Airplane Triage

[Dewey H Lee]

✏💉💊🚑🛌🛫 Way to get them back up Dr Dan. 😷

[Grossman56]

Pandora One is repaired, here's the before and after pics, and in case I didn't post it, the Splintfire. This actually worked well as the battery compartment floor slid back into place and the rig all owed it to maintain some compression on the fuse as it dried.

Grossman56

[Dewey H Lee]

Good job Dan.

[Prowler901]

"Splintfire" Classic. :D

Great work, Dan! Looking forward to the post-flight reports.

[Grossman56]

Just waiting on the weather, windy today starting to look like Fall, I'm hoping we get a decent September, got a lot of flying to make up for before the season ends.

Grossman56

[Grossman56]

Well, got about two minutes of flying in today!!
Left the house, winds calm, perfect morning to get Pandora One back in the air! Figured I'd start with her and hop over to Big Beautiful Doll afterwards. P-1 out, battery in her, flight check perfect, slight breeze, right across the the funway er runway, some throttle and off she goes, flying like her old self!!
A few clicks of trim and I'm ready........and then the wind comes.........
A sudden 180 degree shift of wind direction and the sock is straight out, 20, 25 mph??
Don't know, but P-1 is hovering out there. Throttle off and nose down to lose some of this altitude I suddenly find myself in excess of. Get her down to within 5 feet of the runway and add a little power, 1/3 throttle maybe, to keep the nose ahead of the tail, ease her down into a pretty little landing and grab her while Diane is grabbing her Apprentice which has decided to fly on its own, sans wings believe it or not.
A well, thats life in Windy Wyoming. The good news was that P-1 flew like her old self which was great news, Smitty the Spitty will be next after her nose surgery, hopefully tomorrow, if the wind behaves!!

Grossman56

[Grossman56]

Hey guys, back from Nefi or as we call it around here, cleaning out the basement !!
As you probably heard, I lost the Bearcat and the P-40 to the gods of Nefi and the Nefi Triangle respectively.
Upon inspection, the Bearcat wings were repairable but the P-40 was a write off, fortunately, motors escs retracts and servos were good. The hatch from the P-40 was good and was the first thing repaired and the tail feathers were good as well so that's something.
On the Bearcat, the hatch was usable but I'll end up replacing it in the future. So just a new fuse for her and a BIG thanks to Beeg who graciously sent me a set of Blue Angels decals, Thanks Buddy!!
She was a pretty straight forward rebuild, everything comes out of the old and into the new kind of thing. NO gyro, Charlie!
The P-40 fuse was the same, btw, don't bother ordering a decal sheet. Even though the pic show a bare bones fuse, it comes with decals already installed. There are, however, no pushrods, just the tubes.
So the fuse is done and I started on on wing last night. EVERTHING has to be pulled through a channel, so be prepared, it's not the old trough thing we're used to. The wing lights have their own separate tube running out to the wingtip so we're currently figuring a few scenarios on how to accomplish that. So far it looks pretty good, and so clean, the old one being 'aged' and beat up by my air brush!!

[Grossman56]

Pics of the 'cat and the Tiger, so far... I readjusted the eye on the Tiger and got rid of the stock cat decals and replaced them with Callie decals. I was thinking of a different livery, but since everything was already on, I thought 'what the heck' and stuck with the Flying Tigers, flies better in that livery anyway.......

Grossman56

[Alpha]

Looking good, Grossman! Curious, which markings were you originally contemplating?

[Grossman56]

I was thinking of the Pearl Harbor scheme, but with the Tiger decals already installed and the fact that., well, I'd just miss the Ol' Tiger, I opted for the installed scheme.
I used the Ice Cube method of removing the old tiger insignias, actually, we have a bean bag that we keep in the freezer so I just laid that over her for a while and the decals pulled off relatively easy.


Grossman56

[Grossman56]

I also repositoned the eyes as I ordered a set of decals because they show a blank fuse on the spare parts page.
She looks sharp, now for the aging and 'beating' her up. Lookes so strange without any weathering on her.

Grossman56

[Grossman56]

As you can see, well weathered!!
Grossman56

[OV10]

Mines getting to look like that...........I just don't wipe the bug smears and splats off.LOL An ol' habit from the HD days;)

[Prowler901]

Lookin' good, G-man! :Cool:

[Grossman56]

You'll notice I corrected the eye positioning and swapped out the original cats for Callie's, much more authentic. I'm going to try Steve's idea of watered down acrylic and a rag to weather as well as my spray painting tricks, I'll take some pictures as I go. I was a bit disappointed in the quality of the wing halves, there's a chunk missing near the rear where they join and mate to the wing fillet, so some putty work to do there. CB, yours goes so fast, it's probably the paint peeling off!!
My rule of thumb was to get out the silver paint and paint over any chips with that, she just got older and older.
By the way, the cats peeled some of the paint off, I had a paint match done to the E Flite Spitty and its an exact match for the P-40, which makes sense as the real P-40s were heading for the RAF so the more than likely were using the same paint numbers. Touched up the green, mixed in some red and white to the left over green to create the brown.

Grossman56

[Grossman56]

The Bearcat seems ready to go, so weather permitting, I'll get her airborne tomorrow So I'm debating on whether to respray the left wing to get a solid color on it, or streak the other one, both appeal, opinions??

Grossman56

[Grossman56]

And I started aging the P-40, using a mixture of nutmeg brown and black with a lot of water, still some work to do, I started 'chipping' the paint by brushing some silver in appropriate spots, still have a way to go with that as well. I'm also addressing the sloppiness in the retracts. They'll to in and toe out very easily, I'll take a look inside the retract mechanism and see if I can't tighten the trunions
My only complaint is this dent on the underside by the wing fairing... hope you can see the weathering here you can also get rid of the shiny spinner this way. The whole airplane dulls down quite a bit.

So here's the girls together
Grossman56

[Beeg]

The Bearcat seems ready to go, so weather permitting, I'll get her airborne tomorrow
So I'm debating on whether to respray the left wing to get a solid color on it, or streak the other one, both appeal, opinions??

Grossman56

Blue Angel's Bearcats were show planes. Probably were'nt weathered but always polished and looking pretty.

......nice decals by the way! :)

[Grossman56]

Yes, thanks to you Beeg, much appreciated buddy

Grossman56