JohnT

Reminds me of a time when at a rugby club one guy was sick of folk nicking his new pint when he went to the toilet for relief so he wrote on a bar coaster "I have spat in this pint" and placed it on top of the glass only to come back and find some wag had added "So have I!"

Heather - you have said it now !! when is the thread starting ? I'll be there with the

Great picture and inspiration for a diorama though. Back seater is going to be a bit in the dark. Not as bad a coal hole as the Sea Vixen but still not a panoramic view out the windows

@Alan P @SprueMan I wonder if we are getting into an area where externally fighter designs look the same rather like modern airliners. The real differences will be under the skin and in the capability of their computers and sensor packages and the integration of same with other aircraft and platforms Will the 21st Century top gun be more a geek than a Captain Kirk I wonder????

And death only comes the once

Aye but didn't the therapy sessions make a big hole in the modelling budget ? An ICM 1/48 Hampden will fill and gap in the market. I have an FM one and every time I get brave enough to open the box I close it quickly and mop the sweat from my forehead. I always thought getting one was a good investment though as sure as eggs are eggs now I have one some manufacturer will bring out one that I could,actually build - and so it proves. (Hasn't worked with my 1/48 FM Halifax thing so far though)

Pete one of the best cars I ever had was a Sierra in the XR4x4 guise. Not a Cosworth but it could shift and held the road well for its size. A chap in the local garage described that version as Ford’s best kept secret.

just astonishing.

Bird Brain? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-oxfordshire-68785461 Brilliant. How clever is that.

Nice idea as a Whiffer. Perhaps a suggestion. Knowing the Fat One's predilection in later life for glittery and sparkly things and also collecting art might some "adornments" by way of heraldry , hunting or suchlike be considered??? Just a thought. His DVII was just plain white though so maybe best stick with that?

1978 British School of Motoring Triumph 1300. Had a great instructor. Took me out one day in a snow blizzard. I thought he was joking at first as the street were empty and deep in the white stuff. He pointed out one day I’d get caught in that sort of weather so better do it first time in a dual control school car with instructor. Had great fun too.

Pretty cool of them but very dangerous and I hope that no Hollywood producer tries the quiz. A few wrong answers and we get Boeing 747’s attacking flown by Tom Cruise in the 8th Army Air Force 😁 with the quiz results as research🤪

I know I will be falling out or dribbling out of a Boeing fora long time to come given the booze I will require to steady the nerves

I might add that I too am a huge fan of Americans, mostly anyway. Some of the nicest people I have met in my life. My sons Godmother is from the US. That said in the world of international realpolitik @junglierating is pretty much spot on. It goes back a long way. One foreign policy concern shown during WW2 and since is that the US were concerned not to support the return of Britain to old colonies after WW2. Fair enough - there was a fair amount of the UK thinking the same as well. That trend in US thinking continues to today and the Falklands issue might not get the same support as last time from across the pond. In 82 the Argentinian junta got it all wrong. A democratically elected government might have a better chance in future. US support can't be guaranteed on this particular issue. I think I can see an increasing trend in the US policy back towards isolationism. It is something that has never wholly gone away but has been dormant for the decades after WW2. I think there is a change in the way the wind is blowing and certain other countries have become aware that the US might not be the forward leaning reliable security senior partner that it has been in the second half of the last century. All that rambling done though I'd like to think that the Falklands are not under threat just because the Argentine Air Force acquire some F-16 aircraft which they do need to modernise. Perhaps if their navy acquired a credible and significant amphibious capability with the same for anti submarine tasking then that would present a more significant threat. I recall reading that a much earlier concern about an Argentine landing evaporated when the then Prime Minister James Callaghan sent a hunter killer sub to the South Atlantic - possibly more than one? Or at elast he let it be known that one was there. Whether that was true? Who knows? I suspect the main barrier to military intervention is not Typhoons or F-35's but the possibility of 1-2 submarines sending any amphibious force to the bottom of the South Atlantic. While the sabre rattling is going on I'd have one on permanent station at all time as a reality check. A better solution is that the UK buys up all the annual Argentine wine supply and creates an economic boom there so that renewed hostilities are unthinkable - I am prepared to do my bit drinking it for King and Country.

@Rob de Bie nice Huskie

@Sabrejet - I got @Rob de Bie to do me some F-105 decals in 1/32. Quite tricky as it was a specific artwork for an F-105 squadron and multi coloured. Not cheap but just what I wanted so I was a happy bunny. Very happy to recommend Rob. You might have to wait a time while he gets enough folks together to make a sheet run off sensible. Worth waiting for though.

10/10 on the nostalgia meter. This kit was the first one I bought by mail -and I mean mail. Letter posted to the USA as I recall after seeing an advert in some modelling magazine. I sent International Money Orders - anyone remember those !!!!? Several weeks later the kit arrived and boy was it shiny. I was well advised in the instructions to scrape off the plating to allow glue to join the mating edges. I am sure there were obvious seams but my rose tinted memory only recalls I was a truly happy bunny. I did the USAF scheme too. Thanks for the trip down memory lane

Hi Alistair just got one of these to try and do it without succumbing to AMS for a change. Going to do it pretty much OOB to try and get something finished after starting so happy to be a fellow traveller along the way with you. I always liked the lines on the 202 so will be closing up the engine but maybe not the cockpit. I have seem some Macchi experten slate the kit but heck - if I went with every article that said the model looked nothing like a real one I'd never end up buying or building anything I saw in kit reviews that both Brett Green and Chris Clifford expressed their concerns about the undercarriage and the build sequence.

I hear talk of an ancient Egyptian Air Force one in papyrus that comes with papyrus chariot launcher model.

Boeing paying out to airlines for the 737 issues. The numbers are pretty big - we could all get a pretty big stash on those numbers !! BBC Report:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68737292

and the one about how copper wire was invented.............................................. two of my fellow Scots fighting over a penny* and neither would let go *(a coppery lowest value coin in UK currency for our friends abroad)

Remind me of the guy being interviewed on the news after his near death experience on the mega bungee jump. Every time he did a bounce he passed part of the cord and he could see that it was fraying more and more and getting worse with every bounce as he passed it going up or down. He thought it was his last day on earth. Luckily it stopped before it broke but only just. Afterwards the tv news reporter asked how he felt. The guy said "I thought the suspense would kill me".

As my son tells us all the time “You do realise if the cat was ten times bigger she would look at you and think play with it and then eat it”

Hi @stever219 Yes the FBI do seem to be jumping the gun. That said there can be crimes without positive intent. Death caused by negligence for example leading to manslaughter aka culpable homicide for example

Interesting Mike. I for one didn’t know about such things. Can’t find the button on my box brownie either. seriuosly I’m going to have read up on that and thanks for sharing