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bjohns5

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Everything posted by bjohns5

  1. The connection between the Wings72 and Wings48 lines and Eagles Talon is that for quite a few years they were all owned by Don Bennett who manufactured and distributed all three lines as well as sold them on his own website "Don's Model Works." Don Bennett passed away in September 2011. I don't know what happened to the production molds and masters, but as far as I am aware none of the Wings or Eagles Talon products are now in production. Here is a segment of the obituary Don's son Chuck posted on the website after his father passed: "Don Bennett bought the Wings 48 and Wings 72 model company from Don Bratt of Michigan in 2001 and began producing and selling vacuform model kits under the name Wings Models. In 2004 he bought the Eagles Talon model company and added those kits to the Wings Models line. In October of 2004 he incorporated the business as Wings Models LLC, a Missouri Limited Liability Company. With the assistance of his son, Chuck Bennett, he expanded the company's eBay sales to his own website, Don's Model Works (www.donsmodelworks.com), for sales of vacuform kits produced by Wings Models LLC, plus model kits from other companies that were purchased from a wholesale distributor. In 2007 the company added books to the product line-up, to be followed by modeling tools and armor model kits. Don Bennett died in September, 2011, just two weeks short of his 50th wedding anniversary. He will be missed by his friends and family, including his wife, children, and grandchildren."
  2. I doubt you will find a retailer that has one, but your best bet is to contact smaller physical shops in Poland, or make a post on Polish modelbuilding sites. From discussions on those sites in the past it seems that the owner of Historic Models/X-Resin only makes a couple dozen copies of each kit he masters and those mostly get sold/traded to the Polish model community.
  3. Has there been any info about when the general release of the CW-21B might happen? I know things have been a bit hectic for the Dora Wings folks lately.
  4. Something else I just noticed that is different about the R-5SSS. On the standard R-5 there is a pair of air scoops located on the underside of the engine cowling as seen in this photo of an R-5 undergoing engine maintenance. Those scoops are not present on the R-5SSS. I can't yet find a photo showing whether the ducts were eliminated completely or if just the projecting scoop was eliminated and there is still a screened over opening in those spots.
  5. The AMG Polikarpov R-5 kit includes five of the PV-1 machine guns on the sprues indicating they have plans to release the R-5sh early attack version sometime in the future. They also include a very delicate but beautiful paired Degtyarev mounting for the observer position.
  6. Massimo - There are several visible differences between the R-5SSS and the regular R-5. I have found very few photos of the R-5SSS which makes sense since they were few in number and mostly spent their active service at frontier airfields where casual photography would not have been welcome. The attached photo of an R-5SSS being bombed up during the Winter War shows most of the external differences. 1)The SSS aircraft had sheet metal fairings covering the attachment points of all the exterior struts and support wires. I haven't found a good photo showing these on a SSS, but they were nearly identical on the R-Z which I have attached a photo of. 2) Most, if not all, photos taken of regular R-5s show them with the TUR-6 gun mount for the observer with either a single or paired DA machine guns with "can" magazines. The R-5SSS was equipped with either a manual TUR-8 or a powered TUR-9 gun mount carrying a single ShKAS machine gun fed by belt from an ammo box. Those later TUR turrets are noticeable by the heavy welded "U" shaped structure compared to the light-weight TUR-6 which was basically a WWI-style Scarff ring. 3) The R-5SSS of course carried 4 ShKAS guns inside the lower wings mounted sideways with the barrels exposed. These are extremely difficult to identify in most photos. If you see the lower surface of the wing as in this photo, you can see the metal cover over the gun bay with circular link ejection openings and the rectangular slots for ejecting the empty cartridge cases. There is a cover of the same size on the top of the wing without any openings. 4) On the R-5SSS the support bars of the bomb racks were built inside the wing structure versus mounted on the lower surface of the wing on the standard R-5, so that the only exposed parts are the bomb crutches and the safety wires. The SSS also only had 2 bomb racks on each wing compared to the standard R-5's 4 per wing. 5) The SSS had large quarter-rounded aerodynamic fairings across the top of the lower wing to fuselage join. 6) Many of these features are also found on the R-Z, making it difficult to tell an SSS from an R-Z in photos. The biggest giveway that you are looking at an R-Z and not an SSS is the lowered canopy opening and the plexiglass canopy covers which this R-5SSS does not have. 7) On the R-5 a different system was used to shock absorb the landing gear, and the landing gear struts were made of a stronger metal alloy so both the faired "bulge" over the shock and the tubing in general are noticeably smaller on the SSS compared to the regular R-5. '8) The R-5SSS had an internal bomb bay under the floor of the pilot's compartment with 4 pairs of narrow doors. This is the only photo I have found showing those doors. As I mentioned above, R-5SSS aircraft were built with aerodynamic wheel covers. But it seems that most were removed from aircraft soon after entering service so they show up in few photos. One feature that is often noticeable, but not in this photo, is that the SSS had a teardrop shaped fairing covering the connector where the four front landing gear struts attached together in the center. Another more obvious feature that the R-5 models almost always had but the SSS did not, was a "u" shaped protective guard below each with tip made of metal tubing. Finally, regular R-5 aircraft had all surfaces of their upper and lower wings covered in fabric. On the SSS however, to strengthen the wing for the machine gun mounting, the lower wings were covered fully in plywood from the root to about the 8th rib, and then just the front half of the wing, approximately, was plywood covered for a further four ribs. And of course, though I had found no photos to document it, on the SSS there should not be a machine gun on the port side forward of the wind screen, and no gun trough leading out through the engine cover as found in the standard R-5. I'm sure there are other differences that I'm missing, but that is what comes to mind from my research. Unfortunately most of the photos that I have collected are not clear enough to show most of these details.
  7. Thank you. I have all 6 known printed book references for the R-5/R-Z aircraft as well as copies of the Technical Manuals for the R-5, R-Z and R-5CCC aircraft which I have machine translated into English. I've also found pretty much every website with photos and info on the R-5 family in English and Russian. The problem is the various references contradict each other in several instances. Even the R-5CCC Technical Manual contradicts its own self when it says in the text that the structure of the R-5CCC was altered to eliminate the fuselage gun, but in the illustration of the changed R-5CCC fuselage framework provided, they still show the cutouts in the arches of the 1st and 2nd frames to accommodate the bullet trough. I finally decided the text is most probably correct, and that the illustrations were likely taken from the original R-5 manual and edited to fit the R-5CCC and whoever edited the drawings just missed a few details. I'm proceeding under the assumption that the text in the technical manual is correct and the fuselage gun was eliminated.
  8. Thank you. I find your site very useful and I did go there seeking answers to my questions. However the only verifiable R-5SSS models in those profile discussions are in the photos in the text associated with "White 15," though the profile itself lacks most of the identifying features of an "SSS" except for the wheel fairings which were largely removed from service aircraft within a couple years since they had a tendency to clog with mud and dirt when operating off unpaved fields.
  9. To my understanding, the PT-22 variant had about 4 degrees of sweepback to the wings. The visually similar (but usually seen with landing gear fairings) PT-20 and PT-21 variants had straight wings.
  10. For situations where you are trying to figure out what size hole to drill to fit an existing axle or pin, the best bet is to get a screw/wire sizing template like these two. Or you can just drill a variety of different size holes yourself in a piece of scrap plastic and do the same thing. The 61-80 one comes in very handy when you don't put your drill bits back in the holder each time you take them out and you end up with a pile of tiny bits that you can't tell which size is which. https://www.micromark.com/Micro-Drill-Bit-Gauge-61-80 https://www.micromark.com/Gauge-for-Drill-Bits-and-Screws
  11. The number size drill bits correspond to the American Wire Gauge (AWG) sizing chart for wire diameters. That's why you often see them referred to as "wire gauge" bits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge
  12. An example of why I never trust drawings unless I have photos to confirm the details. Otherwise a drawing is usually just the draftsman's best guess as to what is there. To definitively answer this question I remembered that I have a scan of the 1936 Technical Manual for the R-5 "CCC" so I ran the first couple pages through Yandex Image Translation and on page 4 found a summary listing of the technical changes between the R-5CCC and the standard R-5. It states that the fuselage machine gun was deleted and the fuselage structure and surface features of the cowl altered accordingly.
  13. One of the first things I learned when I first started researching aircraft from other countries was to learn the name of the aircraft in the native language of the country and search the internet for that. I don't know much Russian but I quickly learned to identify Самолеты and Поиск.
  14. Thanks for the info. I'm converting the AMG 1/48 R-5 to the R-5sss ground attack version. (I know AMG will probably announce the release of a kit of that version as soon as I finish mine, but when that happens you can thank me.) I'm making the assumption that the fuselage-mounted gun was eliminated from the R-5sss because I imagine the Soviet designers would have figured with the firepower of four ShKAS guns in the wings outside the propeller arc why would they also need the weight of another synchronized gun in the fuselage firing at a slower rate, and greater bomb carrying capacity would have been more important. Plus the Rest Models kit of the R-5sss did not have the fuselage gun and I figure they had access to more research material than I do and I'll follow their lead. So I will be filling the gun trough in my kit, and filling in the fabric areas on the inner half of the lower wings to represent the area that was covered with plywood on the R-5sss. The major difficulty when trying to research the R-5sss is there weren't many of them compared to the large pool of other R-5 versions, and the only SURE way to tell you are looking at an R-5sss (or R-Z but they are easy to identify by the covered cockpit) and not another variant is if you can spot the wing root fairings. And for some reason pretty much all the existing R-5sss photos in circulation show the aircraft from the starboard side and so don't shed any light on the question of whether there was a gun on the opposite side.
  15. As long as it doesn't turn out to be the Classic Airframes plastic inside.
  16. I'm trying to determine whether the Polikarpov R-5sss ground attack version retained the fuselage mounted machine gun that was present on other R-5 variants, or if it was eliminated when the 4 ShKAS guns were added into the lower wings. Information I have been able to review is inconclusive as to the total number of guns carried including the one mounted in the gunner's turret.
  17. It's extremely difficult to do an acceptable job painting the exterior colors with the top wing in place. For that reason I think most of us assemble everything else while gluing the struts to the lower wing and fuselage but not the top wing. Then paint, decal, clearcoat, weather, and all that fun, and drill holes for rigging if using Easy Line or thread. Then glue on the top wing, touch up any oopsies on the paint, and install the rigging.
  18. I wish they'd get off the stick with the 1/48 PiperCub/L4 kits. The kits available now are pretty deficient.
  19. https://www.hyperscale.com/2008/reviews/kits/montexrma7201reviewpm_1.htm
  20. The P-35As were still a better aircraft to fly against the Japanese than the P-26s they replaced. But honestly nothing the US had stood up well to the Zero until US flyers stopped flying the way they were taught and devised tactics that played to the strengths of their aircraft instead of taking on the Zeros in their own element.
  21. This is true of plastic extrusion printers like most Shapeway parts are made from. But Dekno uses light-hardening resin 3D printing which has a much finer resolution. I have Dekno's 3D printed 1/48 Hornet Moth kit they released several months ago and if you didn't know it was 3D printed you would think the parts were traditional resin castings.
  22. Dora Wings kits so far have been injection molded. Are you confusing them with Dekno Models who announced a 3D printed 1/48 Mew Gull a couple weeks ago?
  23. The blue is the only color that is difficult to match. Here is a suggested sample based on an actual 1940 French Air Ministry paint chip book. Most commonly folks interpret it as a true pale blue when it actually was a blue-grey. http://memorial.flight.free.fr/nuancieruk.html
  24. The O-38 is another subject I wish a top resin maker like Chorosy Modelbud or Planet Models would address in 1/48 scale.
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