Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Noel, they could have been the C-119 "Flying Boxcar," a large cargo plane with a similar construction. They had a twin-boom configuration with an engine at the front of each boom, and the fuselage suspended by wing stubs between the booms. From a distance, they could be mistaken for a P-38.

Maybe so, Paul. I'll run that by Dad. He's a pilot and a bit of warplane scholar.

Say, didn't the '38 have more kills in the war than any other US plane?

I used to work for an old gentleman (who started drinking his gin and tonic at lunch) who flew fighters and bombers in both theatres. Lots of great stories were told -and precious little work got done!

My father earned the Distinguished Flying Cross in WWII for flying a real P-38 over Burma in '42 and '43. He never talked much about it, though.

Paul, Now i am jealous.
My father used to bring home a model kit for my brother and i every friday night when we were kids. We'd spend the weekend building them. Every kid in the 60's built scale models. It's a hobby i hope my boys take up in years to come.
My favorite... ww2 Spitfire in 1/24 scale. I still have a 1/48 B-17 here in my office.

Very cool, Paul.

I only have one aircraft model, but it's pretty big. I'm planning to launch Clifford out of the back yard and then call 911 and see if I can get on a reality TV show.

Paul, the last time I saw a collection anything close to yours, it was on display at the Atlanta airport. If memory serves me right, Milwaukee's Mitchell Field also has a nice collection.

When I was a kid, my father would hang our models from the ceiling of my bedroom with fishing line, simulating dogfights. I never built a model with the landing gear extended. My favorites were a Messerschmitt Bf-109, F4U Corsair, and "Songbird", Sky King's Cessna 310.

teb wrote:I only have one aircraft model, but it's pretty big. I'm planning to launch Clifford out of the back yard and then call 911 and see if I can get on a reality TV show.

Ha!

Be sure to have Clifford hide in the attic and later inadvertantly tell the truth about your dastardly deed.


Paul, I asked in the other thread but I think it got missed due to moving it over here but I spy a 707 done up in Air Force One livery among others. Any other airliners you have?

As much as I love warplanes, I love the airliners too having worked for Boeing in a previous lifetime.

Any russian Tupolev bombers/fighters?

Great toy room, Paul...looks like one of the local hobby shops out here; I did a double take. FSM was a terrific magazine when I used to buy it on the stands most months during the mid '90s.

Tupelov...my first look at one was on the tarmac at Recife, Brasil, a few years back. A '50s vintage Tu-114 had made an emergency landing due to avionics failure, and was sitting smack in the middle of one of the taxiways with its landing gear collapsed. Guararapes has only one runway long enough for jets, so things slowed down for about three weeks, since there were no cranes large enough to shift the plane.

That summer I was travelling a lot around Brasil and passed through Guararapes a few times. I got to see this monster from ground-level and also from the air as it was being worked on 24/7: unusual for Brasil. The landing gear is very tall to clear the giant counter-rotating props. Looked pretty dicey to me! Eventually, instead of cranes, screw jacks were used to lift the plane from below and railroad ties were cross-stacked to hold it in place while new gear was installed.

Supposedly avionics failures are an ongoing issue with these planes due to the size of the props; even at idle speeds of 750 rpm they are on the edge of being supersonic at the tips and vibrate like crazy as they are throttled up for takeoff. These are the loudest prop planes in the world.

Hah! That's awesome Paul.

Not that I think Tu makes an awesome plane but some of their designs are rather... interesting, that's probably the best word for it.

Richard, I built some of the models on display in the Mitchell Gallery of Flight museum at the Milwaukee airport! If you come through here often, give me a buzz.

Paul, great story about the Tupolev (spelling). The military versions of those babies were awesome.

Scott, my collection is 1/72 scale US military aircraft, so I don't do many foreign subjects, although I do out-of-interest subjects once in a while. You might see the nose of a British Airways Concorde on top of one of the cases. There's another Boeing 707 derivative near the VC-137; it's an E-8 Joint Stars conversion of a Heller E-3 Sentry. Between them is a Super Connie, Dwight Eisenhower's VC-121E "Columbine III". I'm just finishing a C-9A Nightingale air ambulance made by merging two ancient Aurora DC-9 Series 10 kits to make the Series 30 airframe that became the C-9.

Tarrbot wrote:Hah! That's awesome Paul.

Not that I think Tu makes an awesome plane but some of their designs are rather... interesting, that's probably the best word for it.

Scott, don't get me started on the Ekranoplan...

Here's the C-9A finally finished.

Great rooms Paul! I need one of your models for my "war room".

incubus2432 wrote:Great rooms Paul! I need one of your models for my "war room".

Really? Which one? Maybe we can swap it for the Lemmy!