Well I have to say I’m back working on the Dauntless. Went over to Gerry’s house today and we shot it with primer. Will start sanding it on Friday. Pictures coming.

Wheels varnished waiting on paint.


Motor completely rebuilt and components restored.


Body all redone and sent to paint.
Guess I also should have mentioned that the Olds is coming along well and I’ve worked on about 6 other cars during the last couple years. As I thought, I would have little time for my RC builds with the restoration hobby but I’m making it a point to work on my planes as I need a little break from the car work.

She’s a beauty Tom. There’s so much stuff that gets in the way as you get older! I thought it was supposed to become less but things that you work all your life for like more vacation time accrued turns into more vacation time taken as just one example. It’s like, OK, you’ve got the time, now you need to find place to go and use up that time. Now I know there’s lots of people who would never consider the vacation thing a problem or hassle( and I know I’m lucky to even be able to take a vacation) but it seems when you’re older and can go nicer places, it’s no longer as easy as hooking up a camp trailer and going a couple hours away for the weekend. You want to see this or go to different places and everything now has to be coordinated and all that takes a ton of time.
This is why I’m scaling back other hobbies have that consume TONS of my time. Still going to be involved with the antique cars but will spend more time driving and showing the Olds than tearing others apart and restoring them. I’ve already turned down half a dozen cars because people have seen when I’m working on other people’s cars, I get a full restoration done in about 12-15 months where most others take 3-5 years for the same type of cars. Some owners are old and figure they don’t have those years left to waste. But, because I’m a one man show/ hobbyist restor, it’s turned into a huge amount of work for me to keep my time frames. The engine and paint shops alway put me back months on a restoration and have really soured me some. If I could get a motor or body back in a 3 month time frame I wouldn’t be so soured. I often wait 6-9 months on a motor and about the same on painting. I waste more time visiting and trying to coerce them to just get the work done. It’s mainly this reason why I’m stepping back to relax and build/fly again.

Glued in the balsa fillets then used bondo to round out the fillets.


Sanded down both sides of the tail one for a nice flow of lines.


Rear view. Looks straight anyway! 😆


Bottom view. For a smaller plane there’s a lot of wing.


This picture just says Dauntless!

Few goodies for the girl. Bomb drop and machine gun sounds with flashing leds in the nose gun mounts.


Going to start on the cockpit and canopies right after the fresh work at the stab and fin gets glassed up then primed.


Bottom view. Amazing sometimes how we think things are good, then we look and realize we didn’t shape things quite right. Took a fair amount of bulbous balsa of the tail cone and this is how it looks now.

Speaker and mechanism in place


Roughed out control rod inside a pivot tube


Aileron Servo with speaker underneath


End of control rod in center of pic up against the release arm and rod coming up to top of wing


Close up up control rod


Bomb in place on release mechanism
Worked on sanding and resining the trailing edge flap area and the wheel wells to get it ready for the insignia white bottom paint. Cut the hole for the speaker and added an old Vortac bomb drop. There was no easy way to set up the servo for the mechanism so I made a captured control rod to push on the back of the release arm. Took a little thinking but it works perfectly.

View from behind of the bomb drop servo with the control rod bent to contact servo arm


Front view


Overhead view of the servo with the bomb release control rod.


Tail section in Gerry’s makeshift spray booth getting ready for some primer.

Been doing some more work on the dauntless. Gerry did his magic on my gunner and pilot adding goggles and a life like face to this pair of vaily aviation pilots. Should look really good flying with open canopies.

Sorry about those pilot photos, my cell phone takes lousy pictures. Decided to put in the three leading edge wing tip air flow slots. Made up a 5” long box using 1/4” square and sheet stock. Cut into the wing in the appropriate area and slid the box in. Will razor plane off the excess the put some tape on the wing around the slots and sand it down flush with the wing. The slots will then get some further work to duplicate the shape of the slots on the top and bottom of the wing. I’m curious if putting these in will have any effect on the planes flying.

Finished making the mailbox slots. They will get resin inside and finished up inside then get glued into the wing. Then they will get block sanded completely flush with the wing. Split some black soft tubing with a custom tool I made then we glued the tubing down with goop and some Zap. Very happy with the results.

Thanks Tom but as usual, the pretty work is Gerry’s. Here’s a couple more of his handy work.

He does a lot on the canvas too. I’m hoping this plane flies good as I’m adding a bunch of stuff to it and it’s going to have a ton of bling for a 57” wingspan model. Going to model the “ace of spades” SBD 5.

More progress. Started putting the wing back together. Working on the bomb trapeze and other small details.

Finished up the bomb release mechanism. Used mainly 3/16” dowel and some light ply. Using a Dremel saw blade, I cut through each joint and used pieces of 1/32 ply to reinforce each joint. Thefront of the mechanism has a drill bit in it but it will get a pin that can be removed so the trapeze can taken off when pulling the wing.