Lusitanian

FINALLY found a supplier in Portugal where I could buy a CO2 cylinder for my airbrushes. It’s been like looking for unicorn shoes. And of course US and EU nozzle threads are a different size, so I have to buy a new regulator. Because of course they are….

Here’s what’s on my bench at the moment - nothing! Just starting to get it set up.

LOL. I have already been recruited to start making paper flowers in 2026!

I’m in Asseiceira near Tomar. I absolutely love Portugal! Where is Quinta do Anjo located?

Just got a HUGE order of ATOM acrylic paint from Mig Jimenez. I only brought a little bit of Tamiya (mostly my own custom mixes) with me from the US, so I needed a total restock on everything. Everything I’ve read about them is fantastic, so I hope they’re right! Still waiting for my household goods shipment to arrive from the US so I can get my workbench set up. I found a local welding gas supply that can hook me up with CO2 (I’d never use a compressor again!).

In recent decades, and this came from the Blue Angels maintenance officer back in the 1990s, from his mouth directly to my ear, standing on the ramp at Pensacola: “We don’t use FS595 paint, we use commercial aircraft paint”. So anyone who tells you that Blue Angel blue is FS15050 doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The actual paint used is *similar* to 15050, but that’s not what it is. They’ve used several different brands and specific colors over the years, and the color has varied slightly.

I had the same issue. I had used a Chase credit card, and had to end up disputing the charge with Chase to get satisfaction.

Google “liquid latex” and you can buy the same exact substance for a tiny fraction of the cost of the same exact substance in a “modeling” bottle.

Ike’s airplane wasn’t a C-69/L-049, it was an L-749/C-121. AFAIK the only extant C-69/L-049 is the one in TWA markings at Pima, parked near Ike’s C-121.

If you knew the number of items that are *critical* to the everyday practice of medicine and surgery in the United States that are sourced from China, India, Pakistan, and/or from single-source suppliers, you’d be terrified. Literally every drop of heparin (an anti-coagulant used daily in many surgeries, including cardiac and major vascular procedures) is made in China. It’s derived from porcine GI tract tissue, and the Chinese eat more pork than anybody on earth. The US drug industry wisely decided it wasn’t worth their time to retain the ability to manufacture it (and thus, keep the supply chain intact for making it), so it all went to China. If China decided to f*ck the rest of the world, one very easy way for them to do it would be to simply turn off the tap on heparin. Hundreds of thousands of people would die every month.

It’s just a FUGLY airplane, but so ‘veddy veddy British’

Mailman delivered the new Sword 1/48 Gannet AEW.3 kit this week. Pretty much the dictionary definition of “obscure”, and it’s beyond ugly, but in a very British way. Have to come up with markings for the bird that’s at Pima when she was in service.

I know people who love them. I’m just not one of them.

I bought a Grex pistol grip thinking it was going to be all-singing and all-dancing. I hated it. Went back to my traditional Badgers and Iwatas.

After one false start on shipping, I finally got the Clear Prop! F-86A kit today. Unlike the first people who got the kit, mine comes with not one, but THREE different gun muzzle panels. It has the original one with the doors closed, the interim one with the rectangular doors bolted open, and the later F-86E/F style! The kit is every bit as nice as everyone has said, and now you can do any F-86A from the box with just a change of decals.