AlexN

Stray FW 190 bomb through the hangar roof, was it Simon. I'm enjoying you Spitfire procession immensely . Cheers, Alex.

Thank you, Tony - I'm glad that you liked my eccentric selection . Hello CC, welcome to another of my threads - hopefully not as loopy as the last three... I have more or less finished tidying up the bench, and have printed out the Top Birds and Fings photo for measuring up, studying, and general inspiration and encouragement. That's as far as I've got. As expected I couldn't start when the clocked ticked over to 12 am 2/9/17 in the UK - 9 am here in Eastern Orstrilia - since we were busy carting stuff to the tip and shopping, plus my getting ready this evening for a fairly long and arduous day tomorrow. So maybe Monday evening Oz time. Cheers, Alex.

Same here - ipad and safari. (Visible on my imac via chrome and the pb plugin, though - when I chance to expose myself to google .) Cheers, Alex.

As has been said before, you can never have too many Catalinas . I will be following your build, too. Cheers, Alex.

Lovely aircraft! We get Coulson aircraft over here in Oz during the fire(fighting) season, but I suspect that they might be a bit delayed this year on account of the fires in Canada (we have personnel on secondment over there at the moment). Will be following this one with BIG (ha ha ) interest . Lucky it's not 1/48' eh? Cheers, Alex.

Be very, very, very careful using silicone as a release agent, Tony. Very careful indeed. In fact, I would suggest that you DON'T. Get that stuff on a surface that is going to receive paint, or thin-layer epoxy, or any other suface coating, and that coating will never stick. And it's very hard to track down and eliminate once it's out of the bottle. I had a terrible time with it poisoning paintjobs on my recent 1:1 boat, and now won't have a bar of it. I'm surprise that it didn't work very well on paint. A reputable boat-building firm that I know of banned the stuff from their premises, but some got in one day from a boat that came in for repairs... Substances that are used as mould release agents are polyvinyl acohol, carnauba wax, and many others. Do an internet search for companies that sell moulding/casting requisites and have a look through their catalogues. Or an internet seach for the two items that I have mentioned. And don't let the silicone anywhere near your modelling cave. My tuppence-worth, and others may disagree: I am reporting my own direct experience, and really don't want to start an Internet Flame WarTM. Looking good - of course - by the way. I got such a shock seeing that spray can that Imcompletley forgot to say something nice about your fine work, but remembered so I've added it post hoc. Cheers, Alex.

Yummo!

Nice bird! Intersting twin fin arrangement, too. And a resin kit, hat's not too lile (except the dust, wear a mask or cut 'wet' ). Cheers, Alex. <-- not a resin replica

Hello Rob, I'm really looking forward to this one: I'm discovering types and variations of types that I never knew of through this Group Build . Cheers, Alex.

I'll be following this with great interest, too :). Wonderful protoype - the very first V-/Delta-ish-wing, back in 1910! - and a vacform to boot. I love watching vacforms being built, having three in my collection and being rather scared of them. Cheers, Alex. <-- not a vacform - or a V-wing

Never heard of one of these - will be following with great interest! Cheers, Alex <-- is interested too

Wouldn't miss this one, Johnny! Cheers, Alex. says hello to your back cat ('Blackie'? ;).

Interesting! I have the Czech Models kit (also 1/48) which is one of my few seaplanes so nearly got chosen for this GB. Will be following along with great interest . Cheers, Alex.

Well done on a difficult little ensemble (some elements more than others. I think you got that concrete just right! And I love the wee doggy :). Looking forward to the S6B. Cheers, Alex.

Thank you Jaime - fingers crossed! Cheers, Alex. says "Thank you :)", too

It was a bit cryptic, even for me ;). Thanks in advance. Yes, the vampire clothes pegs. Note the fourth hungry peg rushing on from the RH side, rushing in to join its mates before they bleed the carcass dry. The poor little rotor head never really had a chance :(. Thanks Rob, I'm looking forward to 30-tooth after my not-yet-finished 1/72 nightmare! OK, here's the (brief) promised type information, gleaned from Wikipedia here, and the front page of the Revell instruction booklet: The Alouette II was, logically, developed from the Alouette I design which did not in fact enter production, and has the distinction of being the world's first turbine-powered production helicopter. All other helicopters at the time were powered by piston engines. Work on its predecessor(s) began in France in 1945 at the Societé Nationale des Constructions Aéronautique Sud-Est (SNCASE) and continued up until 1947. Continuing work resulted in the Alouette II, but the actual final version of the aircraft didn't make her maiden flight until 12 March 1955 - quite a long gestation period. It was powered by the single-shaft Turbomeca Artouste turboshaft engine rated at 260 hp (190 kW). The Artouste turboshaft's power was increased over time, and the Artouste IIb that powered the Alouette II that was to catch the German Heer's eye was rated at 400 hp (300 kW). The French Army ordered 365 machines, and the German Army, after looking at various Bell examples plus those from a number of other manufacturers, was attracted by the performance of the Alouette II's turbine powerplant, which enabled speeds of up to 170 km/h. The type was extremely versatile, and could be fitted with skids, four wheels and no skids which enabled untrammelled winch work, and floats. Thus, it was able to cary out a variety of roles in both civilian and military use, including montane search and rescue (it was the first helicopter to be used in this role, in the Swiss Alps on 3 January 1957), crop spraying, cargo haulage (500 kg/1,100 lb maximum load), anti-tank attack with Nord 5210 SS-11 rockets (the subject of the Revell kit) and homing-torpedo firing. The rocket-carrying experiment was not a success on account of weight and (wire-controlled) rocket-generated smoke and only five experimental machines were fitted with the necessary gear. The Alouette II also broke a couple of altitude records, the second being a height of 10,984 m (36,027 ft), and was eventually used by a total of 47 armed forces around the world, and in 80 countries A hot-high altitude version, the SA 315B Lama, was developed for the Indian Air Force and the Nepalese Army Air Force in 1969, and included the uprated Artouste III powerplant of the Alouette III. Production of the Alouette II ended in 1975 after over 1300 units were built, the II being replaced by the somewhat larger and heavier SA 613B/619 Alouette III with 570 hp (425 kW) Turboméca Artouste IIIB turboshaft engine. The III lacked the girdered rear boom, which latter was replaced by a stronger monocoque-construction tail unit. More than 2000 units of the III were built. The French Army replaced their Alouette IIs with the Aérospatiale AS350 Écureuil (Squirrel). The subject of this build, KZ-HNW, was operated by Helicopters NZ, usually for carrying personnel to and from oil platforms off the New Zealand coast in the 1970s. The one photo that I have so far found of this particular machine (see preceding link) shows it, rather ironically for the purposes of this Group Build, sitting on grass. But it does have floats, whether it is actually floating on water or not. Some snaps: 1. DOW blue styrofoam sheet remnant, to be used to make the Alouette floats DOW blue styrofoam sheet remnant by Alex1N, on Flickr 2. Close-up of the broken side of the sheet, showing the fine grain Close-up of the broken side of the sheet by Alex1N, on Flickr 3. The New Plastic Modelling Environment needs tidying up! And the Seafire - it's in there somewhere - putting in a safe spot New Plastic Modelling Environment needs tidying up! by Alex1N, on Flickr I'm not going to be able to start on Sunday Oz time since I have an abseiling course, so I will be starting on Monday or thereabouts instead. I will, of course, be looking for more photos and so forth between now and then. Cheers, Alex.

It was a toss-up between the SX1 and the G11 when I got the former - in hindsight the G11 would probably have been better for modelling snaps, but not as good an all-rounder as the 'superzoom' SX1. Horses for courses. And it was my own silly fault that I wrecked the handy little Sony . Cheers, Alex. <-- not a G11

The 'not cricket' remark was levelled at me cheating and attracting Mr Heath's attention with an '@<insert name here>'. Very lazy. Nice Alouette III there, SS. Same type of floats as on the II that I am attempting. I'm not sure about the good ideas bit - I hope that you're not disappointed! I will do my best, though :). There's quite a lot of stuff there - although there is quite a lot that I won't be using - and quite a lot that I will be scratch-building, the rear row of three seats, for example A very likely reason, Ced. Or they got fed up with ham-fisted persons destroying the delicate parts so provided the spare to keep said persons off their backs a little longer. I will have to be Very Careful Indeed, see my remark about ham-fisted persons... Thank you Martin :). We'll see how it turns out. Speaking of how things turn out, I have a few things to do that aren't in the instructions, apart from adding the floats. Two of these will be: adding rear seats; and removing the metal plates from the rear fuselage structure immediately behind the engine/fuel tank: they are conspicuously missing from KZ-HNW. Here's a few snaps from the instruction booklet, as promised, although the type information keeps getting bumped down, my apologies. 1. Upper half of front page of Alouette instruction booklet. The piece of paper with the scribbles and scrattings at the top of the snap is my measurements and rough drawings for the Skyfarer noseleg, which still continues to elude me. Mostly, it's the lack of a good heavy duty coil spring that eludes me, but that's lurching a wee bit off topin in a thread about wobblychopters on floats... Upper half of front page of Alouette instruction booklet by Alex1N, on Flickr I like the appearance of common household items in revell instructions, and this kit is no exception: 2. Common household objects no. 1: some sticky tape (and a bit of wood or something) Common household objects no. 1: some sticky tape by Alex1N, on Flickr 3. Common household objects no. 2: some clothes pegs Common household objects no. 2: clothes pegs by Alex1N, on Flickr 4. Attack of the clothes pegs! Attack of the clothes pegs by Alex1N, on Flickr 5. Common household objects no. 3: a box of matches. I most likely won't have any need for the box o' matches since I won't be adding the weapons pylons... Common household objects no. 3: box of matches by Alex1N, on Flickr 6. Side view of Alouette in the colours and marking section of the instruction sheet (German Army in all six instances - the rockets were a Cold War anti-tank fit-out) Side view of Alouette in instruction sheet by Alex1N, on Flickr I spent quite a bit of time moving a large number of tabs and passwords over to Chrome from Safari, since I was curious about the PhotoBlaggard extension, and wanted to see @LDSModeller's Short Sunderland pictures. There haven't been any WebQuit crashes yet (Google have their own WebKit fork), and I have turned off a number of Google's more invasive stalking devices. AdBlock might be a good idea if they start trying to feed me 'tailored ads' again. So far so good with the new setup, and I can see images hosted on PhotoBlaggard, although why anyone still uses the bounders is beyond me. Apart from fiddling about with Chrome (and Safari), I also got a bit more done on the little lathe (pretty well operational now after some hole-drilling and tapping into the headstock), and have largely back-converted the mill from its CNC rig to manual handle control (it's a long and tiresome story that I won't repeat here). Only a few more sleeps until I can start on the Alouette in earnest, and in the meantime I can continue to trawl the internet for useful cockpit and float images. Cheers, Alex.

I will never be able to think of ManU with a straight face, ever again! Aaaaargh! Another Aaaargh! too, since my 'likes' quota has been used up. You can blame the nascent Floatplane GB for that.

Excellent choice! And the photobucket extension seems to be working at the moment, so I can now see your photos (having just downloaded Chrome and installed said extension). Will be following this with interest :). Cheers, Alex.

Wot PC Ced. Looking at your 'distance' photo of the S6B at the top of your post above, the floats definitely look painted. Whether it's the nature of the beast, a trick of the light(ing) or the camera itself I couldn't pretend to say, though.

One has to assume that they use the same paint in the tiny starter-set pots as the stuff that comes in the larger plastic 'tins', but I wonder. I always look at those pot-lets with a degree of suspicion, not to mention jaundice.

Those S6B floats definitely look painted in that photo of yours, Ced. Land Rover looking so much better now :).

Reminds me of the R4S mod.2 that I used to have . As far as digital cameras are concerned, the best one that I have used for modelling snaps was a little Sony compact that allowed me to optically zoom in really close. Something like that or a Nikon Coolpix might be worth investigating, although you would have to check about auto-uploading to photo hosts (a mixed blessing in any case, in my opinionated opinion) since only really new models are likely to have that feature, and even then... I've used other cameras such as the Canon Powershot SX1 and the iphone 7 plus cameras with mixed results, as neither gets up close enough for me, and the Canon's lens gets in the way of the flash. A ring flash would get around that - for a high price. All the best with your researches, Cheers, Alex.

Yum! Looking forward to this one, too!