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A couple weeks ago I made an awesome score on eBay... A vintage Night Raven for $20 including shipping (yeah, my jeans got tighter at the end of that auction). The only thing wrong with it was that it was missing the pilot and the front landing gear bracket was broken. I had a Strato-Viper already and the landing gear bracket isn't that big of a deal, I just need to be carefull when retracting/lowering the landing gear.
So I made another lucky score and got a Rattler for $25, it's only missing the pilot and two missiles. Actually, I won two Rattlers in the last week, both less than $30 including shipping. I got the first one today and learned a couple things...I've always wondered why people add "comes from a pet free home" in their item description. Well, I got a dog hair covered Rattler today, stuck to the package foam and each decal on the plane. This is no big deal to me, a quick wipe down and it was clean.
As I was holding it, I was looking at the Rattler entry on YoJoe.com to see if the decals were correct and to what it might be missing if anything besides the afore mentioned missiles.
In the YoJoe entry there is a section titled "easily broken/lost parts" with the descripton of CAUTION! the rear landing gear are EXTREMELY fragile. The hinges on the rear canopy break easily, too.
I read this just as I spun in my desk chair, hitting the wall with the plane, just in time to have both rear landing gear legs break off. This caused the plane to drop from my hand land on my drill's case, nose first, snapping off the chin gun, then landing on the top, breaking the rear canopy hinges.
WHEW! Glad I got the easily broken parts out of the way in the first two minutes of owning the thing so I don't have to worry about doing it later.
The canopy stays in place while closed, so I my replace that later down the road, but the gun and landing gear were fixed by drilling a hole in each end and glueing a piece of wire hanger in the hole.
I haven't held one of these things since 1986, I guess I didn't know how brittle the rear landing gear was. I'll know more better when I get my second Rattler. Now I know...
_________________ Some people, when trying to avoid thinking about those things that cause them pain, turn to drink, food, or drugs...I turn not to any of those...I collect action figures. Over the years, I've found that alcoholism is much more socially acceptable by far.
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