Fatcawthorne

I'm in Colchester now, moved up there when my first son came along and we couldn't aford the upgrade from a 2 bed flat in Heathcote Grove to a house locally. My Mum's in Cherrydown Ave still as she never escaped, and my sis was in Whitehall Road until a year or so back. Still go down, but tend to meet at the Biker's Tea Hut at High Beech now as we've all got dogs to walk! Always loved being close to Epping Forest, not so proud now of the fact that some of my 17 or 18 year old self's Mk1 Ford Capri's wheelspin tyre tracks appeared in Full Metal Jacket as the scene where they were on a Platoon Run was filmed on the road that connected the Tea Hut to Epping New Road next to the junction with Rangers Road. Different times indeed!

Know it well. My Nan lived in Hall Lane (my Mum still lives in Cherrydown Ave too) so when I went round hers whilst exploring the alleys round the back of the factories I'd always pick up loads of reject Matchbox cars thrown over the fence from the satellite Lesney factory there. Chase Lane Park, remember that well too. Used to play football there and loved the Youth Clubhouse. Was there a train ride there, not to the scale of the Ridgeway Park Model Railway, or am I starting false memories here. My Dad after splitting from my Mum moved up to West Scotland too, although not as high up as you must be. He's in Langbank on the south bank of the Clyde. Think he wanted to get me into St Mary's but my Mum's CofE so Larkswood it was (well before Harry Kane and David Beckham went there!!)! I had a couple of good Spurs Fan mates that went to St Mary's but they were a year or two younger than me so would be nippers in comparison!!! Did you stay around the Chingford area much longer? My haunts (obviously after turning 18 - yeah right!) were the Kings Head, The Bull & Crown plus The County Arms after school as I was at Sidney Burnell by then! My Teenage lads don't believe a word of any of my stories from those times, how things hav echanged eh!?

I was 12 in 1978, living in New Road E4, virtually opposite Greaves and Penn Sports shop (owned the great Jimmy Greaves), near to Bishops Supermarket and its infamous Bishops Ramp up to the rooftop Car Park, where intrepid skateboarders, the latest craze of the time, would forever be breaking limbs (never had a skateboard so I had to make the trip in a shopping trolley until I got tipped headfirst into a pile of doggie-do on the grass verge of Brook Crescent opposite)! Obviously with this being my stomping grounds, Arts & Crafts was my weekly go to and I was devastated when this little oasis of calm closed down; it was like a part of my childood had died with it! My guess is either the B-29 or C-130 as I remember coveting them there, never having a fiver to spare! What schools did you go to Pat?

Here they are a bit larger than life!!

Thanks again Dennis @sloegin57, as it's a lovely slow afternoon in the shop I've had a chance to have a little play with Dennis' photos and CorelDraw with a view to making some homebrew decals for these zaps. Hopefully we've cracked it now, short of firming up on the colours, unless anyone knows of any extra Zaps I don't know about!! Hopefully the pictures will enlarge OK on the screen.

As Iain (@iainpeden) says, what a spoilsport and what am I going to do with that USAF 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron patch I've bought now Dennis? - OK, well I could start a USAF stash to match my RAF one, only I'd need a new wife, new bigger house and to live to 972 years old to finish them all in that case!! Dennis, didn't realise you were even responsible for these shots (well I hadn't tied you to being sloegin57 to be more accurate). I had spent a few hours earlier this week trying to find you on Google as a longshot to ask if you had any higher resolution versions of the pictures used in the book that started this quest for me, and there you were right under my nose all the time!! Were you part of Crab Air when you took these? I know it sound so crass and cliche but the knowledge and generosity (materially, interlectually and with their valuable time) of our membership truly amazes me, if only the rest of the world could work to our model (pun intended btw!), what a world we could live in. We truly are a Band of Brothers and Sisters!! Thank you so much Dennis, and I can't wait for the next installment, it's like being at Saturday morning pictures and the Flash Gordon cliffhangers!!!

I'm just amazed she didn't attempt to "High Six" you!!!

Thank you for your input fellas, a google search for "RAF aircrew red diamond patch" led me to this eBay item which was soon snaffled into the basket!!! Do you think this is it? Pretty long shot if it isn't I'd say! Now what's the story behind a USAF 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (based in Iceland) Zap on a 92 Sqn airframe at the Silver Jubilee review? Right I'm off to bury myself even further down that rabbit hole!! Thanks again, and if any of you know anymore for anymore please keep chipping in! Stay well all, Chris

Hello all, just want to tap into the BM Hive-mind to shed some light on some of those tiny tiny details that delight modellers everywhere. Now I have rescued one of the longest-serving members of my ever-expanding Shelf of Doom Club, a Revell re-pop of the Hasegawa 1/48 Phantom FGR.2. Now this kit went to the SOD at least 15 years ago dressed in my then stock finish of Humbrol Enamels, in the later Air Superiority grey finish. It wasn't a bad build for my skills of the time, but I had knocked off and lost one of the flaperons and thus she never got finished. Roll away those years and whilst building my RAF Sabre F4 a couple of years back I had been reading about stripping paint from old models and decided to give this a dose of the old-style Oven Pride and to finally finish the kit off in the DG/DSG 70's style camo whilst I had those colours out for the Sabre. Now having built it with the Marconi RWR Fin Cap in place I was limited with marking options, especially not wishing to do the kit scheme. However I found an option on the Xtradecals X48199 sheet for XV413 of 92 Sqn. Now I was happy to take their word for accuracy as I could find no photos at all of the airframe in 92 Sqn service online, and TBH I just wanted this one over the line; the re-build is now so so close to an RFI (stick on the missiles, a Flory Wash and a Satin Coat and we're there), so what could possibly go wrong? This morning I received a copy of Richard L Ward's Phantom Squadrons of the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm, that I'd bought on eBay that's what!! I thought I'd just flick through and have a look at the 92 Sqn pages and blow me sideways there's only a photo of XV413 in the right timeframe. Timing or what? Now this photo (copy below scanned from the book including the photo's credits) shows a couple of Zaps applied, one of an aircraft on the tail and another of risque footprints on the lower rear fuselage. Now these do not appear on the Xtradecals sheet, (and also the Z for Zulu appears much thicker than as printed on the sheet). I can also see some wording on the intake splitter that I guess is Sticker No. 18 from the Xtradecals sheet that I can find no menton of in the destructions, (saying that it looks very much like it has been typoed as 14 on the instruction sheet so mystery over - with the brain-fog I've got at the moment I looked and looked and looked at the destructions but never made that link until typing this here! Doh!)!. Anyways do any of the BM Brethren have any further information on, or photos of these Zaps for XV413? Thanks in advance as usual, and do stay safe out there. Chris

I got this unsolicitated email earlier; they were trying to tell me that they could teach me to read maps backwards. Now that's probably Spam I thought!

Thanks fellas. Ran the gamut of another stack of emotions since the last update, however whilst the Camera still managed to click away like a good one as I buried my head and hid from the world in my modelling man-cave, my time (and more truthfully my inclination!) at the keyboard was quite limited by all that Real LifeTM stuff going on. I'm afraid today's update is going to be a very brief glitch in the Matrix, as I'm going to show where we've got up to in the last 3 weeks or so and then later in the week I will update the steps taken to get here (and then most probably get this transfered over to WIP to carry on with the builds there). Now the Airfix Red Zebra; although this is the most advanced in it's build schedule, it is by far the least advanced in terms of quality and buildability! It is 99.9% there now, just the Ejection Seats (and then the canopy can be posed open) and the nose gear doors (I painted the red stripe on the wrong edge of the door - doh!) to go on and it can be put on my shelf never to be viewed from closer than 4 foot away! It is a very striking and likeable scheme, just please don't use your zoom-in functions else I'll cry!! I have deliberately kept the weathering to an absolute minimum as I have many many photos of ZE907 from this timeframe, but in everyone she is wearing her Sunday best dress, with very little or no panel line detail or colour variations visible, which I have tried my best to copy. I know some of us on the site tell us to build what we see, this is an example where the real airframe looks toylike and quite dull and boring, so i guess I can live with my version being so too! Now the Italeri kit (main weakness is the inherent weakness of the wing hinges so will need to concoct a way to lose any unwanted anhedral before too long) is going to be ZE791 in its final paint scheme and is pretty close to being there or thereabouts at the moment. I love the patchwork quilt of newer and older scheme panels on this kit that I've tried to replicate. I might have one more go at ZE791 in the scheme prior to this to see if I can improve on it further from the experience gained on this build. But hey there are 400 red or blue boxes in front of it in the stash queue and I could do with a break from F3's soon!! The Revel kit is going to be a 2004 Op Telic scheme and is by far the most detailed of the kits, with added fuctions such as drooped wingslats and flaps to wet your whistle. Therefore this is languishing in a poor third place, but a few days concerted effort will get it zooming up the field again. Anyways once the illusion that is real life allows, I will update on how we got from mid-February to where we are now, and the time-space continuum will be fine and dandy once more!! So until next time, stay safe out there and speak soon. Chris

Phew, thank you Enzo for the extension. Even then I couldn't quite get to 100% done (Nose Gear doors and seats still need to go on but hey, we're all friends round here! The canopy will be posed open once the seats are in) So as Meatloaf's first draft of his hit song that didn't quite have the right ring to it, "One Out of Three Ain't Bad", I present for your delectation and general merriment, the Red Zebra made from the 1/48 Airfix Tornado F3 box of Tornadoey looking plastic bits. It's not my best work by far; in the WIP I had two other Tornados on the go from Italeri and Revell, and hopefully although they won't pass the finish line tonight should be far more respectable models! Now Red Zebra as it was a display aircraft, always looked close to spotless in every picture I could find of it, so weathering was deliberately kept to a minimum.

'Bout the same as me then (and how long it seems to have taken to do the Ipswich Rd roundabout roadworks too for other locals!) Having been a long-term STAB I never got to serve up here though as was based in East London. You still in or an escapee? There's a few BM'ers in the Colly area though. Looking forward to seeing some of your builds soon.

Well I'm an escaped Cockney, married to a Tykess living in Colly too. There's a lot of it about!!! Welcome to BM Andy.

Thanks Col, how's the F.2T going? Is there a thread for that or was it so long ago it's on floppy disks or punch cards somewhere?? Anyways I saw my friend Ken off in as good a style as lockdown would allow earlier in the week. Ken was on his third marriage (one of his daughters from the second marriage works for me so I was mainly supporting her and her twin sister on the day as they had very few other relatives there that they knew), so there were a few power-plays in evidence at the funeral. Despite being part of 2 Para during the Falklands campaign the eulogy only mentioned his prior service with the old 3 Royal Anglians, which infuriated his brother (along with all the other factual errors in it which could have been avoided if he'd been consulted). Why do folks cut out the other relatives at times like this? Nice to see a Pompadours flag though which was touchingly spread on Ken's coffin. So as it was a another week I would prefer to not go through again, the man-cave got a fair bit of use and abuse. Mrs FC is still looking after her Mum up in Sheffield so no foul, no harm at the moment. Not sure I'll get so much "me-time" when she finally returns to Fort FatCawthorne though! So what did we do? Thankfully I took some photos otherwise my brain would be so scrambled I could only tell you that the Airfix Goblins must've visited in the night!! The ARC's on each wing were given a more subdued "greying", giving us................. With every photo of every machine seeming to show a different combination of greys I concentrated on just getting the closest matches using my very own Mk.1 Eyeball technique. The next steps were to prepare the fuselages to accept the wings, this involved fitting @Shaun's resin wing sweep covers that I bought from him donkeys years back and set aside for just this moment! The Airfix and the Italeri kits weren't really designed to use these as they're to fit the Revell kit, but hey we're on a mission, we have razor saws and scalpels, so let's do it!!!! You can probably see the feint line in the primer under the covers on the bottom image of the Italeri version, where the measure twice and cut once mantra didn't quite go to plan and the resultant gap got filled with plasticard. Never said I was clever did I???? OK, have started prepping some of the smaller parts too; the wheels were homebrewed resin copies of the Xtrakit parts for the Airfix and Italeri ones (the kit parts are a bit pants IMO) and the kit parts for the Revell one. They got a spray of Halfords finest Grey Primer.............. I will also be using homebrew copies of the Aries undercarriage doors for the Airfix and Italeri versions for the reasons mentioned earlier for the wheels! Anyways it was time to start aiming to get the fuselages buttoned up, the Revell one still following Nathan's tutorial and the other two, well just winging it really!!!! In the last image you can see a repair to the inner wall of the port intake that I knocked off in handling, and promptly ran over with my chair castors - doh!!!! The Revell wings have been masked to save grief and too much re-painting later in the build. A different tactic will get used for the other two as the wing gloves are moulded integral to the fuselage halves. The other two versions had the wing gloves painted before joining the fuselage halves, which hopefully should make masking for the rest of the airframe easier when we get to that stage. The fuselages were then TET'd to within an inch of their lives and joined together and PPP'd.................. The Revell kit got its schnozz added too and faired in using sanding blocks and finally using more PPP. It wasn't a great fit this part, I even doubted I hadn't accidently switched the nose cone with the Italeri one as it was that far off in places. I found the wing pivots to be a bit lacking on the Italeri and Airfix kit and the port Italeri one sheared off, leading to a repair with brass rod and PPP, (the white dot on the underside of the glove!!!). The Italeri has had a fair bit of PPP aPPPlied (see what I did there, Royalties are due if you use it please Mr PPP!) and sanded down to smooth the fuselage joints, but the winner for the 2021 PPP Queen of the Air goes to the Airfix kit unsurprisingly................. Once this has dried off good and proper it will get attention from one of the manicurists sanding blocks to knock it all back and blend it all in. Hopefully we'll lose the vast majority of it! Now that's a proper cliffhanger to be ending on eh? Eat your heart out Eastenders, duff duff, duff, duff duff!! Well that's all for this update folks....... So until the next time, keep safe out there and see y'all soon! Chris