Iron Modeler

Paint for Scale Models – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly…

Hi, all! Welcome to the latest edition of “There’s another paint fail…”

I’ve documented my recent searches for a good model paint.

In my model building years, I started (as did most modelers in the 1970’s) with either Testors PLA Enamels or the Pactra equivalent. I stuck with Testors, since it was what I could find at most of the local places that sold models and supplies for them.

When I discovered modeling magazines and dedicated hobby shops in the late 1970’s, I also discovered the Pactra Authentic International Colors. I used them in 1981 to paint an Otaki F6F Hellcat, and I was smitten. I found that when thinned with Aerogloss Dope Thinner, the paint laid down very thin, dried very quickly, and gave an almost eggshell finish. Of course, that meant that the paint was on its way out—indeed, Pactra had discontinued the line. No matter, a change was coming…

When I went off to college and resumed my model building activities during my second semester, I decided to give my dorm neighbors a break and switch to something more friendly. At the time, there was only one acrylic paint for models, that being the OG of modeling acrylics, Polly-S. I continued to use Polly-S (with one exception) until that line, too, began to be phased out. Polly-S was a strange paint—it was a latex paint that could be brushed without leaving brush marks, but it was tricky to airbrush. You could thin it with water or alcohol, but it took some trial and error to see which one and how much would do the job. It seemed to me that no two bottles were the same, so I got used to making changes on the fly. In hindsight, it was merely okay, nothing stellar, but I had decided to be kind to my neighbors, so I was stuck with that decision...

For those of you who just “gotsta know”, the exception was in 1983, when I built the then-new Monogram 1/48th scale F-105G. Since the Polly-S representations of the SEA colors weren’t available to me at the time, and because I wanted to see what the fuss was all about, I used the new Testors Model Master paints. I used them also on a Monogram 1/48th scale F-100D and a kitbashed ESCI/Monogram A-7D. They worked really well, but they came with all of the issues of a solvent-based paint—namely, how do you dispose of the thinners used to clean out the airbrush (I used an empty thinner can) and what to do with the thinned paint (not a good idea to return it to the bottle, as it would cause the paint to jell more times than not)…

In the meantime, two new acrylics came into view—Tamiya Acrylics and the then-Gunze-Sangyo (now GSI/Creos) Aqueous Color Range. The paints were similar in chemical composition, and early on I could get them to work quite well. But back in the day, there were frequent changes in the paint chemistry for the Tamiya paints, and accordingly I had to learn how to use it all over again with each change. In the case of the GSI Aqueous paint, I liked the way it sprayed, but it seemed to take a lot of paint to cover, and that a jar didn’t seem to go far.

I took a side trip into the 1992-era Floquil Enamels for about six months, then Floquil/Polly-S graced the world with a new acrylic paint: PollyScale. I loved this stuff, and couldn’t (still can’t) understand the negativity surrounding the paint. It thinned with distilled water (it said so on the jar AND in the literature available for the paint), sprayed nicely, and dried to a tight layer of color. It feathered out well, too, and I could mask it with no peeling/lifting issues whatsoever. I have a feeling that those who had problems with the paint were busy playing home chemist and using some strange concoction to thin the paint, which caused all the problems mentioned. Hint: Windshield washer fluid is good for removing dirt and bugs from glass. I doubt it was designed to thin paint. As I said in previous paint discussions, use the thinner recommended by the manufacturer—in this case, that thinner was distilled water, period. I was reminded of this sometime later, when I would add Future to the paint and thin with either alcohol or the Testors Acryl Thinner—the paint would give me fits. Once I went back to plain old distilled water added to just the paint, those issues went away.

Of course, in time RPM International (the parent company to Testors, Floquil/Polly-S, Bondo, Zinsser, and a handful of other companies) killed off both the Floquil enamels and PollyScale lines (and the Aeromaster Warbird Colors and Acrylic Warbirt Colors, which were checmically identical and manufactured by Floquil/Polly-S).

In response, Testors introduced a new acrylic line that was supposed to combine the best features of PollyScale and the Pactra Acrylic line (that was also fairly nice paint—I only used it once or twice, and I don’t recall any issues). This new line was called the Testor Model Master Acrylic line, and it was the Shop Vac of suck. The pigment settled hard at the bottom of the jar, so it took a powered stirrer and a good deal of shaking to mix the paint. It would clog the airbrush at the drop of a hat, it didn’t cover well, and when you could get it to spray, it would dry with a rough, chalky finish.

Another pair of new acrylics that popped onto the scene briefly were the Niche Paints (they had two lines, one featured WWII Luftwaffe colors and the other was a line of modern Soviet colors) and the Monogram ProModeler paints.

The Niche paints were rumored to be custom shades of regular eggshell finish interior house paints. I’ve only used it a few times, but I can almost buy the rumor. It wasn’t around long…

The ProModeler paints came along in 1999-2000, and were touted as the first hobby paints to be certified Non-Toxic by some US government entity. I used it once. The paint took forever to dry—if it dried at all. Again, they didn’t last long…

Anyway, I had to find another go-to paint line in the early 2000’s. Since PollyScale went away, I have tried the following:

• Testors Acryl

• Vallejo Model Air

• Lifecolor

• Hataka Orange Line

• Mission Models Paint

• AK Real Color

• ICM Acrylics

In addition, I have renewed my acquaintance with the chemically similar GSI/Creos Aqueous and Tamiya Acrylic line.

So, what did I experience?

Testors Acryl

When I first used it, I wasn’t too thrilled—PollyScale, back in the day, was a superb acrylic paint that could be thinned with distilled water, airbrushed well, hand brushed well, and had good adhesion. As I started to switch from PollyScale to Acryl (the writing was on the wall—RPM was discontinuing PollyScale), I learned to work with it, as I have done with every single brand of model paint I’ve used since way back in the early 1970’s. After a while, I reached a point where I was comfortable in how the paint behaved. It became my go-to paint brand for several years, until RPM once again decided to cut back on their product line and killed the Acryl line off.

Verdict: It is a shame that RPM killed it off, since it was head-and-shoulders better than the previous Model Master Acrylics. The color fidelity was good, and the paint performance was good and predictable.

Vallejo Model Air

With the demise of the Acryl line, my next stop was Vallejo. The learning curve was steeper, since it really didn’t like to spray to my liking. Once I learned to use their thinner, things went better. I wasn’t thrilled about using a paint that required a primer—and I did use it without primer many times—but my bigger gripes were with color accuracy and shelf life.

Vallejo’s idea of color accuracy is to get it somewhere within city limits; i.e. FS36622 gray will be gray. Whether it comes close to FS36622 or not is a matter of personal choice, but usually it did not. Which is okay, I can mix colors. But when I use a small amount from a bottle and close the bottle tightly, I don’t expect the remaining paint to turn to thick goo in a month. Also, they almost always required a primer, and the “hotter”, the better, which sort of defeats the purpose of using an acrylic paint, no?

Verdict: Not a full fail, and their Metal Color paints are still my go-to for bare metal finishes. And I’ll still use it for hand brushing. But for airbrushing camouflage schemes, nope, this ain’t it. And their shelf life is still hit/miss.

Lifecolor

I used Lifecolor for the orange patches on the Sea King I built several years ago, and I was impressed. It laid down smoothly, with no orange peel or other issues. I was so impressed that I bought their ship colors and their version of Air Superiority Blue for when I get around to building my original-issue Revell 1/72nd scale F-15 as one of the prototypes. It does require you to use their thinner, but I’m good with that. See my take on PollyScale above…

Verdict: I like this based on one use. We’ll see how other colors behave, but I’m optimistic.

Hataka

My experience with the Hataka acrylics was not good. They clogged the airbrush, no matter what I did. I used their thinner alone. I added some flow aid and retarder to the mix. It would still clog the airbrush. I wound up using the colors I had to paint terrain, where I could use a brush.

Verdict: Fail.

Mission Models Paint (MMP)

This stuff was being pimped as the greatest paint ever* (*IF you use their primer, their reducer, their poly-mix, and strictly follow their application procedure to the letter). I painted two 1/72nd scale F-16s with it, following their instructions to a ‘T’. And when I went to apply the decals, as soon as I put a wet decal on the surface of the model, the paint began to run like watercolors.

I ran some further tests on styrene card. No matter what I did, the result was the same—a fragile paint that would run when a little water was placed on top of the paint.

Verdict: Fail. Big fail, given the advertising hype. And yes, I know people who have been able to make it work. The bigger point here is that I shouldn’t have to go through a Graduate-Level course on how to use their paint and get it to yield a permanent, durable finish...

AK Real Colors (AKRC)

I was reluctant to use this product for two reasons—one, nobody could tell me whether it was miscible with AK’s acrylic thinner as well as their “High Compatibility Thinner”; and two, AK has, in the past, stepped on their ding-dongs with golf shoes in their advertisement department—promoting the Holocaust and other forms of forced slavery to sell books and then, when getting called on it, brushing it off as it was not a big deal.

But when I needed paint for my Hasegawa 1/72nd scale A-10A, I decided to give it a try. I had, by this time, been thinning Tamiya acrylics with lacquer thinner, so the first issue was mooted. I still wasn’t thrilled with their advertising gaffes, but I figured I was buying the paint from someone who had already paid AKI.

From a performance standpoint, thinned with either Tamiya lacquer thinner or Mr. Color Leveling Thinner, the paint sprayed very nicely, laid down smoothly, and dried quickly.

From a color accuracy standpoint, there were issues. Their idea of what 34102 and 34092 looked like weren’t in line with what was indicated in the FS595a fan deck I keep handy. It wasn’t close to something I had painted earlier with the PollyScale acrylics. The 34012 was too brown and not olive enough, the 34092 was almost turquoise rather than a deep green with a blueish cast. The 36081 gray was also too light—even if you subscribe to the scale color theory (which I do), it was still far too light.

Verdict: Fail. Not a hard fail, because they performed well. But they failed where it matters most—the paint should be close to what the label says. Talking with friends, this is a hit/miss thing with AK. Some colors are spot on, others are not correct.

ICM Acrylics

I’m building the “Ghost of Kyiv” release of ICM’s 1/72nd scale MiG-29 Fulcrum C. It was given to me as a gift along with the ICM paint set specifically intended for this kit. The kit gives you the gray “pixel” camouflage as decals, but I scanned the sheet and created masks on my Cameo 4.

As I began to paint the airplane, I noted that the paint said when airbrushing, thin “with water or thinner”, the thinner being unspecified. I’ve read a few accounts of folks using X-20A. I also noted that it said to use a primer. So, I primed the model with a coat of Tamiya X-18 Semigloss Black and allowed it to dry for a few days.

I began with the lightest of the gray colors. I used distilled water to thin the paint, and it seemed to go down fairly nicely. I did note that the surface was a bit chalky, but nothing that couldn’t be buffed out when the paint was dry with a microfiber towel.

I let that color dry for a few nights. I then airbrushed the next darker shade of gray on the underside. This time, I used Tamiya X-20A thinner. Again, it laid down okay, but with a chalky finish. Again, it was allowed to dry overnight.

When I resumed painting, I noted some dust that wouldn't simply wipe off, so I dampened a Q-Tip with a wee bit of distilled water—the swab was barely moist. As I tried to wash the dust off, I noted that the paint was dissolving—almost like a watercolor. As I continued, the paint wiped off the model. I did the same thing in several other locations on the model to make sure it wasn’t a localized issue. Nope, the paint—whether it had been thinned with water or X-20A—dissolved and wiped off of the surface.

The final confirmation was when it took a little over 10 minutes’ scrubbing with a toothbrush under the faucet. The paint simply wiped off.

Verdict: I hate to say this, because I think ICM is hitting it out of the park with their kit releases over the past few years, but the paint gets a Hard Fail. I will do some more tests with the paint I have left to see if it wasn’t a “me problem”, so stay tuned. But for the MiG, the paint got stripped and the model will be painted with Tamiya Acrylics, thinned with lacquer thinner. That combination has not let me down for as long as I’ve been using it.

Which brings us to the GSI Aqueous and Tamiya Acrylics.

As mentioned earlier, I used both when they first arrived in the scene. As other paints were available that worked better for me, I didn’t use them that much. But was the other acrylic lines died off, I took another look.

The initial impetus to revisit them was a pair of 1/72nd scale Phantoms in British colors I built, Academy’s F-4J as a 74 Sqn F-4J(UK) and the Fujimi FG.1. British Standard colors are hard to come by in acrylic paints, and I had already stockpiled some of the required colors, so I gave them another go. This time, I used X-20A thinner (this predated my use of Mr. Leveling Thinner buy a few months), and found they worked much better than my previous efforts. The only issue I had was with the decal application on the FG.1, which did weird things to the paint. I blame this not on the paint, but the decal adhesive, as the same paint/clear coat combination worked with no issues on the F-4J(UK). I imagine the paint would work even better with the use of that magic elixir known as Mr. Leveling Thinner, MLT, or simply “Unicorn Tears”…

And so my search ended at the Tamiya Acrylics. I guess I learned that the paint could be thinned with lacquer thinner in the late 1990’s. At the time, I was trying to remain as “hot solvent free” as I could (the exception was using Testors Metalizer Sealer as a clear coat before decals and weathering, as it was nearly bulletproof), so I steered clear. However, as the acrylic lines continued to shrink, I saw what some of my AMPS club buddies were achieving with this combination. So, I bit the bullet and tried it. As far as the fumes were concerned, I crack a window and wear a respirator. I use alcohol to clean the airbrush. So far, the results have been good—and they are repeatable. I’ve painted an Airfix 1/72nd scale Bristol Blenheim I and the Hasegawa 1/72nd scale A-10A (after I abandoned the AK Real Colors paints) with them. I painted all three of the Vermont ANG F-16’s using this mix. I had no surprises down the road when the decals went on.

I’m convinced, and it will take something Earth-shaking to change that opinion.

For those who want to know about the Andrea, Ammo by Mig, Citadel, Games Workshop, or the AK Interactive acrylics, I can only speak on the Citadel paints—I use them for detail painting only. Like the Vallejo Model Air and Model Color, they brush on well and I have no complaints. I had pondered using the AKI 3^rd Gen acrylics, but the other factor on paints, for me, is local availability. If I run out of a color, I’d like to be reasonably sure that I can buy a new jar/bottle locally and not have to put together a larger order with one of the online shops (I almost used the phrase “Mail Order”--kids, ask your parents). And in my area, I can get Tamiya Acrylics at several shops. So why would I want to venture too far away from that?

And yes, I said I also liked the Lifecolor paints. But I believe their use will be in limited, specific scenarios such as the Air Superiority Blue for the early F-15A, or the ship colors (unless I mix those, too, from Tamiya colors) because these too will need to be ordered online.

A final word on the GSI/Creos Aqueous line. I’d use them more IF I could find the H3XX and H4XX colors anywhere—these are the colors matched to AN/ANA, FS, RAL, and BSC paint specifications. I’ve scoured the various online shops, and all of them show stock on colors up to the H9X numbers. I contacted GSI/Creos, they say the colors in question are still being made (good thing, since most Hasegawa and Fujimi kits use their color call-outs). Knowing that, I would figure that Hobby Link Japan would have them, but recent searches have come up empty. If anyone can tell me what’s up here, I would appreciate it. And yes, I know I can use the Mr. Color lacquers (or the Tamiya Lacquer Paints, for that matter)—but their smell is much sharper, and lingers much longer, than that of either the Aqueous or Tamiya Acrylics thinned with MLT or lacquer thinner does.

As for the new breed of acrylic lacquers (MRP, SMS, etc.), I have not tried them for the reasons listed above. Some friends have used them, and they think they’re the best thing since bottled beer, sliced bread, apple pie, and Mom. Getting them can be an issue, which defeats the “locally stocked” availability question.

Postscript. A few weeks ago, Ammo by Mig announced a new acrylic line called “ATOM”. They are supposed to combine the best features of an acrylic paint with the best features of a lacquer. Several online shops are showing them as preorders. Just for giggles, I may have to try the line to see whether its performance is that much better than my current Tamiya/MLT mix. I don’t envision any of the local shops rushing out to start stocking ATOM, so it will have to be that much better than my current go-to to make me switch.

This opens another can of worms, one that some friends and I discussed several years ago, when MMP became available and folks were flocking to it. At the time, it seemed there was a new paint line announced every month, and modelers were flocking to them the way the 5-year olds playing soccer all follow the ball rather than playing their position. They never stick with one product long enough to become competent with it, before they run to the next shiny new paint line. I suppose you could say that I did the same thing during my recent search for a replacement for PollyScale and Acryl. I don’t think I fall into the same category, since my go-to lines were going away and I was trying to find a line that worked for me.

The other player at work are the manufacturers themselves. They change the formulations of their paint so often that a user doesn’t really have time to become properly attuned to them before they are gone, replaced by this year’s new darling.

And this is yet another reason I came to the conclusion I did—Tamiya Acrylics have been around since 1983 or 1984, and I don’t seem them going anywhere any time soon…

I have friends who still wish they could go buy some good, old, Dio-Sol/Xylene-laden Floquil paint. Sorry, gang, those days are long gone. With the recent demise of the Model Master paint, the same laments can be seen far and wide on the various modeling boards. Yeah, you can pine for them all you like, but they ain’t comin’ back...

There you go, my take on the State of Hobby Paints.

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

I mentioned the 1/72nd scale models (a Hasegawa A-10A, an Airfix Blenheim, and ICM MiG-29), here are some happy snaps of the models. The Blenheim and MiG will be part of a “Small Forces” display at our show in June...

 

 

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

The Tamiya 1/48th scale A-10A is almost done, look for a feature shortly.

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~

As always, thanks for reading.  Be good to one another, and I bid you Peace.

 

87,600 Hours

Howdy, all!

“That’s an interesting title”, you say. “What does it mean? Is it a countdown to something?”

Allow me to explain…

Many years ago, a friend and I were discussing models. It was in the early 2000’s, right when the Monogram ProModeler 1/48th scale F-86D arrived at hobby shops. At the time, it was a much welcomed release, since nobody to that point had released an accurate, state of the art kit of the Dog Sabre. Of course, it didn’t take long for the online community to bring up several items to note. If memory serves, they were (in no particular order):

• It was based on an early Block number airframe (Block 5, IIRC) at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force that had been used for flight testing, therefore had the early tail without the drag chute compartment and an additional rudder trim tab;

• It had the early instrument panel layout;

• And, after a bit of math, it was determined that the wing sweep was too steep by 3.2°.

Of course, Revell AG later released the later configuration of the fuselage with the drag chute, but kept the instrument panel and wing from the earlier ProModeler issue of the kit. But for all the carrying on, the issues were minor.

One thing I said then (and still say it now) is that 99.9% of the people who even see the completed model on my display shelf wouldn’t know the difference between an early and late Dog Sabre instrument panel—even if they were die-hard fans of the F-86. I told one of the guys making a lot of noise over it that I was sure that Eduard or Airwaves (remember Airwaves?) would more than likely make a photoetch set with the proper layout that could easily fix that problem.  And, lacking that, a reference photo, a bit of Evergreen sheet, a set of punches or drills, and about an hour's work could fix the problem.

As for the wing, Jennings says it in his article—unless you had the Revell Dog Sabre placed next to a Hasegawa or Academy Sabre with a gridded shelf under them and could view them from directly above, it wouldn’t be noticeable. And, for those intrepid types who couldn’t live with the 3.2° error, they could always do the work and fix it.

I added that unless I put them in the case at the shop (I was still in Florida at the time, and several of my models were in the cases at Warrick Custom Hobbies) or took them to a show, most of my models never got seen by anyone else for more than a few hours—and on a display shelf, nobody ever got close enough to inspect the model to make sure it was “nuts-bolts-rivets” accurate anyway.  Plus, if you build models so you can do the contest thing, AMPS or IPMS contest judges are instructed not to evaluate accuracy, anyway. So unless you get so hot and bothered over a half-inch long bit of plastic...

That prompted us to do some math to figure out just how much time our models were being looked at by other people.

The logic worked out something like this:

We estimated an average 10-year life span for a completed model. It seemed like a good starting place.

10 years X 365 days/year X 24 hours/day equals 87,600 hours.

Next, we estimated a few more things.

• You build a model, and take it to the club meeting. The average club meeting clocks in at 2 hours.
• You take it to a contest. The average one day contest is about six or eight hours. To be fair, we’ll call it eight.
• You might take it to the local hobby shop (if such a thing still exists in your area) to show it off for an hour.

So, total that up. We’re at 11 hours. Add on an hour or two for when friends come to visit—you *do* have friends, don’t you? Anyway…

Let’s just say 15 hours. Do some cipherin’...naught from naught...carry the two…and we have 0.017%. If we round it, 15 hours is 0.02 percent of 87,600. Other people look at your model for a total of 0.02% of the model’s life span, using 10 years as the average life span. If the model “lives” longer, the percentage gets even lower.

Maybe you take it to a local, “regional”, and “national” show, the latter being a three-day affair. That comes to 30 hours at shows, plus the other time. Let’s just triple the initial estimate from 15 to 45 hours. What the hell, let’s say 50 hours. That computes to a whopping 0.06% of it’s life span.

Want to stretch it to 100 hours? Okay…that works out to 0.11%. Still less than 1%.

You can split hairs all you want, but on average a completed model that goes from workbench to your personal display shelf will only be looked at by other people for a very small sliver of the total lifespan. Otherwise, your peepers are the only ones to view your work.

So again, *who* do you build your models for?
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Work on the A-10A’s continues slowly. The pylon depressions on the 1/48th scale model are filled and ready to have the ResKit pylons (for the Hobby Boss kit, explaining why the depression on the Tamiya wing had to be filled), and some color has been applied to the 1/72nd scale model. I want to try and complete the 1/72nd scale model in the next few weeks.
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
In the meantime, I’ve bought some stuff.

I’ve wanted to get a set of quick disconnects for the airbrushes for a few years, and figured I might as well buy a MAC valve, too. I still need to play with the valve and test things out, but the big benefit is being able to switch airbrushes quickly.

I also bought some wax pencils. Back a long time ago, a modeling friend used them to position small parts. I had forgotten about them until a FineScale Modeler video reminded me how handy they were. And they’re dirt cheap—I bought 10 and some sorting trays on Amazon for less than $8 American…
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
Along with the tools, of course I bought some kits.

Back in 1996, I used the KMC resin conversion kit to build an FM-2 Wildcat from the Tamiya kit. The model turned out pretty nice, but it always nagged me that the conversion was about as superficial as it could get. All KMC really gave you was a copy of the kit cowl, a casting of an extended kit rudder, and some very sketchy instructions (later versions of the conversion also offered an engine). So imagine my glee when Eduard introduced their FM-2 kit at the IPMS/USA National Convention. I was so happy, I bought two. I’m tempted to push the A-10’s to the side…

At about the same time, my order from Ukraine arrived. Once again, I have to commend Plastic Models Store in Kyiv for their superb service. If you want kits made in Ukraine, give them a whirl.
~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~
I was discussing the A-10 project with someone at work. He wasn’t too versed on the whys and wherefores of the ThunderHog. I gave him a few places to read up on it, and told him if he really wanted some fun, he should look at all the various postwar agreements made between and among the various branches of the U.S. military. As I refreshed my own memory, I thought it might be a good idea to write it all down in capsule form and post it here as a companion to my piece on “The McNamara Effect” that I wrote a few years ago. Stay tuned, sports fans...

That's all I have for this installment.  Thanks for reading. Be good to one another, and, as always, I bid you Peace.

Turning Corners and "From the Mouths of Babes"

Howdy, all!

Do you remember the projects you completed where you thought you had “turned a corner”—that is, you finally put a group of skills together into one project and brought it to completion?

Given that this blog is centered on scale models, I can think of a few projects that fill the bill.  I consider these the first real fruits of my labors after discovering  Scale Modeler (and later, FineScale Modeler) magazine, Solvaset, and Squadron Green Putty, and after acquiring an airbrush.

1979-ish, Monogram 1/48^th scale Hawker Typhoon.  It was the first model where filled seams and painted with an airbrush.  It turned out fairly well, all things considered.  I think I was still using Propel cans, and the limitations with them didn’t help the project.  I seem to recall that shortly afterwards, I got a compressor for the airbrush.  For the life of me, I have no recollection of what became of the finished model.

Around the same time, I built a Guillows’ 1/16^th scale stick-and-tissue Spitfire model, just to show Dad that I could…

1980, Revell 1/32^nd scale F4U-1 Corsair.  I was inspired by Sheperd Paine’s “Pilots, Man Your Planes” article in one of the “Special” issues of Challenge Publications’ Scale Modeler.  He had done his usual superdetail job on the model.  I tried to duplicate some of what he did to his model.  I used masking tape to make seatbelts, I made the landing gear springs from wire, and I cut and dropped the flaps.  I left the wings unfolded, and didn’t do a whole lot to the rest of the model.  Like the Typhoon, I was still using the little square bottles of Testors Flat Enamels, so the colors were a little bit weird.  I also went my own way with the markings—I built the model as Tommy Blackburn’s “Big Hog”.  I painted the letters freehand, and rather than seek alternate markings with the red surround (not that I could have afforded such a luxury), I used a 3/0 brush and Testors Flat Red to “convert” the kit insignia to the pre-September 1943 version.  Again, I was rather pleased with the end result.  The model went to a friend and I never saw it again.  I have a strange feeling that it became an air rifle target…

1981, Otaki 1/48^th scale F6F-3 Hellcat.  This one put everything I had learned to that point  together.  The model was built, the seams were filled, and the scheme was airbrushed.  I applied the decals with Solvaset, and I did a little “toning down” and “weathering” with some washes.  I added some paint chips, and I was really happy when I finished the model.

1984, Nichimo 1/48^th scale Ki.43 “Oscar”.  This was a further extension to the process started with the Hellcat.  In this case, I did more paint chipping using an alternate method—I used a silver Tamiya paint marker on certain areas of the airplane before I added the camouflage colors.  I had switched to Polly-S acrylics, and I “chipped” them with a tight roll of masking tape right after the paint had started to dry.  I added more chips to the markings once the decals were on using the paint marker again. 

1985, Monogram 1/48^th scale P-51B converted to an Allison-engined P-51 with the Koster Aero Enterprises vacuum-formed conversion kit.  This was my first vacuum formed kit.  Also, using the knowledge I gained from reading Bob Steinbrunn’s cockpit detailing article in FineScale Modeler, I did a lot of scratch detailing in the cockpit.  I really started to learn how to use alternate materials—the injection molded cannon barrels from the Koster kit were rather softly detailed, so I removed the various details and replaced them—I used vinyl tape for the bands and fine wire for the recoil springs.

From this point on, I coasted on my abilities.  I was back in college, so my model building time was a bit limited.  It didn’t stop me from scratchbuilding a seat or adding plumbing to landing gear, but those were the exception rather than the rule.

After college, I started hanging out in the hobby shop.  And I started learning more.  One of the locals brought some models in that had a really convincing finish—the camouflage colors weren’t “solid”—the upper surface olive drab was actually many different shades of olive drab, and the panel lines were highlighted.  In a sense, it was probably what “The Spanish School” was originally devised to be.  This was in 1988, and it was about the time Verlinden was really making inroads into the American modeling scene, but the guy told me he had been doing it for years.  He said all you have to do is vary the colors and make the whole thing look good.

Undeterred, I took a Tamiya 1/48^th scale F2A Buffalo from the shelf and refinished it.  I removed the decals and smoothed the paint, much as I did on a Monogram B-17 in 1984.  This time, when I painted it, I thought about those other models I saw, and tried to emulate the procedure.  It worked.  The result was rather nice, if I do say so…

1989, Monogram 1/48^th scale B-29.  This was the first model I totally rescribed.  It was an eye-opener, for sure.  I used a lot of filler to cover my mistakes, of which there were many.  In the end, I was happy with the result.  The model was sent to the Valiant Air Command museum.  I have no idea if it still survives…

1990, Revell 1/72nd scale F-89.  My first really successful bare metal finish was achieved with Floquil silvers.  Since then, I have tried several methods.  My go-to these days are the Vallejo Metal Colors, but for a while I used a highly thinned mix of Isopropyl Alcohol, Future, and Tamiya X32 Titanium Silver over a gray primer base.  The impediment to continue using this method is the fact that SC Johnson discontinued Future, and I'm not convinced any of the alternatives folks are using would work.  With the Vallejo stuff available, there really is no need to look elsewhere.

1999/2000, Hobbycraft 1/48^th scale P-26A.  I had rigged models before, but none was really that good.  This time, fresh off a trip to the IPMS National Convention and armed with some nifty stainless steel orthodontic wire, I set out to change that.  The Hobbycraft Peashooter is a fabulous kit, and I did little additional work on the kit.  When it came time to rig it, I cut lengths of the aforementioned wire and glued it in place with small drops of white glue.  The model still sits in the display case, although it has developed a twist in the aft fuselage over the years.  I should probably build another one of these gems soon…

The next big leap came only a few years ago, when I remembered that “This is just a plastic model, there isn’t a lot I could do to screw it up.”  The model was the 1/48^th scale Special Hobby Macchi C.200 that I’ve shared previously.  I took the time and effort to detail things a bit more.  I added the landing gear trunnions to make the main landing gear more authentic.  And I added more and more of those little details to the model.

What I learned on the Peashooter and Macchi was put to use on the Aeroclub 1/48^th scale Gloster Gamecock I finished last year.  It was a vacuum-formed kit of a biplane with a scratchbuilt cockpit, wing struts, a lot of little details, and it was rigged.  The rigging was different, though--I used Davis' Invisible thread looped through tiny "rigging blocks" and "turnbuckles" made from stretched Evergreen styrene tubing, secured with CA.  It featured a metallic finish (aluminum dope), and most of the markings were painted on.

I used the latter skill to also paint the huge checkerboard patterns on a 1/72nd scale Fujimi Phantom FG.1,  I like the method so much that I bought a Cameo Silhouette with the intention of cutting masks for my paint schemes instead of using decals.  I'm not living under the illusion that I'll never use decals, but knowing how to do this frees me of the limitations of decals, namely being able to do subjects that are never covered by any of the aftermarket decal sheets.

To add to the story, today I bought some UV cure resin and a UV light to make my own lenses.  With MV Products lenses being difficult to obtain, this will allow me to "roll my own" when I need them.  Another tool in the toolbox, another skill in the portfolio...

What is the moral to the story?  Keep exercising your skills, whatever your craft or hobby might be.  You might not realize it right away, but these skills build upon each other through the years, and one day you complete a model that puts it all in play.  And you’ll wonder—for a minute, maybe—how could you have done such work?  Then you recollect all the projects that came before and led up to this latest effort…

It goes back to what I said a while ago on these very pages—it only takes an investment of time and a little effort to do good work.  Keep on trying…
~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~
Something I’ve touched on before has risen again on the various forii.  I always get a kick out of the comments that come from the under-30's in the hobby.  You know, the kids, the noobs, the folks who have only recently discovered the hobby.

I saw someone speak in glowing terms of the yet-to-be-released Magic Factory 1/48^th scale F4U-2 Corsair, and how it is “head and shoulders better than the ancient Tamiya kit!”

Ancient?  Tamiya’s kits arrived on the scene in 1996.  They fit like a glove and exhibit Tamiya’s standard of excellence.  I won’t rush out to buy the Magic Factory kits just yet… 

Recall, too, that before the Tamiya kits made their debut, the options for a 1/48^th scale Corsair were the 1996 Hobbycraft kits (which, had Tamiya not produced their kit, could have been a contender had there not been some unfortunate issues with the fit), the 1980 Mania/Hasegawa F4U-4 (still the standard for the -4 after all these years), the 1977 AMT F4U-1, the 1976 release by Otaki (still a fine kit, as I demonstrated a few years ago), the 1973 Monogram F4U-4, and the 1956 Lindberg F4U-5. 

After the Tamiya kits came the questionable Academy/ Minicraft “reworking” of the Hasegawa -4 (that somehow acquired a bloated fuselage), the absolutely awful Minicraft F4U-5/5N, and the superb Hasegawa F4U-5/-7, and AU-1 kits, followed by what I can only determine to be the hit-or-miss Hobby Boss kits.

My point?  Be careful when you call a kit “ancient”.  By the same standard, the Accurate Miniatures 1/48^th scale TBF/TBM and SBD kits are also “ancient”, but back in the day they were seen as absolute wonders.  Before they came along, you built the Monogram kits (or Nichimo knockoffs) and either did DIY detailing or, after they appeared, used the Medallion Models resin sets. 

Bottom line: these kits might be ancient to you, young pups, but to those of us who made do with the early 1950’s kits for years, they were—and still are—wonderful kits.

That’s all I have for now.  Until next time, be good to one another.  As always, I bid you Peace.

On the Gustav Line

Howdy, all!

This is the article on the StuG IV project that took me a decade (!) to complete.  If you go back through the posts from the early days of this little slice o' the Internet, you'll see many references to the StuG project that finally got finished a few years ago.  Without further ado, here it is in all it's glory.

The StuG IV

The German assault gun known as the Sd.Kfz 167 Sturmgeschütz IV (StuG IV) was a result of the Krupp manufacturing firm’s desire to built assault guns for the Wehrmacht.  The vehicle was a lash-up of the late mark Panzerkampfwagen IV chassis and running gear topped with a modified StuG III Ausf. F superstructure.

At the time, the Panzer IV was being outperformed by the StuG III, and all Panzer IV production was scheduled to be shifted to building the Panzerjäger IV, a Pz.Kpfw IV/L70 “Lang” chassis and a fixed superstructure armed with a 7.5 cm/L70 gun, the same gun being installed on the Pz.Kpfw V (Panther).  However, Vomag also fitted a 7.5 cm/L48 gun to the vehicle, which became the Jadgpanzer IV Ausf. F. 

The Stug IV was beginning to fade into the files of “never built” vehicles until an air raid on the Alkett plant in November 1943 destroyed the StuG III production line.  Since the StuG IV could be placed into service faster than either the Jagdpanzer IV or the Panzerjäger IV, Krupp was authorized to begin producing them. 1,108 StuG IV’s were constructed, and an additional 31 were converted from damaged Pz.Kpfw IV chassis before production was ended by the German surrender.

Dispatched to the Eastern Front, the StuG IV became a proficient tank-killer.  It would be used on all fronts between 1943 and 1945, and some saw post-war use with the Syrians in their conflicts with Israel in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Four examples are known to survive, two in Poland, one in Latvia, and one in Australia.

Panzer-Abteilung 190

Panzer-Abteilung 190 was formed from the remnants of the first iteration of II./Panzer-Regiment 202 and sent to North Africa with 90. Leitche Afrika-Division.  Engaged in battles in the region, most of the unit’s vehicles were destroyed in the battles around Tunis in May 1943.  The remnants were then reformed with additional vehicles in July 1943 and attached to the 90. Panzer-Grenadier Division and garrisoned in Sardinia.  When the Allied attack began on Sicily, the unit was kept in reserve and later removed to the Italian mainland.  Initially posted to the area around Pisa, it would later take a place on the Gustav Line, one of the defensive lines around Anzio and Cassino.

The unit would ultimately see most of its war fighting ability again destroyed, and the few remaining vehicles would be re-distributed to other units.  The StuG IV’s of Panzer-Abteilung 190 would wind up going to the 34. Infanterie-Division in Northern Italy, where they would spend their final days.

The Project

Photo 1: The kit.

The project started as a “group build” project with the AMPS Central South Carolina “Wildcats” in late 2010, shortly after the Chapter formed--this coincidentally was a period in which I was laid off and only working part time, so I figured it would be an easy task.  The best laid plans and all that...

The group decided on the then-new (2009) Dragon “Early Production” StuG IV kit.  Along the way, Mike Roof did a lot of research on the kit, assembly sequence, and applicable features of the StuG IV, and provided the information to everyone in the group build.  The level of detail that Mike went into was incredible, and the fact that he broke down the various bits of the kit into what was used in which time frame, what parts could be kept, what could be tossed in the spares box…in short, it gave everyone a glimpse into Mike’s “style” when he builds a model.

Before I move forward, yes, this is another one of those models with very few in-progress photos.  Follow the text for the procedures I used.  Also, some of the sequences might be written in a different order in which I actually completed them.  Sorry, but this project stretched over nearly a decade…

Let’s get it on!

One of the first items to consider is zimmerit, the paste that the Germans applied to their vehicles to prevent magnetic anti-tank mines from sticking to the hull.  The early StuG IV’s got it, the later ones didn’t.  Since the model is an early vehicle, it needed to have it.  There are many ways to add it—textured acrylic gel, putty (either body putty or epoxy putty), photoetched brass, resin...and, of course, several months after this project started, Dragon issued a kit with molded-on zimmerit.  The aftermarket and kit alternatives are nice, but they tend to be too regular whereas the real thing was applied by hand, and one vehicle was different from another.  To get that “organic look”, the best thing to do is make it yourself with putty or another substance.

I tried the green putty route years ago, and it works, but you have to move quickly, before the putty skins over and becomes unworkable.  This time, I tried the acrylic gel method—apply the gel, then “comb” it out with a section of Campbell’s HO Scale corrugated siding.  It is easy enough to do, but after it dried it lacked depth and “sharpness” when compared to photos.  The corrugated siding left rounded ridges.  To address this, I had an old razor saw blade lying around, cut it into sections, and gave those a whirl.  I liked the profile, but the gel medium tended to relax as it dried, yielding sharper, but still rounded, peaks.

Looking around the workbench, I noticed a tube of Elmer’s Professional Wood Filler.  I tried a test swatch on some scrap Evergreen sheet, and it was promising.  It still wasn’t as sharp as I would have liked it, so on a whim I added a small amount of microballoons to the filler and gave it another test.  Bingo!  The rows were sharp, as were the peaks.  So, over the next few days I applied the wood filler and combed it out with the section of razor saw blade.  Hurdle number one, crossed…

If you’re a tool junkie, several companies offer zimmerit tools.  Trumpeter’s is a roller-style tool—apply the medium and roll it out—and Tamiya’s are photoetched “saw tooth” scrapers similar to a razor saw blade.  I actually acquired the Tamiya set through some wheeling and dealing a few years ago, so I believe I’m set for zimmerit tools for a while (not that I use them all that often, anyway).

I painted the inside of the engine compartment flat black to disguise the fact that it would be empty.  Some areas could be seen through the cooling louvers, so painting it black makes it less obvious that the area is empty.

Now we reach the part of the story where I went back to work in the corporate aviation world, complete with six-day, 16 hours a day work weeks.  The project languished.  I would peck at it every now and then, but for the most part it remained stalled in the “Projects in Limbo” cabinet.

I did develop several habits during the project.  The first was to remove all the parts I didn’t need from the trees and place them in the spares box.  I also used a highlighter to note which parts I was going to use on the instructions, and would cross them out with a pencil as I installed them on the model.  As you might know, Dragon’s kits are, as the Brits might say, “bitty”, with lots and lots of small parts—my take is that if the actual item consisted of four parts, Dragon will break it down into a dozen, no matter how teeny the parts will be.  By marking them out on the instructions—especially when you are picking up on the project after a week, month, or longer—helps keep track of what has been done and what still needs doing.  I figured this last one out after I spent the better part of an hour (!) figuring out where I left off after my last session on the model a few weeks prior.

As I pecked away, I continued to pre-paint some parts and subassemblies.  The superstructure interior was painted Testor Acryl Panzer Interior Buff and the details painted in their relevant colors.  I didn’t go whole hog here, since I was unsure whether I wanted to leave the hatches open—I did enough to make things convincing if it was seen through the hatches, and no more.

The wheels were given a coat of Panzer Yellow (PollyScale) and then assembled.  Road wheels were brush painted a few at a time with Acryl Aircraft Interior Black (it is a “scale black”, perfect for tires) until they were all complete and ready to be assembled to the suspension.  I kept them in a plastic cup until they were needed.

Be sure to follow the Prime Directive—make sure everything is straight, square, and plumb as you assemble it.  Nothing looks sillier than a model of what is nominally a 23-ton vehicle with half the road wheels floating up in the air.  I made a block for the lower hull—I set the hull on the block to hold it at the correct height, and then installed the suspension bogies.  As the glue dried, I checked to make sure it remained aligned properly.

When it comes to the tracks, I can offer several tips.  First, work on them throughout the process.  Clean the links up and place them into a container with a lid so that should it overturn you won’t be playing “Pick up the Links” for an hour.  The next tip is to assemble a few links at a time, even if that only consists of lining them up against a fixture and taping them in place.  It becomes less tedious by spreading the job out over several sessions.

Did I say fixture?  There are commercially available track alignment fixtures available, or you can go the DIY route.  I taped a section of square brass tubing to a picture frame glass.  The brass acts as a straightedge.  I would clean up a few links and lay them in place along the brass.  I used thin strips of tape to hold them together until I had the whole run completed.  I constructed the second run in the same manner.  Pay attention, since the Pz.Kpfw IV tracks were handed.  Dragon molded the links in slightly different values of gray to help out in this respect.  It may help to label them right and left to keep things organized.

When it came time to assemble them to the vehicle, I temporarily installed the road wheels, idler, and return rollers.  The sprocket was permanently attached and the glue was allowed to dry for a day or so.  This is important, since the final assembly will undergo a bit of tension—nowhere near as much as the old-school “rubber band” vinyl tracks, but there will be some tension on the sprockets because they attach to a raised boss and not an axle to lend stability.

Now, here’s how I ran the tracks—I doubt it is the best or most efficient way to do things, but it worked…

Apply some liquid cement to all the track joints and allow it to begin bonding the links.  Once the bond has firmed up but is still pliable, carefully wrap the run of tracks around the suspension.  Cement the loose ends together and use a small strip of tape to secure them, and repeat with the other side.  Set the vehicle on the glass surface and set some weight into the hull to keep it down.  The upper hull was taped into place, then I used cosmetic sponge wedges to set the sag between the fenders and upper run—simply cut a wedge and insert it between the road wheels.  Be gentle, since you don’t want to pull the track links apart.  Now, leave the model alone overnight—or longer.  The key to the whole operation is to allow the cement to cure fully and the plastic to re-set before handling the tracks.

Because the wheels were left loose, the wheels and assembled track runs can now be removed from the model.  Make sure you mark each track run so you don’t mix up left for right after you paint them.

The fenders were a bit fiddly, but with some careful fitting they got added to the hull.  The gun was assembled into the interior and the upper and lower hull was joined.  Once the major parts of the vehicle were together, it was a matter of assembling the smaller bits to it.  Use a good pair of tweezers, since some of the bits are tiny.  Some parts, like the tools and jack, were left off until they were individually painted.

When it came time to paint the thing, I was in a quandary.  I knew I wanted a vehicle that operated around Anzio.  My maternal grandmother’s family was from Naples, and some of them remembered watching as the abbey on Monte Cassino was bombed by the Allies.  I was meeting dead ends every time I looked.  I finally found an Italian website (http://www.dalvolturnoacassino.it/asp/n_main.asp) that gave some decent accounts of the battles in and around the Volturno River basin.  Since I still retain some of the Italian my relatives taught me, and since pictures are universal, I managed to pin down units and places in the area.

With an idea in my head, I began digging deeper, and eventually found a photograph of a StuG IV in an Allied salvage lot near Pontecorvo, about 8 miles southwest of Cassino.  Further digging turned up a link to the ADH Publishing book To The Last Bullet: Germany’s War On 3 Fronts (Part 2: Italy).  One of the photos of (supposedly) this vehicle shows General Albert Kesselring posing in the commander’s hatch before the battle, and others show it sitting derelict, although mostly intact, in the salvage yard with some U.S. dogfaces examining it.  Between the photos and color plates, I knew where I was heading…

Photo 2: The book.  If you have any interest at all in the land battles of the Italian Campaign, this is a must-have.

As I was researching, I noted that this vehicle was fitted with a cover where the mantlet meets the superstructure.  Apparently, the canvas cover leaked, so the crews would fabricate these covers from whatever they had at hand.  The cover that appears to have been installed on this vehicle appears to be either bent sheet metal or welded armor plate from a discarded section of Schürzen attached to the superstructure with hinges so it could elevate with the gun.  I fabbed a scale version up from an index card, soaked with CA, and attached with some quick non-functional hinges made from more CA-soaked index card and some fine wire.

Speaking of Schürzen, for some reason known only to Dragon engineers, the kit provides them in photoetched steel.  Attaching the brackets to them was an exercise in insanity.  The bond between the plastic hanging brackets and the steel panels kept coming loose.  Also, measure twice before you attach them or your panels will not hang correctly.  I omitted a few panels, as was commonly seen in photos.

The StuG IV was painted in the typical German scheme of Panzer Yellow with a pattern of dark brown and dark green painted over it.  Using some of the last of my PollyScale paints, I used the photos and color plates as a rough guide to paint the model. 

While I don’t usually recommend the use of color plates as references (they are, after all, an artist’s conception of what the original itself looked like), the plates were used simply because the photos depict the vehicle coated in dust which obscured the camouflage.  I took it on faith that the color plate would be close to what the vehicle looked like.  Given that common wisdom had the green and brown applied in the field, and given photos of similar vehicles, I took the chance and am quite happy with the results.

Photo 3: Base coat of paint applied.

 

Photo 4:  Squiggles

 

Photo 5: More squiggles

The paint was allowed to dry, and the next day a coat of Future was applied and allowed to dry overnight.  The few decals required (notably, the crosses) went on with little trouble.  They were cleaned up after they dried, and a coat of semi-gloss clear was applied to the model.

I went full-on old school with weathering.  I used artists’ oils to not only do pin washes and flood washes, but also to drybrush the model.  The joy of oils is that they stay workable for a much longer time than hobby paints, so you can go back and re-blend an area until you are happy with the way it looks.  From start to finish, the oil weathering took all of an hour. 

Photo 6: Decals on, weathering in progress.

Photo 7: The rear of the StuG.

 

Photo 8: More decals, more oils...I keep my weathering understated.

I then applied a few dings and chips to the surface.  I may have been too restrained, but I like to err on the side of “not enough” rather than “too much”—even the photos show a relatively well-kept vehicle.  I used a “pigment wash” to apply the dust to the lower hull and Schürzen—I mixed various colors of artists’ dry pigments with distilled water into a slurry, then brushed it onto the model.  A wet brush was used to control the wash, and later, after the wash had dried, the brush was used to “tame” the area.  By washing off areas, you can simulate areas that have been “cleaned” by the crew climbing on the vehicle or the vehicle rubbing up against vegetation or other objects. 

The tracks were painted with Vallejo Track Primer, and then given a dark wash with oils.  The raised areas were rubbed with a flannel rag and some SNJ polishing powder—find a dark smudge on the cloth and use that to impart a shiny—but not sparkly!—look to the tracks.  Do the same where the wheels contact the tracks—the constant movement will wear the dirt and grime away. 

To install them, work slowly and carefully to get everything installed properly.  I found the best way to do it was to install several road wheels and the return rollers, then carefully maneuver the tracks on to the hull.  Then install the rest of the road wheels and the idler.  You’ll soon find out how well those sprockets are attached—one of mine broke loose, and a few harried moments ensued until I got it solidly re-attached.  The wheels and tracks were further weathered by drybrushing and the pigment wash method discussed above. 

I gave the model a coat of matt varnish to blend everything together.  The kit-supplied tow cables were cut to length and annealed with a butane torch—it makes the wire easier to work with, and it also imparts a realistic “used” look to it, no paint necessary.  Attach the tools and other bits, wrap the tow cables, and it is time to put the display together.

The base

The base starts with a craft store plaque that is sanded to remove the tooling marks and given a few coats of Minwax PolyShades.  Felt was glued to the bottom for a “finished” look. 

The terrain module was made up by stacking and gluing foam sheets.  I used the commonly-found packing foam (the stuff made up with little beads of Styrofoam), and it really isn’t good for this purpose since it is difficult to shape.  I did my best, and then coated the module with pumice textured acrylic gel medium (you can also use plaster).  Once dry, I started on the actual road where the vehicle would be displayed.  The model was set on the road bed, and the contact patches of the tracks were marked out.  Pieces of Evergreen sheet were cut just smaller that the dimension of the contact patches and glued to the module.  These would give a flat area to attach the vehicle without a lot of fuss.

The road surface was simulated with Durham’s Rock Hard Water Putty mixed to a cookie dough consistency.  It was spread on the area and smoothed with a wet brush.  Blend it so that the Durham’s is faired in with the Evergreen strips.  When dry, it was painted in a nondescript ground color and left to dry.  The sides of the module were painted black using craft paint.

The landscaped areas were covered with Celluclay that I mixed with a good dollop of white glue so it would adhere better.  Once dry, it was painted a dark brown and left to dry.

To texture the road, I went out to my driveway (a gravel driveway) and collected a few paper cups full of various sizes of gravel.  Using a sieve, I separated the various sized of gravel, and used the smallest size to represent the gravel road on the base.  Woodlands Scenics Scenic Cement was used to lock the gravel into place.  Take care to blend and feather the road surface into the plastic strips added earlier.  Some various “gravel road” colors were used to create several washes to tone the road down and look to scale. 

The landscaped areas were covered with various shades and grades of Woodlands Scenics grass, weeds, and turf.  Some of the larger driveway gravel was placed here and there to represent rocky outcroppings.  When all was dry, the same washes were applied to again tone the area down and give it a “scale” look.

While researching the Italian website, I found a period photo of a sign on the road between Itri and Pontecorvo.  Jodie converted the photo into decal artwork, and had it custom printed with one of her projects.  The sign boards and sign post are Evergreen sheet and strip cut to shape.  The items were painted tan, and then streaked with oils to represent wood.  Then I “whitewashed” everything with a thin mix of white in the airbrush.  When dry, the barber pole stripe was masked and painted.  The decals were applied to the sign boards, the sign boards attached to the pole, and the pole was installed on the base.  The “8” was applied to a white disk; it identifies the road as Strada Provinciale 8, presently the main road between Pontecorvo and Cisterna.

To attach the model, I used white glue.  I also used a little of the driveway gravel to tie the vehicle in to the base, and gave it the same wash I did on the road itself.  Make sure the vehicle looks like it weighs 23 tons—mind the floating road wheels and tracks (which shouldn’t be a problem since you followed the Prime Directive, right?).  You’ll need to once again blend the road surface around the tracks to make sure there are no gaps between the road and the tracks.  Do a walk around, and touch up any areas that might need some wash, paint, or clear coat.

I started to assemble and paint figures from the Dragon Panzer Grenadiers set, and at least one will eventually be added to the base, but by the time I reached this point (in 2019, nearly a decade after the project started!), I decided to make up a placard, attach it and the module to the base, and call it a day…

Photo 9: Playing around with placement of the elements.  This was early in the game, I actually reversed everything for the final product.

 

Photo 10: The final configuration.  The figure is partially complete at this stage and the vehicle has yet to be treated with the pigment wash.

 

Photo 11: From the other side.

 

Photo 12: The finished project (minus the figure), only a decade after it began!  The pigment wash is subtle, yet effective.

Stormy Weather

Howdy, all…

Every now and then during the day this past Wednesday and Thursday, I would check the progress of Hurricane Ian.  As landfall approached, my heart went out to the people in Southwest Florida.  Ian came ashore near Cayo Costa and Punta Gorda—nearly the same place Hurricane Charley landed in 2004.  Watching the TV coverage, my heart sank further.  The area is devastated.  We used to have family friends in North Ft. Meyers, and we used to take boat rides on the Caloosahatchee River in that same area.  Photos and footage after the storm show some extent of the devastation—a lot of what was there is gone and will never be the same.  Ever.

Ian wasn’t through with Florida, though.  He plowed across Central Florida, bringing heavy rains and flooding to Orlando, Daytona, and St. Augustine before taking his leave of Florida (as a Tropical Storm) near the Kennedy Space Center.  He meandered out to sea, regained strength, and took aim at the South Carolina coast.  Thursday night’s forecast had Ian making a second landfall in Charleston and basically following I-26 on a path that would have taken the storm over our house.  Ian had other ideas—he meandered north and east before making landfall near Georgetown, causing damage in Charleston, Pawley’s Island, and Myrtle Beach.  Currently, what’s left of Ian is soaking Virginia and West Virginia and is headed to New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

I’ve lived in South Carolina for 21 years.  Ian was only the second tropical system I’ve done any sort of prep for—Florence in 2018 was the other.  However, I’m no stranger to these kinds of meteorological events…

1972:  Hurricane Agnes was the first time I experienced a hurricane—only I wasn’t in the Southeast.  We were vacationing in New Jersey when Agnes blew through, dumping a lot of rain on the area. By the time she hit, she was a strong tropical storm.  Agnes was one of two events that keep the summer of 1972 vivid in my memory.  The other?  I came down with chicken pox while we were there.  Chicken pox and tropical rain—not a combination I can recommend to anyone…

1979:  Hurricane David was projected to make a direct hit on the Broward County coast on Labor Day weekend.  David reached Category 5 strength when he came ashore in the Dominican Republic.  After that passage, David weakened to a minimal hurricane, but gained strength.  My brother and I spent the weekend at a friend’s house in Sebring, since David was supposed to be past Ft. Lauderdale by Labor Day.  Yeah.  We drove home as David made landfall in West Palm Beach.  David would skim the Florida coast, barley on land, until he went to sea near New Smyrna Beach.

Honorable Mention for 1979:  Hurricane Frederic.  David was supposed to be a major storm when it came ashore in Florida and Frederic was supposed to be his weaker brother.  Sure.  Frederic would  intensify to a Category 4 storm when it came ashore near Dauphin Island, Alabama.

1981: Tropical Storm Dennis would come ashore in South Florida in August.  He dumped a lot of rain on the area.  I know this because I was camping that week.

1986:  Hurricane Charley came ashore near Apalachicola and  traveled east, finally leaving via the Carolina coast.  I remember it because for a while it was predicted to cut across Florida and pummel the Daytona Beach area.  Embry-Riddle cancelled classes for a few days…

1989:  Hurricane Hugo.  While Hugo only briefly brushed the Florida coast, he hammered South Carolina.  Friends of the family in Savannah and Hilton Head suffered some substantial damage.  Hugo would be a harbinger of future storms—he came ashore near Sullivan’s Island as a tightly wrapped Category 4 storm, and actually accelerated after making landfall, carrying hurricane force winds as far north as Charlotte.  The path of destruction was easily traced through the state, as it appeared someone took a 40-mile wide buzz saw and cleared a path from Charleston to Charlotte.

1992:  Hurricane Andrew.  Andrew didn’t seem like he would amount to much in his early days.  But as he approached the Bahamas, Andrew rapidly gained strength and passed the Bahamas as a Category 5 storm.  Once clear of the Islands, Andrew made a beeline for the Southeastern Florida coast.  Initially predicted to come ashore in Ft. Lauderdale, he jogged to the south and made landfall near Homestead, south of Miami.  Andrew was a tightly wound and very dry storm—some likened him to a 30-mile wide tornado.  The damage Andrew caused made him the most expensive storm to hit the United States at the time.  After wrecking South Florida, Andy zoomed up the Gulf of Mexico and made a second landfall near Morgan City, Louisiana.

Andrew brought a lot of issues to light.  The housing boom in Florida through the late 1970’s and 1980’s saw housing developments spring up seemingly overnight.  One such development, Country Walk, was leveled.  It was discovered that there were some construction anomalies—the roof trusses were only tenuously attached to the house, and the roof sheathing was likewise poorly attached.  In one study, one out of every ten staples meant to attach the sheathing actually hit the truss—the rest missed entirely.  The building codes were reviewed and reworked after Andrew.

The insurance industry took a huge hit from Andrew.  Several companies went bankrupt.  The Florida legislature enacted several joint underwriting groups in response.

Homestead Air Force Base was heavily damaged, and expected to be closed under BRAC.  However, the base was repaired under an austere budget.  The active-duty unit, the 31^st Tactical Fighter Wing, was dispersed and later reformed at Aviano AB, Italy.  The Air Force Reserve unit, the 482^nd Tactical Fighter Wing, remained at the renamed Homestead Air Reserve Base.

In addition to all this, there is a very real psychological effect on people, as they see their homes and everything they ever had swept away.  South Florida saw a marked upswing in divorces and suicide attempts.  I went to Homestead a few times to help my boss at the time rebuild his mother’s house.  I had been there before, and I could not find any landmarks.  The area was more or less devoid of trees.  Roofs were torn off.  It was not a pretty sight, and I can see how stress would take a very large toll on people.

There was a rash of looting after Andrew, too.  It took President Bush to activate the National Guard and impose curfews to slow the crime wave.  Imagine—you’ve lost pretty much everything, yet here comes someone who wants to steal what little you have left.

FEMA was slow to react—they had never dealt with anything of this magnitude.  Relief supplies were slow to arrive on site.  This issue afforded me a ride on an Army CH-47 Chinook.  The Florida Aero Club started a relief drive, and a week after the storm a friend and I went to help them at North Perry Airport.  As we loaded carts of water bottles and dry goods, a UH-1 Huey would land, we’d load it, and the helicopter would depart.  Another one came in, loaded, and left.  Then the Chinook landed.  We packed it per the crew chief’s instructions, and then we looked at him.  “Who’s going to help you unload?”  He looked perplexed.  We both volunteered.  So, that afternoon I found myself following I-75 south to Homestead General Airport.  We unloaded, and took a quick look around.  I looked into a hangar.  The doors had been blown in, and in the far corner of the hanger stood a mountain of airplanes.  As we departed, we flew east and then north along the coast, where I got a good look at the damage along Cape Florida and the Miami Bayfront area.

After Andrew, people started paying attention to warnings when the National Hurricane Center started tracking storms—and this not just in Florida.  As history has shown, Andrew set records.  Records are made to be broken… 

1998:  Hurricane Georges.  He was supposed to make landfall in Ft, Lauderdale.  I was in an apartment that was little more than a double-wide, so I went to stay with my brother in his apartment—a concrete-block-and-steel (CBS) building.  As it turned out, Georges remained south, and came ashore in Key West.

Georges would be the last tropical weather system I would, by necessity, need to track to see if it would hit close to where I lived in South Florida.  I did follow the 2004 season, where Charley, Frances, and Jeanne criss-crossed the state, and 2005, when Wilma came ashore late in the year and wreaked havoc in South Florida. 

Of course, everyone watched as Katrina devastated New Orleans, much as Harvey did in Houston and Maria did in Puerto Rico.  Andrew’s crown as “most expensive disaster” has been given away several times since 1992.  I believe Ian will now wear that crown.

Each of these events made impressions on me.  When Florence looked like she would be a strong storm and head inland, I did full-on hurricane prep—I stocked up on batteries, bottled water, provisioned with non-perishable foods, filled my bathtubs, and was ready for a bad time.  Florence stayed near the coast and dumped lots of rain over the Pee Dee region of SC and Wilmington and Fayettville in North Carolina.  As with Ian, we dodged a bullet…

To my friends who have been affected by Ian, my heart goes out to you.  I’ve contacted most of you directly, and if you need anything, anything at all, please get in touch.  I may only be able to lend moral support, but every little bit helps.  For those who want to help who are able, the American Red Cross is one of several groups who are taking donations.  Again, every little bit helps.  Some things will take many months or years to recover.  Some things will never recover.
~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~

As a further point to my last entry, I want to recommend several YouTube Channels to my scale modeling peeps.  These modelers do great work, and each of them will be the first to tell you that in some cases they don’t know if what they’re doing will work, but are willing to try and deal with the results rather than throw their hands up and say “I can’t!”

The first is David Damek, aka PLASMO.  If you look through his history, you will literally see him try new things as he makes an effort to expand his horizons.  He’s gone from basic kit construction to 3D printing and resin casting his own parts.  https://www.youtube.com/c/idaemonplasmo/videos

Armor modelers, here’s your guy.  Martin Kovac, aka Night Shift.  His results are stunning, and he’s very much a teacher.
https://www.youtube.com/c/NightShiftScaleModels/videos

Another guy who covers a multitude of subjects is Metodi Metodiev, MM Scale Models.
https://www.youtube.com/c/MMScaleModels/videos

Greg Phillips will plainly tell you that he does what he does--and he does it well.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3uGdoOTmEsyn7m3ewRVDeQ/videos?app=desktop

Jen Wright, aka Jenesis, is another modeler who shares how she does things.  She reminds you, like all the others I’ve referenced, that SHE does things this way, but it might not necessarily be the way YOU would do them. 
https://www.youtube.com/c/JenesisDesignsandModelcraft/videos

Scale-A-Ton also shows some interesting techniques, such as using kitchen plastic wrap to texture fabric.  He’s another jack-of-all trades, and I enjoy his presentations.
https://www.youtube.com/c/Scaleaton/about

Finally, if you build ships, you need to follow Ebroin Song.  He does everything using hand tools, and isn’t afraid to rebuild assemblies to fit his resources.  His sculpting work is excellent, and all in all his work is exquisite.
https://www.youtube.com/c/EbroinSong

Take a look at these channels.  There are literally thousands of scale modeling channels on YouTube, and I’ve found these to be the ones I go back to time and time again.  Some of the others are fun to watch if you want to get the ASMR feels, but for learning content, these are my go-to channels.
~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~     ~~~~~

That’s all I have for now.  Thanks for reading, and if you can, please consider making a donation to help the victims of Ian.

In other words, be good to one another.  As always, I bid you Peace.

Tales from the Hangar, Part 2

Howdy!

 

Being located in Ft. Lauderdale, our customer base was quite varied and eclectic.  One of the more colorful characters we knew was a charter boat captain for hire who owned a Cessna 177 Cardinal.  The Cardinal was a sleek version of the venerable 172 Skyhawk—the windscreen was laid back and the design placed the pilot forward of the wing’s leading edge, the wing featured a laminar-flow airfoil, and it lacked the lift struts that were featured on the 172.  Intended to replace the Skyhawk, the Cardinal was only in production for 10 years.  Cardinal Owners are a proud bunch—they are quite loyal to the “swoopy 172”…

Our customer would come to us once every two years for the biennial transponder, altimeter, and pitot-static system certification.  If he brought it to us outside that, it had to be fairly serious, bordering on catastrophic. 

 

He was an Australian, and there were only three of us in the shop who could decipher his thick Aussie accent into American.  He called one day, and left a message.  By the time the boss heard it, the guy had called back several more times, in a bit of a panic.  It turned out that he had a power feed for some sort of portable device, the exact nature of which I cannot recall, that wasn't providing power to the device in question.  It was in the early days of GPS, but it may have been a hand-held COM radio.  Anyway, whatever it was wasn’t getting power.

The boss went across the ramp to investigate.  Sure enough, there was no voltage at the end of the cable.  He came back to the shop to get some tools—that usually meant he dragged me across the ramp with my tools, since he didn’t have his tool bag in the shop most of the time.  We grabbed a few bicycles and pedaled across the ramp.  The boss opened the baggage compartment door—a square opening with rounded corners that measured about 24” square—pulled the interior panel, and gained access to the battery to check things out.

The customer, who always referred to himself as “a poor boat captain”, wanted to help.  I guess he figured the bill wouldn’t be so bad if he pitched in.  As the boss wigged his way into the baggage compartment to look things over, our poor boat captain was in his hip pocket.  We had to remind him that there wasn’t really enough room for one, let alone two, in that compartment.  We finally got him to hang back as we went to work.

The boss’s hand poked out of the door, grasping a fuse.  I checked it with a meter, and it was good.  I handed the fuse back.  Next, I saw a short tail of a wire in his hand with a hand-written tape flag on it.  Before I could get close enough to see, our poor boat captain stuck his head inside.  I heard a muffled question, and the boat captain moved closer and asked to repeat the question.

“What does that say?” came the question.

“Wot?” asked the customer.

 

“What does that tape flag say?”

“Wot’s a tape flag, mate?” 

“The tape, it has something written on it!  What does it say?”  The boss was getting hot—literally.  It was late July in South Florida, so the temperatures were in the high 90’s outside.  Inside that battery compartment was probably closer to 105 degrees.

“It says ‘tab’”, our captain says.

I looked at the scene with a puzzled look on my face.  “Tab”?  What the hell is “tab”?

I heard the boss call for me.  I asked the boat captain to move aside.  The boss said, “Look at that tape flag and tell me what it says…”

“BAT”, I said.  “I guess it is supposed to the battery.”

It was connected to ground, as was the other conductor of the pair of wires. 

Apparently, our poor boat captain decided to install this by himself to save about $40 in labor.  He never connected the positive wire to the voltage source—in this case, the positive terminal of the battery.  Both wires were tucked under the battery's ground terminal...

From that day on, whenever he would call, the whole shop would put on our best “Crocodile Dundee” accents:  “We got one from the poor boat cap’n, mates!  Fosters all around!  Shrimp on the barbie later…”

“It says ‘tab’!” became an inside joke.  He was a good sport about it.  He would come by and be what we called a "hangar bum" every so often, even after the company started to send the piston maintenance work away so they could concentrate on Learjets.

Unfortunately, the airplane was destroyed one night when somebody broke into the maintenance hangar and set fire to it, using the Cessna as the closest source of an accelerant—the arsonist opened the wing fuel cocks and threw a match.  The airplane was disassembled for an annual inspection, and the only parts that survived were the wing tips and the cowling.  The rest was a pile of ash with a well-done engine block sitting on top.

As any true Cessna Cardinal fan would do, he bought another with the insurance money.  But he forgot to do one important thing—get a pre-purchase survey.  Had he done so, we would have told him to pass or renegotiate—it had a dated stack of Narco radios in it, and those radios took a fair amount of upkeep…

But that's another story for another time.

 

*****     *****     *****     *****     *****

As I type this, I am back among the ranks of the gainfully employed.  I am working remotely for a company that writes supplemental maintenance documents for a major airframe manufacturer.  So far, it has been a lot to absorb...

 

I’ve been introduced to the modern method of aviation technical writing, using tools like Adobe FrameMaker and XML.  As I told my trainer, the content isn’t the problem—I have used similar manuals for many years.  Figuring out how FrameMaker works and where to get the basic data I need to write from are the challenges.  But I’m doing well and actually having fun—I had been told FrameMaker is a bit of a nightmare, but once you understand how it is structured (and that it is structured, unlike the way most of us use MS Word), it works quite well and is easy to use.  Now, we have the frames templates (I believe in some conventions it is called "schema") already established, so I can’t say what it is like establishing the frames themselves, so…

My writing has come a long way since I first used WordStar, EasyWriter, WordPerfect, and AppleWorks back in the day.

 

*****     *****     *****     *****     *****
With the Phantom Menace behind me—the 1/72^nd scale 43 Squadron Phantom FG.1 got finished a few weeks ago--I’ve moved on to other projects.  The primary effort was intended to be the Aeroclub 1/48^th scale Gloster Gamecock Mk.I, I’ve had in progress since around 2016, but I also wanted a quickie. 

 

As I looked at the stacks, I remembered that I bought the Authentic Airliners 1/144^th scale Convair 440 kit a few years ago (I also bought their CV-580—I will probably have to draw the artwork myself for the livery I want to place upon it).  I also acquired the Vintage Flyer decal sheet that featured the Delta Air Lines airplanes, so I got started.

 

These kits are very nice, indeed.  Actual construction only took a few evenings—the joy of well-done resin kits is their easy and quick assembly.  Before I knew it, I had it in primer (Badger’s white Stynylrez—I have mixed opinions).  A few more short paint sessions, and it is now sitting in its drawer, waiting for decals.

 

The base is interesting—I’m using a genuine Delta Air Lines cutting board that I picked up at one of their surplus sales during the annual Airliner Collectibles Shows held at the museum.  I used my normal method of painting a section of mat board to resemble the terminal ramp—in this case, the ramp around the old Hartsfield jet terminal where the Renaissance Atlanta Airport now stands.

 

The Gamecock was ready for paint—at least, as ready for paint as it was going to be—so I primed it in preparation for final colors, too.  I decided that it would be marked as a 43 Squadron airplane, too (they named themselves “The Fighting Cocks” when they equipped with the type) so I laid out and cut the checkerboard markings with tape.  The airplane is now painted and clear coated, but is it nowhere near being finished.  I still have to make the wing struts, exhaust, cabane struts, and a bunch of other parts.  But it is one step closer to being completed, so that makes me happy…

I will probably try to paint all but the serials on this one.  I still need to dig up the closest paint matches for RAF roundel red and roundel blue, circa 1927, but the rest should be easy.  The serials are a unique type face, so I’ll probably have to draw them in Inkscape and print them onto decal film.

*****     *****     *****     *****

Reunion planning is progressing nicely. 

 

I've been asked why this one seems to be more important to me than the previous reunions.  I missed the previous events due to various instances of "life getting in the way".  This one, our 40th, may well be the last one many of my classmates will make.  Our class motto was "The Chosen Few".  Well, the laws of nature dictate that we will become fewer in the years to come.  We lost one classmate less than two weeks ago to complications of diabetes and COVID-19, and another is fighting Stage 4 colorectal cancer and the prognosis isn't good.  One of our reunion chairs has early-onset Parkinson's, and only through DBS surgery has she been able to continue a semblance of a normal life.

 

So, I'm planning to go this year.  In my advanced sentimentalism, I've realized that you don't go to see.  You go to be seen.  You go to reconnect with friends, and to (belatedly) make new ones.

That’s all I have for this installment.  Thanks for reading!  Be good to one another, and as always, I bid you Peace.

Some Insight

Howdy, all!

Last time out, I made a comment that my hobby of scale modeling led to my career/vocation paths.  To refresh your memory, they were (in no particular order) history, aviation, research, writing, and hanging out at the hobby shop.

This is one of those "about me for myself" pieces I talked about last time, but I thought this one might be fun to share.

When my father brought home a Revell 1/32 scale Wildcat model kit, I don't think he realized the vast worlds he was opening up to me. 

I was an early reader.  I've been told that I could read before I was four years old.  As I got older, I loved to read.  I would read pretty much anything I could get my hands on.  When we started building that model, I was only concerned about the three-dimensional puzzle in the box.  However, one night, as I waited for Dad to come to the table for our modeling session, I started to read the side of the box.  Then I noticed that the instruction sheet contained more than just how to get the parts together—the front page had a capsule history of the airplane and its exploits during WWII.  Before I read it, I just thought the little pudgy airplane looked neat, but as I read about how it was the Navy’s front line fighter airplane in the early days of the war, and how it was flying against faster, more maneuverable enemy airplanes, my interest grew.  I looked for books in the school library about the war, and learned about the Battles of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, Wake Island, and the Solomons.  Each new discovery led me to learn more.  I’d find one nugget that would lead me to three more. 

That’s research, kids.  I do a lot of research to this day—most of what I do uses what are known as secondary sources, so it is technically “Research Lite” (Less Filling!  Tastes Great!), although I did start to use primary sources when we were up to our necks in the Fire Support Base RIPCORD project a year or so ago.  What’s the difference?  Primary sources are from either official accounts from the units involved or from the guys who were actually there and participated.  SITREPS, diaries, After Action reports, first hand witnesses—those are all primary source materials.  Secondary sources are what you find on the shelves at the local Barnes and Noble—books written about events where the author may (or may not) have used primary sources.  (As “true” researchers know, you take all secondary sources with a grain of salt…)

As I researched things, I’d write about them.  I wrote a lot of book reports, sure, but sometimes I’d write just for myself.  They were more a collection of notes, but every now and then I would collect those thoughts into an article for the local modeling club newsletter.  I laid off writing for a while, but with the COVID shutdown I’ve managed to get a little of my groove back, and have once again been pumping out modeling articles, and they’re now being published in the national organizations’ magazines. 

The more models I built, the more I wanted to build.  Unfortunately, like most things, it takes money to acquire and build models.  By the time I hit high school, I was at the age where I started to take my modeling more seriously.  A long-time modeler and author, Roscoe Creed, made mention of it when he “wondered where all the cracks went?” in one of his books  a book that I still refer to from time to time. 

I wanted to get rid of the seam lines.  I wanted to make it look like the pictures of the actual item.  As I learned of such things, I began using putty, decal setting solutions, these new-fangled super glues, and an airbrush.  Like the kits themselves, that stuff isn’t free.  More experience led me to discover the then-emerging world of the aftermarket—decals were the first thing I think most modelers encounter from the aftermarket, but later things like photoetched brass details, white metal and resin parts, vac-form kits, and other additions and conversions also became part of my repertoire.

Of course, by doing so, I was honing my skills as a craftsman and, dare I say, artist.  I was learning how to solve problems.  I developed a sense of spatial relationships--how stuff goes together.  It goes without saying that I developed a good eye for small details. 

After I graduated from college, I started to visit the local shop more frequently.  I became a regular, and eventually I was asked if I wanted to do some fill-in work.  Before long, I was a regular part-time employee, and would remain so until I moved out of state.  During a layoff period about 10 years later, I got a job at the local hobby shop here.  I was only there for a few months, but when my next full-time employer picked up and left, I went to work for the shop again. 

What helped me get the job, I think, is that I was familiar with all the stuff one needed to complete a model.  I was also interested in going the extra mile when I built my models, and I knew what that took, so I could guide others when they came looking for hobby stuff.  Many see retail sales as a drag, but I saw it as a chance to get paid while playing with toys.  Hence, my days hanging out at the hobby shop...

Now, how about the aviation thing…

I have no idea what first got me hooked on airplanes.  Perhaps it was the Wildcat model.  More likely, it was reading of the exploits of the men who flew them in the war; the Wildcat model was merely the first step on the path.  For many years, I wasn’t interested in a book if (A) it was not related to aviation; or (B) the word “fiction” was not preceded by “non”.  I have to believe it was that—the more I read, the more I learned, and the more I wanted to be part of that world.  Interestingly, I never really wanted to be a pilot.  I can’t say why, I just never saw that as where I would be.  More on that shortly…

In my day, teachers were almost always matronly ladies in their late 30’s to early 50’s.  However, my fourth grade teacher was an exception.  I guess she was in her late 20’s--I seem to recall she had only recently received her teaching credentials at that time.  She was a pretty, petite, energetic lady, blonde with a deep tan, and was always smiling.  Her name was Miss Gerstle (Nancy, if I recall correctly).  Her last name rhymes with the chocolate company’s name, and we often called her “Miss Nestlé-Gerstle”.  From the little bit I managed to gather on her by listening to her, she lived with a few roommates and they all worked on the weekends as flight attendants (we called them “stewardesses” back in the day) for Mackey Airlines, a small scheduled airline that flew from Ft. Lauderdale to the Bahamas, in order to earn a little extra money. 

I don’t know if she lined it up, but one day we took a field trip to Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and got to walk around some airplanes.  I seem to recall a Mackey airplane, maybe a DC-6, and it sat next to an Eastern Airlines (IIRC) 727 which was powered up, and we could walk through it.  We spent a few hours walking around the airplanes, asking questions, and talking with the pilots and “stews”.  I loved it.

An interesting tidbit—when I graduated from college and landed my first “adult” job, I worked from that same ramp, by that time occupied by the National Jets/Florida Aircraft Leasing facilities.  Small world, right? 

I don’t know what happened to Miss Gerstle, but wherever she is, I hope she is still smiling brightly and doing well.  She was a breath of fresh air for me…

Later, while going through the steps to earn my Aviation merit badge, somehow I got what we call today a “Discovery Flight”.  We went to the airport bright and early, got the whole briefing, got to do the preflight on the airplane, then we went out for a flight over Ft. Lauderdale.  Sitting in the pilot seat, I couldn’t see over the glareshield! I enjoyed the flight, but decided that while it looked like fun, I wasn't interested in being a pilot. 

As I started high school, I was shunted into what we would call a STEM program—back in those days, it didn’t have a name, but it put me on a track that emphasized math and science.  We only had to take two science and two math classes over four years, but I had four of each.  Somewhere along the line, it was intimated that I should become an aeronautical engineer, but as I related a long time ago, that didn’t work out so well.  But I never abandoned my interest, and eventually went back to school and earned two degrees from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University that said I had what it took to be a genuine wire stringer, smoke wrangler, electron herder, and spark chaser—I became an avionics technician.

For most of my 30+ years chasing sparks, I worked in the world of corporate aviation—Learjets were my bread and butter, along with Hawkers and Citations.  From time to time, I also worked on General Aviation craft—the little Cessna and Piper “puddle jumpers” that you see at your local airport—and business class turboprops like the Beechcraft King Air and Cessna Conquest families.

It was a demanding career, to be sure.  I worked in 100+ degree heat and 20 degree cold.  I worked in the sun, the rain, and sometimes even snow.  Many times, we worked from “can” to “can’t”—we did what we needed to do to keep ‘em flying.  It was hot, dirty, demanding work at times—especially at my last stop, where I was also the airframe electrician.  If something provided electrical power or had a wire or air data line leading to it, it was in my wheelhouse.

I was always acutely aware that if I failed in my job, people could be injured or killed in a most loud and grotesque manner.  I accepted the challenge.  Not everybody is cut out for such a critical job, and as I began to supervise others, that would be my first question to them.  If they were cavalier or flip, I wouldn’t hire them.  If you wanted to work with me, you had to not only be aware of the consequences of your actions, you had to accept that any little deviation, a nanosecond of inattention, and you could possibly kill someone…

Incidentally, I don’t really like to fly.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that 95% of the flying I have done in my lifetime has been done because I *had* to in the line of duty.  Flying for me was almost a mandatory thing, and much like running on a treadmill—we made a lot of noise and expended a lot of effort to basically go nowhere--it quickly became work. 

For most folks, flying is a way to get from what you know to an unexplored exotic location on the other side of the globe, some sort of personal adventure, and flying is merely a gateway to that adventure.  It is quite different when you know how the sausage is made and have to do it every day.

When the folks I was working for picked up stakes and left in 2016, I stayed put.  I decided that my days of crawling around on hard hangar floors or cramming myself into ever smaller spaces were behind me.  Since I had done a lot of the documentation that aircraft modifications required, I decided to use my writing skills and my avionics knowledge to start down the path to being a Technical Writer.  My mother, who taught Latin, always said that I had technical hands and a liberal arts brain, and this seemed to be the best of both worlds.

And that’s how scale modeling made me who I am today.  A gift from my father awakened an interest in history, and also fed my reading and research habit.  What I learned through my reading led to an interest in aviation, helped along by a teacher and a merit badge.  The technical aspects of the hobby sharpened my problem solving skills, helped me develop good hand-eye coordination and spurred me to develop a keen eye for small details and a sense of craftsmanship and artistry.  The marriage of all this led to where I am right now. 

And it started with a model airplane.

Thanks for reading.  Be good to one another, and look after each other.  As always, I Bid you Peace.

Christmas memories

Howdy, all!

As Christmas draws near, I get nostalgic.  I've waxed on about my occasional bouts of nostalgia, and they get especially strong in December.  My memories, in no particular order:

Going to the hobby shop.  I've told you several times that Christmas was about the only time we'd go to a real live hobby shop back in the day, with the purpose of buying a grass mat for under the tree.  Sometimes, we would pick up a little something for the train layout, too--a new structure kit, or a piece of rolling stock in addition to rail joiners and other required parts.  As my brother and I got older, we would get each other's gifts there, too.  It wasn't much of a surprise--we'd each pick something, hand it over to the other, who would buy and wrap it.  We tried to be surprised on Christmas morning...

Playing with the trains when we were little, and setting them up as we got older.  I still have both the Lionel O-Gauge set my parents bought in 1971 (our first Christmas in Florida) and the HO-gauge train set our Grandmother gave us in the late 1970's.  Perhaps I should find a place to put them up?  Of course, our Feline Justice Units will probably have something to say about that...

Slot cars.  After we moved from the apartment we rented when we first moved to Florida into a house, Santa Claus gifted us a genuine AFX by Aurora race track (you know, the ones Jackie Stewart used to advertise), and a few years later my brother got a Tyco TCR (Total Control Racing) set for Christmas.  I can't be sure, but I think my brother still has the TCR set, and maybe the AFX set, too.

Decorating the house.  We had what my Mom called "pixies" (some call them "elves") that were Elf on the Shelf before EOTS was even thought of.  We'd place them wherever they'd fit, and invariably forget one when we took the decorations down.  It wasn't uncommon for us to find one hanging out as late as Easter.

Decorating the house, part 2.  As kids, we'd watch Dad hang the lights on the house.  When we got older, we got to do it.  After a while, my brother took over the duties, and he could teach Clark Griswold a thing or two about external illumination.

Decorating the house, part 3.  Setting up the tree(s).  We had a large artificial tree and several smaller ones of various construction.  Mom made a ceramic tree in the early 1970's that we'd put in the Family Room, and my parents had this vacuum-formed translucent plastic tree with colored lights inside that randomly flashed.  It was definitely a product of the 1960's.  Eventually, I would be tapped to do the lights on the big tree, and we would all do icicle duty--until the family had a cat.  We stopped doing icicles for the most part when one year we noticed Samantha, the family cat, tearing through the living room with a shiny streamer coming from her hind quarters...

Getting the annual visit from our Grandmother.  Both of my paternal grandparents died before I was born, and my maternal grandfather died when I was six.  My grandmother would come to visit every other year or so, but after she married her sister's husband (her sister passed away from cancer in the early 1970's), she and my uncle would come down and spend a few weeks with us.  I had to give up my bedroom, but as I got older I learned to appreciate the time I could spend with them.  (Before I went off to college, between mid-December and late February I might get the use of my bedroom for maybe two weeks--as soon as my grandmother and uncle left, my father's sister and her husband--the Marine I built the models for--would arrive.  Again, I treasured every moment with them, although a younger me wasn't happy sleeping on the couch for the better part of two months every year!) 

Shopping.  Back in the day, it was slower paced and more relaxing.  During my college years, it was fun to be able to come home and cruise through the town to see what had changed.  It was always fun to listen to my grandmother joking about going to the mall to "push and shove" every year, too, especially knowing that she and my mother had finished their shopping.  It was usually an excuse to take us to lunch. 

Food.  My mother made cookies by the dozen (Toll House, Quaker Oats' "Vanishing Oatmeal Cookies", and Spritz), and cranberry nut breads by the pound.  Along with those, there were meringue cookies, and what we called "Five Cup Salad" (one cup each pineapple chunks, mandarin orange slices, miniature marshmallows, shredded coconut, and sour cream--add a garnish of halved maraschino cherries, nuts are optional).  One year, my grandmother and uncle decided they wanted to make pecan pies, and we must have made a half dozen pies, all from different recipes, between 20 December and just after New Year's Day.

Of course, once Mother Butler Pies became established in South Florida, they got our pie money and we moved on to other things.  It was truly a sad day when they went away...

One of the strangest items we made one year was a coconut pie that was as simple as tossing a bunch of ingredients into a blender, whirling them up for a minute, then pouring the result into a greased pie pan and baking it.  Sounds strange, but the pie was rather tasty. 

Eventually, once my mother bought a pizzelle iron, she added those to her repertoire, although she waged a constant campaign to get someone else to make them for her...

And when I say cookies you might think, "What's so hard about that?  The recipes are on the bag/container!"  You obviously never met my mother.  She would routinely add nuts and raisins to both the chocolate chip AND oatmeal cookies (she would have added them to the Spritz, but then the dough wouldn't pass through the cookie press!), and anything else she thought they'd go with (hence the nuts in the Five Cup Salad).  She'd always use walnuts, too.  She'd also play around with spices--she'd add cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, ground cloves, and ground mace to the cookie dough.  Those cinnamon-scented gewgaws you see in the stores these days had nothing on what our house smelled like during Christmas cookie season... 

These days, as I've chronicled a few times, I'll bake the Big Three cookies, pizzelles, and cheesecakes.  On occasion, I'll add more different types of cookies to the mix, and I really need to pester my cousins again.  My Aunt Madeline made spectacular Italian treats, and I want recipes!  The shame of it was that I didn't get them when she was still alive and visiting us every year...  

Christmas dinner was usually a ham.  Back before places like Honey Baked Ham arrived on the scene, Mom prepared it the old-fashioned way--pineapple slices, cherries, brown sugar, and Ginger Ale for the glaze, throw it into the oven, and let 'er rip.  We'd have turkey some years--a lot depended on what we did for Thanksgiving.  The sides--aside from stuffing and smashed potatoes, which tended to be turkey-only deals--were pretty much standard.  Baked macaroni and cheese, green beans almondine, cheesy broccoli, and some form of rolls were constants.  Dessert was pies, cookies, the aforementioned Five Cup Salad (a friend of the family called it "Three Prong Salad"), and whatever else Mom and Dad had received as gifts at work.  Of course, dinner was preceded by the snack trays--pepperoni, cheese, crackers, olives (green and ripe) and pickles (dill and sweet).  Yeah, it was a pretty big feast.  

After I moved up here, Christmas is different, but I actually prefer the way my wife's family does it.  Biscuits, country ham, sausage patties, bacon, chips and dips, sausage pinwheels, pigs in blankets, all served buffet style, and everyone helps themselves when they're hungry.  After we arrive, my cookies get added to the feast, too (but not the cheesecakes--they're whisked off to undisclosed locations as soon as they're delivered--and if you believe that...).  It's a fun time, and everything is easy to prepare.  No fuss, no muss...

Mom was a teacher, so she would always get food gifts.  Cookies and candy were common, although one year she got a rum cake--and the final glaze was more like a dunk in a vat of rum--you'd blow a 3.3 on the breathalyzer and get a DUI by just standing next to the tin!

A couple of the people Dad worked for would give out Christmas baskets, and, working in the insurance industry, he'd also get booze--this was before the days of corporate rules against such behavior.  I still remember the year he got this huge bottle of Amaretto in a wrought iron tilting pouring stand.  He'd get several bottles each year, and by the time my brother and I were old enough and in school, a bottle would usually go back to school with each of us.  One year, I recall a bottle of Cutty Sark (my folks, when they did take a drink, preferred bourbon or rum) that came to Daytona Beach with me.  I later came home for a weekend in February, and when I got back to the apartment that Sunday evening, I noticed that the bottle was empty.  Dry.  My roommate gave me some cock and bull story about some masked man who knocked on the door, told them he smelled Scotch, and held them at gunpoint and wouldn't leave until he watched my roommate pour the bottle out on the ground.  (I knew better.  The masked man held them at shot-glass point and made them drink the stuff!  I know this because I knew my roomie wouldn't waste free Scotch, even the blended variety...)

Christmas SWAG.  Oh, the stuff we would get.  From Life Savers Story Books (every year, you could bet on it!), to clothes, models, toys, and other stuff, we were fortunate.  Some years were leaner than others, but we never went without.  I recently came across a picture of our back yard, with two brand-new tents airing out.  One year, we received air rifles--but not Daisy's OfficialRedRyder200shotrepeatingactionrangemodelairriflewithacompassinthestockandthisthingthattellstime (my Mother- and Father-In-Law did, however, give all their young'uns each a shiny new Red Ryder a few years ago).  Nope, these were original, genuine pump action Crosman Model 760 pellet rifles!  Yes, sir, the Big Time!  Another year, we got Marksman air pistols that could shoot darts--you know the guns, the ones that look like .45 automatics and where you can literally watch the BB dribble out the muzzle.  We got pretty good at tuning them up.

Spending time with friends.  We had a family friend who we knew from Scouting.  He and his father had bought a house on Lake Istokpoga after their wife/mother passed away, and we'd head there with them on weekends.  Often, we would go  go to each other's place for a while over the holidays, too.  When his father died,  Bob would come and visit us at the house.  One year, we (Bob, me, and my brother) took a ride out to the then-new Markham Park range.  We spent the afternoon punching holes in paper and trying to educate the pair of young Hispanic gentlemen in the lane next to us how to feed and care for their veritable armory's worth of small arms--they go so bad that the Range Master had to show them the gate.  The funny part of the day came later, when we were cleaning the firearms.  We had some PVC-framed furniture on the patio, and the webbing on the chair I was sitting in failed--voom, and I went from looking across the table to staring at the bottom of the table.  Bob thought that was hilarious, and as he was laughing his ass off, his chair followed suit.  Yeah, who's laughing now...

When we were younger, we would visit a couple of other families we got to know through Scouting.  Both families were Jewish, and it was interesting to see how they celebrated their holidays.  One of the mothers was raised Catholic, so their family celebrated both.  We used to joke about whether it was a Christmas tree or a Hanukkah bush.  We lot touch with one of the families in the early 1980's, but the other family has kept touch with ours throughout the years. 
 
Spending time with family.  Yeah, as kids that was a given.  But as we got older and moved away, it was great to come home again.  My immediate family now is my brother and sister-in-law, whom I have seen once (for a few hours, tops) about six years ago.  My extended family (cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.), I haven't seen in a loooong time (my Grandmother dies in 1992, so it has been that long or longer!). 

I haven't even seen my in-laws (who live an hour away) since last Christmas. 

Once COVID-19 gets tamed, I'll have to change that.  Because without family and friends to celebrate with, Christmas just isn't Christmas, is it?

Thanks for reading.  I want to wish each and every one of you a safe, happy, and healthy holiday season.  As the old-timers say, Season's Greetings to all of you!

Be good to one another, and I bid you Peace.  

 

Tales From the Hangar

Howdy, all…

My Facebook feed is mostly pictures of cats and models, links to music videos, and history tidbits.  A few months ago, I noted the celebration of the first flight of the Cessna Citation.  In my narrative, I said “Cessna’s first jet flies”, and was taken to task by someone who corrected me—Cessna’s first jet was their Model 318, aka the XT-37 trainer. 

The Cessna T-37, designed as an economical basic jet trainer for the U.S. Air Force, featured side-by-side seating for the instructor pilot and student and was powered by a pair of Teledyne-Continental Aviation and Engineering (CAE) J69-T-9 or (T-37B) -25 single-spool centrifugal flow turbojet engines (license-built copies of the French Turbomeca Marboré).  Between the engine design and the inlet design, the airplane had a rather recognizable sound.  Because of the bulbous canopy and the high-pitched engine sounds, it was alternately called “Tweety Bird” (usually shortened to “Tweet”), “Screamin’ Mimi”, “Kerosene Converter” (it converted JP4, aka Jet fuel—which is basically highly refined kerosene—to noise), and “6,000-Pound Flying Dog Whistle”. 

Scanning the feed a day or so ago, I noted that it was the anniversary of the mighty Cessna Tweet’s first flight, which reminded me of something I experienced in my early days as a spark chaser.  Let’s get in the Wayback Machine and travel to 1989…or maybe it was 1990…

We got a phone call from the owner of a 1947 Beechcraft “Bonanza” (aka the “Fork-Tailed Doctor Killer”).  The gentleman told us he was having some problems with his COM radio, and asked us if we had time that day to take a look at it.  We told him to bring it on, and after he arrived we started to debrief him as to the nature of the problem.  He was an older man, jolly and friendly—he reminded me a lot of Burl Ives as Santa Claus riding a Norelco razor head as it slid down a snow-covered hill.

He said his transmitter was noisy—according to him, the actual symptom varied from “hash” (a low rush of static) to a low whistle any time he keyed the microphone.  Some further prodding yielded more of the story—it was a new radio, recently installed by a shop that had a monthly two-page center spread advertisement in “Trade-A-Plane” and “Aero Trader”.  These guys were sort of the “Crazy Eddie” of the avionics world, promising to turn lead to gold in an hour at a discount price.  He told us that they did the job while he waited, which raised all sorts of alarms—on an airplane that old, there were a lot of tripwires that could delay completion of even a simple job.  Anyway, he filled out a Work Order and we got to work.

When this airplane was built, it was built with no radios—that’s simply how they did it back then.  As time wore on, and more air traffic filled the skies, the need for radio communications arose.  Then came a need for some sort of aerial navigation system, then a secondary radar (aka an ATC Transponder), and pretty soon, avionics became a thing.  This airplane previously had an older NAV/COM and transponder installed (probably sometime in the late 1960’s), and they were both recently replaced with new radios, as noted above.  The transponder was working fine, the customer said, as was the NAV.  Only the COM transmitter was giving him problems.  Or so he said…

A quick visual inspection of the airplane indicated that the antennas were older types.  They weren’t the best antennas to use with a modern (well, “modern” for the late 1980’s) radio, but a quick consultation with the installation manuals and a quick phone call to the radio manufacturer in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania (you old time airplane guys know what that means!) allowed that yes, they could be used—they weren’t optimal, but they were allowable.  We checked them for good ground plane and electrical bonding, and they looked as good as 20-something year old antennas could. 

The airplane had only a COM and a NAV for audio sources.  The microphone wires were connected directly to the microphone jack, and the NAV and COM headphone audio—did I mention that this airplane didn’t have a cockpit speaker?—was controlled through an unlabeled toggle switch.  In the UP position, the COM audio went to the headphones, DOWN and the NAV audio was heard.  Not ideal, but workable.  We made a label for the switch functions, stuck it on the instrument panel, and continued.

We checked the airplane’s battery—a low battery level can cause some problems, even though modern radios were more tolerant of low voltage conditions.  The battery checked out, so we did some radio checks sitting on the ramp apron outside the hangar.  Calling the shop wasn’t bad, but a call to Ft. Lauderdale Ground resulted in a reply of “garbled”.  So, the problem varied with distance.  We decided to do some checks with the engine running.  Again, calling a hundred yards to the hangar was okay, but a call to Ground resulted in another “garbled” reply.  We varied the engine RPMs to see if the problem varied with power (indicating a possible generator/alternator issue), but it remained more or less consistent—the transmission was low level audio surrounded by hash.  Every now and then we’d note a low-level whine, too, but the hash was the main issue.

We also noted that the NAV indicator needle tended to “windshield wiper” at times, and the NAV audio had some noise in it, too.  These signs—the weak audio, the weak transmitter at distance, and the erratic navigation needle swings--pointed to bad shielding on the antenna cables and signal wires, and possibly defective antennas and antenna cables.   

We taxied back to the hangar and removed the radio for a bench check—as my boss hammered into my young head many times, “You have to know what you know”.  In other words, we weren’t to assume just because it was a new radio that the radio wasn’t at fault.  We handed the radio off to our bench guy, and he ran it through a functional check.  Everything looked good.

With the radio out, we examined the installation.  The hole in the panel had been enlarged with what appeared to be a chain saw.  The radio mounting rack (“can”) wasn’t very secure, and the forward end wasn’t supported.  We removed the can to get to the wiring.  The wiring—well, let’s say the wiring wasn’t tidy (“mouse nest” more aptly describes what we found).  The wires were stretched tightly behind the instrument panel, and the bundle—if you could call it that—was poorly tied and secured.

Audio lines are shielded wires—the conductors that carry the signals are surrounded by a metallic braid.  This braid acts as a sort of antenna that receives potential noise to keep it off of the signal lines.  The braid would be connected to an airframe ground at one end to shunt the noise to ground (these days, the shield is grounded at all ends, because radio technology has changed and requires stricter High Intensity Radiated Fields, or HIRF, protection).  The antenna feeds are coaxial cables--in this time period, it was RG-58A/U 50-ohm impedance cable with a single braid (more modern radios have low-loss cables with multiple braids and foil shields, again to combat HIRF).  We reasoned that the old cables were probably re-used with the old antennas, because aging cables could have multiple problems, from corrosion to deteriorating shield and/or dielectric insulator.   

The audio wiring in this installation may as well have had no shielding at all.  The audio pairs from the COM and NAV to the switch were unshielded twisted pairs.  The one audio wire that was shielded was the twisted triple conductor for the microphone audio.  The installer didn’t do a good job in terminating the shield—through chance or by sheer luck, he managed to get a few strands of one end of the shield tied to the radio’s power ground.  The audio selector switch was a low-quality switch of the type you might find at Radio Shack (or, as it was also known, “Tandy Avionics”).  The wires were also too short, and it was under tension as routed.  The first thing we thought was that we might as well have the whole mess removed and replaced with a proper harness and new antennas, but that would take quite a while to accomplish.  We showed the customer what we found, and explained just how poor this job was, and that it really needed to be re-accomplished from the beginning.  He wasn’t going for it.  His jolly nature was beginning to recede…

We were told to do what we could with what was there.  After untying the harness (such as it was), we found places where we could get a bit of slack in the harness.  The unshielded audio wires were replaced with properly shielded wires.  We extended the power and ground wires to further alleviate the banjo string tension of the harness.  Finally, we inspected the wires to the NAV indicator, and they looked acceptable.  Our senior installer had a look and gave his seal of approval.

After the wiring was addressed, we looked at the antenna cables.  As we feared, the cables were in bad shape.  The connectors were poorly installed (and these were new connectors installed on the old cables), so they were removed.  We noted some green corrosion between the braid and the dielectric, the jacket was hard and brittle, and the dielectric was crumbling, so we got approval to run a new antenna cables.  We reasoned that while we had everything open, now was the time to make it right. 

We finished our work and called for an inspection.  The shop inspector gave us a thumbs-up, and we closed up the work areas and taxied out for a final check.  The radio checked out good on the ground, all that was needed was an in-flight check.  We told the customer that he really needed to get those antennas replaced.  He said he would do that when he got to his home airport, he paid the bill (grousing about every last nickel we charged him, too!), and prepared to leave.  His jolliness had by now turned to grumpiness.

“What does all this have to do with the T-37?” you’re asking.

I’m getting to that. 

As our customer started up and taxied across the ramp, a T-37A was sitting at our FBO—we had the military fuel contract at Ft. Lauderdale, and this guy was on a cross country training flight and needed fuel.  As we headed out to the ramp to watch our customer depart, we heard the Tweet fire up its engines—an event difficult to miss, since even a deaf man could hear the banshee-like wail of the J69s.  As the Tweet pilot went through his preflight checks, the airplane sat there, whistling away.

We also watched as our customer taxied away from the hangar, rolled up directly alongside the jet, set his parking brake, and attempted to call the tower for his departure clearance.  After a few minutes, the customer turned back to the hangar.  We didn’t know what was going on, but we had an idea as to why.  Our bench guy confirmed our thoughts.  He had been monitoring the radio in the shop, and when the customer keyed his microphone, the only sound transmitted was the ear-piercing screech of two J69s at idle.  The controllers in the tower never heard his voice, only the sound of the jets.  Our bench guy came out of the shop and told us what was going on as the customer taxied up.

The customer shut the airplane down and climbed out—and boy, was he hot!  “You have no clue what you’re doing!  The problem is worse than it was before!  I want my money back!”  Frankly, I was worried that he would have a stroke or massive coronary right there on the ramp, he was shouting so loud.

The boss pointed to the diminutive jet trainer, by now taxiing out to the runway.  The noise was still ear-splitting—even more so with the increased power settings needed for the airplane to taxi.  “You were sitting right next to that when you tried to call the tower.  Try again!” the boss shouted to him.

Red-faced, the customer got into his airplane, started up, and departed without further incident.

                                              *     *     *     *    *     *     * 

I’m in the middle of a belated annual sports let-down.  COVID-19, I don’t think I have to tell you, threw a large wrench into the sprockets of the major sports series.  Since my annual yardstick tends to be measured by the various sporting events and seasons, this year a lot got bunched up in the past six weeks.  So, instead of having a few months between events, they all came or are coming up in the space of about eight weeks.  The Stanley Cup, the U.S. Open (tennis), the French Open, The Masters, Sebring, World Series, NBA Championships, they’ll all be back to back this year.

Also, several events I like to watch were cancelled:  Wimbledon, the races at Watkins Glen and Pocono, some of the NHRA drag races…

After all this is over, I am hoping we can get a handle on COVID-19 and next year can reset to whatever the new normal will be.

                                              *     *     *     *    *     *     * 

Other events effected by COVID-19, and I’ve mentioned this in passing, have been scale model shows.  We were on the calendar for the Third Annual South Carolina Scale Model Mega Show in June.  In April, we decided to postpone until August, and in July we finally pulled the plug.  Most other local and regional shows were postponed or cancelled.  The two big shows in the U.S., the IPMS/USA National Convention and the AMPS International convention were also cancelled, the latter after being initially moved from Harrisburg, PA to Danbury CT and postponed.  Scale Modelworld in Telford as well as the Shizouka Hobby Show were also cancelled.

                                              *     *     *     *    *     *     * 

So, with all this time on my hands, I should be a model building fool, right?  Not so much.  As noted previously, I have managed to winnow my long-term project drawers (some may call it a Shelf of Doom) to one—the Aeroclub 1/48^th scale Gloster Gamecock.  I also have embarked on a few 1/72^nd scale F-4 projects.  But what has really eaten into my time has been research and writing—I’ve been working on four articles in association with the Phantom projects, as well as trying to put something together for our club newsletter and this blog. 

                                              *     *     *     *    *     *     * 

Needless to say, my gripes are quite minor in comparison to folks who have been directly affected by this disease.  In my own extended family, my cousin’s husband died in February from what was most likely COVID-19—remember, in February, 99.9% of Americans hadn’t even heard of COVID, so there is no 100% confirmation, but the symptoms he exhibited certainly sound familiar—high fever, cough, shortness of breath, and pneumonia-like symptoms. 

Several other friends of mine have been infected, too, and are in various stages of recovery. 

Bottom line:  Wear a mask, maintain social distancing, and practice good hygiene.  These are simple steps that, according to science, works.  If we all do our part, we can put COVID out of business. 

Game-Changing Moments

Howdy, all…

Set the Wayback Machine.  The date:  July, 1982.  The place:  Warrick Custom Hobbies, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

The summer was winding down.  I had graduated high school in early June, and we went north for a few weeks to celebrate and visit family.  This was my one and only (so far) visit to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, and I literally could have spent a week there alone--as it was, we went twice because one of the other places were wanted to visit was closed.  I must have taken a hundred pictures with my new 110 Instamatic.  Yeah, I have no idea where any of those photos went.  To this day, I haven’t been able to find any of them…

A week or so after we got home, I went to my recently-discovered hobby haven to look at the latest kits.  On my previous visit several months before, I had previously spied a few kits that I might want to bring home with me.  So, I grabbed the car keys and set out.

I strolled around—I was only beginning to discover the depth of merchandise housed within the store.  There wasn't anything in the stacks that grabbed me on that day (I know, right?), so I went to the magazine rack and started looking at the books.  The first to call to me was Sheperd Paine’s How to Build Dioramas.  Having pored over his diorama sheets from the Monogram kits for a few years, I decided that I probably should pick this up.  Back in the day, it was only about 9 dollars American, about the same as one of the Otaki kits of the day.  Next to it was Hints and Tips for Plastic Modelers.  I flipped through it, and there was quite a lot of information packed into the book.  Four bucks—yeah, I can swing it.  Then, as I turned the rack, a magazine cover caught my attention:

Image:  Kalmbach Publishing

I gave the magazine a quick once-over, verified that I had the extra two and a quarter (plus the 4% for Governor Bob Graham), and took my finds to the counter.  The guy at the counter—who had previously saved me from buying a Nichimo Avenger, noting it was nothing more than a re-box of the Marusan 1/50 scale kit, itself a poor copy of the Monogram kit—told me he liked the new magazine, and thought I would, too.  I settled my tab--so much for that $20 bill--and drove home.

When I opened the magazine at the house, the following words greeted me:

 

Image:  Kalmbach Publishing

As I scanned the articles, I noticed the editorial in action.  Unlike the previous scale modeling magazines I had read in which the articles were text-driven with a few shots (mostly in black and white) of the completed models, the articles in this magazine actually took time to show me what the process looked like.  There were detail drawings.  Color references.  Notes about where to find the stuff they used to build the models.  Also unlike the other magazines, the history of the prototypes was mercifully brief—a paragraph or two, tops, but the meat of the article was the model and how the builder made it look that way.

At the time, I was still an airplane geek—sure, I built a few tanks and ships, and more than a few cars—but I found myself reading and re-reading all the articles in the issue.  The scratchbuilt 1/76th scale Abrams captivated me—I thought the Abrams was a neat-looking vehicle, and the MERDC color schemes (which I found quite attractive) were just coming into vogue, and were certainly more interesting that straight green.  But the color scheme was only the tip of the iceberg—the way Steve Zaloga wrote the article was almost begging me to try to do the same.  All along the way, he made it sound like any modeler could do this, and he did it without treating the lesser skilled modelers like imbeciles or idiots.  The tone was advanced, but the undertones were inviting everybody to give it a try. 

The only article of a subject in my area of interest was Ernie Pazmany’s Fw-190 conversion, and I certainly learned a great deal from his model.  The same holds for Richard Stazak’s vacuum-form kit article—I had only seen one vac kit to date back then, and I wondered how you built it.  Now I knew.  And, true to Bob Hayden’s word, I managed to take something away from every article in the issue, even though I didn’t build armor, or Navy jets, or space ships, or boxed dioramas.

I must have read and re-read that copy a dozen times before I decided that I needed to subscribe.  I had to scrounge for the twelve bucks (introductory rate, IIRC—the ad in the first “real” issue said $15) for eight issues, or two years, but to me, it was well worth the price.  Twelve dollars would have bought a nice model kit and the paint it needed, but I could buy them any time.  As I matured (ha!), I reasoned that it was like the parable about men, fishing, and eating.  I could have bought a model that kept me busy for a few days—and yeah, I would have learned something, I’m sure—or I could buy the magazine that would teach me how to build better models for years to come.  I would still subscribe to that other magazine, but it paled in comparison to FSM. 

Of the early issues, I remember most of the articles, simply because I read them over and over, extracting as much knowledge as I could from each page and every image.  To this day, I can still remember the sense of amazement I experienced when I read Boh Boksanski's article on combining a vacuum formed and injection molded kit into a fabulous model of an airplane I had only read snippets about (the B-50D) that was painted with...dope?  Pactra Silvaire Aluminum dope?  Yep.  Dope.  Wow. 

Or Mike Dario's conversion of a vacuum-formed F-89D to the earlier cannon-nosed F-89C, painted with what to me seemed to be a strange concoction of Floquil's Crystal Cote, Dio-Sol, and Pactra Silver.  I would later rely on the recipe and alter it to come up with a home brewed acrylic metal finish paint many years later, a recipe I used until Vallejo's Metal Colors made their debut.

My all-time #1 modeling article of all time is still Bob Steinbrunn's cockpit detailing article from the October (Fall) 1983 issue.  My original copy of that issue became so shop-worn and dog-eared that when I found a mint condition copy in the late 1990's, I snapped it up. 

To give you an indication of how much I ate this stuff up, my first copy of Shep Paine's book on dioramas that I bought with that Test Issue of FSM was likewise (as they say around here) "slap wore out" by 1984 or 1985...I finally bought a new copy, as well as the Second Edition, in 2000.

I would go off to college shortly after I read that first “Test” issue, but I would look forward to reading the new issues when I would go home for the occasional weekend.  Since it was a quarterly back in the day, and since I wasn’t at the house but three or four times a semester, the wait wasn’t too horrible.  And once the new issue arrived, I was off to read it from cover to cover, several times.

Through FSM, I learned of IPMS, and of local clubs.  After I graduated and came home, I would spend more time at the hobby shop—doubtless looking to buy all those kits I had read about in FSM.    I started to meet fellow modelers who said I should start going to the IPMS/Flight 19 meetings.  I went to one in late 1989, and as the story goes, was a bit gun shy to bring anything, but I did—I had a Nichimo Ki-43 Oscar in 1/48^th scale that I built a few years earlier.  I had dipped my toes into weathering on that one—I used a Tamiya silver marker to check seams, and added a few patches here and there for good measure.  I would swab the paint on with the paint marker, and then wipe off the excess with toilet tissue.  When I applied my finish colors (Polly-S in those days), I let them dry for a few minutes, then used a tight roll of masking tape to pick off spots of color to reveal the silver underneath.  I thought it was merely okay, but by the number of questions I got from the other guys you would have thought I had invented beer. 

As I looked at the other models on display, I was impressed by the scope and quality of the work and it seemed like everybody was there to help each other.  That was my kind of group, and I was a member from that night in 1989 until I moved away in 2001.  For some odd reason, I got roped into serving as the club President from around 1993 until we moved. 

A funny story about that first meeting—I knew the guys from the shop, and as I was socializing and meeting the rest of the gang, I bumped into an old high school friend.  I hadn’t seen him in seven years, and had no idea he built models.  He had, like me, been building since he was a kid.  Without clubs, that’s pretty much what model building was in the day…a lone wolf hobby.

Between discovering FSM (and the Kalmbach books) and joining IPMS/Flight 19, I was on the way to being a better model builder.  What I learned back then has become the foundation of the skills I use to this day.  Further, and I’ve already discussed it, I met people who are friends to this day.  For what can be a solitary pastime, that speaks volumes.

*     *     *     *     *     *

One of the hobby manufacturers who was noted as introducing a line of paints matched to Federal Standards in Mr. Hayden’s editorial was none other than Testors, through their Model Master line.  In fact, the ad inside the cover of the next issue was for Model Master products.  In the nearly 40 years since then, the Model Master line was expanded to include the Metalizer products (bought from the originator), new colors, acrylic colors, brushes, blades, knives, tools, clear finishes, and a whole raft of modeling “stuff”.

Republic Powdered Metal (now RPM International) had acquired Testors a few years previous, along with Floquil/Polly-S, and were in the process of acquiring Pactra.  They also owed or would eventually own Zinser, Bondo, and Rust-Oleum. 

Testors got into the airbrush business in 1991 when they first marketed the Aztek airbrush as the “Model Master Airbrush”.  I bought one, sight unseen, as soon as Warrick Hobbies could get them in stock, and I used it until the early 2000s.  Aztek was a UK-based manufacturer of airbrushes and within a year of Testors marketing the Aztek, RPM (Testors parent company since the early 1980s) would buy Aztek and expand the line.

That 40-year run is coming to an end.

RPM has announced that all Pactra, Floquil, and Model Master Products have been discontinued.  Apparently, they are contracting the line back to where it was in 1978—square bottle enamels, their original tube and liquid cements and putties, and the inexpensive brushes.  It seems like several big steps backward, but apparently RPM had to answer to the shareholders, so they have moved the focus of their efforts to the craft scene.

There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over this decision, but as I wrote on one of the online forums, there is nothing Testors made or marketed that you cannot obtain replacements for elsewhere.  The bite comes when you will have to order it, since the local stores might not carry it.

*     *     *     *     *     *
In related news, Revell has announced they will be marketing their paints and finishing materials in the U.S., including enamels, acrylics, and spray lacquers.  They should be hitting the stores before the end of the year.

*     *     *     *     *     *

The 2020 AMPS International Convention, initially planned for Harrisburg, PA in May and moved to Danbury, CT for late September, has been cancelled.   Given the resurgence of COVID-19 in some states, and the quarantine orders several of the Northeastern Governors have enacted for folks traveling to their states, it came as no surprise that it, too, has been shelved.

*     *     *     *     *     *
I have a few model-related research projects underway.  One is fairly straightforward and will probably become an article on the F-4J(UK), the surplus U.S. Navy Phantoms purchased for the Royal Air Force and put into service by No. 74(F) Squadron in 1984.

The second project is more complicated.  From the time I first saw one of the photographs of a 340^th Bombardment Group B-25 buried under ash after the 1944 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, I wanted to recreate it in miniature.  The sharper ones out there will see the problem right away: the lack of good, comprehensive documentation of the Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces in Italy.  It has been a bit of a hidden treasure hunt so far.  The books that are out in the world are either rather dated (Kenneth Rust’s books date back to 1975), limited in scope, or are nothing more than picture books.  The websites, too, are disjointed and scattered.  I even sent one of the webmasters an e-mail suggesting that the various sites join forces, like the old Web Rings. 

We’ll see how that pans out...

That's about all for now.  Thanks for reading!

Stay safe and healthy! 

Be good to one another, and, as always, I bid you Peace.