Nine years ago I decided to build an Airfix (Pioneer?) 1/72 Sea Fury as a fictitious air racer named Barracuda that I'd found on FlightSim.com:
cuda by
Zac Yates, on Flickr
(This is the preview image of the plane you see when you download it.)
cudafs by
Zac Yates, on Flickr
(Some screenshots I took while "flying" to help with painting the model.)
This was when the Airfix kit was expected but not yet in New Zealand. Because of this, and I think because he liked the idea, a member of a fellow forum named "sotoolslinger" kindly sent me a Hobbycraft 1/48 Sea Fury kit. To my shame I sold it a year or so later, and that kind man has since died.
Fast forward to the other day, when I found Barracuda was a simple repaint of a flight model of a real Reno Unlimited racer named Critical Mass. Reno fans will recognise the name. CM retired in 2006 and had been restored to full stock condition - first flight was two months ago - so the most radical Sea Fury is no more.
A very cool thing about Critical Mass is that High Planes Models make a few 1/72 kits of her and her Blind Man's Bluff guise. I imagine you can see where I'm going with this ;-) I can't remember the speed of postage from Singapore to New Zealand...
Like an earlier Unlimited racer build, the Yak-11 Yak Attack, Barracuda will wear sotoolslinger's forum avatar on the cowling in tribute to Ron. I'm excited to get started.