Navy Bird

I couldn't find anyone who makes anything like this (but I certainly could have missed it) - do you know of a source? Or do we have to etch our own? Cheers, Bill

Navy Birdman's Summer of '17 keeps rolling along - today it was a nest of white-faced hornets in an old tree stump. I managed to bump into the stump while we were taking down an old shed, and boy were those guys upset! I, being allergic, ran for my life (or was it my Epi pen?). I called the exterminator and he came right over - there literally was a dark cloud of buzzing things flying around when he sprayed the stump. He said there were several thousand hornets in that nest - yikes! Luckily, I didn't get stung or I'd be back in the hospital again! Maybe I should stay indoors and build models for the rest of the year... Cheers, Bill PS. He was going to spray in his street clothes, but then he got a good look at the nest and donned his Def-con suit. Good thing.

I attempted a similar process for the VG that Xtrakit left off of their Canberra kit. In my case, I used the old Waldron round punch and die set, even though the actual parts are not circular. Some ideas of this insanity: 1:72 scale, of course. When I realised just how many of these buggers had to be made, I gave up and built the Airfix kit instead (which was challenging in MANY other ways). To be honest, the 0.005" styrene I used was still too thick, scale-wise. I shall return to this project, however, now that I'm equipped with the new knowledge of hexagonal punch and die sets! Surely this cash in pocket cannot stay for long! Cheers, Bill PS. Mr. Friday, will you do my undercarriage for me?

The overhead console contains the controls for the DVD entertainment system, the sunroof, the rear hatch release, and the ejection seat heaters. There is a huge amount of modeller's license at work here. I'm just trying to create the right "mood" when one looks through the canopy. The stand-by compass will probably be the most visible once the canopy goes on. Once that happens, I believe it's time for some paint. Cheers, Bill

Thanks, Tommy - now I know! The Eduard masks seemed like a good idea - however, the die-cutting did not go through all the way in most places, so they ripped when I tried to remove them. Arghh. I've had this happen a few times with masks. I tried cutting one out, following the die-cut line, but then it didn't match the canopy outline very well. I guess I'll go back to the old way of masking and then use individual decal stripes for the canopy seals. I think I even have some that are "rubber" coloured. Cheers, Bill

Well, I know this isn't much but I finally got around to processing the photos for the work I did back on August 17. I added a small rectangular box (fashioned from leftover resin) to the instrument panel coaming, along with the HUD glass (which I made from some very thin clear plastic - the kit part is about 3 scale inches thick). I don't know what this box was for, or what instrument it contained, but it's pretty obvious in some photos. I wasn't able to mount it at quite the same angle as it should be due to interference from the inside of the canopy part. I won't tell if you won't! After painting the mysterious box black, the HUD glass was added. The next step is to mask off the canopy in preparation for painting. Before the canopy is added to the fuselage, there are some additional gubbins to add inside (just like the overhead console in my wife's mini-van). One of these is the stand-by compass which is also quite noticeable in photos. One feature of the F-111B canopy was the seal around the canopy glass. As can be seen in this photo of 151974 on-board the Coral Sea, the seal is quite prominent on the portions of the canopy that open for ingress/egress, but not so much on the windscreen. This shot of 151972 seems to show the seals on the windscreen, though, and this photo was taken during the Phoenix missile testing at Hughes. Certainly the seal around the windscreen was much smaller though. Normally, I run away in horror from the prospect of having to mask canopy seals, as I much prefer decals (like those that come with the superb F-8 Crusader kit from Academy). However, in this case I may be in luck as Eduard provide two sets of masks for the Hasegawa kit, and if I understand the pictorial instructions this is so one can paint the seals. The kit canopy has engraved lines for the seals, but only on the side panels not on the windscreen. The Eduard masks are for all parts of the canopy, so it may be that the smaller seals on the windscreen can indeed be masked. We'll see! The masks are for the USAF versions of the F-111 - I don't know if they were different in any way. Thanks for the nice comments - I'm feeling a bit better. This has been a nasty problem to shake off but I think we're finally starting to show it who's boss. Cheers, Bill

At least the hospital stay allowed me to catch up on my reading - a nice little gift set of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid all translated by Robert Fagles. These have been on my list for a while, and I'm just about finished with the last one. Although Fagles seems to have dispensed with meter all together (and no rhymes - thank God!) they still read like poetry, and in a form of English I can understand. I have no idea how these compare to the real thing (having no knowledge of Ancient Greek or Latin) but I really am enjoying them. Cheers, Bill PS. Virgil is a pale imitation of Homer.

Hi mates, I'm just out of the hospital again - it seems my pleural effusion doesn't seem to want to go away and more fluid had to be drained from my chest cavity. That, and my sinus infection is still plodding along, ignoring all the antibiotics. The immunoglobulin transfusion brought my IGG levels up slightly, but now they are dropping again. Essentially I have a really weak immune system (a side effect of the chemo) and that's why these problems persist. I suspect I'll need another immunoglobulin transfusion, perhaps on a regular basis. Ugh! But now I'm home and will try to get this F-111 finished! This has been languishing way too long. Cheers, Bill

Cheers Jerzy! Although it's quite labourious, I am slowly doing the same thing. I kept bookmarks to my WIP and RFI threads and this is where I'm devoting my energies. Unfortunately, I have no clue about the hundreds of pictures that I've posted in other people's threads - these links will end up broken until I either stumble across them or someone lets me know. Maybe the forum software guys can write a script that finds all of my posts with a Photobucket link in a thread not started by me - should be a bit of cake. Just software, you know? Cheers, Bill

Beautiful work, Martin. Probably the best floats I've seen, and they're not even painted yet. Anticipation! Cheers, Bill

Wow, it's been a lot of work tidying up the estate of my late brother-in-law. In addition to cleaning out the house and preparing it for sale we've had numerous visits to the solicitors to get the financial side settled. Lawyers, bloody lawyers! What was it Shakespeare said? I'm still quite neglectful of my modelling duties, but I have managed to finish up the cockpit coaming (adding the HUD and some "box" that is pretty obvious in the photos - not sure what it was, but I thought it needed to be there). I've also blended in the camera on top of the tail to make it look a bit more like the real thing. Not much to report really. I have, however, spent a lot of time "eradicating" Photobucket links from my threads here on Britmodeller. I've kept bookmarks for my WIP and RFI threads, and I've converted several of those over to Flickr links. Gawd, I hope they don't follow suit and try to do the same as Photobucket - then I'd have to do this all over again. What I will have difficulty switching over to Flickr are those posts of mine which aren't part of my WIPs and RFIs. I don't know what or where they are! Once I kill the Photobucket account, any links in those posts will break. Arghh. I hate computers. Cheers, Bill

Welcome to the club! Cheers, Bill

This is a really good idea, I'll have to remember this the next time I'm trying to rig something. Uh, except that rubber mallet part. Cheers, Bill

An enviable book collection to be sure. I'm at a loss to know how you manage your time - husband, father, historian, philosopher, modeller, worker bee...what is the secret? Single malt is to die for, but it hardly improves my time management skill. Cheers, Bill

Hi mates, I wanted to edit my post in this Group Build gallery to remove Photobucket images and replace with images from my Flickr account: Unfortunately, the topic is locked and I can't edit my post. Is there a way to enable editing, or perhaps unlock the topic so I can fix the photos? Otherwise there will be even more of those Photobucket nasty-grams appearing in the thread, and I think we'd all rather see the photos. I suspect others may have also encountered this issue. Cheers, Bill