Ben Brown

Please let it be a D! Ben

All of the family photos and such are now set aside. I just came home from going through their attic. Found a box of Dallas newspapers and Life magazines covering the Kennedy assassination! Ben

According to late F-100 guru Dave Menard, Monogram nailed the shape of the F-100. It isn’t perfect, but even with a ton of aftermarket “corrections,” Trumpeter’s doesn’t measure up. The Monogram kit is mostly a Vietnam-era jet, but with the early 275-gal drop tanks. These can be updated with a 28 scale inch plug or some resin noses from the aftermarket. The open access panels on the Monogram kit are a PITA, but are easily fixed with a little filler. If you bend the upper panel slightly before installing it, it will follow the contour of the fuselage better. Most of the fuselage seam problem is caused by the one-piece wing. The gap is too narrow and the plastic on the lower fuselage half isn’t very flexible, so the sides of the upper half get pulled inward, causing a big step. The easy fix is to remove the stabilators and assemble the fuselage without the wing. After you clean up the now minor seams, split the wing and glue the left and right sides in place. I don’t like scribing models but I’ll take that over spending a ton of time and money getting the Trumpeter kit up to 75% of the Monogram kit. Ben

Nope, he only sells direct. I’ve dealt with him in the past and recommend him. Renaissance from France also sells a nose correction. I’ve dealt with them, too and recommend them. Ben

X Mold makes some for both the single seaters and the F. Personally, I think you could have stopped typing after “Trumpeter screwed the pooch with the F-100.” 😈. (Couldn’t resist!😉) Ben

Thanks for the suggestions. I went through the house and “sanitized” it of anything that had account or social security info on it soon after we moved Mom to the rest home. Now we’re slowly going through the family stuff and it seems like an overwhelming task. So many old photos of unknown people, and Mom’s dementia is to the point where she doesn’t remember who’s in the photos. I’m definitely keeping my dad’s and his dad’s military papers and photos. We’re also hanging onto the family’s genealogy files. Ben

My dad passed away five years ago, and Mom is now in a nursing home with dementia and balance problems. Her house is unoccupied, so we need to clear it out and sell it. The furniture and all of that can go in an estate sale, but what do you do with old family photos dating back to the 1800s, immigration papers, diplomas, and general stuff they kept from their ancestors, and the other odds and ends that were valuable to my parents, but not to the rest of the family? I'm not the least bit sentimental about the vast majority of this stuff and I've already taken the few things of my dad's that mean a lot to me. My sister isn't interested in most of the stuff, nor are my daughters. There is nobody left on my dad's side of the family and only an uncle and a couple of cousins on Mom's side, so we can't send the stuff to family. I'm happy to throw out the tons of photos of me as a kid, and we already have duplicates of the pics with my own kids. It seems a shame to throw the very old photos and some of the other things in the dumpster, but I don't want to clutter up my own house and leave a bunch of crap for my daughters to go through some day. Ben

Yes, I was thinking I could get away with printing the driver names and the mirror logos in plain ol' yellow, since they're small. The Volt logos on the front and wing can be masked. I'll keep at it. I won't be starting the model until I get a few more things off of my plate, so I have some time. If all else fails, I'm going to build it as one of these two Compass Racing cars: Cheers! Ben

Thanks! I think I’m going to give up on the Volt car and go with one with a different livery. It’s too bad because that fluorescent yellow paint would have looked awesome! Ben

Thanks. I figured what I need would be too small for a cutter. Might have to find a less ambitious livery that's easier to replicate. Plus, it just dawned on me, I could use dry transfer letters as masks.... Ben

What would be the smallest size of letters that could be machine cut for a vinyl mask? I'm thinking of building this car, and will have to mask some of the logos to paint the gunmetal gray ares. The letters for the drivers' names and the Volt logos on the mirrors are going to give me trouble. They'll be ~2 mm tall. I haven't found anything like Letraset letters that are in Dayglo yellow/green and I don't want to go to the expense of having custom dry transfers made. Any suggestions? Thanks! Ben

Wow! That’s fantastic! Ben

True, and it’s not just a lack of vets. With so many people going through these Cessna to airline programs these days, I don’t know if many civilians are getting the kind of training I was lucky enough to get when I was learning back in the early 80s. I got some aerobatics training (enough to be dangerous!), I hopped rides with anyone I could learn something from, and spent a lot of time in the hangar, holding wrenches and learning from the A&Ps. You can’t get that kind of education in airmanship and systems with a lot of these current high-volume flight schools. Oddly enough, one of the ads that popped up within the article was for a Cessna to airline school in Wisconsin. Ben

I finally had time to read the article. Wow. Very well-written. The US had similar problems back in the '80s, where commuters were hiring pilots with 250 hrs total time. I heard and can tell lots of horror stories, and there were a few smoking holes in the ground, too. The training system in one type I flew was a lot like that described in the article, where it's "do this at this time," "mash this button if that light comes on," and "autopilot on at 600 ft; off at 200 ft," so some of the FOs I later flew with were trained by rote and were actually hesitant to fly with the autopilot off. Ben

I was flying to Atlanta that day. I walked into the station office just in time to see the second plane hit. We got stranded there for several days, and eventually got permission to ferry back to RDU. It was eerie, spending days in a hotel right next to ATL airport and not hearing a single airplane other than the occasional fighter. When we ferried home, we could only hear the ATC half of the conversations with the military planes, since the military was using UHF. The only traffic we saw was a flight of F-16s with a KC-10 cruising above us near Columbia SC. Professionally and personally, it changed me, too. Ben