Hi Everyone,

Well believe it or not I am finally getting back to work on modeling.  The first step though is to clear off my workbench.  It has become a collecting spot for things that I did not know where else to put stuff.  Consequently, it will take a few evenings to get it cleared off.  But at least I have started on it.

On another note, my Mom finally found out about her heart.  It seems that the valve in her left ventrical is not working correctly and hence the reason for her enlarged heart.  Apparently that is not enough concern to not do the surgery on her para-esophageal hernia.  She will see the surgeon tomorrow to discuss that.

Ken

Hey, roger that, Dom. Congratulations on passing your exam!   

Hi Dom,

Sorry that I didn't congratulate you on passing your exam earlier.  I didn't realize it was a big deal.  Congratulations!!    I celebrate with you on your success!

Ken

Russ, you are right,

it was lethal, and worthy of respect.

I make fun of it because that part is easy,

they did it to us as well.

Defeating the MIGs was hard - and no laughing matter, as you suggest, life and death.

I have nothing but admiration for the plane and the guys that flew it.

The system that evolved them and their aircraft, that's

the part that is really lethal. It has infected everything. It's not

a lethal aircraft anymore, its all dressed up like 'save the world'. Ahem,

That's about as much as I can say so we don't get nuked.

Looking forward to seeing it show up.

i still wonder how they get that whole kit here

for $28 total.

I wish I had the real thing parked out back,

right beside my Sabre......

Bockscar

But it is so ugly it's beautiful.

How does that work?

I suspect it has a certain beauty because it was so lethal, Dom. If it had been a clunker in combat, you would see a squat, ugly failure and not give it further thought - and probably not waste your money on a model .

Russ

Hey, I passed my tractor-trailer-semi-big-rig-34-wheeler-truck exam,

so to celebrate tractors, and the fact that i passed the Air-Brake or 'Z' section of the exam,

I bought a 1/32 Trumpeter kit of a famous Soviet

Collective Farm Tractor, you know, the Soviets went green (sn*t green, to be exact) big-time before

the smiley-faced-enviro-mental good people here (sn*t) did,,,,lol, gotta love 'em.....lol,,,,

(here's a warm wash cloth, don't eat that, wipe your nose instead, and scrub up the back of those ears....they look dry.....lol)

here it is, lol:

Yes, I bought a MIG-17 for 28 bucks, Trumpeter, from China no less (that included shipping, ahhhem).

That thing is uglier than my Rig License ID photo.

Too bad it shot down so many F-4's, but heck, look at the

non-missile ordnance the thing carried. GUNS. ARTILLERY. Given Johnson's "let's be nice"

'eye-ball verification' policy, you can see why a sub-sonic cannon equipped farm-tractor could wipe out

so many advanced machines and crews, the dragsters were losing until guys like John Boyd

and Harry Hilaker straightened  the McNamara 'missile boys' out. Death and defeat used to count in war, not like today! ---gotta be nice.......nice counts......lol....

Seeing as I was programmed enviro-mental as a kid and young adult, i figure that

investing in Chinese styrene is a good, errr, investment.....

as it makes me very smiley-faced- great kit. I need more.

Yeah, thank the Fabian Brits who sold the Soviets such a nice engine to power that captured German scientist's design!

But it is so ugly it's beautiful.

How does that work?

Well, you can't use a dragster to plow a wheat field.

would someone tell Bob McNamara that?....lol....Too late

Rumor has it he invested in MIG....shhhhhh

and he spent all his time goosing the stocks!

Well, the stocks and Jane Fonda.....one day you're up

and one day you're down......lol.......Bob positively leaked goose down.

Guys, that's my 'cracked' worth for the next two weeks.

I'll be rare until things straighten out around 13th,

what with Thanksgiving up here and all.

Dom

Photo Credit:

http://www.airforce.ru/aircraft/mikoyan/mig-17/index.htm

Sparrowhyperion

Congrats man!  I know you were stewing over that test..  I just hope my insurance premiums don't go up.. lol

Hey, I got a call from my Nephew today.  He's working on one of the kits I sent him.  Now ships aren't my usual gig, so I'm kind of a fish out of water here.  Could someone tell me what gray FS number or color you generally paint a battleship.  He has a Turpitz and an Arizona he's working on andn he can't find an accurate answer.  He said the callouts in the instructions just don't look right.

On topic.  I am going to start another kit for this build soon, I just can't figure out what one.  I suppose I could finish the FGR.2 I started in the Phinomania build last year.

Have a good night. 

Rich

Bockscar

Mikey,

Yesterday I passed my big-rig exam, I am

still a card-carrying honkin' tractor AZ driver.....lol

but I wil never forget my first Chevy 427 4-barrel, Muncie,

Posi-Track, Ford-Waster....

errr....Ken....errr......you hear that......lol

The thing is, the colour of a battleship at any given time was as much a function of the colour of the sea it was sailing in, the colour of the sky and lighting conditions, and from how far away it was being viewed.

Also, every country had their own idea of what grey was, some battleships are very dark almost charcoal, others very light, and then there's the camo and Trompe-l'œil schemes

Shissh, Testors has a number of greys that fit the bill.

My favourite, a bit on the blue tone scale, is Testors Aggressor Grey, FS36251.

From there you can go a shade darker, a shade lighter, a slight tone redder, a slight tone bluer.

Bismarck was sunk on a mundane day in the Atlantic way off the coast of France in mundane weather.

I would not obsess, start with an Aggressor Grey and build on that.

-Dom

Congrats man!  I know you were stewing over that test..  I just hope my insurance premiums don't go up.. lol

Hey, I got a call from my Nephew today.  He's working on one of the kits I sent him.  Now ships aren't my usual gig, so I'm kind of a fish out of water here.  Could someone tell me what gray FS number or color you generally paint a battleship.  He has a Turpitz and an Arizona he's working on andn he can't find an accurate answer.  He said the callouts in the instructions just don't look right.

On topic.  I am going to start another kit for this build soon, I just can't figure out what one.  I suppose I could finish the FGR.2 I started in the Phinomania build last year.

Have a good night. 

Rich

Bockscar

Mikey,

Yesterday I passed my big-rig exam, I am

still a card-carrying honkin' tractor AZ driver.....lol

but I wil never forget my first Chevy 427 4-barrel, Muncie,

Posi-Track, Ford-Waster....

errr....Ken....errr......you hear that......lol

Ken;

I was always a Pony-Car fan....lol

Bockscar

Mikey,

Yesterday I passed my big-rig exam, I am

still a card-carrying honkin' tractor AZ driver.....lol

but I wil never forget my first Chevy 427 4-barrel, Muncie,

Posi-Track, Ford-Waster....

errr....Ken....errr......you hear that......lol

  You still make me laugh Dom!!

Mikey,

Yesterday I passed my big-rig exam, I am

still a card-carrying honkin' tractor AZ driver.....lol

but I wil never forget my first Chevy 427 4-barrel, Muncie,

Posi-Track, Ford-Waster....

errr....Ken....errr......you hear that......lol

Sometimes on a warm day,

you hit a pocket of really low density air.

Scorpiomikey

Race car driver stuck behind the wheel of a big rig.

Ive seen that video a few times, and im sure he had those throttles firewalled. simple fact of the matter was, he made a mistake.

That is exactly how I look at it too.  Nobody is perfect and it is easy to criticize anybody for making a mistake.  It was just unfortunate that this one caused fatalities.  But he did some amazing things with that aircraft in the many years prior!

Ken

Race car driver stuck behind the wheel of a big rig.

Ive seen that video a few times, and im sure he had those throttles firewalled. simple fact of the matter was, he made a mistake.

Ken:

You and Steve McQueen.

maybe he was great pilot, but never understood the

exponential curve. If everything had been linear that day,

maybe he would have pulled it off. Wings do not lose lift

in a bank in a linear way, it is a a sharp exponential

loss of lift.

Maybe he underestimated the amount he

needed to throttle up before the bank.

maybe he was flying a Sukhoi aerobatic plane the day before,

and underestimated the BUFF's reaction time.

maybe he was actually just trying to do everything by the book,

not violate the 'no-fly',

and didn't listen to his inner Steve McQueen.

It's all moot now.

Scorpiomikey

All the stories i had heard were that the pilot had been flying them for quite some time (long enough to work the p and v out of his veins anyway) And most crews were reluctant to work with him. I dunno if thats just scuttlebutt, but thats what ive heard.

Yes, the pilot had been verbally reprimanded on several occasions.  In fact that was one of the findings in the investigation that he should have been more severely punished prior to the accident.  But like I said, I still see a lot of myself in him.

Ken

All the stories i had heard were that the pilot had been flying them for quite some time (long enough to work the p and v out of his veins anyway) And most crews were reluctant to work with him. I dunno if thats just scuttlebutt, but thats what ive heard.

Ken:

i saw that crash video, and i can't watch it again.

I'm relieved to know the guy wasn't just hot-sticking,

thanks for that info.

A very sad end to a great pilot and crew.

-Dom

Bockscar

Gamera

Sparrowhyperion

The Buff is a lot like the B17.  They could both absorb an enormous amount of damage and still get their crews home safely.  I wonder what happened to this one...  Midair Collision?

Rich

Bockscar

Ever use the rear landing gear when your vertical stabilizer is AWOL????

Why I love the BUFF:

Ya know, some days that's what I feel like... 

Russ: I've seen plenty of aircraft with the stressed skin but don't think I've seen anyone try to model it before- nice work, looking forward to seeing how it looks all painted up.

Mike: Hey, she's not the best looking AH-64 I've ever seen but she ain't that bad! Nice work! 

Yeah Cliff:

I had a bad day or two myself, here's a real

bad day at the office. It wasn't the BUFF's fault:

Here's the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress

There's a video of that too, but it'll make you sick to watch it. The Buff was full up with fuel.

I watched that video several times.  There is another video that has more of the flying done by this pilot.  There was a lot of criticism about him but I feel sorry for the guy.  In a way he reminds me of myself.  In my younger years I was just as crazy with the high horsepower cars that I drove.  I could just see myself doing the same thing with a B-52 if given half a chance.  He really did some outrageous maneuvers with that aircraft!

What caused this crash was complicated.  First of all the pilot was practicing for an air show.  Right before this crash, the pilot had originally planned on doing a touch and go but at the last second was waved off by the tower because of another aircraft on the runway.  During all that of course the pilot had reduced the air speed.  As the pilot retracted the landing gear and started pulling back up, he asked for permission to perform a 180 degree turn around the tower which he was given permission.  Now whether he forgot or because of the last second decision, he apparently didn't take into account the proximity of a "no fly zone" inside the radius of his turn until he had already commited the turn.

What happened next was a poor choice.  He tried to take the already slow moving B-52 into a tighter turn to avoid the "no fly zone" instead of just proceeding through it.  This took the remaining air speed that the B-52 needed to stay airborne.

If you look carefully in that photograph you can see the ejection hatch cover next to the tail fin that the co-pilot had blown in an attempt to eject.  No one survived the crash.  Very sad.

Ken

Gamera

Russ: I've seen plenty of aircraft with the stressed skin but don't think I've seen anyone try to model it before- nice work, looking forward to seeing how it looks all painted up.

Thanks, Gam, so am I . I've seen several models with some wrinkling shown but I think mine may be the first to cover virtually the whole fuselage. Hopefully, I haven't gone too far...

Gamera

Sparrowhyperion

The Buff is a lot like the B17.  They could both absorb an enormous amount of damage and still get their crews home safely.  I wonder what happened to this one...  Midair Collision?

Rich

Bockscar

Ever use the rear landing gear when your vertical stabilizer is AWOL????

Why I love the BUFF:

Ya know, some days that's what I feel like... 

Russ: I've seen plenty of aircraft with the stressed skin but don't think I've seen anyone try to model it before- nice work, looking forward to seeing how it looks all painted up.

Mike: Hey, she's not the best looking AH-64 I've ever seen but she ain't that bad! Nice work! 

I had a bad day or two myself, here's a real

bad day at the office. It wasn't the BUFF's fault:

Here's the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress

There's a video of that too, but it'll make you sick to watch it. The Buff was full up with fuel.

And a video of the incident.

Oh and that Buff was doing low level testing, hit turbulence, climbed, hit a patch of particularly bad clear air turbulence, pilot said he felt the aircraft wrenched to one side and it got a bit difficult to control, but not too bad. Wasn't until a chase plane caught up to check on them that they discovered that.

www.boeing.com/.../story3.htm

Thanks guys. Yeah pop it on the home page.

Sparrowhyperion

The Buff is a lot like the B17.  They could both absorb an enormous amount of damage and still get their crews home safely.  I wonder what happened to this one...  Midair Collision?

Rich

Bockscar

Ever use the rear landing gear when your vertical stabilizer is AWOL????

Why I love the BUFF:

Ya know, some days that's what I feel like... 

Mike: Hey, she's not the best looking AH-64 I've ever seen but she ain't that bad! Nice work! 

Incridible! I don't think any other plane could do that. Thanks for the image, Dom!

Russ

The Buff is a lot like the B17.  They could both absorb an enormous amount of damage and still get their crews home safely.  I wonder what happened to this one...  Midair Collision?

Rich

Bockscar

Ever use the rear landing gear when your vertical stabilizer is AWOL????

Why I love the BUFF:

Scorpiomikey

Right, im sick of this thing.

Im calling it done even though its missing its weapons and some handles/service steps.

Good on you, Mikey, for sticking with it!  It looks really good considering all you had to go through.

Russ

Nice job Mike!  Do you want it posted on the front page?

Ken

Right, im sick of this thing.

Im calling it done even though its missing its weapons and some handles/service steps.

The kit itself is terrible. But it only cost me another kit that i wasnt going to build anyway (Thank you CallsignOWL)