Tag Archives: ows

Kit Bashing, Reviews

Kit Bashing: Heller, Fujimi & Hobbycraft F-86 Sabre kits compared

Don’t throw out that 40 year old Heller kit just because it has raised surface detail.  You can always use the wheels, landing gear doors and speed brake doors.

fuselages

The fuselage of the Heller kit has a better shape, but it doesn’t come with the fuel dump (fixed easily), and the area where the elevators attach is the wrong shape (it’s too straight).  The vertical tail/rudders on the Fujimi and Hobbycraft kits are bigger in area, and taller than the Heller kit.  Fujimi and Hobbycraft have subtle recessed surface details.

f-30 wings

The F-30 wings are about the same size in all three kits.  With Hobbycraft (now issued by Academy?) you get the added benefit of separately molded slats.

f-40 wing

Surprisingly Fujimi does not make a distinction on its packaging regarding the type of wings their kits come with.  In their “JASDF” issue you get an F-86F-40 with the extended span, slated wing.  In their “Mig Mad Marine” issue you get the F-86F-30 with the in Korean War theater hard fenced wing conversion.  Fujimi’s boxes just say “F-86F” (at least on the kits I have).

intake trunks

The old Heller kit has the best detailed main wheels. The Fujimi main wheel tires are the biggest in diameter, followed by Hobbycraft.  Photos indicate that the Fujimi tires might be the correct diameter, but the Heller wheel definitely has the best detail.  All three kits have similar nose wheels.  The real F-86 used at least three types of nose wheels: Two types of spoked wheels, and a solid wheel.  Most of the pictures I’ve seen of the solid nose wheel is of South Korean and West German Sabres.

intake trunks

The Heller and Hobbycraft kits have a short intake trunk.  The Hobbycraft kit has the nose wheel bay and cockpit floor molded onto the trunk.  The Fujimi intake trunking also has the nose wheel bay and cockpit floor molded on, but is much deeper and actually goes somewhere.

fan blades

That somewhere is an incorrectly faced engine.  The fan blades should be set back more (there should be a section of venturi before the blades), and the nose cone should be larger, but who’s gonna really notice once it’s assembled?

doors

The wheel bay doors, and speed brake doors are much better, and accurately detailed on the old Heller kit.

nose gear doors

Hobbycraft has screwed up its nose gear door.  They’ve put the locator stubs on the wrong side.  Their instructions give a vague indication of placement on the correct side of the wheel bay, but if your not paying attention and simply go with the locator stubs you’ll end up with the door on the wrong side (it should be on the pilot’s left side).

elevators

All three kits have issues with their elevators.  The Hobbycraft kit has the shortest, with the least angle of sweep, and rounded tips.  The Fujimi and Heller elevators have the same angle of sweep, but with different shaped tips.  The Heller elevator is the longest of the three.  From three view drawings of F-86F-30s it doesn’t look like any of the three kit makers got it right, although Heller’s looks the closest to being correct.  The Fujimi and Hobbycraft elevators look more like earlier F-86A/E elevators (according to three view drawings).

Other notes: The cockpit details on the Heller kit are worthless.  Fujimi has a nice looking instrument panel (not necessarily accurate, but it looks good), and it looks like Hobbycraft has copied the Fujimi panel.  The detail on the side consoles, in all three kits, is spurious at best.  All three kits have similar looking seats.  All three kits have canopies that can be posed open.  The Heller and Hobbycraft kits come with external fuel tanks, while the Fujimi kit comes with Sidewinder missiles as well as external fuel tanks.

You can improve the Fujimi and Hobbycraft kits with some of the parts from the Heller kit, but you’d still need aftermarket photo etch, or resin parts to improve the wheel bays and cockpits (or scratch build your own).

A note on references: In one book I have (no names/titles mentioned) there is a color photo of a South Korean F-86, with the -40 extended slat wing (and solid nose wheel).  At the back of the book is a color profile of the same aircraft, except it shows the -30 hard fenced wing.  It’s just an example to show that you can’t trust a profile, instead use photos of the real thing.

Part 2: F-86 Saber Fujimi vs Heller, or, Nobody is Perfect!

Fukushima

Government & Corporate Incompetence: More radiation in Yokohama, this time school lunches!

Shiitake mushrooms used in school lunches have tested positive for 350 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium.  That’s below the government limit of 500 becquerels, but Yokohama school officials are getting rid of them anyway.

Yokohama is about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

At a Ibaraki Prefecture mushroom farm, 830 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium were found on the mushrooms there.  The farm is about 170 km (106 miles) from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Earlier in the week mushrooms in Chiba Prefecture were found to be contaminated with cesium, higher then the government safe limits.  Clearly, after almost seven months, radiation is still spreading from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Fukushima

Government & Corporate Incompetence: Radioactive Strontium found on Yokohama roof tops!

Yokohama City officials are testing their soil for strontium, after a private testing firm said they found high levels of strontium on some roof tops.

The company said they detected 195 becquerels of strontium per kilogram, more than six times the government safety limit.  Yokohama has already suffered cesium levels at 80 times the government limits.

Yokohama is about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

 

International, U.S.

Occupy America! Some facts about Revolutions the leaderless Wall Street occupiers, and Tea Partiers, need to know

The following is a brief on research I did on how Revolutions actually work, because they don’t follow the predictions of Karl Marx; that revolutions are led by the lower classes.  Three authors were read: Crane Brinton, James C. Davies and Ted Gurr.

James C. Davies (creator of the J-curve theory of revolutions) compared the theories of Karl Marx and A. de Tocqueville, with the Dorr Rebellion,  1917 Russian Revolution and 1952 Egyptian Revolution.

Davies found that economically motivated revolutions come after a relatively long time of decline for the middle and upper classes (the poor are too destitute to do anything about their situation).  In other words, it’s like a frog in a boiling pot of water; it takes awhile before the middle and upper classes realize they’re being screwed over.

Davies also discovered that if economic times are bad enough no revolution will take place, because everyone is too busy fending for themselves.  In other words if the middle and upper classes wait too long, they won’t have the strength to fight the elites.

Ted Gurr (Why Men Rebel) found that civil strife is affected by many factors, including economic deprivation and how the society views its leaders/government.

Gurr found that societies with a history of recurring civil strife are most likely to continue with such problems in the future.  Here in the United States the main problem is that too many citizens put too much faith in their ‘authorities’; from organized religion, to Corporate America and their government (at all levels/local/state/federal).  The irony is that the United States was founded on rebellion against authority (something that has been forgotten by many U.S. citizens).

Gurr also found that the success, or failure, of a revolution depends on how much support (from the general population and from outside the country) it gets.

One way the government/Corporate America can snuff out domestic support is to control the media coverage of such revolutions.  In fact our government (along with the British) has also used the media to create false revolutions (false flag ops) in other countries: The 1953 coup in Iran is a prime example.

Another proof of support for revolutions comes from the 1776 U.S. Revolution. If it wasn’t for the occasional raids into the southern Colonies by the Spanish, and the blockade of the British navy by the French navy, there would be no United States.

Crane Brinton (The Anatomy of Revolution) applied the scientific method in studying the 1641 English Revolution, 1776 U.S. Revolution (American War of Independence), the 1789 French Revolution and the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Brinton found that those revolutions were actually started by middle and upper class leaders.  The poor had little to do with it. The motivation of the middle and upper classes were economic: They were living in circumstances that were threatening to take away the economic gains they, and their predecessors had made, for the benefit of the elites.

Some beginning signs of Revolution: Austerity acts; tax increases/cuts to social programs.  Tax revolts.  Mobilization of Revolutionaries.  Ineffectual government reforms/accommodations.  Government repression.

Revolutionaries tend to be better leaders, organizers and motivators, than the establishment, but Brinton has warnings for Revolutionaries: Usually what happens is moderates take control of government but end up running things the same as before.  Then extremists take over, and things can get nasty, like a “reign of terror”.  Extremists can take advantage of “mob mentality” resulting in social terror that is presented as being democratic. Eventually extremists turn on each other, leading to dictatorships.  (Also, read Orwell’s Animal Farm. There’s also a cartoon version, but it’s not really for the kids ’cause it follows the book closely.)

So, these three researchers discovered that it’s not the poor who lead revolutions, it is the middle and upper classes.  The middle and upper classes revolt because their economically unstable governments (and now unstable Corporate America as well) put pressure on the more stable public, which causes the public to feel threatened and creates, at the very least, the perception that their economic prosperity (or even the chance of ever achieving prosperity) is finished.

Occupy America: Steve Jobs’ secret to success; Live Life your way

Occupy America: Federal Reserve boss blames Wall Street

International, Opinion, Technology

North Pole Ozone Hole bigger than ever, proof Earth’s magnetic field is flipping out, is someone out there?

Video

Researchers from eight countries are reporting that the hole in the ozone layer above the North Pole is now as big as the hole over the South Pole.

The North Pole hole now covers an area about 3,000 kilometers (1864.113 miles) long and 1,000 km (621.371 miles) wide.

Of course environmentalists are blaming it on man made pollution.  Never mind all the volcanic activity, and record number of forest fires, in the past decade.  Also, never mind the fact that the Earth’s magnetic field has being weakening, seemingly at the same time that the holes in the ozone layers have been forming.

It is a fact that the North and South Poles of the magnetic field have gotten much weaker.  In fact, in 2003, PBS NOVA produced a newer program on the fact that the poles of our magnetic field are about to flip.  You can go to the a PBS NOVA web site to use their interactive programs to see how they think our magnetic field works.

In 2009, famed physics professor Michio Kaku, warned that the solar flares, from the Sun’s expected 2012 pole flip, are going to be much worse than first thought, by a “factor of 20”.  He called it a “tsunami of radiation”, which is not good when you realize our atmosphere and magnetic field has weakened.

I believe the real reason for the holes in the ozone layer is because of the weakening of Earth’s magnetic field.  The magnetic field weakening and the intensity of the Sun’s solar flares, could be caused by extrasolar planetary encounters.   There is an ancient story of another plant that experienced a similar “breaching” of their atmosphere.  The story is thousands of years older than any other written stories found so far.

In the ancient story the founders of Earth’s human civilization notice changes to their planet, changes that we currently call “climate change”: “…the fields diminished their yields, fruits and grains lost abundance. From circuit to circuit [orbits], nearing the Sun heat grew stronger; in the faraway abode, coolness was more biting.”

Earth’s magnetic field is directly caused by the spinning molten core.  The people of this ancient story noticed their atmosphere was thinning, and their volcanoes were growing dormant: “In the atmosphere a breaching [ozone hole] has occurred; that was their finding. Volcanoes, the atmosphere, forebear, less belching were spitting up! Nibiru’s air has thinner been made, the protective shield has been diminished!”

While most of these ancient alien people thought their volcanoes were the cause of the strength of their atmosphere, others pointed out a more astronomical cause: “It has happened before, some gave an answer: Nibiru in the past colder or warmer has grown. A destiny it is, in the Circuit [orbit] of Nibiru embedded!”

Eventually the ancients realized that their planet’s atmospheric depletion was the result of millennia of near impacts, and actual impacts, with the planets in a more stable orbit around the Sun.  The most devastating impact created the Earth, and stopped the Moon’s progress to becoming a full blown planet itself.  Later, a near impact slowed the spinning molten core of Mars, and stripped off the atmosphere.

This ancient planet, according to the translations done in the 1960s and 1970s, orbits against the grain of Earth and the other Solar bodies, and takes several hundreds of thousands of years to make one orbit (which is about the time line for major catastrophic events that take place on Earth).

The ancient planet (and its “companions”) approaches from our South Pole.  In the past few decades, dozens of astronomical observatories have been established on Antarctica.  Recently Japanese astronomers discovered at least ten large dense (with very strong magnetic fields) planets approaching from the south.  They stated that the planets ‘lived’ independent of the Sun.  They called them “floating planets”, I call them Ronin Planets.

Here’s a link to an OK (some grammatical & spelling errors) pdf posting of The Lost Book of Enki.

Business/Economics, International

Class War: Studies reveal Money does make you happier, but it only drives you to want more

A Chinese newspaper gathered data from studies done around the world, about wealth, and the people who have it, and found that many common myths about having lots of money are false.

I always heard that “money doesn’t buy happiness”, turns out that’s a lie. One study, by Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson, concluded:

1) Rich people are happier than poor people.

2) Richer countries are happier than poorer countries.

3) As countries get richer, they tend to get happier.

However, Psychologist David Myers says the degree of happiness depends on the relative disparity between the rich and the poor.  Apparently the more impoverished a country is, the more happier the rich bastards become (is that why Wall Street is trying to take down main street U.S.A.?).

Also, University of Michigan researcher Ronald Inglehart discovered that once a person becomes wealthy, it takes even more and more money to keep them happy, like a drug addict (again, is that why Wall Street is trying to take down main street U.S.A.?).

What about the myth of suicides and rich people losing their money?  Many people think of the Crash of ’29, when supposedly dozens of people jumped to their deaths, from their high rise offices, after losing all their money in the stock markets.

While some rich people do kill themselves, people living in poverty are still more likely to end it all.  Several studies have been done, including by the UN World Health Organization, and they conclude that the majority of suicides involve people living in rural (poor) areas!

U.S. deaths are caused by poverty…. about the same as deaths from heart attacks and stroke, study finds

The Global Social Crisis: Report on the World Social Situation 2011

Every Thirty Minutes: Farmer Suicides, Human Rights, and the Agrarian Crisis in India

Poverty, Mental Illness and Suicide Linked

 

Fukushima

Government & Corporate Incompetence: Once again, Plutonium contamination found in Japan, this time outside the Fukushima Daiichi compound!

30 September 2011, for the first time since the March nuclear disaster, the Japanese government has found plutonium contamination outside the Fukushima Daiichi nuke plant compound.

There have been at least three other times plutonium was found. A couple of times it was found within the perimeter of the nuclear plant’s compound, but, in June a university team found plutonium outside the Fukushima Daiichi compound.

This latest (government confirmed) plutonium contamination was found 45 km (28 miles) outside the nuclear plant.  It was detected in samples taken from six locations in the towns of Futaba, Namie and Iitate Village in Fukushima Prefecture, all northwest of the nuclear plant.

The isotopes included plutonium 238, 239 and 240.

Business/Economics, Fukushima

Government Incompetence: Japanese officials decide to check beer & wine for radiation!

27 September 2011, Japan’s National Tax Agency has just now realized that all alcoholic drinks coming from the Fukushima area are probably contaminated with radiation.  Even so, testing on beer, wine/sake will not take place until next month!

Mandatory testing will be done at all beverage factories within 150 km (93 miles) of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.  Random testing will take place at factories outside the 150 kilometer radius.

Along with the national government, six major cities, including Tokyo, will test water meant for use in making beer and wine.

Rice and barely, used in beer and sake, have already tested positive for cesium contamination.

Fukushima

Typhoon Roke comes ashore, heading for direct hit on damaged nuclear plant Fukushima Daiichi, 4 dead!

21 September 2011, Typhoon Roke is moving up the Pacific coastline of Japan, after coming ashore south of Tokyo at Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture.

Sustanted winds are 144 km (89.4 miles) per hour, with gusts up to 155 km (96 miles) per hour recorded at Hachioji City, near Tokyo.

During the past 24 hours, more than 400 millimeters (15.74 inches) of rain has fallen in Tokai region and Yamanashi Prefecture, and more than 200 mm (7.87 inches) of rain fell in northeastern Japan.

At least four people have died, three are missing.  More evacuation orders have been given to at least a half million more people.

The damaged nuclear plant, Fukushima Daiichi, has escaped typhoon damage from previous storms, but Roke looks like it will make a direct hit.

Roke is moving fast and should be approaching the northeastern Honshu prefecture of Fukushima. Already 200 mm of rain has fallen in Fukushima since September 20.  The nuclear plant is already flooding with rain water.

Work to stop the further spread of radiation, like the steel wall around the ocean intakes, and specially treated tarps over the exploded reactor buildings, has been halted.  Tokyo Electric says their workers have tied down everything they could think of that might get blown away.

TEPCo says reactor 1 and 2 have rain water pouring in from the roofs, and Reactor 6 basement is totally flooded.  TEPCo officials insist that none of the radioactive water will leak out.  Yeah right, how many times now have they made such promises?

 

 

Fukushima

Corporate Incompetence: Heavy rain from Typhoons & Tropical Storms are flooding Fukushima Daiichi

Nine months later, and the radiation just keeps pouring from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.  Now its Mother Earth who’s to blame.

Tokyo Electric Power Company admitted that the heavy rains from typhoons and tropical storms are flooding reactor buildings, greatly increasing the chance of massive flooding of highly contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.

The nuclear plant is already flooding the ocean with radiation, but this would be on a massive scale.

Here’s why it’s so bad: TEPCo is already pumping 550 tons of water per day to cool three of its damaged reactors. About 80,000 tons of highly radioactive water has already accumulated in the buildings.  Now add the flooding from the storms. TEPCo says it has found 200 to 500 tons of rainwater entering every day into the basements of reactor buildings.