Pete J.

Oooh, I am a baaaad boy!....and was it fun! Got one of those annoying phone calls today from India. I am sure many of you have had them before. I seem to get two or three a year with the same scam. "Hello, My name is David I am calling from the Microsoft Security department and your computer has been sending us alerts about....." They are trying to get me to log onto their web site so they can extract information or hack my computer. Well, I had some time and decided to play with them. "Can you go to your computer?" Oh, I am so glad you called. Yes I will go there now. Put them on speaker and finish cleaning up the kitchen. "Is your computer on?" Oh, it takes a while to start. "Ok"...."is it on yet?" No not yet, it is just slow. After seven or eight minutes I hang up. Well, they figure they have a sucker on the line and call back. "I sorry by my line seems to have gone down, is the computer up?" Yes. "Look at your keyboard. Do you see the Windows button?" Windows button? no. "Do you see the control key?" Control key,..no I see an alt button. "No, the ctrl button." I see an ASDF. "Focus on the lower left corner of your keyboard" Keyboard? After about 25 minutes of this they are getting quite loud and a little annoyed. Finally one of them(I think there were a couple of others involved) Shouts "Are you stupid?" I reply, No actually I am rather bright and hopefully I have given you a reason to not call me back. He starts yelling about me wasting his time and I laugh at him. He then starts cursing and using foul language and I laugh louder. He hangs up. First time I have gotten them to hang up on me. I hope they call back. I would like to play this game again!

Danno, The only problem with Slater's 50/50 is that they are growing. The restaurant they are opening near me is either their fifth or sixth.

Ok Harry, you think that is bad, there is a new restaurant here in SoCal that gives me angina just mentioning it. It is called Slater's 50/50. They are a high end hamburger place. There signature burger is a 1/3 pound(after cooking) that is called the 50/50 because it is half beef and half bacon! They are opening an place about 2 miles from me in the 15th. I got an invitation to attend their soft opening on the 14th. A free entrée, one adult beverage(read beer) and unlimited soft drinks for 4 people! Probably the last time my wife will let me go!

Oh, my! Another featureless modern econoblob!

If it is uncoated aluminum, then a dab of hot glue will hold it in place nicely. Then chuck up a sewing needle in the pin vice. Use that to mark the spot where you are going to drill by making a dimple. Make sure that the spot is deep enough to hold the drill bit in place. This technique is in lue of center punching it. If you have a center punch all the better. Then chuck up the drill bit and place the bit in the needle hole and drill the hole holding the pin vise as close to vertical as you can. Here is a weird technique that I picked up from a wood worker. You can stabilize the drill by placing your forehead on the end of the drill. Apparently your head is more stable than you hand.

I've had one for quite a while now and it is a very useful modeling tool. The main advantage is that the heat is very localized and concentrated. This means you can make two solder joints relatively close without the first one desoldering. It also gives you control that you can't get with any soldering iron of any size. It also heats an area very very quickly as the resistance of the part itself is creating the heat, not the tips. It is a specialty tool and not for everyone, but if you are going to solder a lot you should look into it.

Oh, by the way, I thought you might like to see the final piece that came out of the jig I mentioned above. It is a set of cowl flaps for a radial aircraft engine I am building.

David, Soldering jigs for me are really one of the main reasons I have a small mill and lathe. Unfortunately, most of my jigs are based on these tools and are very job specific. I use 6061 aluminum for the most part because it has two major advantages and one major disadvantage in soldering brass parts. The two major advantages are that it is easy to machine into the jig I want and solder doesn't stick to it. The major disadvantage is that it is a huge heat sink. Now this last bit can be used to your advantage if you can understand how to use it as a heat sink and to negate those properties when necessary. Here is a photo of a jig I made for soldering the axle to the spring assembly on the chassis of a hot rod. As you can see it is quite complex, but I needed to get the bearings as close to vertical and parallel as possible so that the wheels will sit square. It also uses machining parallels on a milling table to keep everything as square as possible. Here is another jig I made to solder several pieces together in an arc at a set angle. Here I used the heat sink properties to my advantage. I took a piece of Tamiya masking tape and put it on my half of my jig. I would solder on the part of the jig that had the tape on it and then move the newly soldered part so that it was on the untaped part, in direct contact with the aluminum and then place the next part to be soldered over the taped portion. The taped part would get hot enough to solder and the untaped part stayed cool enough to not remelt the prior solder joint. As I say, each jig is built to do a particular job. In my experience you can get different types of holding fixtures that use pushpins or alligator clips, but if you need real precision often the only real solution is a purpose built jig. Hope this helped.

You can get the Tamiya paints in either rattle can or bottle. The rattle cans are lacquers and dry very quickly and have a very hard surface. The bottles are water based acrylics and take longer to dry and are not as durable. I use the rattle cans for larger lenses and acrylics for smaller spaces like a dash board light.

I am still surprised that this tread is still trying to define something that is undefinable. A muscle car is an idea, not something you can quantify. My personal car is a perfect example. Midrange price two door 1.6 hp per cubic inch 12 lbs. per hp Runs in the mid 14s in the quarter mile 6 second 0-60 Performance about what a new Boss 302 ran. Is it a muscle car??? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Are you kidding?? Not even close.

As long a the jet keeps coming out of Alaska and slides down the Idaho Montana boarder and then goes due east you are in for cold. All ya got ta do is watch the Jetstream and you will know more winter is on the way. Once it moves north for the summer, the low temps will go away.

Classic case of jack of all trades, master of none. To effectively turn metal, you need something that doesn't bend or flex. When I saw one comment on the fact that the tool holder wasn't strong enough, it would be time to depart the building!

No, it's a 1967 hoogivza..

So it is time to update the Zero again. I have made some major progress and I am happy with my aviation side at this point but am also looking forward to getting back to the hotrod. Hope to have this beast done soon. What has been done here was to set this up to display it as a cutaway style model. The problem was how to do the cowl and the cowl flaps. The cowls on the real deal are a top and bottom clamshell design. I wanted a left side/right side display. So I soldered the top and bottom pieces together(they are white metal) and then cut down the centerline with my jewelers saw. I replaced the kit cowl flaps which are closed, with a set in the open position and made of individual plates soldered together. Here you see the right side painted a semi-gloss black and mounted with the open flaps. The metal finish piece is the original cowl with the closed flaps. I think the open flaps is a much nicer looking piece. This shot shows the open side. I left the cowl flaps in their natural polished brass to highlight the work. They have a clear coat over them to prevent tarnish. I decided to open the flaps because in the kits closed position the exhaust was fully covered and I really like to heat discoloration that I did. It came out well. The rest are just different views.

I find it interesting that many still try to restrict the class by engine size. I am old enough to remember a lot of the discussion that went on back in the day. I was 11 in 1960 at the beginning of the era and came of age in the heart of the era. One of biggest arguments was about engine size. There was a trade off between the additional weight of the big blocks and the hp they produced. There was a lot of support for the pentastar 340's, whether it was the Duster or the AAR 'Cudas. Those cars were quick and in some cases as fast as the hemi's or elephant motors. Same could be said for the ford Boss, and CJ engines. My friends could argue these points for hours on end. Frankly, I think those discussions had more to do with the fond memories of the "Muscle Cars" than the actual cars themselves. Some were pretty terrible. Burn lots of rubber off the line but didn't hook up real well, couldn't go around a corner on a bet, and stopped like the Titanic, but just a ton of fun to argue about. That is what the muscle car era was all about.

I think Harry is dead on. You really can't take a series of numbers and use them to define a muscle car. It is a lot like art. I can't tell you what it is, but I know one when I see one. Probably the best way to describe it is to be a bit more general. Notice I said describe and not define. That is a major difference. A muscle car will be able to produce prodigious amounts of torque and get it on the pavement to produce excellent acceleration, preferably stoplight to stoplight but 0-60's and 1/4 mile times are also a measure. The body and chassis is more than likely a lighter weight, mid to lower priced model so that it is affordable. The old bang for the buck measure. Early muscle cars were sleepers. Cars that you wouldn't expect to be pavement pounders. Later versions had exterior appointments and names to go along with the "muscle car" image. Owners of muscle cars were always involved in heated discussions about who had the fasted brand which generally resulted in a side by side challenge. Every one had an opinion about what was the best. So, to say a muscle car is defined by a specific set of facts just isn't possible. Everyone had a favorite and a least favorite and would argue for hours over it. It was as much about attitude as it was about hardware.

Really P.O.'ed by people who figure it is Ok to change lanes in the middle of a turn in a double turn lane and then flip you off when you use your horn to alert them to the fact that you are next to them. Double turn lanes? Stay in your own frikin lane! Had a lady who was gutsy enough to roll down her window and start cursing at me when I didn't yield to her trying to change lanes. I verbally let her have and she was not pleased.

Several years ago I had a lot of fun at a show with this subject. I had completed an Tamiya Tiger tank. You might know the type. It is a full sound an motion R/C model. The sound is recorded from a real working Tiger and includes the sound of the inertia starter cranking up and it has a cannon that flashes and recoils with a resounding boom. Since it was designed to run it was pretty rugged. I had done some weathering and detailing but it was still a "daily driver". I put it on the table in large scale 'cause the thing is huge and intentionally put it within 6" of the edge. I suppose you can see where I was going with this. I stood back away from the table with the control and waited. Well I didn't have to wait for long, sure enough a 8 or 9 year old comes up and touches the model. I flipped the switch and you should have see the look of horror when it started winding up and the turret started tracking him. When it fire, the kid ran out of the room as fast as he could. I would bet he never touched another model for the rest of his life. I had a lot more fun the rest of the day with people who insist on getting too close and touching things they shouldn't. I only regret I didn't have a movie camera to record it. I could have got a million hits on YouTube.

Alcad is kind of hard to quantify on motors. I use a lot of different shades to achieve the look I want. What I did is made a sample sheet. I took a piece of plastic sheet and shot it with the base color I was going to use(white Tamiya Primer) and the masked it off into grids. I sprayed all the different colors so I had an idea of what they all looked like. Mostly, I use stainless steel, Steel, dark aluminum and magnesium, but others are also very handy like jet exhaust. I try to mix the shades up a lot because engines are rarely all one type of metal and the mix adds definition and depth to the model. Brass is also a handy to overspray parts to get that yellow cast that a lot of auto parts have.

Thinning paint is a black art! Well not really, it just takes time to get it right. For airbrushes, you want the paint much thinner than you would for a full sized gun. There is an old saw out there that says you should get your paint to the consistency of milk. That is really what it amounts to, but that is really hard to judge that with the old Mark I eyeball. What I did is bought a bunch of cheap plastic bottles from Coast Airbrush and made a ruler our of spare plastic. I marked the depth on the ruler of amount of thinner that I would have to put in the bottle to get everything from 2:1 to 6:1. Then I started to experiment. I use DuPont automotive lacquers and they are very thick straight from the jobber. I generally thin them starting at about 4:1. Yes more thinner than paint. I fill the bottle to the level that I need with thinner and then add the paint. Because the paint is so thick, it is easier to get accurate measurement with thinner in the bottle first. When adding the paint if the thinner is already there, all I have to do is add the paint to the filler neck and I am done. Next thing I suggest is get a notebook and take notes. Include temperature, humidity, and thinning rate and air pressure. All of these impact how the paint goes down. If something isn't working only adjust one of the variables at a time until you get a better result. Keeping a notebook will prevent future mistakes. Mistakes are not failures, they are lessons. The lessons will continue until they are learned. Good luck!

Shoot! I thought from the title that this was about what happened when you hurled an especially recalcitrant model across the floor out of frustration. . Nice demo! Sorry for the DA remark.

Pete J., on 04 Mar 2014 - 10:42 PM, said: Carrier landing with a bunch of jarhead pilots at the O club in U Tapao. If you know what I am talking about I have already said too much! Then you can understand the fun that ensued when the jarheads walked into a bar occupied by a bunch of us Air Force types! All in good fun, and no harm done after a couple of quick trips to the Flight surgeons office for stitches for all.

Carrier landing with a bunch of jarhead pilots at the O club in U Tapao. If you know what I am talking about I have already said too much!

What are you talking about??? We are already flying off into space. We are just taking the earth with us! Line from the opening of a 60's movie. "There is no gravity. The earth sucks!"

Got it! This was an easy one. I remember thinking this was a weird configuration to begin with!