Heavy Lifter

Back in the day-the Beattles changing the way we listen, and look.

Vietnam boiling, Kent State fractured and Presidents falling.

Our minds ran numbers with only a slide rule to help.

Still we grew, in numbers and stature-our machines following suit.

The Manitowoc 4100 was an existing crawler crane which needed to lift more.

Engineers defined the need and ran the equations. The solution, black and white, in a era when society ran afoul with the newly discovered shades of grey, continues to stand the test of time.

Spend a little quiet time with this magnificent replica. Notice the straight utilitarian lines and the consistent angles. The solutions; two booms for lifting, counterweights balancing, a wide ring distributing the total weight over a large area and providing stability for those long reaches.

Manitowoc's newer siblings reach higher, lift more. Boom combinations spit out by computers precise as only silicon can be. Beautiful in design, etched for capacity, so efficient the problem is lost deep in the bowls of a mainframe. It is still there, the American ingenuity, it just that, I don't know; it's too pretty?

A beautiful museum quality replica of Manitowoc's Ringer crawler crane in 1/50 scale

by TWH collectibles

Pumper Rocks

Pumpers, the backbone of the trade.
Initial attack-they have it all. Deluges and on board water and foam. Hoses for grass fires, hose for structures. Hydraulic jacks for rescues, ladders for access. Hopefully you will never need one-if you do, chances are it will be a pumper that answers the call.

Kern County Fire Dept. operates the Pierce Pumpers modeled by TWH in 1/50 th scale. The replicas are exact copies of the full sized pumper. I have looked at the replicas and talked with the folks at K.C.F.D. Magnificent is the word that comes to mind.

Check out the Spring 2009 issue of DiecastX magazine for a detailed review.

Below is a link to TWH's web site.

http://www.twhcollectibles.com/c-26-pierce.aspx

Fire Rules

Tanker 99. The retardant tanks fill the space in her bomb bay, circa 1985.

We are helpless, wafting in and out of the rising column of smoke, desperately searching for the Pumper crew below;
Do you see them on your side? There along this flank...do you see the Heuy?
Every one talking at once on the Guard UHF:
Engine crew in trouble-divert all air tankers to this fire, all engine crews pull back.
To the air attack circling above the fast moving flank;
"Do you see them; any one see them?"
A voice fringed with panic slices through the radio chatter..." We can't breath... we are making a run for it..."
A long second of silence.
The cockpit is stifling, the air we are breathing tastes like charcoal, our eyes scratchy and irritated by the ash floating through the air vents. We are very low. Turning tightly, flaps at 15 degrees, airspeed at 135 knots, we are heading back into the smoke.
They have to be here.
A new voice
"We hear you overhead..."
The B-17 bucked, the yoke slamming into my wrist as the load of retardant salvoes from her belly tanks even as the fire boss is yelling "Drop damn-it drop!-"
A S2F thundering through our wake adds his load to the pink mist drifting into the roaring smoke below, two Heuys, Bambi buckets overflowing with water are waiting for us to clear. A second S2F arrives over the fire and a DC-4 advises he is 5 minutes out.
But it is over.
Fate has sealed the books.
Three lives are lost, the fourth firefighter would succumb to his burns several days later.
The fire was not finished, even as we headed back for another load of retardant an S2F air tanker lay shattered and burning on the side of a hill, the pilot, while attempting to save these lives, lost his own.

Tanker 99, before her conversion to a wild land firefighter, endured  a nuke and 20 some odd years of weather exposure at the Yukka flats testing grounds in Nevada. Deemed safe by the air force she was sold to a civilian contractor, who, rumor has it, replaced the fabric surfaces, fired her up and flew her to her new home for a major overhaul. I was relieved when I was assigned to the company's PB1W (Navy B-17) T-34. Although 99 didn't glow in the dark, I remained skeptical, although it turned out, not  skeptical enough to not fly her when the opportunity arose.

More Then a Horse

Ford GT-40 MKII by Exoto in 1/18th scale

Photos by author

The Ford man wanted to buy the Ferrai man.
The Ferrai man laughed at the Ford man.
The Ford man built the GT-40.

The Ferrai man got the point.

.

THE PETE, THE KID AND THE HILL

Sword diecast Peterbilt 379 tractor in 1/50 scale. Photo by author

The scale dude, framed in my right door mirror, stops what he is doing, popping his head out of the door to watch the truck, the hill and me.

The cab of the old Peterbilt smells of diesel and sweat and we are both caked in a half-inch of dust. The Cummings is rattling and I am shaking a little too.
Ahead, 200 yards to shift 8 gears if we are to have any hope of topping the summit - miss a gear and the dust clears and you face the humiliation of shutting down the entire operation waiting for loader to pull you over the top and the ridicule of the other drivers waiting their turn at the hill and of course they always make it.
That’s it then.

  

We go.

Making the first three gears with ease, the old Pete’s pulling hard now, off road hauling and shouldering twice the weight of freshly bucked pine that she was built for. 100 yards. 35 mph, crunch time. Hitting back-the hill robs us of three easy gears in rapid succession.

‘Still in the game kid?’ the taunt from a grinning hill. The Pete’s is pulling her heart out, her cowl jerking with each shift. Left arm poised through the rattling steering wheel, resting on the short aux transmission stick shift, the right hand man handling the longer main gearshift, waiting for the perfect second, the perfect shift, when all the gears are perfectly aligned in the transmission and hopefully the moons in the heavens-make it and the aux slides into place like hot butter-miss it and the main transmission snaps out of gear with enough force to break a wrist-make it and you are over the top-miss it and the world comes to a thunderous stop, with the hill smirking, the sun blotted out in a shroud of dust and the Pete sinking deeper into the loose gravel of her grasp; the impetuous crackle of the bosses voice over the radio;

‘Going to have to do better then that kid.’

The Pete, the hill, and me.

For a review of this superb model check out my review in DiecastX magazine's fall 2008 issue.

www.swordmodels.com/products/default.aspx?product=pete379333 

To War in a String Bag

 Corgi's 1/72 Swordfish Mk II, photo by author.

The Fairey Swordfish was obsolete before the beginning of the second world war. The Royal Navy flight crews went on to decimate the Italian Navy's capital ships anchored at Taranto, Italy. It was a Swordfish launched torpedo that crippled the German Navy's Bismark in the North Sea. The 'stringbags' flew missions through the end of the war.

 

For a review of this model check out DiecastX magazine's Sept. 2008 issue.

Jaggies

In an era of beautiful things, when speed was yet to be king, the elegance of old world ruled; and Jaguar and Mercedes flowed in one's veins.

Porsche 911 vs Mig 29

A couple of lovely Porches from Exoto in 1/18

I'm not sure which I would rather fly, although as one commenter on UTube noted, it's not a fair race as the Mig only has three wheels!

The Cat

Armour F-14 Tom Cat ' Jolly Rogers' 1/100

F-14 big, fast. Eyes that could see and track targets 70 miles distant. I have read, at a speed of 500 kts, the fuselage generated enough lift that the wings were superfluous. A cat tail? probably. The fleet's Toms replaced by a new breed of Rhinos. 9 lives verses one hell of a horn.

Scooters

A4E Skyhawk, 1/100 scale by Armour (pre Franklin Mint)

Wrong place, wrong time.
A4, inverted, shock wave blasts me off the tractor, launched into a melon patch face first, the sweet smell of the ripening fruit obliterated by the acrid stink of Jp4.
OK! OK! they are ours! some one shouts in English, drowned out by the roar of two F-4s, loaded for bear, 50 feet off the ground, headed for Syria.
The Golan heights, 1973. A hell of a place for a Canadian kid and his girl.


A4E and A4 E/F both by Armour