I woulda bought the hell out of a *lot* of these kits… had they been made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX5B1TUUOA0
Apr 292023
Apr 012023
A few years ago:
It’s been left outside for an extended period, so it’s in pretty rough shape. According to Google Maps, the wings have been removed, but it’s apparently still outside, dissolving.
Mar 192023
After watching these videos, I’m glad I passed on buying into the Mars Industries 1/18 scale “Airwolf” kit. There are a lot of problems with it. A *lot* of problems. There are design issues, uncured resin, quality control issues and, most shocking to me, problems with the vac-formed transparencies. The problem with *those* was that the forms were themselves 3D printed, which is fine… but the prints with their substantial layer lines were not sanded smooth. Thus the transparencies have layer lines. AAAARRRRGH.
Mar 172023
I’ve added some more things to my eBay: “Dynascott.” There are some new cyanotypes, some books, a piece of vintage NASA test equipment that I bought *years* ago to serve as a prop for The Alternate History Movie That Shall Not Be Named. Some cyanotypes I’ve had before; the photos are of the *actual* prints I’m selling. I have more cyanotypes and a lot more books to add soon, but this gets the ball rolling. I’ve included Buy It Now for them.
Large Convair “Super Hustler” Mach 4 bomber Cyanotype Blueprint
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NERVA nuclear rocket engine NASA model construction diagrams Cyanotype Blueprint
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Trident II SLBM Cyanotype Blueprint
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Vintage NASA Hydrogen Detector, General Monitors Model HP1000A
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Northrop B-2A stealth bomber Cyanotype Blueprint
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And some old listings that are still up:
Aerofax Minigraph #14 Lockheed F-94 Starfire by Francillon & Keaveney 1986
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Wasserfall German WWII Surface to air missile Cyanotype Blueprint
Feb 282023
I’ve never gotten into RC aircraft. Partly because I know that I am fated to spend thousands of hours building something only to have it promptly flop over two seconds after I launch the thing. But static display models? All about that. So this electric RC B-1B bomber looks intriguing. At $800, it’s out of my price range and I *certainly* don’t have a place to display it (seems to be about 1/23 scale)… but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s just neato.
Feb 042023
Jan 192023
The Fairey Rotodyne was a valiant but doomed attempt to develop a high speed civilian passenger VTOL. Decades ago, the British Airfix plastic model kit company released a decent model of it, but it has been unavailable for a good long while. They’re bringing it back out.
Jan 052023
Two separate projects to create virtual Discoveries from “2001.” Neither one is complete, both are interesting.
Jan 032023
Something like 15-20 years ago I bought a 1/18 scale P-47D “Ultimate Soldier” toy. This line of large scale accurate fighter planes was sort of peak Golden Age Of Toys For Adults, even though they sold for a reasonable price at WalMart. They make great display pieces even without structural modifications or repainting, but they are generally screaming for such.
Anyway, the P-47D spent years on a shelf in my shop in Utah. From time to time it caught direct sunlight. This discolored the paint *slightly,* but it turned the originally crystal clear canopies milky white. I’ve left them in the dark for some years to see if that would help… nope. I boiled them… nope. I nuked them, if perhaps briefly, with UV; no change. Anybody got any ideas? Why did this happen? How can it be reversed? Scrubbing has shown that this is not a surface feature, but seems to be throughout the plastic.
At some point, recasting them with crystal clear resin might be the only solution, but it’s not one I’m fond of. None of the other canopies did this, so it would seem these two pieces of plastic came from a bad batch.
Nov 172022
The original USS Enterprise model is back in the restoration shop at the National Air & Space Museum. Adam Savage got to go in and take a close look at it, and you can *feel* just how hard it was to not get handsy with the thing.