Recognizing gneius

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mholt@ohiohills.com - 22 Mar 2010 00:56 GMT

Do we ever hear from the guys who designed the kits? Do we ever
hear tales of what it was like to take an airplane or tank (or
whatever!) design and covert it to a plastic kit? So far, I've never
read anything by anyone who worked for any company ... no tales of how
hard it was to reverse-engineer a given design, or what discussions
went on during the process of figuring out where to put the tabs so
the thing could be glued together?

Alkso, I seem to recall my Gulfhawk kit having retractable landing
gear. The prop would spin, but if I pulled it out a bit it engaged a
gear and the Boeing landing fgear would fiold into the fuselage. Was
there a patent for that landing gear? For the wing-swing mechanism on
the X-5 kit?

Seems to me that maybe there's untapped resources in this question.

MIke

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The Old Man - 22 Mar 2010 01:28 GMT

On Mar 21, 7:56 pm, "mh...@ohiohills.com" <mh...@ohiohills.com> wrote:

> Also, I seem to recall my Gulfhawk kit having retractable landing
> gear. The prop would spin, but if I pulled it out a bit it engaged a
> gear and the Boeing landing fgear would fiold into the fuselage. Was
> there a patent for that landing gear? For the wing-swing mechanism on
> the X-5 kit?

Gulfhawk was made by Grumman. The Monogram kit was also released as
the F3F-1, but the real Gulfhawk had different wings from an F2F-1.
That monogram kit also had some of the smallerst styrene pieces that I
ever saw in a model. The collets that held the pieces of the landing
gear were about 1mm in diameter and were too tight a fit for the pegs
they were supposed to attach to. Needless to say, the landing gear on
my model are in the "down" version - only!

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AM - 22 Mar 2010 13:09 GMT

> On Mar 21, 7:56 pm, "mh...@ohiohills.com" <mh...@ohiohills.com> wrote:
>
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> they were supposed to attach to. Needless to say, the landing gear on
> my model are in the "down" version - only!

Don't ask me how, but I did indeed get mine to work after a lot of work,
and help from my Pa as a kid. Actually had that kit around for many many
years too.... Got an unbuilt one hanging around here still.

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AM

http://sctuser.home.comcast.net

http://www.novac.com

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frank - 29 Mar 2010 15:56 GMT

I remember the one I built as a kid in the early '70s went
together well & the gear really did work. I remember tho, I had put
the prop shaft in backwards or something & that was how the gear
worked, so instead of pushing it or pulling it, I had to do the
opposite to make mine work. I've got a couple of them off of eBay that
I plan to do again some day. That was one of my first models I ever
built. The other model that had retracable gear that I built & was
fascinated by its mechanism was the Revell 1/40 Skyraider & I plan to
do another one of them one day, too! The functioning dive brakes
seemed a marvel as well. I think that one took a real 'gneius' too.

> > On Mar 21, 7:56 pm, "mh...@ohiohills.com" <mh...@ohiohills.com> wrote:
>
[quoted text clipped - 24 lines]
>
> - Show quoted text -

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Rufus - 22 Mar 2010 02:02 GMT

> Do we ever hear from the guys who designed the kits? Do we ever
> hear tales of what it was like to take an airplane or tank (or
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
>
> MIke

This is actually pretty interesting read -

http://www.hyperscale.com/2010/features/wwinterviewdw_1.htm

I never would have guessed that the guy behind the "Lord of the Rings"
movies would have been a model builder, let alone pirated the CG people
from the production crew to start a model company...and done it so well
so quickly...now there's genius.

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- Rufus

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Model Forum / General / Models / March 2010

Recognizing gneius