Merry Christmas to me and to you????

Merry Christmas Bob. Looks like you were a really good boy this year. Nice assortment of modelling/airplane related stuff you got. Now after seeing your goods, I think I will settle down here today and watch Amelia. Haven't seen that one in a while.

Just got home from a fantastic Christmas Eve with my fantastic family in Illinois.
Little Brother Keith gave me this super-nice, highly detailed Christmas Tree Ornament of a Rearwin "Speedster"...my favorite of the 1930's era sport planes.



The cute little Speedster Ornament from Keith parks on my vintage 1960's Jetco Kit of their namesake.

Luckily, my Veco/Dumas "Scout" project currently owns the building board, helping me resist starting ANOTHER kit...I hope...

Just another day here....no friends....no family.  You all have a good one though!

OhBee wrote:Just another day here....no friends....no family.  You all have a good one though!  

You have friends here OB.

I'm in the same boat.  I'm having Christmas dinner alone with Marie Callender.  




Bob

Edit add:

Wound up burning it too, but I have vanilla ice cream.

NEW222 wrote:Merry Christmas Bob. Looks like you were a really good boy this year. Nice assortment of modelling/airplane related stuff you got. Now after seeing your goods, I think I will settle down here today and watch Amelia. Haven't seen that one in a while.

Funny, last week I caught the last half of Amelia on cable TV missing the first half, thought I would probably never catch it again. My son found the picture at a local auction house that auctions things once a month. He kind of hid it behind a rug on the auction floor and went home to research it before making a bid. Put together a package of the DVD, Corgi planes, and the picture.

I had told the kids that ALL I wanted was a case of V-8 juice and a pair of slippers and for all to chip in on those. They almost made it. Youngest daughter as a running joke got me the desk calendar. Every year for as far back as I can remember, 12 months 365 days of flowers on every month. Can't you find something with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles???????????

Ya....the holidays arn't so joyfull when all of your friernds and family are dead. I just live vicariously through the rest of you guys! ......a great bunch! Happy holidays to you all !.....

Where in Minnesota do you live?

rsv1cox wrote: Can't you find something with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles???????????

Santa brought me some useful Panhard engine parts.



A Dural cam shaft gear to replace the original gear made of fibre. These gears are at least 60 years old and due to the oil, fibers tend to travel happily in the oil channels and block some passages.



A cast aluminium double sump as mounted on the competition DB  (Deutsch & Bonnet) cars. The sump of a Panhard engine is square and flat without baffles. The contents is only 2,2L. This results in a momentary oil pressure loss when negotiating corners as oil is slung to one side and the oil pick up sucks air. The bolt on extra sump enlarges the oil capacity by 50% and contributes to a better cooling of the engine. The oils suction pipe is lowered by 40mm for continuous oil pressure.




more info:     http://www.mjscrane.com/panhard/blog/

Why do I get so much pleasure looking at milled and cast parts.............even more working with them.

Nice Lieven

A windage-tray is often used in high-performance applications to help keep motor oil where it's needed under extreme conditions.

panhard is it like 1945 boxer like vw engine ?? Wat it was used for ? race cars 750 cc clas ??? Monoplace ?

Looks like that exta oil pan works like sort of an ”anti splash” baffle too?

Nice stuff indeed! That ”Citroen” gear really is something! Real pain from the manufacturing point of view I’m sure. Have you planned other performance upgrades to your Panhard?

I guess I have been a good boy too. I got a set of new tubes for my amplifier (built from a kit I got for last Christmas) to replace the ”basic” tubes that came with the kit.



Also a couple of new books by my favourite Finnish authors and the ”Deluxe Edition” of Norah Jones’s new album.

It is a bit different this year, as we did not have any visitors for the traditional Christmas Eve morning rice porridge, and won’t be going to my parents’ house for the Boxing Day dinner either. Other than that, pretty much like the usual, traditional Finnish Christmas cuisine (”well done” ham and some specialties), dark beer, chocolates, marmelades, books, fireplace etc.

Sounds like everyone had a Merry Christmas!

We had a blizzard on Wednesday that started with freezing rain and turned into high winds and something over a foot of snow. No extended family this year mostly because the roads were terrible, normally we get together on Christmas Eve. We still did our usual here. Made a bunch of cookies and lasagna.

Very nice Kari, what is that, a pair of 6BQ5/EL84's in push-pull and a 12AX7 for input?

We lucked out here in s.e. Mn. and only got an inch of that bizzard!. High winds and -20 wind chills though!
I didn't know they still made radio tubes!

I was naughty, but I'm the bread winner so it gets overlooked.  The son and his girlfriend came over for dinner and the four of us did Christmas.

I always wanted to learn to play piano, but never did.  I played tuba and trombone instead in school and in the Navy.  I've played at other instruments over the years, but still never got to the piano.  For Christmas this year, the son wanted to learn piano and put a keyboard on his Christmas list, so I called The Guitar Center here in Portland, and they had the keyboard he wanted, so we drove to the store to get it.  My wife knew that I wanted to learn piano when I was a kid, so she bought me the same thing.  I got this goodie:




A Yamaha P-45 keyboard.  Nothing special, just a nice sounding keyboard.  88 weighted keys that feels pretty good.  Gets great reviews, although the latest reviews knock it because it debuted in 2015 and there are newer models.  But I like it.  I especially like it because it doesn't have a couple dozen buttons and switches.  Yamaha actually got smart and only put two buttons on it.  One button for On/Off, and one button as a Function switch.  To access the functions and features of the keyboard you push the Function key and one of the piano keys.  Very clean.  

The keyboard, stand, bench, and pedal all came under the tree this year.  Since the son moved into his own place a couple of months ago I turned his room into the new music conservatory.  I threw a stand together for a TV and DVD player to watch my learn to play videos and did my first lesson this evening.

The Virtuoso Mark

Admin wrote:
Very nice Kari, what is that, a pair of 6BQ5/EL84's in push-pull and a 12AX7 for input?

Good eye, Jacob! This is a stereo amp, with EL84’s (Pentodes used as triodes), and the pre-stage is a 12AT7. The operating principle is ”single ended” or ”class A”, i.e. It converts a large amount of electricity to an almost equal amount of heat and about 1 or 2 Watts of output The idea of this kit was to create an inexpensive, yet good entry level tube amp that uses commonly available tubes that are still made. So far it has fulfilled all my expectations, I’m very happy with it and I don’t think I’ll ever return to transistors in my ”main set”.

I use it mostly for headphones, plenty of power for my AKG712’s and it could drive just about any of the higher end sets too. The little Amphion speakers (seen in the pic) are a little too ”insensitive” for this amp, just like most small modern speakers are, but I bought a pair of early 70’s 3-ways for replacement, much better. I recall there is an ”audiophile” thread somewhere, I’ll post more about the little amp and the speaker mod/refurb project there instead of hijacking this one

Kim, that Rearwin Speedster ornament reminded me of my favorite 1930's airplane a Stinson Voyager.  I have related here how my wife and I climbed into one for sale at Pensacola in 1956 and dreamed of buying it.   $795.00, heck we didn't didn't have $7.95 in our pocket at the time.

Very similar designs.



Would love to find one in this condition today.






And Kari/Jacob

I lived the vacuum tube era.  My first Navy assignment was at a secure communications site.  Transmitters/receivers/etc. the size of refrigerators with vacuum tubes like teakettles in a room the size of a house.  At night with the overhead lights off the glow was memorable.  

And Mark, the only piano I could ever play was an old player in our den room.  I had the desire but not the ability.  But your new electronic piano has me thinking - Am I to old to start.... Thinking..........



Hung Mark's Christmas gift.  Good place for it but not perfect.  He put a lot of effort into it come to find out.  Removed the torn backing, disassembled and cleaned.  Contains an actual piece of fabric from Amelia's airplane, these pictures used to be available through the National Air and Space museum.




 

Mark, if imitation is the sincerest from of flattery, consider yourself flattered.

Simple with Amazon, just hit the buy button. Not aiming for Andre Previn, Fred Flintstone will do.

dear friends !, a hard year for all, without a doubt, many families with some important loss, despite the pain that many of us live, we must continue with the firm desire to recover our time and strengthen ourselves despite these great trials. Therefore, I want to join you and wish you a Merry Christmas, strengthened in knowing that we have each other in this beautiful forum of friendship.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.  And may all our New Year be great.

rsv1cox wrote:Mark, if imitation is the sincerest from of flattery, consider yourself flattered.

Simple with Amazon, just hit the buy button.  Not aiming for Andre Previn, Fred Flintstone will do.

Great going, Bob!  You're never too old to start.  I'm 57, so I got plenty of time.  I'm not shooting for Andre Previn either.  Not even Andre the Giant.  Just want to have fun.  My goal is to be able to play the intro to The Year of the Cat by this time next year.  I may not be able to play Chopsticks, but I will be able to play that damn intro.




The Determined Mark

Played it.  To much of a challenge for me.

I have no illusions of playing anything but maybe I can master the first three notes of one of my favorite piano pieces.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Autumn+Leaves+1955&&view=detail&mid=FA857BD4D1A2A3ACEF24FA857BD4D1A2A3ACEF24&&FORM=VRDGAR