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John H. Rood

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Posts posted by John H. Rood

  1. Thanks, Andy!  

    Where I left off was October 2019, and me having to add a bit of fuselage skin on the the belly aft of the wing TE, adding thin balsa lams to a few spots where I had gone overboard with the sanding block... creating a touch of the dreaded "starved horse" look.

     

    This all happened because I neglected to follow Phil's procedure of making careful "do not sand deeper than here" guide marks beforehand!

     

    To show the project's current state, here's a photo from a few years ago... drinks in the Den of Iniquity with some impressionable civilians.

    My next step now is to finish fixing that aft snafu, finish the elevator control installation, and close up that nose.  

    IMG_4869.jpeg

    • Like 2
  2. Reentering the fray after far too long away.  

    Looking here at a step I inadvertently missed:  Making an exit path for the elevator control. 

    I've included a screen shot of what Phil Cooke did, and now I'm having to do it with the fuselage all buttoned and shaping begun. Would've been better to do it in Phil's sequence!

     

    Now -- where in blazes did I put put those snakes?  The wife and I moved to a new home this year, and much as I tried to pack up and move the workshop in an organized fashion, I see I have a ways to go!  Organization and all that. 😅

    IMG_6840.jpeg

    IMG_6841.jpeg

    • Like 1
  3. On 19/09/2023 at 11:33, Saint 1 said:

    "...Suitably pleased with the result we went on holiday for a week and whilst we were away I did a bit more researching and realised my gun ports weren’t spaced correctly..."

     

    😄 My favourite moment in Phil's amazing build story!  The man goes on holiday with his wife and he's researching Sea Hawk gun port spacing!!! 🤣

    Beautiful!  This is why I love PSS !!!

    🤓😸

    • Haha 1
  4. If I have my family history correct, my uncle Paul’s first solo in any airplane was in a Tweetie Bird, it was at Lackland AFB, Texas way back in the 1950s.  He went on to a full USAF career flying the bigger guys all over the world and then the airlines upon retirement.

    But the Tweet — what a fun subject for PSS!

  5. The Hamilcar X.  ? Sacky, that's the bird I was thinkin' about, too!   Fits the 24 hour build madness perfectly!

     

    I've had the unpowered original Hamilcar design on my wish-list for a while now.  Last year I had some FF scale glider drawings printed up from the OuterZone website, thinking this could be a fairly simple project that I might actually be able to complete.   

    I took this photo just now...  in the foreground is a great old Aeromodeller magazine plan, and in the background is a (less romantic!) contemporary re-draw/upgrade.  Each plan is on two pages;  only one of each is shown here.

    Drawings.jpg

    • Like 2
  6. Phil, that scheme is what attracted me, too!  Glad you like!

     

    Phil, also, somehow last year my initial post (way back in March 2016 -- I am guilty as charged!) got deleted -- and YOUR user name then appeared in its masthead.     Fast-forward to now, and RCM&E's David Ashby is very kindly helping me sort it.   He instructed me to start a new thread and so that's what we have here.  He then shall transfer all the stuff from the "old" thread over to here, and delete that "old" thread.   

    Meanwhile, I'm back at building the model -- so I'll have some actual progress to report.

  7. Gents,

    I grew up seeing bright orange/red and white airplanes out in the 1950s-1960s high desert of Southern California, and with this Skyhawk build I'd like to tap into those vague but absolutely fantastic memories.   So I'm wading into the fray here with a California-based A4D-1 Skyhawk, either a Weekend Warrior with the US Navy reserves circa 1960 at NAS Los Alamitos, or one that served as a weapons test aircraft with the US Navy and US Marines out in the high desert of Naval Air Facility (NAF) China Lake and over water with the Pacific Missile Test Center (PMTC) at Point Mugu. 

     

    So, I'll need to modify the PSSA A-4E/F Mass Build design just a bit to represent an earlier Skyhawk, the A4D-1, a designation that was later changed to the A-4A.   

    These Skyhawks are identifiable by their shorter nose, no refueling probe, and lack of external stiffeners for the rudder.  The next development, the A4D-2 (later designated A-4B), incorporated a refueling probe and the rudder stiffeners.  Next came the A4DN-2 (later designated A-4C), which brought a longer nose that housed advanced avionics.  Next came the A-4E and F variants with the more familiar Skyhawk shape we see in Matt and Phil's PSSA design.

     

    Unfortunately the photo here of a PMTC A4DN-2 and A4D-1 at sea off Point Mugu is lo-res, but compare the two nose shapes in that photo and you see the most prominent difference between the two marques, as well as general colour & markings for reserve and test aircraft in California during that era.   The AD4N-2 is in the foreground, and behind her is an A4D-1.

     

    And I just had to include the early 1960s photo of an Point Mugu A4D-2 (A-4B) because of her fabulous AQM-37 target drones.  That's a lot of aero-enthusiast mojo right there!

    A4D-1 and A4D-2 of NMC Point Mugu with Bullpup D missiles.jpg

    A4D Nose -- Prelim Sketch (3).jpg

    A4D-1 China Lake  Gate Guard via.jpg

    A-4B_Skyhawk_with_AQM-37_target_drones_in_flight_1965.jpeg

    • Like 2
  8. Excellent, Sacky!

    The Sidewinder missile was so aptly named -- developed and tested in the harsh desert of China Lake, California. Deep in memory is the fearsome presence of The Sidewinder, a desert predator that pushed all the right buttons for many of us warped 1950s/60s kids in the USA. We first learned of it in the 1958 Walt Disney Productions' documentary THE LIVING DESERT.

    And here's a fun little audio-visual foray into the Sidewinder's mystique!

    Turn your audio UP! kuloukuloukulou

     

    Edited By John H. Rood on 04/07/2020 19:01:46

  9. David, two scans for you:

    c.1962 aurora kit of cv62 indy.1.jpg

    c.1962 aurora kit of cv62 indy.2.jpg

    Your Captain Grey is looking good for an OK-3 on this one.  By the looks of the painting, I'm thinking the original art was done by the great John Steel?  Terrific action-perspective of CV-62, the Indy, one of the great Forrestal class "supercarriers".

    You asked about my XFJ-2 Fury build progress: Zero!   But for weeks I have been focused on reorganizing my Cellar of Aeronautical Doom and it has been a colossal battle; a lifetime of STUFF and a glaring lack of discipline as to inefficient STORAGE vs functional WORKSPACE; as part of that war I found this circa 1962 model kit amongst the rubble.

    I made these two scans off my small home machine for you; at 1/600th scale the kit is too large to fit on my scanner bed, so here are the two bits. No ideal, but there it is!

    I have now declared a bloody stalemate/cease-fire in my battle with my mess; time for me to cut wood on the Fury. The workshop has never been better, all feels very good... so no more excuses! 

    Meanwhile, thanks for checking in on me yesterday and kudos on your good work here.  That instrument panel is really COOL.  Sure looks the part!

    Edited By John H. Rood on 09/06/2020 16:01:51

    • Like 1
  10. Golly but I'm such a tiny mere wisp of a thing, but somehow I will nonetheless need a hefty, stretchy size XL !!!

    Also ordering a smaller one for the Mrs. Rood; doubtless the consummate BIRTHDAY / ANNIVERSARY / VALENTINE'S / EASTER / COVID-19 STAY HOME AND BUILD MODELS / etc. luxury romance gift!

    Paypal & Particulars just now sent to the Cooke Mansion & Aeronautical Trust.

    Thanks guys for doing this and everything PSSA!

    Air.Trails.MiG.jpg

  11. Pete, your fuselage process reminds me of my MiG-15 1/10th scale that I started but never finished some years ago.

    Here I was laying on the first fibreglass strips over the packing-tape-covered pink foam... and yes, Sir -- that same unbelievably godforsaken messy "is-ness" that you encountered from A to Z... foam dust, static cling, resin, gloves, brushes, fiberglass shards, silica dust, the works!

    Note the extra strips lying there in the foreground...

     

    It was my first attempt at doing anything in fiberglass... and after the resin dried I was dismayed by how dang HEAVY the fibreglass monster seemed to have come out... as in, I likely fell prey to the impulse to add more resin than was needed... something I had set out to AVOID, but maybe it happened anyway?

    So... here's how the thing looked during the next step, rough-sanding the now-cured White Whale:

    The leftover pizza and gin helped me to cheer up, as did the shiny insides that emerged when I cut the thing in half... turned out that I didn't even need to destroy the foam original plug in the process!

    So I can fast-forward to NOW and your Sabre build is a real eye-opener. Lots of info about where and how next to proceed on this MiG-15 someday soon, especially with all these new Sabres out and about.   Love your detailed, info-packed build threads!

    Edited By John H. Rood on 05/03/2020 18:47:59

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