit within the time frame. This is also my first completed build of the year, a sign that I could focus on modelling lately, after a beginning of the year under major clouds on the family health side. I can say that I had a blast throughout this build, which seems apt for a "sand" theme . I have explained in the background history in the build thread, the genesis of the so-called "pink cruise", a nickname that was invented when Admiral de Laborde took his wife with him, to lead a three-aircrafts flight from Bizerte in Tunisia to Tumbuctu, "replying" to the "Black Cruise" that took place one year before to celebrate the birth of the French Air Force as an independant Corps, also using the workhorse of the time, the Potez 25. I started from the Lukgraph 1/32 resin kit, but it represents, with some mistakes by-the-way, the "A2" version. The "TOE" (for Théâtre d'Opérations Extérieures ) was quite different, and I embarked on a significant conversion work, using parts I designed and printed in the process. The detailed build thread is here : The concept of having Navy aircrafts, with their "fish-hook" on the roundels, and somewhere in the Sahara was already irressitible. But I found pictures of the local fuel replenishments in the Sahara, where the "bowsers" had four legs and a hump. So I had to show this, as I had to show Countess de Laborde with her husband. As a final comment, Admiral Laborde's "BZ 65" carried his admiral 4-star penant on the fin, so that made "BZ 65" a true Blue Goose aircraft as well. Now, on to the pics. They were taken outside this afternoon. The shadows are strong, but somewhat low. And you may have a glimpse of a cork-tree, which is totally irrelevant for a desert setting (sorry about that) One final note. The French organised a network of roads and airfields at regular intervals in the Sahara in the 20s and 30s. Some were significant, with shelters, fuel pumps for cars AND aircrafts, etc. Some were more spartan, but a characteristic of the French airfields in the Sahara was the windsock visible on many pictures of the time. So, I had to have a windsock ! I designed one and printed it in transparent resin. it was then painted with light coats of red and and white, before receiving a general mist of sand ... I feel pretty happy about the effect achieved on the windsock : I hope you like it Thanks again for your interest and support throughout the build. Hubert

Thank you all for following along my trans-saharian trip into madness. I thought I'd add some shots of the last details before closing the build ... The windmill generator and mudguard have been added on each side ... The pushrods fro the ailerons were added from 0.2 mm nickel-silver rod. The "park-bench" aileron compensators were a PITA to install, but submitted to persistant swearing and gluing 🤣 @DocRob, yes the French Navy Potez overflying the Sahara were taking a spare wheel. I thought the feature pretty irresistible. But installing the spare wheel as per original, using EZ Line was even more a PITA than the "park-bench" aileron compensators. This bloody thing has a way of snaking around that can be pretty irritating, especially when you are trying to tie it in the middle of the rigging ... By the way, I had repainted the wheel-centers from dark blue grey to silver, as the pics seemed to indicate this was the color, rather than the DBG shown on some profiles. I also added the fuel line, connecting the main tank, the supplementary tank and going into the fuselage to the engine. That's about it ... So is it finished yet ? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind ... See you in RFI Hubert

I mopped (but did not wipe) the excess paint from the spill with a paper handkerchief. Wiping the paint woudl have resulted in the base color being removed as well. Then, when dry, I rubbed the areas of the spill with a fiberglass pen, before respraying the damaged araes with aluminium. There are some areas which have kept a very slight grain effect under the aluminium paint, but it adds texture and interest to the aluminium IMHO. Hubert

You stole my words, Martin ! Hubert

What I did was to lightly mop up (but not wipe) the excess paint with a paper handkerchief. Wiping it would have resulted in a greater disaster as the base paint was stripped in the same time. When all was dry, I then buffed the spill areas with a fiberglass pen, before respraying the whole in aluminium. There is still a slightly grainy feel under some of the repainted areas of the cowling, but it does add an interesting texture to the aluminium, IMHO. Hubert