AI 2008/DFW, 757, 767, 777 and MD-80 photos posted

I’ve put up the best of my photos from Airliners International 2008, including photos of my brother Ian and friends Ken, Alan and Rick, the 767 pix I got on the American Airlines maintenance tour, AA 737 and Saab-Fairchild 340s landing, Embraer 170 in Air Canada markings, etc. I got more 777, 757 and MD-80 photos, and I’m putting them up separately.

Here are the 777 photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wbaiv/sets/72157606467482880/

Here are the MD-80 photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wbaiv/sets/72157606550884206/

Here are the 757 photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wbaiv/sets/72157606559901502/

Making water-based metalics work with a brush- Dilute like a watercolor wash…

So I’m looking at some of my 1/700 planes and huge globs of aluminum paint in various shades that disfigured them and I was thinking about stripping, spraying and trying to decal on the markings… and then I though, nah, that’ll take too long.

So I sanded off the old paint, and repainted using Polly Scale Bright Siver/Shiny Aluminum something like that- look it up and fix later. And it would have glopped like oatmeal too BUT I dipped the tip of my brish into the water I was using to apply decals and WAY diluted the paint- almost to a water-color wash, and flowed it all over and around the model… and it dried pretty nicely, no brush marks, no globs. A second coat was needed to cover, bring it on, I say. Multiple thin, coats are always best. Result looks pretty nice. I recomend it. I imagine the same would work for oil based, Tamiya, blah blah.

Try it, and if it doesn’t work, I’m sorry, let me know anyway. If you’re careful, it ought to work for you too. I’d say it was good for up to a square inch (2.5 X 2.5cm), maybe more if you use a big, soft, laquering brush.

Bill

99% Persperation, 1 % inspiration!

Ah, well I’ve resisted (so far) the temptations of starting new projects and am hewing to my goal, getting stuff “in progress” *done* and off my list, and making the list shorter. Of the models I named:

The 1/144 MD-82 in AA markings, is done as far as assembling kit parts and applying decals. It needs antennae, maybe pitot tubes, paint touchup on wheels and tires, paint or decal touchup on the red and blue stripes near the port side of the nose. Detail decals wouldn’t hurt, but aren’t required as its not going to win anything.

The 1/400 A340 needs some decal clean-up, some touchup paint, the landing gear wheels and tires glued on. If it were to have blade antennae, they’d need to be added too. All the kit decals have been applied, some more than one time, and are more or less in the right places. It’ll make it.

The 1/700 FW-200 has its BOAC registration letters “G-AGAY” on wings, top and bottom, and aft fuselage, both sides. Red-white-blue stripes underline it on the sides and under, no white but still a blue and red stripe on the top, and the blue part of the starboard side needs a bit more work. UK fin flash is also applied, and I think that covers the decals for this one. Landing gear is already installed, all it needs are windows, four props and four ‘engines;’.

The 1/700 S-2 has paint, decals, cabin windows and wheels, painted. I’m fiddling with the red stripe between two white stripes on each prop blade- my thin red stripe, good for FW 200 registrations, couldn’t be put down on the blade tips. I may try painting by hand. The nosewheel gear door needs one or two touchup coats of tennis ball yellow.

The 1/700 TBM has paint, decals, windows, prop. Might need fuseage #s repeated on the wings?.

The 1/700 DC-3s are moving slowly, the Olive Drab & Gray “Northeast Airlines” has its paint done and if I can’t get my (^&()$^% $34 Rapidograph 6-0 pen to work, I’m putting on a “Northeast” decal that I found and calling it fair. The American one needs either to be finished slap-dash or sanded down and started over.. I’m still wrestling with it.

The 1/700 Ju-52, needs its markings chosen- BOAC post-war, MALEV pre-war, or whatever, and applied.

I’m pretty confident all the above will make the trip to the contest, and I’m content.

The 1/400 B777 had too rough a surface finish to start painting, so I wet-dry sanded it down to smooth and now the gray/whte demarkation is far from straight and obvious. I guess it needs some white added up to where it should stop, maybe after sanding off any gray in those areas, and when the white is dry, mask IT and apply the Boeing #707 gray. With a reasonably straight demarkation line, I can then put on kit decals, engine hot sections and other missing parts, etc.

The 1/700 Boeing 377 needs a filer/styrene stock pass around the nose, the tail glued on and rudder/fin extended to the correct size, then engines shaped from styrene rod, the kit nacelles shortened and the whole business assembled. Markings and paint are needed next, then props and landing gear.

The 1/700 Tu-114 Needs its nose finished, mounting for the horizontal and vertical tail made, horizontal and vertical tails made, maybe molds made at that point for copies, then widen the wing roots about 1-2mm, put it all together, paint, finagle some Aeroflot markings, put on the stock landing gear and lightly sanded props from the Skywave kit.

The Hasegawa 1/200 777, Minicraft and Revell 1/144 737s and the Minicraft L1049G are all unlikely to get done.

Were I to start something, a Cessna 172, 1/72 size, or a BOAC Mosquito, 1/72 or smaller, would be my choices. Or the 1/200 Boeing 2707 SST I started stripping the previous owner’s paint from… As if!

Pray for us sinners….

Other Bests in the Bay Area – 2008 – Collecting now, alphabetized soon.

A friend is coming in tonight for a week working in San Jose, and it occurs to me to make a list of “best”s in the bay area for Michael and any other visiting fire-persons whom might come out for business or pleasure. This is also prompted by the SF Chronicle’s annual top 100 restaurants list, some of which I’ve been to (and agree are terrific) and some I would have listed that aren’t on the Chron’s list.

Best places to go:

The Exploratorium. The world’s greatest hands-on science museum and (dis)organized meeting of art and science. Whether the awesome majesty of the three guysers, who’s periods are determined by the distance between the pool at the top and the heat source at the bottom, or sheer coolness of the string shooter and spinning discs on a spinning turntable, or the interactive the water vortex, the fog vortex, the giant pinboard or the magnetic properties of eddy currents in the giant bar of copper, never mind the tactile dome ( my advice: wear a swimming outfit under your street clothes…), the Exploratorium is better than words can possibly describe. For kids of all ages, and the cafe food is good enough to just go and eat if you get hungry. The original 11 on a 10 scale.

Muir Woods. Accurately described as a cathedral of trees. Its bigger than any of the European cathederals I’ve visited, and I enjoy it more, nice though they are. Less moral ambiguity, though not none (our park did used to be someone’s home and not so long ago…) There are lobster-shaped cray-fish (big claws) in the creek the runs through the middle, and spotting them and the fish in the creek from the many bridges is one of our family treats when we go. I’ve done the hike up from the Muir Woods creek bed to the top of Mount Tamalpias and its steep and exhilerating and you have your choice of how hard to make it, based on the paths you select and how fast you push it. Bring a gallon of water per person if you plan to go all the way up and all the way down. The trees of the Wood are huge, and yet dynamic- some fall in the wind, some expire of age, new ones grow where the old have departed. Besides fish and the predictable squirrels, we’ve seen deer, moms and babys, from pretty darn close, and it was pretty darn cool!

There are also the fire-hollowed trees on the trail on the ocean side of the creek, a bit above ‘floor’ level. Jean and I have several pictures of Benjamin at various ages in these icons, a small, friendly, forest creature, all our own. Its hard to NOT take a good holiday card picture of yourself and your family here. We probably ought to take the Dipsea trail some time. I strongly recomend going out on one of the two trails into the main “cathedral” canyon and coming back on the other- doesn’t matter which you go which way on. Take the map from the gate and plan to cross the creek at the furthest bridge. If you walk that far and back, it’ll make your day better.

Easy splashing/wading in the Pacific Ocean: Drake’s Beach, north-east of Pt. Reyes. A pretty place, a large beach, rotten rock in the cliffs so don’t stand under them, a public restroom at the parking lot and a gentle slope under the water- Drake’s Beach has it all and in abundance. Because the bay its in faces south, the waves aren’t as vigorious as those on west-facing beaches north or south, and the water seems a tad warmer.

Best hat store. The Hat Store on Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, just before it turns into a 1-way for the last blocks just south of UC Berkeley. We go here when we need to create a costume- buy an excellent hat and build the rest around it. Notable purchases have included a Jester hat, a soft Viking helmet, an Egyptian Pharoh head-dress and several less-formal choices. We always find something to like and take home, and they hold up well.

Best Aquarium store – Albany Aquarium. San Pablo Avenue, between Solano and Albany Bowl. This was where we wound up when UCB Open House day ran out of complementary goldfish… and $150 later we had a heated, filtered, glass, 10 galllon, aquarium with a bunch of attractive fish. Fairliy tough fish. We’ve always gotten good advice here, their fish, snails, plants and frogs are hale and hearty. They don’t over-sell or low-ball prices, but if you want a gold fish in a gold fish bowl (no heat, no filter…) they’ll help you with that too.

Two bits of wisdom I picked up from them/with them:

A) Fish aren’t like hamsters- you don’t have to put them all in a pickle jar and scrub out the tank once a month… Get a cleaner/vaccuum/syphon, learn to use it (There is a non-return valve, you have to ‘pump’ the big tube full and then it’ll syphon, without you having to suck on it) Use a 2-5 gallon bucket or trash-can to collect the wastewater and stuff from in between the rocks.. (Pour it out on the fruit tree in the back yard…)

B) pH balancing is VERY important, and if you can’t master it quickly, invest in a buffer solution that will AUTOMATICALLY balance pH to the right-ish area, follow the directions and sleep easy/. At least for the tetras, guppies, etc, this is just fine. Incoming water after I ‘vaccuum’ is treated with a chlorine/chloramine treatment product so the fish aren’t poisoned, and the pH balance stuff. Works every time.

Best Bowling Alley: Albany Bowl. On San Pablo, between Solano and the strip-mall/bart-station about a mile north. Games are reasonably priced, you can get shoes that fit, pool tables are $10/hr, they have bumpers to block the gutters and do kids birthdays. In short, they do it all. Nice people, nice place to bowl, great family ‘go out’ spot. We usually bowl a couple of games, or more, and then take a pool table for an hour. WAY fun! Someday I’ll get to the black-light miniature golf in the South Bay and I can compare the two.

Child-friendly restraunts:

Chef Chu’s (Los Altos/Palo Alto/Mountian View)

Armadillo Willie’s (all)

Venezia Cafe (University Ave, Berkeley)

Cliff House, Ocean Beach, SF

Caesar – Piedmont Ave, Oakland

Little Shin Shin, Piedmont Ave. Oakland

Becky’s Chinese Food, College Ave, Oakland,

Barney’s (Hamburgers, salads) College Avenue, Piedmont Avenue

Christopher’s Hamburgers

Both Japanese places on the last block of Shatuck, northbound, before University

Sam’s Log Cabin, San Pablo, Albany

Montclair Egg Shop, Medau Place, Oakland

Pizza Pastino’s Park Blvd, Glenview,

Buttercup coffee shop- just south of the Cotton Mill, now home of West Marine and Numi Tea, on the bay side of 880.

Jolie’s Coffee and Gifts- at the street side of the lighthouse anchorage in the Oakland Estuary, near Livingston and also the bridge to Coast Guard Island.

Bowser’s Pizza, Park Avenue, Alameda

<Restaurant in the Lighthouse>, Oakland Estuary, near Livingston and the bridge to Coast Guard Island…

More later,

Bill

Anyone out there have 1/20 Chevy small block V8 engines or 1/20 kit parts? A drawing? 1/25 or other size model parts?

So I discovered there was a Bandai McLaren Mk6B kit, and the McLaren Mk6 is one of my very favorite racing cars- yeah, looks a little narrow and slab sided, but there’s *something* about its shape, still a whiff of romance, that the Mk8 seems too efficient to capture. And now I’ve got one of the Bandai kits, or most of one… its a real relic of the 1960s- the body looks more or less right, the chassis guts are simplified to toy proportions, the steering has big, beefy, parts that allow you to set it to go straight or curveed, and the model’s engine conceals a Mabuchi electric motor that drives a gearbox (in the gearbox!), which drives the rear axles and thus the rear wheels.

I can certainly manufacture my own replacement pieces for what’s missing- some of the rear suspension bulkhead, some suspension arms, the one-ball Hooke joints for the rear axles. But so little of it is ’scale-like’ that I’m more tempted to try to turn what I’ve got into a scale model. One of the MPC McLaren Mk8D kits could be a donor for much of this- the 6 had two more structural bulkheads- one aft of the engine block and connected to the chassis tub, for rear suspension loads, the other at the front edge of the front suspension. These complemented the two bulkheads that both designs have, the firewall/central bulkhead between the engine and the driver’s seat, and the forward bulkhead that caps the tub at the rear edge of the front suspension.

But the suspension geometry, arms, hubs/uprights, gearbox, axles, brakes and wheels all translate directly, and a hybrid tub using parts from both *and* scratch built parts for a Mk6 would go a good distance to supporting the body of the Bandai car.

However, the Mk6, in McLaren Car’s team use, carried a Chevy small block V8, not the big block moster (540 cu. in.) that the Mk8 used both for power and as a loaded memeber to carry rear suspension loads to the tub. So I need a 1/20 scale Chevy small block V8. None of the 1/20 scale Corvette or Camaro models seem to have a small block engine (duh). I found a couple of Chevy kits with 1/25 or 1/24 motors that I think are small blocks:

Revell 1969 Z-28 RS kit, with 302 cu. in. V8 <- this has gotta be one…

<AMT?> 1969 Camaro SS, with 396 cu. in. V8. Big block destroked? small block bored and stroked up?

<someone> 1966 Chevy Nova – seems like it should be a 350 and not a 427/454.

I’ve got profile/outline views of the Mk6a, and a number of picture books, including the recent, “Bruce McLaren, Racing Car Constructor”, (Thanks, honey!) that I can mine for useful photos to draw up a plan. There’s no way I’ll get this done this year, so looking for the parts I need seems to make sense. Soooo, if you have 1/20 parts for a Chevy small block V8, please drop me a line. If you’ve got a good set of drawings or photos of a Chevy short block V8, and can share them, also please get in touch.

Thank you!
Bill

Bill