Ace-Garageguy

I fondly remember the Kaman H-43 Huskie, both the early recip powered and the later turbine-powered (as in your photo) ships. They functioned well in the crash rescue / firefighting and general utility roles they were intended for. Interesting design, with no tail rotor required because the counter-rotating main rotors canceled out any helicopter-typical tendency towards yaw-axis rotation of the airframe due to torque.

Though the Lark was based on the full size Studebaker shell, with the wheelbase shortened ahead of the firewall, and as Joe mentions above, none of the exterior skins are shared. I've been looking at my Lark from the standpoint of narrowing it, shortening it, giving it a light top-chop and body sectioning, and re-scribing the rear door shut-line to get the initial impression closer to what it would be if it was correct 1/25 scale. With very careful measuring and cutting, I think this might not be as hard as it seems at first glance. It's odd that the scale is off, as Johan was usually very good about getting the outer appearance of their models spot-on. I'm wondering if the somewhat larger scale wasn't a concession to Studebaker's marketing department, concerned by the diminutive size of a promo if it had been scale-correct.

My Photobucket account is in good standing, functional, and paid up. All the photos appear correctly from my end at the present time, 9:31 PM EST, Friday, Dec. 27, 2019. However, Photobucket has occasional operating glitches, and sometimes photos are not always available. Check back.

Sorting day...

A slightly different spin on Floyd...

Contrary to what a certain element is trying to shove down our throats these days, "morals" and "profit" are not mutually exclusive. The only thing that shouldn't be for sale at any cost is personal honor. But sadly, it's often traded for peanuts.

Came home to pick up a tool, and this '50 Olds wagon conversion was waiting for me. From eBay seller bestmodelcarparts, it's the second piece I've bought from him. The other was a Corvair rampside pickup, and they are both in the "about as good as resin gets" category. VERY nice quality.

I first saw those crazy things in Japan in the late 1980s. Seems like some were actually being used as trucks at the time...without the silly airdam/cowcatcher and rockets, anyway.

Over the years, there have been several threads here and elsewhere about "how do I replicate factory shrink wrap?" There was at least one instance of an eBay buyer opening a "rare factory sealed" kit and finding nothing but scraps and sprue. There is, at the moment, a seller listing a "factory sealed" kit and making a big deal out of stating he's "not responsible for the contents of sealed kits". Draw your own conclusions.

I appreciated your response, went back looking at the same area on mine, then started pulling up other images of the same kit wherever I could find them. Another problem with that body shell I haven't seen addressed is that besides it having that unfortunate curl down on the top of the windshield frame, when viewed from the side, the roof climbs towards the front, unlike the real cars. Somewhere in there, the discussion around "I don't see the problem" popped up. Again, I appreciate your taking the time to post the photos of your corrective work. I'm glad I didn't pay much for the thing...though the chassis is a fair starting point to replicate the custom frame under the real one (a very expensive hot mess built 12 years back by somebody in the Northwest with a whole hell of a lot more ego than knowledge...and the primary reason I've been on the dammed car so long...WAY beyond what my original contract called out). At this point, I rather doubt I'll bother with doing a reasonably correct chassis for the models, and just get the "first impression" close enough so I don't cringe every time I look at it.

Hi Bill, and glad to have your input. The more I look at the Lindberg body, the more convinced I'm becoming that some heavy file work to lower the forward-most ends of the front fender character lines, and possibly strategic cuts to lower the tops of the front fenders as well (assuming there's just not material there to file them down enough), will at least get the thing to the point where the first impression isn't nose-climbing. I can live with a model that looks pretty good, but to my eye, this thing is immediately jarring. I'm tempted to buy another one, do side-by-side comparisons of what I consider to be minimum necessary corrections, then fix the second one to match it.

Mine are "he, him".

Excellent point. Also why different music appeals to different people, no matter what they were raised around, and why music is just random noise to some folks (yes, I've actually met one of those). But one would hope that the people who are employed to design the real ones, and those who are employed to render full-scale vehicles as scale models, would be on the end of the spectrum that's most sensitive to this kind of thing. Sadly, that's not always the case.

The little bugger is obviously based on the Opel Kadett B, the progenitor of the badge-engineered Vauxhaul mentioned above...but try as I might, I couldn't find a South American derivative. It occurred to me to look for a Vauxhaul derivative, but I didn't follow through.

Sounds like another woke-fest to me, the final nail-in-the-coffin-for-the-franchise. I'll wait 'til it's on the DVD clearance table for 99 cents.

^^^ That's some good schmidt.

Mark and Snake...thanks for the input. Mr. Snake...how much work did you put into the front of that roof? I went cheap and bought a gluebomb of that flipnose kit, and the upper part of the windshield frame is bowed down so much, the poor thing looks like it has a forehead. The glass fits it, so I assumed it was made that way...but yours doesn't look anywhere near as bad as mine.

Time to beat the dead horse. I believe I mentioned earlier the last customer car I ever intend to do is a nightmare '66 Chevelle SS 396. The owner is the nicest guy I've ever done a build for, the shop where I'm doing it has some of the best people in the business, and I thought it would be nice to present both the shop and the owner with models of the car at the end. We're coming up on completion, at least my part, which is 100% functional, all the custom bits finished, all the body panels corrected and aligned and marked, and needing absolutely nothing but to be blown apart for paint, and reassembled. So, I decided to look deeper into getting a '66 Chevelle that actually LOOKS like a '66 Chevelle. It's not easy. I mentioned all the shortcomings I found on the Lindberg kit previously, and thought I'd look into the possibility of putting the MUCH BETTER LOOKING front clip from the Revell '66 wagon on the Lindberg mess. No dice. It's as if they're models of two different cars, in different scales. Overall, the Revell kit LOOKS pretty good, though I haven't compared the measurements with the real car yet. After finding just how much difference there was in front door lines and width between the Revell and Lindberg '66s, I thought it might be interesting to see about possibly grafting the nice Revell '66 front clip to the old '66 Monogram body shell, as it's 1/24 and considerably wider than the Lindberg, naturally. Sadlly, it's considerably wider than the Revell kit as well...and the front of the roof is too awful to even contemplate trying to rework. I saw somebody above mentioned grafting the Revell '66 front clip to a Revell '67, and I don't know exactly what for the tail. I'll be looking into this too, so it looks like I'll be needing the Revell '66 El Camino kit also. This is becoming a ridiculously expensive proposition, considering I just wanted a couple of low-effort but reasonable models, shot in the right color, with wheels and tires close to what's on the real one. One final option...and most likely the one I'll go with...is re-carving the nose of the Lindberg body shell. The more I look at the Lindberg shell, the more I'm seeing it shouldn't really be too bad. Look carefully at the Lindberg kit, and it looks like a movie stunt car after it's been over a jump and landed on its nose. The front of the fenders go UP where they're not supposed to...and it's very noticeable. We'll see...

Kinda fascinating how a thread started about a forum member's posted birthday turned into 30 seconds of hate for Bruce Springsteen. The album versions of the songs Born to Run and Jungleland will always be among my favorites, and unfailingly take me back to a time when I was doing my best to live fast and die young. I never noticed much else he did, and I don't give a rat's backside for what any entertainer thinks about politics.

Very, very nice. Always a pleasure to see somebody making the effort to achieve historical and technical accuracy.

A packing peanut? HOW DARE YOU !!!!!!!!!