LDO

Land Speed Racing sounds like fun. I'd take part in that.

Build what makes you happy. Period. I think most everyone does, and more power to them. I would say the only people who are doing it wrong are the people who build to please contest judges.

Not that I know of, but Airfix's 1/24 P-51D has six .50s. I just gave away a set to a guy on this site. You might go to an aircraft website and ask if anyone can spare a few. I do have a second P-51. If someone on here can copy them, I'd be happy to send him a .50 or two. Just go to the Wanted section and ask if someone will cast them.

Do you walk around in the summertime sayin' "how about this heat?"?

Finally, more visible progress. I got the canopy and fairing all sorted out. It also has a cockpit. At first I was going to go with black paint on the canopy, but I decided to go for a more realistic look. That caused A LOT of work. I have to keep thinking ahead on this because of the paint. The exhaust stacks are supposed to be put on before the fuselage goes together, but it would be tough to polish the paint with those stacks in the way. I cut the nose open so I can install them through the nose before the spinner goes on. The radiator scoop also presented a problem It would be tough to paint the top part of the scoop with it being so close to the wing. Polishing? Forget about it. I painted the scoop before putting on the wing. I'll blend it in after the wing goes on. I was about to glue the wing on when I realized the scoop will also interfere with painting and polishing the wing. So tonight I painted the bottom of the wing. (It will not have any visible glue joints) Here's the color scheme: pearl white and pearl pink. It will have a thin black line at the color separation. Man, this thing is a lot more work than I thought it would be, but I think the results will be worth it.

If you don't want to cut up your foam-core sanding sticks, make one from wet/dry sandpaper glued to sheet styrene. Choose thickness based on what you need. Trim with X-acto and stainless straightedge. I make these all the time. One is a "flat board" type sander. Paper is not glued on because it's big and I want it to be reusable. It's about 8 inches long with 2 laminated sheets of .125" for a base, plus a sheet plastic handle glued on that also makes it stiffer. I used it for smoothing out the roof of Tamiya's 1/12 scale "Lunchbox" van. That van has a sunroof that I filled in. The roof is depressed all around that hole. The big flat board allowed me to fill in that shallow depression.

Jairus has said that the Sea Fury and Bearcat are eligible. Even though they didn't serve before the war ended, they have been turned into real racers.

My workbench is a wooden commercial door (8ft tall/long). It is supported by a pair of 2-drawer file cabinets. One drawer has hanging files. The files hold my Evergreen strip plastic. First up is plain strips, starting at .010", then it goes to other profiles. One file each for quarter round, round, c-channel, square tubing, round tubing, etc. Put all sizes of each profile in in one file and you'll have plenty of room.

I sent a package to Moparfan426 about a week and a half ago. It's still not there. Time to worry? FYI it had no tracking number or insurance. It was just a resin engine out of an airplane kit. Not much value, but I certainly don't have any more of them.

Progress on the new canopy/fairing: I extended the fairing all the way to the base of the vertical stabilizer. Canopy is separated from the fairing. Next step is to cut a hole in the fuselage for a cockpit. This photo also shows how much the fin was enlarged.

I made some progress tonight. I had a couple of setbacks. First; the wing was glued together with Weld-On 3. I should have used CA. The trailing edge is very thin and the solvent glue really softened it up. Next was the streamlined canopy. I made a vacu-form master, but had no clear plastic. Since I am currently unemployed, I'm not buying any hobby supplies for now just on principle. I tried using an old 3-liter bottle, but that just shrunk over heat. I dig around and found some blister packages and I got one that worked great. I now have several canopies/fairings, in case I goof up on one. No photos tonight, I can't seem to get the camera to focus. Maybe tomorrow in the sunlight. I'm really diggin' this build.

Somebody had to do it.

Ulf Norinder's 250 GTO rebodied by Drogo. (Body later removed from GTO chassis and put on a less valuable Ferrari)

What's wrong with a 4-valve V-8?

Is that better for you?

I hope you guys never post on a political message board. A wacko found my posts here and put them on a political board. He also found out where I live and had a free medical book about Colitis sent to me, just to let me know that he knows where to find me. Yeah, yeah, I know, having a pulse means he didn't need the posts here. <sarcasm>

And some still go there anyway. http://client.sigmachat.com/sc.php?id=12510

Evergreen, Evergreen, Evergreen. Check out the Evergreen styrene display at a well-stocked hobby shop. This supercharger was machined from laminated Evergreen sheet styrene. What you see is several machined pieces of plastic glued together. It was NOT machined in this form. {Later thrown away when I made a cut without getting the mill indicated in in all three axes) Along with this 1/35 scale Rolls-Royce armored car. Between the body and frame is a leaf spring made by laminating small strips of styrene over a piece of plumbing pipe (to get the bow in it). The engine block for this Chrysler straight-8 is mostly scratchbuilt. The MPC/AMT kit piece was used as a guide, and the chrome pieces are from the kit. All the white parts of the block are Evergreen styrene, both sheet and various profiles of strip. The grey part of the engine is part of a torpedo out of a Revell 1/48 Heinkel He-111. This Duesenberg Town Car has a divider between driver and passengers made of sheet styrene. The B-pillars are strip, along with the reveals (trim moldings at the belt line) this box for a box truck has walls made of thick sheet styrene, plus various profiles of strip for details. Notice the "C" channel along the top side. The "frame" for the back door is a strip of rectangular-section styrene with a strip of half-round on each side.

Jairus- Just make the "wheels up" photo a "wheels off" photo. I can't wait to see a hot rod butcher bird.

Lead foil. It takes whatever shape you want. It will lay flat with no problem. Real seatbelts don't bow outward from the seat.

Functional. No Machineguns poking out of the hood of my Aston Martin, thank you. A) No room for them B ) Darn sure no room for a retract mechanism C) No room for ammo feed chutes, especially if they both feed from the same side D) There is no LMG or GPMG that could poke through the hood vents on the DBS. It's just silly. To be fair, I do nitpick a bit For $165,000 I'd want simulated machineguns that don't FEED THROUGH THE EJECTION PORT. /nitpick over

I read about it maybe 25 years ago. The idea was to chop up sprue into tiny pieces and melt them, them pour into an open mold for something like an aircraft canopy. That would leave you with a part that's only suitable for use as a vacu-form master. I tried it once with poor results, but I was only 15 or so. It makes no sense today, with casting supplies so readily available. Really it made no sense 25 years ago, with the availability of polyester resin (fiberglass). I used fiberglass to make a mold and a copy of this scatchbuilt scoop in 1/8 scale.

Yeah, building these things with the intent of polishing the paint does require some planning ahead. The P-51 gets the exhaust stacks glued on before the fuselage halves get glued together. If I do that, polishing around the exhaust would be tough at best. What I did was cut the nose open. That way I can use tweezers to install the exhausts through the nose. The hole will then be covered by the prop spinner. I'm glad to see someone else getting started on this build. I was beginning to think Jairus and I would be the only ones building a race plane. Others have expressed interest here and in the Chat room, but have not started building. Any ideas on what you'll do for paint?

A little bit more work: Vertical stabilizer enlarged. Began work on streamlined canopy/fairing. I laid down some Bare Metal Foil, (BMF is like a release agent. It will allow me to pop off the whole assembly) then glued a "footprint" made of .010" styrene over that. The grey part at the front of it is part of a drop tank from Airfix's 1/48 Seafire 46/47 kit. The white stuff is Milliput epoxy putty. When it hardens, I'll pop the whole thing off and sand it smooth, then vacuum-form a canopy & fairing over it.

Cool, Jairus. Any ideas on what you'll do for paint? What about modifications to the airframe?