AdrianMF

Those cockpits look great! In keeping with the rest of the build... Regards, Adrian

It's looking good. The green looks like a very nice colour. How do you model outside without having everything blow away?? Regards, Adrian

Looks good! Or should I say "sieht gut aus"? There's something about the words "Special Hobby" and "OOB" in the same sentence that looks wrong, somehow, but I your interpretation of OOB seems to be pretty liberal! Regards, Adrian

Wow it is looking good! Nearly there - and time to choose your next vac build Regards, Adrian

Thanks for the kind comments chaps... Hmmm... that's an interesting assertion. Several things spring to my mind: I could have bought Ursus plastic in an Airfix bag, which would explain why my two sets of plastic look the same. After all it was a second hand kit and it was only 15 quid. But the header card looks too tidy to have been opened and resealed and the plastic is *somewhat* different (see below). I've only looked through the bag though, and at the time it was a fairly cursory comparison - "oh, yeah, it's a repop" - but I've looked at my photos a bit harder since. On my two kits the panel lines on the fuselage and flying surfaces are exactly the same, even to the point of having the same imperfections (raised edges by the grooves on the fuselage, blurring of the control surface engraving) so they look to be, if not the same mould, then a copy that looks too exact to be achievable with the technology of the time/place except by taking a mould back off the moulding. Maybe someone had scribed extra/different panel lines on your "basket case" kit? I know I have on mine. The smaller parts also look exactly the same and, more tellingly, glaringly wrong in exactly the same way: the rockets, the wheels, the seat and Gort are all the exactly the same. With the same proviso as above. However, the sprue layout is different! On my "Airfix" the rockets and wheels are opposite sides of the sprue, on my "Ursus" they are the same side. The Airfix runner does look like a blob of plastic (a bit like, say, the Bristol F2B that they released around the same time), so maybe Ursus re-arranged the mould with a more sensible runner - I don't know enough about mould engineering to know if that's possible or not, but Airfix have upgraded their kits over the years to include more modern pilots on existing runners. Why would Ursus go to the cost and trouble of engineering a brand new mould of an obscure research plane, and then make it not much better than an existing kit, in the days before ebay and silly prices? So I would tend to think it's either a re-jig of the Airfix mould (which Airfix presumably don't have any more) or it's a very (spookily) close copy which included most of the flaws of the original (it's a rare kit from 1958, not a perfect one!). Thanks for raising the issue, it has been interesting to think about. I wonder if anyone out there can shed any more light on the the history? Regards, Adrian

Sadly I'm at work today and travelling tomorrow morning, because I've just remembered I picked up a Fly 1/72 Rotachute kit a couple of Telfords ago. Would have been perfect Reading from Wikipedia: "On 14 March 1941, the M.10 model was successfully air-launched from a Boulton & Paul Overstrand." Now that would make a fine diorama! Regards, Adrian

Charming little model! I'm sure my old Auntie used to have a perfume bottle the same shape... Regards, Adrian

Thanks chaps! It was good fun and my last weekend of modelling (indeed, of being at home) until the end of August... It was always on the series one stand at my local newsagents and I loved the header card art work, but I loved WW2 planes with guns and rockets and bombs a bit more! My wife (who has sound judgement, apart from her dubious taste in men) pointed out that I must like it quite a bit if I have three kits... Regards, Adrian

I built a quick stand using some coat hanger, balsa and paper and grabbed some shots in the last light of the evening... Thanks for looking, Adrian

Thanks BZN20! I will have a look at the PDF when I have my proper computer out... It is a lovely aeroplane. I've seen it a few times at Cosford. I've just realised I did this build without looking at any of the reference pictures I took! Regards, Adrian

A 34 hours build of the Ursus SR53 (Polish re-pop of the classic Airfix kit). Homage to the old Airfix artwork that made me nearly buy it at the newsagent's every Saturday in the late 1960s: And another one for luck: Build thread here. Thanks for the GB. I've enjoyed all the interesting models coming up and I'm glad I actually got to finish something! I built a stand and took some more pics: Thanks for looking, Adrian

Hello All, Day two dawns. A change of personnel... "Move over, darling" A smaller pilot, possibly from the latest Airfix Me109. Fits like a dream: Canopy on, masked and another coat of Halfords white primer: Decals are all Xtradecals and the letters are very fragile. Two steps forward... And done! The glue inside the port wing still hasn't dried out from yesterday. The perils of fast builds - 34 hours for this one! Two more pics in the gallery. Thanks for looking, Adrian

Hello All, It was painfully obvious that I wasn't going to do the Fairey Long Range Monoplane in time for this GB, so I have paused it. However, while reading Bonhoff's excellent S6B post, I got to musing about kits you could slap together on a Saturday morning. So, this being Saturday, I tiptoed down to the garage at 7am... I always remember looking at the Airfix SR53, thinking "I don't build jets, but if I did, I'd build that one!" Build a classic, hard to find, red stripe baggie? Gulp. Not on my watch! "Hello, my name is Adrian and I have a red stripe collecting problem." Welcome to the group Adrian. So how about the beautiful Freightdog model? Nope, it would take too long to do properly. But how about this? The Ursus repop, acquired for peanuts on EBay years ago. Same plastic - perfect! Including Gort: And a wacky stand: If only I had some references: The fairing on top of the tailplane is wrong, but the fuselage is wronger, being too deep: A Saturday morning build needs a thumbprint: To make the fuselage shallower, the lower edge was brutally bent upwards, getting back some 3mm of added slimness: The airbrakes have a side with an ejector mark and a smooth side. I put the smooth side out but then realised that it is flat. The ejector pin side is contoured to match the fuselage: After all the bending the lower fuselage needed some brutal filing to restore some mating edges. This took the stand slot away: Add air intake trunking: Gort and the seat do not measure up to the Freightdog one: Time for a new interior and seat: And painted up with some hypothetical red bits. I would demand a button that said "rocket booster!": I had glued the wings together and got the undercarriage in: glued up the fuselage: and cut my finger open when the blade broke when I was trying to make the front undercarriage door fit: I took this as a sign that it was time to make lunch... Next up was to remove the end of the tail fairing to get it off the trim tab, and to extend the front a bit: Reshape the canopy to use as a vacform master: Sand down the wings to get the undercarriage doors level. Note that the plastic has a yellow skin - dried moulded release agent? Components ready for assembly: Thogether and filled: Canopy is a plunge moulded, first try: And sprayed with Halfords white primer in the garden: So I should be able to finish this one! Thanks for looking, Adrian

Looks great. I built the Airfix one a while ago (the Frog kit is much nicer) and it was indeed great fun! This has got the right level of detail - a seat AND a pilot! The original Blue was quite light and bright but the one in the Science Museum is much darker, so your blue matches the later repaint. I used Hu25 when I did mine, sort of half way in between. Regards, Adrian

Just to let you know that I'm not going to finish inside the GB for this one. My work trip has been moved up to this coming Tuesday and extended a couple of days because I had to re-book the return. So there's absolutely no way that I can finish in the time and even if there was an extension I go on vacation two days after I get back from my fortnight away! Thanks for organising the GB and for all the support, and sorry I couldn't make it. I will be resuming this build in WIP when I get back. Regards, Adrian