lmagna

No facts at all, just the strange way I look at things. Sorry if you were thinking that I was classifying those aircraft and space ships as forms of boats for posting builds on this forum. There is only one place to post builds of these types of models on this forum and that is in the Shore Leave Non-ship/ Categorized builds. Sorry for the confusion,

Let's see....... I have average lighting, a Dining room 16 light Crystal chandelier and a somewhat small robot arm style work light stuck into a drawer. (I have been allowed to work in the dining area not modify it). OK vision considering my age and other infirmities, glasses out of necessity, but no real magnifier, except when I post close up pictures that show all of the stuff I thought looked OK. I have already demonstrated my patience by building first and doing research later and cutting out doors that did not need cutting out. Kind of like my typing. My brain is moving at one speed and my fingers not so fast, so things get a little out of whack now and then. I will get it done. It may not end up as the masterpiece I see in my mind or as good as you others are able to do, but it will get done.

I haven't even begin to tackle the M23 mounting system and M-60s and mine are a much larger scale than yours! After realizing that the cockpit pillars were missing and making the parts from scratch using not much more than memory, I spent the day today doing what I should have done in the first place, some research! SOOOO I think the parts I made will be removed and another step back and another do-over. Strangely enough the kit instructions for the smaller 1/48th Kitty Hawk kit had the best view of the design.

I suspect that neither of us is trying to make a living at selling these kits and still making a profit. I have to hand it to Dragon in a way I suppose. They took the only 1/35th scale Huey molds available from the old Panda Models release when Panda went out of business. The panda kit was considered OK but definitely a step up from the old Revell 1/32nd rendition. They could have just released it as is but they did add a considerable amount of PE. I am picking and choosing kit and aftermarket and even after all these years I think I have some insight about the D and H model Huey's that not everyone has, but like I said in the beginning, one could do worse than building this model right out of the box. As I understand there is a new kit coming out by Kitty Hawk models in 1/35th also. By reputation their 1/48th D model is to kill for. The question will be whether they just take a pantograph, or its computer equivalent and scale it up, or if as some are saying it is going to the dream come true for larger builders. If it is the latter then my build done perfectly will just be so much painted plastic. In fact, I just looked at the instructions for the 1/48th scale Kitty Hawk Huey and even in that scale it blows this kit, (And my personal abilities) away, ( https://www.scalemates.com/products/img/1/3/5/1069135-88-instructions.pdf ) both in detail and in the way I remember how things were in real life.

Amazing how a simple LITTLE kit can be so completely transformed with some paint, tape, and of course skill. And it's not done yet!

Or you start out small and simple and the results look like C**P. Oh well in for a penny in for a dime, plugging on. I'm not even into the super detailing yet! So far it has pretty much trying to pick the most accurate stuff and glue it in, and trying to learn how top use an airbrush. A few mods here and there and wondering how a important structural part was left out of not only the kit but the aftermarket stuff! I haven't even begin with the PE stuff! Some of that looks microscopic!

Oh I don't know if I would call it serious, but it is fun, at least to me. (I sometimes humor easily). The Hindenburg, along with others of her kind have already been categorized as AIRSHIPS. They were in all respects ships of the air and were operated in a like manner, Blimps, or non rigid dirigibles, on the other hand are operated like airplanes and as a rule have nowhere near the cruising range or endurance in the air. Now days they are normally both considered airships. Flying boats like the Boeing 314 Martin China Clipper, Martin Mars and others I also like to regard as ships of the air, even though they are, or were, operated as traditional aircraft. Their ability to fly great distances with people and cargo was only surpassed by the large airships of the time. Of course those distances and cargo abilities have been far surpassed by almost all present day conventional aircraft but they could still land on water. That has only been done once successfully by a modern commercial aircraft, and it had some problems taking off again.

I would think it would depend on the type of space vehicle. The X wing, or Tie Fighter and Endeavor shuttle I would consider space planes. On the other hand I would think that the deep space vehicles like Enterprise, Galactica, or even the Millennium Falcon would be called space ships. Now all you need to do is categorize the space station. Is it a satellite, or is it a bunch of semi related objects all in the same orbit?

Maybe for you OC I'm pretty much terrified with almost everything I try that is new. There are SO MANY new aspects to this build that I have never done before, foremost being the fact that I am doing it in public! It has been something like 25 years since I even built a plastic model outside of a car or two, let alone detail it out like you guys do. Most of my experience since childhood has been in building RC ships that look pretty good................ when running twenty feet off shore or more!

WOW! That cockpit is so much more involved that I ever thought it would be. It will be a shame covering it up! I also find the chromium green color so much more interesting, at least the way you do it, than the gray and black I am having to use on my build.

I think that this is the first time I have heard of Future being used directly over the plastic to duplicate a painted color. Normally you see it used as a final finish over the painted finish and decals to give a highly polished look and protective coat. Nice thinking out of the box Jack. From here it looks like it turned out well. No raw plastic look. I don't know if I will ever have a need for the technique but I will certainly be adding it to my mental tool list. The worse the predicted weather, the more off the weather Guru's seem to be. They seem to take delight in standing outside somewhere bundled up to their ears predicting the end of the world as we know it. I remember one a few years ago around here that was actually standing in water that was at least one half of an inch deep claiming the sky was about to fall! It seems like there is more weather danger on the days where they DON'T predict it! It almost always seems to be worse than they expected on those days! Good luck on the yacht work. possibly you guys will get it done in time for the next global cooling.

Thanks Ken Does membership come with a little hammer?

Well I suppose it is time to post the next feeble efforts in the "Save The Model Chopper" campaign. As you may remember in the last episode I was able to get a passable result in reinstalling the door that should have not been removed in the first place. Having achieved passable results I went about doing it in the way that it should have been done in the first place. First I removed the window frames from the aftermarket doors. Then I spend quite some time thinning down the outer thickness trying to maintain the inner door shape. In after thought it was probably not necessary to use this much care, in fact it probably would have been just as good to have cut two rectangular sheets and just glued them into place. It turns out that you cannot see the door jams anyway. After getting the inner door panels mated and glued in it was time to address the next, and even more glaring omission inside the cabin. There is a square hollow column located just to the rear of the pilots doors. I am not certain how thick it is but it is several inches. It is obviously a reinforcement between the bottom and top of the helicopter kind of like the roof column in a four door car between the front and back doors. This part is missing entirely and if one is to have the cargo doors open like I am then it is a VERY noticeable item, at least to me. So I cut some thick plastic scrap I had laying around and kind of filed and shaped until it seemed to fit. I am not completely happy with the results as I think I may not have gone thick enough. But I was worried about interfering with the pilot's seats and the armor I still need to install. But when loosely placing the seats it appears that I may have been a little conservative and could have made them a little thicker. So here is some photographic evidence that someone of questionable talents has in fact been making some progress. The left and right doors with panels and columns. The left door that had been removed is on the right. The cabin interior with the seats and dash just hand placed into position for reference. So that is about it for now. At some point I am going to have to decide how much is enough. There are so many details missing and every time I get one done I feel compelled to correct or add another. At this rate I would never get this thing done! I still think it is a shame that much of this is not already present though. It's not like Huey's are an obscure aircraft that would be hard to research and detail out at this scale.

It must be a slow news week. Just a couple of days ago they showed this on the local morning news here in the PNW. I'm afraid Jack is right, it can pretty much be done at any time of the year assuming a broom that is in good condition and a floor that is level, or close.

At first I kind of thought the silver and yellow paint scheme on the box was kind of odd but now seeing your rendition of it is making it grow on me. Nice work Jack

More importantly and at least to me sadder the same thing happened to the seven year old girl and the six year old boy was crushed. All because the director wanted to set off large explosives as close to the helicopter as possible even after being told that it was dangerous to the helicopter. They literally blew the helicopter out of the air, taking the tail rotor off completely in the explosion! Helicopters do not fly well without tail rotors at low forward speeds. I also read somewhere later that Vic Morrow saw what was going to happen and tried to save the kids but without success. VERY sad story with a very bad ending like all to many Hollywood events it seems. Loss in combat is somehow expected and therefore accepted for some reason. Losses like this for the sake of a movie, especially when so many safeguards were bypassed is totally unacceptable.

Luckily you took pictures before and know what the part looked like. After seeing the stuff you have already done with this little plane I am certain that you will have no problems at all. Did you at least get mug shots of the offenders so that the rest of us can be warned what they look like?

The same can be said of the real thing. Ground strikes with either rotor are considered No Nos.

I thought I had heard all of the helicopter slander over the years but THAT ONE is one is new to me!

I take that as you are installing all of the seat belts that you are not going to add the crew?

Any day you want. Since I retired I no longer make schedules, I respond to them! My home and meal table is open to you and possibly you could get Bill to do a ride share and we could make it a party. Don't forget the Museum Of Flight in Seattle as well, If you are driving all that distance for one you should take the time to do both. Probably should not plan on both in the same day though. A lot to see. For that matter there is the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, I have not been there since they moved the display in 2012 or something, but the old building had a ton of really nice model ships that you could spend hours looking over and admiring. Then there is the Naval Undersea Museum that has both inside and outside displays of models, artifacts, and real ships. Also there is The Puget Sound Naval Museum, and of course not far away the Turner Joy, (DD-951). Again I have not seen those locations in a number of years but I suspect it would be another long day trying to fit them all in. But you do get a nice ferry ride out of the deal with possibly a killer whale sighting if you are lucky. I have seen them twice over the years, I seems like they like to shadow the ferry and look at the people sometimes.

Looks like you had to add a lot of weight to bring that nose down! Beautiful work on the interior. I feel almost like I am walking through the real thing in a museum.

I have no idea about how they did it on CH-53s but with Hueys the blades had a hollow tube with a threaded plug at the end of the blade. Inside the tube they had weights inserted to match the weight of a set of blades. I have no idea what the tolerances were but I suspect they were pretty close as when not moving the blades hung pretty evenly on the hub swivel. As the blade ran up to speed it would start fairly smoothly, go through a rpm range where it was pretty rough and then smooth out again at full rpm. Well smooth for a helicopter I suppose. We would pick up vibration, (and noise) when performing heavy turns or pushing the forward speed. Anything over 70 knots and a twenty or thirty degree bank was loud! You could tell a lot about what a Huey was doing just by the sound. I understand that they have cured a lot of the noise with newer blade designs. I don't know about the vibration.

Glad you finally got guns that you can be happy with Mark. It would have been a shame to have to do without like you were thinking for a while.

I'm only six minutes from Paul Allen's Heritage Museum, one of these days................😈