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Head in the clouds.

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Everything posted by Head in the clouds.

  1. Superb work on a lesser type of plane from an airline that does not serve serve pretzels in flight. Fine work on the rivets, you hit the nail on the head with your comment on the rivets costing 3 times more than the kit, how many of us have done that?
  2. Great to see some of your work again Paul, it has been a while since I cast my eyes on one of your fine crisp builds and this is no exception. Great work my friend and my favourite plane of all, bar none. Gary.
  3. Nice work @71chally, that will come in handy when we all start building the kit.
  4. Those photo's are compelling, the CB boards have most certainly changed from blue/cream to black and it makes sense, even a small advantage can win the day. I have never seen inside an SF C130, something most will never see. I am also looking at the floor which I would assume may have had the extra armour protection which is not dark but brown. 🤔 Was it only the C130 C4/5 that had the armour plate added?
  5. This image of an early 47SQ C130K seems to show that at some point they had the original light tan/brown coloured cockpit; Copyright 'aceebee' on Flickr. However, it is my understanding that when 47Sq then recieved the C130J C4/5 these were fitted with additional flight deck armour which may or may not have given a much darker internal look. I stand to be corrected if anyone knows more. That is as much as I can offer @Sabrejet.
  6. It certainly does add to the databank. Thank you, luckily for me I can pin it down to a period which fits my build with a positive pic for conformation.👍
  7. After looking into the various names that have been given to the C130 I believe you are correct, it does belong to the Blue Angels aircraft, however I think it has been borrowed by everyone from service personnel, media to aviation enthusiasts. It fits, it works and it describes fondly the aircraft itself. And as you mentioned, you thought this build was about 'The' Fat Abert, so I am guilty of historical inaccuracies too. Maybe a title change is needed. Thanks Carlos, yes, the Airfix plastic is thick but my worry are the transparencies and trying to correct any work in that area may be creating a lot of work for very little gain. Remember also I may have to do three times, it may be akin to hitting your thumb with a hammer and doing twice again for good measure....🤣
  8. 😂... Nobody Inn. It is Pete, a lot of workers from construction, factories and elsewhere go there and they often have groups on.
  9. After the question by @Mycapt65 about the origins of the 'Fat Albert' nickname I thought I would do some digging. Fat Albert is also the name given to the C130 that supports the Blue Angels display team around the world and is famous in it's own right for it's impressive JATO take off, unfortunately, this has not happened since 2009 as the Vietnam era JATO packs are no longer available. Other names I have found are; Herk Herkybird Hog Bleed Air Blimp Slick Herky Hilton Brown and Green ***** Machine Four Fans of Freedom Bugsmasher Hercu-sleaze Herky Turkey The Dirty Thirty Cessna 130 (my favourite)😀 I think a fair few of these are probably from the States but if anyone can shed any more light on them let us know please.
  10. Thank you @amos brierley 3 of everything is the order of the day. That new release went under my radar, I was only on Hannants site the other week. It is good to see manufacturers now doing some of these obscure subjects and the SVM kit will be welcomed by many people as this scale is more manageable for large planes. The part count is good too. Hi @Mycapt65 that is a good question to which I have no definitive answer but the two answers given by @Pete in Lincs and @amos brierley are perfectly plausible. I shall investigate further. Thanks Pete, I think I will call it a day on the office work and now move onto the wheel bays and FS245, especially on Snoopy as some internal work in the hold is to be done there. Now that you are fully into wearing slippers all day how are you finding it? The beer is still flowing down the Lord Harrowby, it has come to be 'the' traditional pub in town to go to, we need more old school watering holes.
  11. Evening folks. Well, things have been a little quiet on this thread for a while, in part due to life and all it's distractions and the other being me giving my scribing tools plenty of exercise. As with any rescribing of panel lines there are always those that end up off kilter a bit or are in the wrong place, that has been the case here. One of my 'go to' methods to remedy them is Tippex, it dries hard but gets into small nooks and crannies and sands to a lovely smooth surface. After doing so much scribing it doesn't hold the terrors for me it once did and I am finding it is improving steadily. Up to now the fuselage and the underside of one wing has been done, nice and steady with breaks to do other things seems to work for me; The wing half at the bottom is the rescribed Italeri item, there are still some other panel lines to do once I can ascertain they exist because looking at the Zvezda wing half some of them look very fanciful indeed. If you follow the the line of the flaps and ailerons the Italeri kit has them about right to my eye, there are two steps along the hinge line, seen here with the help of a marker pen; This is the Zveda wing and its shallow panel lines are marked with the dashed line, the Italeri with a solid line. According to my reference books Italeri have got it right but Zvezda seem to have got there lines crossed here so those that are wrong will be filled and rescribed accordingly. I was hoping not to have to do anything on this modern tooled kit but it looks like all 3 kits will have some scribing done after all. I am not going to correct every incorrect panel line on the Zvezda kit but these lines are associated with major control items so need to be right and more importantly all the same. Anyway, that is a job for another day, lets get the Italeri kit scribed first. One of my side hustles away from scribing has been the cockpits. Now then! I made bit of a cock-up here but I will let the narrative tell the story, luckily I caught it in time after looking again at my research. It was something @fatalbert had said in another post and a picture I came across in International Air Power Review showing the cockpit of Snoopy showing the scientists seat and HORACE screen fitted to the back of the pilots seat, the only such pic I know of. Anyway, on with he build. One of the hurdles I foresaw early on was the banks of breakers and such like that are either side of the cockpit and how to replicate them. I sat on my hands and waited until I came across these; Bingo.....😁! Good old Kitsworld. I have never used these new fandango decals before, some were very brittle but the detail on them is very good but not sure why I am excited as none will be seen. A bit of mix and match followed, the main IP on the Italeri kit was painted, the Airfix kit received the Kitsworld IP and the Zvezda received its own in box decal. For clarity the other 3D decals went into Snoopy. Here are the results; Zvezda Italeri Airfix As can be seen the 3D IP is crisp and clear, the Italeri, while hand painted is fine and the Zvezda IP is passable, if not a little bright in colour. Also, in the above Italeri pic you can see the HORACE screen and the scientists chair which is something resembling a flat camping chair and just a guess on my part, no picture can I find of this seat. It will never been seen but it was another thing that made Snoopy such an individual airframe and I just had to fit it. The idea of having the scientist in the cockpit was as a direct link to what was happening in the office and through his HORACE screen the scientist could pass on information to the pilot and vice versa. Sometimes the boffins may want to go in a different direction to follow a weather pattern and through the fifth man in the cockpit this could be achieved immediately with continuous update etc. Apparently it worked very well. Now to my mistake, a clue of which is in the pics of the IP's above. Here we are; The finished cockpits.....not! Around the late 80's the RAF repainted the cockpits a dark grey and the seats gained black cushions and grey seats, this was confirmed with the photo in the International Air Power Review and fits the timeline of my build of Snoopy as my decals are representative of DERA and not the MRF. 🤐 The Airfix cockpit is fine and of the period but the other two need changing. I painted the other two dark grey but this for me was too dark so I changed it to Medium Sea Grey, call it artistic licence. The seat covers also had to be painted black and all this was done with a hairy stick, it ain't too pretty but will pass as so little will be seen. Here we go; I didn't neglect the cockpit side walls either; There is one item that I will not be fitting to Snoopy's cockpit....the Elephant with a red and white trunk that lived in the Nav station. It is said that it was put there when it was at Marshalls under conversion and because it was on the blue prints and had a reference number it could not be removed without design authority permission...😂. At this moment in time the whereabouts of this Elephant are unknown and is assumed to be at large. A good story whether true or not. Another unique aspect of Snoopy was the way it was crewed. The fight deck crew was taken from MRF and as there was no dedicated co-pilot flights were undertaken with 2 captains. If for any reason MRF could not provide crew then some would be drawn from Lynehams squadrons. At the back the scientists lived in their van and the Loady and Engineer were both engineers. Lastly Snoopy was maintained by civilian contractors as opposed to RAF staff. That's it for now, thanks for dropping by.
  12. No, you have not missed anything Pete, I am still building but very sporadically, also I am doing the WIP on another forum and they had a bit of a tech meltdown so am uploading it all again. I will hopefully post soon, cockpits finished now.
  13. Brilliant, probably my favourite of all your builds I have followed. Looks like he doing a ton up just like the old Cafe racers.
  14. Latest gift to self are 4 books on wooden ship modelling, now I am really starting to get worried, I can see 1.3 metres of HMS Agamemnon being shoehorned into my cave but I need to bring it into the 21st century and make it stealthy, Gert won't see it then....😂
  15. Just caught up (again) Pete. Good choice, these particular droids are some of my favourite characters even if they are a bit stupid. I hope you have given him a RAM upgrade so he can at least stay on the Speeder Bike...🙂. Great imagination and application as usual Pete...👍
  16. Cheers Jamie, your response confirms why I need to read up on the subject, if there was an emoji for text going over my head I would have used it profusely 😁. Historic Ship Models it is. Gary
  17. Thank you Bertie for your recommendations, there are many books out there to choose from but having books that come with recommendations is far better than buying blind as I would be doing. There are one or two on your shelf too that look like they will be very handy, it seems my library will get an extension of at least one more shelf. Cheers. Gary
  18. Hi folks. Ever since I latched onto @Bertie McBoatface superb HMS Bellerophon build I keep getting this itch to build a sailing ship wooden kit but my knowledge of these superb vessels is very limited, especially in the terminology used in the construction and maintaining of these ships. What I am looking for is a good book that will give me this information without being confusing to the layman, I am familiar with some words but don't know exactly which part of the ship those words are describing, such as 'forcastle'. I know it is towards the front but that is about it. Also we have all the equipment, sails and rigging to name a few others so there really is much to learn and understand to allow me to better understand what I am building. Any suggestions would be welcomed. Thanks for looking. Gary
  19. Sorry to hear of all your woes, when life starts throwing spanners they are usually big ones and they often come at you in formation. Nice work on the Hercules though, you still have your eye for detail and it was good to see the thread moving on a little. When you start looking at C130's close up it is surprising how many rivets and strengthening plates there are which is not surprising when you see how they are flown.
  20. A very clean and tidy C130 and a rarely seen sub variant.
  21. I can remember the sound coming through Peascliffe tunnel as a kid, if I remember correctly were not the engines old gunboat engines or is that just a myth?
  22. Very nicely done if I may say so Bill, that extra detail around the engine and elsewhere really lifts what is a rather small kit.
  23. Nice to see the old Airfix kit in a civvie scheme, well done.
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