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jimmaas

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About jimmaas

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    Glue Required
  • Birthday 08/28/1947

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    Male
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    Clifton Park New York USA
  1. Yes. Actually, my example of the kit does have a small diagonal 'clip' at the inner rear of the elevator, but it should be bigger. A couple of swipes with a file should do. The fairing on the fuselage in the kit is straight across at the rear end, where as Brian notes it should be a concave curve. That might be difficult to fix neatly. Using the AM F3F-1 as a template for the sleeves sounds like a good idea.
  2. The red (port wingtip) - green (starboard wingtip) - white (tail tip) lights are 'navigation lights' and follow a more-or-less international convention that's still observed today for ships, airplanes and evidently is being introduced on spacecraft, which baffles me for sure! 'Formation lights' are different, used for placekeeping during night (or bad weather?) flying. At least for USN aircraft, these were blue through WW II - don't know about afterward. The white light on top of the fuselage is often noted as a 'section light' and I don't know how that works. The whole arresting hook re
  3. ...and courtesy of Rich Dann, confirmation that the objects on the tips of the horizontal stabs are in fact formation lights. Going back to the Grumman Biplanes book, they also show up on the earlier two-seat FF-1 and SF-1. When everything was lit, an F2F must have been a wonderful sight at night!
  4. Hello again, and good to see Dana's info! I haven't been able to figure out the bumps at the end of the horizontal stabilizers, and I've got an inquiry in to someone who may have more F2F information (I don't claim much expertise on Grumman, having concentrated on their less-successful competitor :whistle:/> ). We should probably use marked-up photos, cuz the description Dana used of a hole on the left side is I think higher up on the side. Here's a shot of the tail ident light: and there's also a light on top of the fuselage on the centreline, located over the 'F', looking like a
  5. Hi Brian - I'll be honest, I was debating with myself as to whether the metal areas were light Gray or aluminium lacquer. The photo falls right about in the time frame for the changeover and it could be either. There are three 'holes' when viewing the lower fuselage head-on. The middle one is I assume the carb intake, with screening. The one on the port side is the landing light, angled slightly down, time for an MV lens (and there's a shiny aluminium rim) The hole on the starboard side is just a small hole. Have no idea what it's for :^) The tail colors could have been white to ref
  6. As far as photos of the Soesterberg D.XXI, I can say from personal experience that the aircraft is difficult to photograph. The green comes out, for some reason, as a lighter, almost blue-green, color than what is on the aircraft. Then there's the question of whether the colors on the museum aircraft are correct - certainly recent research indicates the beige color is too tan. I'd go with the FS colors cited from the D.XXIII kit.
  7. Just to add to Dnl142's post, here's something I had posted on Britmodeller: Very nice resin castings (but watch out for loose pieces in your packaging, part of a slender attachment to the port fuselage had broken off with mine). The only part I could measure at this point is wingspan and that is within a twitch of the published 28 foot six inches. The kitmakers did not copy the detailing style of the Accurate Miniatures F3F's: the method of attaching the lower wings is different, the wings have more traditional rib detailing (happily just this side of 'starved cow') and the fuselage emphas
  8. Yes, and it is (a) a good kit, and (B) really 1/48 (I measured it and the wingspan is within 1/32 of the published span for the Flyer). From the style of detailing and the ident marks on the different sprue trees, I strongly suspect this kit had some connection to the people that were doing Otaki kits around the same time - it has that feel to it. Some of the pieces are simplified; for example the horizontal pieces that should be covered on the upper surface only are depicted as having covering on both surfaces. But it is better than the Monogram kit and is actually 1/48.
  9. The Marines never had any F4F-3's in the yellow wing scheme. They did have them in the overall Non-Specular Light Gray scheme. You are spot on with your description of the use of 'silver' paint instead of natural metal during the yellow wing period. The Navy from the mid 1930's used aluminium lacquer for metal areas and aluminium dope for fabric. There never were any yellow wing F4f's with gray metal areas - the use of gray for metal areas ended in the mid 1930's when aluminium lacquer was authorized.
  10. jimmaas

    Curtiss CW-20

    Well, Lance and Jennings are right - in the Skyways articles there's a beautiful shot of the CW-20 under construction that shows the fuselage in cross section, with the distinctive double bubble crease. But in the text [memo - must actually read the text!] it states that the crease was plated over to reduce drag. The AAF thought that was unnecessary (along with many other innovative features) so the C-46 didn't have the overplating. That overplating is probably what looks, to me, like a crease line.
  11. jimmaas

    Curtiss CW-20

    Not so fast - from Bowers' Curtiss Aircraft 1907 - 1947: "CW-20T - as completed in 1940, the prototype CW-20 was a twin finned transport....the fuselage cross-section was of the double-lobe type, with two circular sections intersecting at the level of the cabin floor..." There are a lot of things to change to get a prototype, but the cross section is not one of them.
  12. jimmaas

    Curtiss CW-20

    Best info I know of would be Skyways Magazine 53 and 54, from early 2000. There's a small three view (sorry, it's not a Bentley scale plan). Check this LINK which shows they have issue 53 as a PDF download. Best of luck - Jim Maas
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