Friday, November 30, 2012

Cleveland Model Show in 1/72 Part 2

The final set of 1/72 photos from the show.

Coming at ya.


A nice birdcage Corsair.


A collection of VF-17 Corsairs.


Camo F-100F.


An old Revell Fokker.


The DSS Midway display.


Previously seen on this blog...Rick Green's Nieuport.


The DSS Jet, Thrust, and Rock'n'Roll collection.


A nice 1/72 Russian T something.


V-2.


Friday, November 23, 2012

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Cleveland Model Show in 1/72 Part 1

On November 4, 2012, once again, IPMS/John Glenn and IPMS/Western Reserve joined forces to put on the Cleveland Model Show.  Billed as "Quite Possibly the Last Model Show You Will Ever Attend" attendance was robust and almost 400 models were on the table.  In my opinion, the vendors were rather poor and all I managed to find of interest was an Eduard 1/144 Spitfire IX dual combo.

Here are a few of the 1/72 models on display.

A beautiful Hasegawa B-26 Marauder.


This F-16 had a really well done Have Glass paint scheme.


Fouga goes up.


A Hurricane in blue.


Rick Green's Fujimi Judy.


Tom Griffin's Sword Spitfire Vc.


A nice Hobby Boss MiG-15


Smith's Eduard Hellcat


Dragon YF-23.


"Critical Mass" Sea Fury racer.


A F-4E Phantom.


A well done Matchbox Skynight in a little diorama.


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

More Modeling Progress


The Eduard Hellcat is together. Please ignore that giant glue fingerprint on the wing...

Thursday, November 8, 2012

November 2012 Issue of RCN News Magazine

This issue's modeling column features a report on the iHobby Expo in Cleveland.  You can download the magazine and/or buy your print copies here.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Landfall



Title: Landfall
Author: Nevil Shute

I am a big fan of old English paperbacks, especially Ian Fleming and Nevil Shute novels.  Something about them is just timeless.  Landfall is a good example of a Nevil Shute book, combining a war story and a romance.  Here we have Jerry Chambers, a hapless RAF Anson pilot who is involved in a friendly fire incident while courting Mona Stevens, a barmaid.  After sinking the British sub, he skips town to join Bomber Command, ending the romance, only to redeem himself later in the book while involved in secret testing flying a Vickers Wellington.  And that friendly fire incident?  There might have been a mistake there, and Mona helps solve that mystery using gossip and hearsay heard at the bar.

Outside of his overuse of the word, presently, Shute is an enjoyable writer and the banter between the couple is both amusing and at at times dated.  (Though some of their dialogue must have been possibly scandalous for 1940...)  Of course the class issues, so omnipresent in England at the time, also sound incredibly dated.

Shute writes well about the boredom of Coastal Command and Bomber Command ops, but the most shocking part of the story revolves around Mona's father's view of Jerry after he kept her out too late one night.  He opines "It made a difference, certainly, that the young man had build a (model) galleon.  If it had been anyone else, he have been really angry."  Wow, for the first time in recorded dating history, a father of a woman thinks that her suitor being a modeler is a good thing...

Monday, November 5, 2012

Cocooned Canadian Spitfire?

In September I posted a link to an interesting photo of Spitfire TZ138 with the RCAF Winter Experimental Establishment (WEE) flight. Looking through other photos by that poster, I came across this interesting image the other night.  Captioned as a Seafire in the UK, I can't help but wonder if it is actually Spitfire 24 VN332 in Canada.  It sure isn't a Seafire...no tail hook...and while I have never heard of a Sea Fury being cocooned in Canada, WEE Flight did have a couple on strength.  Can anyone identify the location?  Unfortunately, it appears the writing on the side of the aircraft is a warning not to smoke around the aircraft, rather than what would have been much more helpful - a "This is WEE Flight Spitfire VN332" statement.  Couldn't these guys have thought about us researchers all these years later?  VN332 was later sold to the US becoming N7929A.  It was painted in a civilian scheme before crashing in New Jersey in 1953 killing the pilot.

Now the big question?  Do I dare finish my new Airfix Spitfire 22 like this?  At least I wouldn't need to worry about canopy masking!

P.S.:  Here is a copy of a really interesting RCAF report on the cold weather testing of TZ138.