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David H

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David H last won the day on April 8 2021

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About David H

  • Birthday 17/06/1966

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    Bremerton, Washington
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    Aircraft

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  1. Nice to see one of these built. I know it's an old kit but it's better than nothing. Very attractive paint scheme, too. I always thought it was a beautiful looking plane.
  2. Not sure if you want to do this, but if you have a 72 scale Tamiya F4U-1 Birdcage or an F4U-1A, it includes the sprue for the F4U-1D differences- which includes the 13'-1" Hamilton Standard Paddle Blade Propeller. The Tamiya F4U-1D propeller corrects the only significant shortfall of the Eduard kit, which is the dreadful propeller. Conversely, it can improve the looks of the Hasegawa TBM-3 series or a Monogram F7F Tigercat. It's that whole reduce-reuse-recycle thing... -d-
  3. Looks wonderful, Angelo! I too have one under construction, but it's still in the component stage and the liquid cement is outgassing..... -d-
  4. Well.... here we are again. We are very close to the point where we will need to paint a VC10.... again. One of the last details i wanted to get finalized were the distinctive wing fences. Some of you recall that i was displeased with (some might call it a rant) the Roden approach to the wing fences, and frankly the aftermarket offerings were pretty uninspired as well. The only way i could see a solution that was robust enough, was to make a (thin) saw cut through the upper wing planks and fashion a "deeper" wing fence from very thin brass sheet stock. I'm pleased to say i think we got there. 2 observations: 1) Cutting two wing fences to identical dimensions is an inexact science. 2) The fences slid into the corresponding slots but they were tight. I got around this problem, by laying the fences down on my work mat and thinning them down with a 240 grit sanding stick. Care has to be taken however, because if you're too aggressive in your sanding, you can accidentally lift the fence off the working surface and bend it, possibly irreprarably. This is what happened to the second wing fence i made, necessitating a new wing fence be fabricated for the starboard side. I'm well along in making the smaller outboard fences, but i think i'm about ready to start priming. Stay tuned...
  5. Well, today we got the propeller finished. I hope. That's it for today. Up Next: Troubleshooting the windscreen...
  6. Wow! Those cockpit add ons turned out really great! If you don't mind, i'd like to offer some unsolicited suggestions about building the Tamiya F4U-1 Birdcage for you to think about. Feel free to adopt or discard as you see fit. 1) Birdcage Corsairs did not have a notch in the intercooler flap, so it needs to be filled in and made fully rectangularized (thats a word, isn't it?) The rectangular notch on the lower centerline behind the cowl flaps is for the Brewster Bomb Rack and it too also needs to be filled. 2) The cavities around the three round engine backfire poppet valved should be covered by a flush fitting piece of sheet metal, but it may not be worth the trouble to fix. 3) A lot of model builders get worked into a froth about incorporating salmon-coloured primer on the interior, but the only place where it's truly visible is in the tail wheel well. Barely. 5) Gluing the left and right turtle deck pieces (parts C2 and C3) to their respective fuselage halves first, before gluing fuselage halves together works better from a joint filling standpoint. 6) Wings: If you glue the inlet pieces (Parts B3 and B5) to the lower center wing section (B4) first you can get better alignment along the lower contours which will eliminate a tricky sanding job. Glue the inlets the the lower wing, place (do not glue) B32 and B33 on the lower center section, and tape/rubber band everything together . The upper wing halves serve as a jig to assist in holding the inlets in place while the glue dries. Cleaning up any mismatch on the upper surface of the wing is easier. Do not install the tailplanes (A11 and A31) until the camouflage painting is done. They can be painted and installed as separate units and keeping them out of the way makes painting the camo pattern on the back end a lot easier. They arrived on the factory floor already painted and they were interchangeable, left and right. 7) Wings: This is where a lot of people run into what is arguably the only real fit problem on the model. Some people revert to installing locator shims made from .010 plastic strip in the inboard upper and lower wing skins to assist in keeping the adjacent surfaces level, which is a smart move. In addition, Give some thought to placing (but not gluing ) the outboard wing ribs B26 and B9 first, Into the outboard wings after the upper and lower wing halves are glued together and the center section is also assembled. When you build up and install the inboard ribs that accommodate the spar (B8, B11, B25, B27), Apply glue and install them but before they set up fully, apply glue and install the outboard wing ribs (B26, B9) and then slide the outboard wings onto the spar and wing center section and tape the outer panels to the inboard panels to hold everything in alignment while the ribs set up. This will at least get the overall dihedral and initial alignment of the wings going in the right track. Most of the alignment issues are at the trailing edge of the wing where the inboard and outboard wing skins don't sit level with each other. When the spars are set up, slide the wings off and set them aside til later. You still need to work around the wing spars, but the model is a little easier to handle. 😎 Wing Flaps: My recommendation is to paint them off the model separately and install them at the very end of construction. Tamiya gives you lowered flaps as sort of a "Take it or leave it" option, but it was common practice for the flaps to be retracted after landing. Ultracast does make a set of resin, retracted flaps, or you could modify the flaps on your own but its a bit of work. Getting the flaps aligned in the "down" position requires patience. The little "web", wedge-shaped piece integrated into the intermediate flap that spans between flaps doesn't quite meet and it may benefit from cutting it off, cleaning it up a little bit and re-inserting it. Hopefully i'm not too late in passing this along. Just keep these things in mind as you build the model. The flaps in particular, and to a lesser extent the tailplanes kind of get in the way of applying the camo scheme, freehand. I know the kit has been upstaged my the more recent Magic Factory offering but i feel this is still a really great model if you can sidestep the pitfalls. -d-
  7. Looking great so far, Bill. The contrasting panel line wash looks great. No darker than that!! One thing i have noticed on Victors is a lot of nasty vertical streaking located on the aft fuselage, but well forward of the air brakes. Would be worth consulting General Melchett on that one. Another thing i think would be good -if you can make it work- are faint dirty streaks coming off the vortex generators on the wing upper surfaces, running in parallel. Unlike the Buccaneer, there isn't any bleed air coming over the wing from upstream.... but it might add something, though it should be very faint. I wish you a speedy procedure and an uncomplicated recovery! -d-
  8. Absolutely Splendid job. Love the comparision of the finished model, with the real thing. -d-
  9. Those of you who follow me regularly know i have multiple build threads running simultaneously, and progress can be often sporadic. Having said that, progress does occur. It's been years since i built my last 32 scale Corsair and honestly, i don't remember what i used to paint the last propeller. I think i'd been using pretty much a straight black, but since i used Tamiya Nato Black on a lot of my cockpits, i thought i'd try it on my propeller. It did not go as well as i'd hoped. Simply put, the greenish aspect was too visible and the propeller started to look as if it were painted in Engine Grey, rather than a scale black. To that end, i wanted to darken the colour, but still make it different enough that the application of Roy's Secret Sauce would still be visible. So, this is what i came up with: ...I also wanted to make the blade tips less lemony yellow, so i substituted RAF Roundel Yellow, using the guidance i found on Replikator.club. Next step will be adding the Ham Standard logos and the specs stencils...
  10. Wasn't Operation "JAMBALAYA" the counterinsurgency campaign against Waitrose??
  11. You know, if Airfix wanted to spring a surprise on us.... a 72nd scale Javelin is definitely plausible, though it may be driven by how well the 48th scale one did in the marketplace. -d-
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