lmagna

I have not done a large amount of research on the YMS minesweepers, but what little information I do have shows three bladed props. Your build is coming along very nicely. Too bad about the helicopter. That has always been a shortcoming on this kit.

Nice work jep. Hope you stay rekindled and make some progress on what is already a very good start. (At least in my opinion). It will be an unusual build the no one else is likely to duplicate.

Yes, the J car was pretty much his last attempt at ground effects. It had a separate 45HP snowmobile engine to run the fans. That was it's Achilles heel. They never got the small engine or extra mechanics to last a full race. With the vacuum running the system developed a little over 2200 pounds of down force. The car weighed about 1800 pounds. Jim Hall offered to stick it on a wall for a commercial but it was never made. when ever the fan engines were started the car would visibly suck down two inches. Jim Hall was still recovering from his injuries in the Chaparral 2G in 1968 and was not driving competitively but was test driving the car during it's development. He said that the car could do corners at over 1.5 Gs without the tires braking loose and the he personally was never able to properly judge just how fast the car could brake coming into a turn. In his opinion Vic Elford was the only driver who ever even came close to running the J car properly. It was probably never pushed to it's limits. Jackie Stewart came to America to drive the 2J at Watkins Glen. Normally Hall couldn't afford Stewart but Jackie wanted to drive the car so badly he made Hall a special one-race deal. He qualified third. "The car's traction, its ability to brake and go deeply into the corners, is something I've never experienced before in a car this size or bulk," he wrote in his book Faster!. "Its adhesion is such that it seems to be able to take unorthodox lines through turns, and this, of course, is intriguing." Hall said that if anything ever happened to the main engine, the suction system was powerful enough to move the car at almost 30 miles an hour back to the pits. I believe the J car was the only car that beat the McLarens to the pole position in 1970 season and by the end of the year it was clear that it was the fastest Can Am car on the track........... When working! If it had been allowed to come back in 1971 racing history could have possibly been broken again by Jim Hall. The car was called a number of things depending on who was talking, but the most common was "The ground effect car" "Vacuum car" "Kirby car' and "Sucker car" to name just a few. There were also comments to the effect that it was the only car on the track that raced in the box it was shipped in. Many people, including the people who protested many of Jim Halls innovations, considered this the beginning of the end of the Can Am series. One of the concepts of the series was to encourage just what Jim Hall, Dan Gurney, and Bruce McLaren were doing. Exploring ways to make racing cars go faster, and new restrictive rules continued to come faster and faster each year until there seemed to be almost no avenues of innovation left open anymore.

I gave my secretary twenty lashes for that typo! Sometimes though this part of my life seems like it was 1070. Not much racing going on in 1070, more like rebellion and revolutions everywhere you looked. The Byzantine Navy had some pretty fast ships back then. About a hundred oar power?

Nicely done Tim Looks good doing a flyby.

At last I get to see what a master can do with this model/car. It is far from being the easiest kit on the market. The McLaren M8B is the 1969 variant of the previous M8A and a direct descendent of the M6 cars of the years before. Driven by Denny Hulme and Bruce McLaren with the third orange factory car sometimes being driven by Dan Gurney or Chris Amon. There were 11 Can Am races that year and the M8B won every one of them. Bruce and Denny traded off who was going to win with Denny winning 5 races and Bruce the other six. Most times the factory cars won both one and two and I believe 1,2,and 3 a few times. The Can Am series of races had already became known as "The Bruce and Denny Show", but the M8B virtually made it fact. Out of 24 starts McLaren only had 4 DNFs, the rest were wins. An enviable record in anyone's book. In addition to the factory cars built by McLaren, they contracted out and also produced almost identical chassis for other drivers as well as selling "Last years model" to the competition. This model comes with decals for the car driven by German Immigrant and avid McLaren fan, Lothar Motschenbacher in 1970. The kit is identical to the 1969 bright orange factory cars driven by McLaren and Hulme with the high wing. But in late 1969 most of motor racing, including Can Am, that at that time had relatively few rules, outlawed the high wing as well as the adjustable wing both innovated by Jim Hall on his Chaparral 2E and 2F cars in 1966 and 67 and pretty much copied by everyone until outlawed. Bruce McLaren avidly avoided the wing concept until the advent of the M8B in 1969. The only problem with doing the Motschenbacher livery with a M8B is that I can find no evidence that he ever drove a McLaren configured like the kit. In 1968 he drove a McLaren M6B and in 1969 a McLaren M12, both without wings. In 1970 he did switch to the M8B, but it appears that the car he bought was a converted M8B that was the #2 1969 McLaren factory car that had been converted from one of the 1968 factory M8A cars! So in fact was an updated 1968 M8A. In addition, when raced by factory McLaren in 1969 it had the high wing just as in the kit. But in 1970, when owned by Motschenbacher these wings were outlawed so he lowered his wing down to where the lead edge almost touched the rear fenders. It appears that unlike the M8D Factory cars of 1970, he kept the strut mountings, just shortened. The M8Ds of 1970 had a fins added to the rear fenders to hold the wing, also low to the body. As a side note the testing of the M8D was what killed Bruce McLaren in an accident that was almost as unnecessary as the crash in 1966 that killed Ken Miles while testing the piece of junk Ford J car. But that is another story. I sent this #11 car to both Mike and Craig, as I had WAY TO MANY in my stash and I truly wanted to see what talented builders could do with them. They are highly detailed kits but a struggle to build if done out of the box. I kept my factory decaled M8B as well as another kit that is in a plastic zip lock bag that may or may not be complete. I always thought it would make a good M8A or D or possibly even an F from that kit. But at the rate I am doing any building at all mixed with everything seeming to either break or fall apart on my body in the last couple of years I am beginning to wonder if this is the only way I will ever get to see some of my favorite models built. For those who don't know much about the Can Am series of the sixties and early seventies it was pretty much a no holds bared cowboy kind of racing that as a side note was VERY lucrative for the racers. Winning a Can Am race could bring $60 to $80.000 to the winner, PER RACE! Placing second place in a Can Am race usually paid better than winning in many of the longer European sports car races. Eventually Most of the drivers and teams went over to NASCAR racing when Can Am finally somewhat regulated itself out of existence. Here is a bit of footage to give some of the feel a Can Am race produced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXjZYIzKGCM I'm REALLY looking forward to this build.

Very nice build Greg. I am not normally a huge fan of the modern day warships and don't know all that much about them, but this one is to say the least a very handsome ship. It is also amazingly complex and your build has certainly covered both those aspects well. I am surprised to see the Soya in your stash. I thought I had the only Japanese icebreaker in captivity. I bought a Fuji class breaker some time ago as kind of a companion for my Burton Island icebreaker. If I remember correctly it is not all that detailed. Have you found enhancements for your kit?

That could be interesting. I think Enzo would roll over in his grave! Looks great Craig. Kind of odd seeing it next to that giant motorcycle statue though.

Hello Dan Haven't you heard the statement that you can't fix a leaky roof when it is raining and there is no need to fix it when it isn't? GET BACK TO YOUR HAWKER BUILD! No really. Your work so far is impressive. This is going to be a nice model.

I feel like I must live in a time warp or something. I have a model railroad hobby store a couple of blocks from my house. Years ago it was almost exclusively railroad but now days almost all of the railroad stuff is upstairs. At least half of the downstairs is RC cars, with the rest being mixed woods, paints and the normal construction stuff. They have a closet like room off to one side that has the plastic kits, kind of like the curtained off area of the old video stores that contained the porno movies. We have a larger Hobby Town franchise across town that has a fairly large plastic section and huge paint selection but again at least half the store seems geared to the RC cars. We have a number of others that are further away and I think at least two of them that are still in business are still considered railroad stores. I HATE driving down to the Seattle metro area, so it has been a number of years since I have been to those stores. Your Ferrari is looking better and better Craig, truck tires and all. Just think of it as an off road Ferrari.

Did you ever find it?

That's funny. All this time the color you used looked black on my computer unless I looked really hard and emitted deep thoughts of BLUE. Now all of the sudden as you start adding the chrome it really is looking a deep midnight blue all on it's own. The spell is finally working!

I bought one a couple of years ago when Dr. Per showed the one he bought and the pictures it could take. Like the one I posted above it only cost a few dollars. I don't have a cell phone that it works on but when I plugged it into my laptop USB port it opens a whole new world of photo ops. Photos of the inside of your Chinook would be no problem or the gundeck of a warship. Even waterline pictures of ships taken from the view of someone actually on the water are possible. The depth of field seems OK as well and as they have their own lights that can be adjusted for intensity, the use of a flash is not a requirement.

Looks like you may have to invest in an endoscope! 😵 Even if not, you have done a nice job of detailing out the turret.

Shapeways claims this one is 1/350th scale: https://www.shapeways.com/product/Y4N29CSSC/agustawestland-eh101-merlin?optionId=157812213&li=marketplace They show it as being available in a number of scales but say the 1/350 version is 1:350: 5.5 x 1.4 x 1.6 cm. They say they also have a 1/285 scale at 6.8 x 1.7 x 2 cm, this could be what you already have in your Trumpeter set. They also offer a smaller 1/400 at 4.8 x 1.2 x 1.4 cm. At that scale you get two helicopters. The maker offers all sorts of aircraft in what seems to be almost all scales.

😵 Truly a velvet prison!

Every time I look at this village I don't want to come back to reality. I think you have cast a magical spell on it that will eventually draw us all in and capture us forever!

Nice work philo

You are the exact opposite of Popeye, (Denis) here on the forum. You are using an assembly line for mutable builds, he has little factories all over the house, each one with one project under construction and jumps from one to the other as the mood strikes! I think he has more than four at present as well. I am really watching your work as when I was a child I built the Monogram kit. I can't remember if I tried to float it and if so if it was successful but I have always liked the design for some reason. I'm not normally an armor guy. Your work is impressive.

Sorry you can't go Jim. I know that you have enjoyed these types of events in the past. Congratulations for getting the invite though.

I agree those wire wheels look pretty good in their own right especially for kit supplied wheels. What's wrong with the Dunlops?

Apparently the authorities were asking the same question. At least you got to get a ride. You can still buy them used and I suppose they could be considered the poor man's super car. A few are less than $100.000. Here is one just down the street from you. https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/cars-for-sale/detomaso/pantera/2441879.html You would only have to sell half your model stash to finance it! 😭 Just tell your wife about what a great family car it would make.

Looks good. Glad it made it. We don't want any repeats of Normandie history! 😭

I know that Ford made a continuation Ford GT 40 in the early 2000s. I think it was a ground up design and had very little in common with the 1960s GT40. In fact I think the GT40 name was still owned by the British so Ford had to call it the Ford GT. It looked the part and certainly qualified as a super car but had many concessions in comfort and features intended for the luxury buyers. Much the same as the original Shelby 350 turning into the Shelby 500 Softer suspension a little more headroom air conditioning and radio, stuff like that. I think jay Leno did a comparison piece on the differences. He owns one of the continuation GTs. I think Ford made them in limited numbers for a few years but they never seemed to catch on as well as they hoped. Now days I think they are concentrating on the second generation 2018 GT, supporting it with actual racing models like the original GT40. I looks much more like Craig's build here, than any other Ford GT ever built. Now days there are at least a couple of almost bolt by bolt GT40s replicas being built. I think Shelby American started making them a few years ago but with Carol's death this may no longer be true. The other maker seems to be a company called Superformance they claim that 90% of their MKII parts are interchangeable with the 1966 car. They may be the present maker of the Shelby replica cars, it is kind of unclear, If you are still in the market and just happen to be in Ohio you can look at a few of their line. https://mmgmotorsports.com/inventory/ ! One could almost afford a MKIII 427 Cobra reproduction! I'm afraid that as close as I will ever get to any of these kinds of cars will be to watch Craig build one after another!

No need to get anyone back. When I got the chance to fly rather than plow through the mud I jumped at the opportunity! Armored vehicle life is really no fun at all. They are loud, (Well I suppose helicopters are a little loud as well) they always stink of diesel, they require a lot of maintenance............ remember that mud? that seems to be when they need all the maintenance! Everything is heavy and seems to have sharp edges And if you hit yourself against it accidently you almost always end up bleeding.😭 They are hot as H*ll in the summer and can burn at the touch, and likewise if you touch the side of an M-113 in the winter with no gloves on you can stick to it. Ask me how I know. But yes I built one MANY years ago and I think I did a pretty good job. But like virtually all of my military things from before forty years ago, my ex-wife decided I had no need of them and they were burned, trashed, or given away. I have replacements in my stash but like so many things I have never gotten around to them. Armor never was a big attraction to me for some reason.