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A Flight of Fanciful Fairey Fireflies: FR.1 & TT.4


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In honour of breaking the 800 post barrier, I present some of Fairey's Finest!

 

100_6941

 

Sadly, the Swordfish still languishes, unassembled, in the depths of my stash.

 

Cheers,

Bill

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On 2/6/2016 at 13:48, keefr22 said:

Where would you use Eau de Nil on a Heyford Bill? (and if anyone says 'behind its ears'.....)

 

It was my clever way of getting the posts over 800...of course I meant to type NIVO! :)

 

Cheers,

Bill

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Not wishing to sway your thinking Bill because that would be appallingly bad form

but have you seen this photo I found in my collection.

000%20RAN%20DH%20Sea%20Venom%20FAW53.%20

Myself starting WZ.895 NAVY 870 in 1982 at NAS Nowra

Thought you might like it :)

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On 2/6/2016 at 15:47, NAVY870 said:

Not wishing to sway your thinking Bill because that would be appallingly bad form

but have you seen this photo I found in my collection.

<snip>

Myself starting WZ.895 NAVY 870 in 1982 at NAS Nowra

Thought you might like it :)

 

Like it? I love it! That's almost as much black smoke as would come out of my Corvair after blowing a few push-rod tube seals! :):):)

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. I'm jealous though. You not only have your own personal Firefly, but also a Sea Venom! And if I remember correctly, a Gannet! Oh dear, I have to sit down...

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On 2/6/2016 at 16:23, Ascoteer said:

WOW Bill!

You owned a Corvair and survived?!

 

Yeah, a 1966 Corsa Convertible - it looked quite like this one, right down to the faux wire wheel hub caps. The only difference was that mine had a white interior. Man, that was a royal pain to keep clean. At least it was vinyl, so it kinda sorta looked liked leather.

 

corsa

 

The fun part was the four Rochester carbs - made in my home town of Rochester, NY. (The other two are hiding under the spare tyre.)

 

4x1

 

If this baby wasn't belching smoke from an oil leak, it was really fun to drive. Every once in a while, you'd blow a spark plug wire off of one of the plugs and drop a cylinder, but that was an easy fix. Just pull over and pop it back on. (The plugs were under the big air shroud, since the engine was air-cooled, with the plug wire snapped onto the shroud. Since the cooling fan blew the air away from the shroud, there was a lot of pressure against the plug wires.)

 

And I never tipped it over, so there Mr. Nader. Starting in 65, there were u-joints on each end of the half-shafts, so the tipping over problem remained with the pre-65 year models and all VW Bugs.

 

It was a very cool car for a 17-year old kid.

 

Cheers,

Bill

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On 2/6/2016 at 18:20, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I'd love to see what you might make of the Swordfish Bill.....Reckon you need a Barracuda too! :poke::winkgrin:

 

Both are in the stash - I have the new tool Airfix Swordfish (my, what a beautiful kit!) and the Special Hobby Barracuda Mk.III ("with ASV radar"). I've just read that Special Hobby is going to have a brand new tooled Barracuda and it will be interesting to see what they come up with. If it is up to the quality level of some of their recent kits, it will be very nice indeed.

 

There probably should be a Fairey biplane in that family portrait too...

 

Cheers,

Bill

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On 2/6/2016 at 19:34, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I'd really like to see the Albacore done properly, preferably by Airfix TBH. :pray:

 

Ooohh, that would be nice, wouldn't it? :)

 

Cheers,

Bill

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Believe it or not, a Corvair like the one I had goes for big bucks today! I wish I still had it. Maybe I could build a model of it!

 

No modelling today though - my daughter is in labor, and I'm at the hospital. This will be my first grandson. Woo hoo!

 

Cheers,

Bill

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Carter William Smith

6 lb 6.5 oz

19 inches tall

Very easy labor for my daughter, she only pushed twice. Everybody happy and healthy!

Cheers,

Bill

Many congrats Bill & family, excellent news!

Sounds a bit like my daughters labour, in & out in no time at all! My daughter in law wasn't so lucky, well over 24 hours in labour!!

Keith

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On 2/7/2016 at 14:03, keefr22 said:

Sounds a bit like my daughters labour, in & out in no time at all! My daughter in law wasn't so lucky, well over 24 hours in labour!!

 

Ouch, a 24 hour labour. That hurts just reading it. First thing my daughter said this morning was "let's get this kid out of here quickly so I can watch the Super Bowl today!" She did - with plenty of time to spare. Heck, the game still doesn't start for another couple of hours. I don't even know who's playing...I just go along for the party.

 

Cheers,

Bill

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Thanks, mates! I really appreciate all the nice comments.

 

I've decided to build the CMR 1:72 scale Sea Venom next, out of respect for Steve and the help he provided on these Firefly builds. I'll use the RAN scheme applied to the Sea Venom that he and his mates restored, and from which he takes his forum name NAVY870. It should be a fun build, everything looks really nice in the box. Steve is listed as one of the folks that CMR consulted when they were designing this kit and making the masters, so I believe that it will be very accurate. Stay on the lookout for the WIP thread. :)

 

Cheers,

Bill

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  • 1 year later...

Hi Bill!

 

Just got that FR Mk.I kit after much searching and already bookmarked this topic, as you've done a superb (double!) work here, congrats!

Cheers,

 

José Paulo

 

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