brooker

Hi Chris, I'm not building any plastic models yet - I have not decided which one - I have 2 x Italeri 1/12 Fiat racing cars, the 806 and the other one and a 1/8 Monogram Corvette and a 1/8 Revell Jaguar, which has been partially built and probably needs dis-assembling and rebuilding and an Ichimo 1/200 IJN Yamato kit which I've had for years, about 6 feet long, which I'd quite like to have for R/C, if I can work out how - plus a number of Pocher Rolls Royce Sedanca kits that need assembly and a Rolls Royce Torpedo I had to strip down because it arrived with a busted front axle and broken front mudguards - progress was going OK - until I met and my latest lady partner moved in, some 18 months ago and the Torpedo got pushed aside - the honeymoon period is over, so I shall probably get back to something, sooner or later........being retired is a plus.......not having to work, anyway..... Richard

I have that Pocher Bugatti too - the builder of my car seems to have got both doors fitting OK - I thought the left hand door was a poor fit, but I see now it was just the door catch. Should be posting pix of my Pocher collection of cars - 18 all up, at this stage. They have been gathering dust around my home and they all have lost their sparkle, so I'm waiting for my Dremmel from China, before I can have a go at polishing them all up - along with everything else, presently on hold in the plastics department. Richard

I used to soak stamps off letters when I collected stamps, many years ago. The method then was to soak the torn paper holding the stamps, in water overnight - in the morning the stamps would be floating free and unwrinkled. I used to fish them out and lay them between two dry towels to dry off and recover their rigidity - glueing transfers back onto a model, might involve putting the glue on the model where you want to transfer to go and then applying the transfer afterwards, but I'm not a plastics modeller (quite yet) so let the experts decide. Richard

Wow, what a beautiful model and a beautiful finish, I've got a brown & cream one to polish up and a blue and white one, still in the box it arrived in - it looks a bit shabby - I doubt if I have the skills or expertise to create anything as lovely as your model. Richard

I am happy to say that my Alfa (same as yours) came from the Pocher Car Museum in Switzerland some years ago and the guy there is/was an expert builder of Pocher models - I've posted pix in Photobucket - all I have to do is copy them to these pages, coming, hopefully tomorrow (our time). Richard

To Guba - or anyone else - Help!! Lol, I've never built plastic kits and I'm 69 now, except one or two about 60 years ago and I have the same feelings now, which you display - and I don't have any idea now, even, of how to apply the plastic glue, to join parts together, without creating a mess, or what is the best type of plastic glue to use - in a tube or in a bottle, or superglue, or how to clean up plastic flash when the part is taken off the sprue, or even if its possible to clean up joints after plastic glueing - before painting, without destroying the paint finish there - or how - any ideas please - I sympathize wih you - I understand exactly how you are feeling - me too - but I've bought the plastic kits and I have to assemble at least some of them !! Help !! Richard

Hi Mike, You can find pix and blurb for Europic Ferry here: https://www.google.com.au/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=mMbSVuLJOoOH8Qf934i4Cw&gws_rd=ssl#q=ferry+europicand Sir Lancelot Ferry here: https://www.google.com.au/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=mMbSVuLJOoOH8Qf934i4Cw&gws_rd=ssl#q=ferry+Sir+Lancelot+-+1964 that was the easy part, which I'm told, sank in the Falklands War. Unfortunately, I don't have any plans or card kits of either of the ships you have requested, or The Dixie class above, just checked... If you can find a birds eye view and side view in photo's it might be possible to prepare plans...... Richard

Hi Joe, I don't have Dixie Class in my plans collection and to be honest I wish I did, as I have never seen a class like that before, however you can find heaps of info and pix and possibly plans here: https://www.google.com.au/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=y7_SVpeyIImH8Qf684iYCA&gws_rd=ssl#q=tender+uss+dixie I build my hull and superstructures followng the same format - 1/4" to 1/2" keels and cross sections (frames), I sheet the outside of the hull with thin card and then I use 1/8" card on the inside, to strengthen the hull internally, in between each of the cross sections and the keel, bearing in mind I build the lower structure upside down on a building board, with the keel perfectly straight, centered on a centre line, drawn there first. Removal of the hull is pretty simple by just working a bread knife between the hull and the chipboard working base, then, after internal sheeting, I use the lower hull as the structure to build the upper hull on, so everything tallies, as I progress. When I varnish the card, before painting, the hull is very robust and I can actually stand on the upturned hull centreline - I weighted 18 stone, last time I did that - without the structure collapsing at all - strong and light - so the hull cannot bend, prior to varnishing. I have uploaded 189 photos to photobucket, of my Pocher cars, HMS Tracker pix, which my father served on in WW2, all to be posted here, as I slowly progress with it - with pix of each of my card warships, which range from about 2.5 feet for SMS Sachsen and Jules Verne's Nautilus, up to 6 feet long for SMS Bismarck at 1/200 scale - the German spelling - and I think you are in for a treat, pix wise, please excuse any dust you see in the pix, I huffed and puffed and tried to get as much off as I could between pix - but there was a limit to what I could eventually achieve, still you will get the idea of what is possible and these ships, I built over about 6 years, not instant....lol and I love ironclads say 1850 to 1910, the more weird looking, the better. Richard

I probably have plans and A3 lithograph(s) of HMS Warrior - I don't think I have a card kit - but I can have a look if anyone is still interested or might be prepared to scratch build a model in whatever medium you are comfortable with from plans. I love ironclads (the changeover from sail to steam) and I like to build large scale models of them - I have several built and will be posting pix of them, hopefully within the next day or two - my favouries are Russian and French warships because they are so wierd - "Hoche" which I have a card kit for - don't remember buying it - and some of the other ones - a blank moment, sorry. I have loads of plans in various sizes for ironclads - one of my favourites is Korea - a wonderful ship and I think I have a digital card kit of it - of course, I am speaking a different language to those of you who rely on plastic pre-made kits - sorry, I like to build my detail scale models out of paper compressed card and 3 to 6 feet in length, for R/C - which I never do. Richard

You can usually buy plans from The Greenwhich Maritime Museum, but hold onto your socks when you find out what the purchase price might be. It is very probable that I have a digital paper card kit of the Japanese Battleship YASHIMA in 1/200 or 1/300 scale or one of her sister ships, if you know what they were called. I don't recall the Yashima previously, but I might have a plans set, depending on the date of service which you will have to provide me with, as my plans, I order by date of service, rather than by name. You can find out how to construct these card kits on one of the other links above this request, from you - started by me - brooker. Richard

Hi, I order my catalog of ships plans by date. So if you want me to look for plans, to see if I have any, then you will have to provide me with a date when your ship was built or when it was in service, as I don't have a clue what I've got now - it has been 20 years since I last looked at any of my folders of ships plans or my large scale plans (all indexed) which are in a large metal box in my undercover garage, which resembles a metal coffin and much has happened in my life over those years for me to forget more than I can remember. Whist I have a large private collection of plans, I have by no means anything like the numbers of ships - or for that matter plans of those ships, which were issued or built, beyond that which was made public, so the more obscure the ship, the less likely that plans will be available for it..........if you find side view pix and birds eye view pix, of reasonable clarity, you might have to prepare your own plans set for the ship which you most want to build. Richard

If you have bought a plastic kit, I would be very surprised if all of the blocks and other parts are not provided in the kit, also with all of the rigging, probably moulded to shape and all you have to do is paint them and glue them in place. Better to wait and see what arrives than going off half cock and buying stuff you really did not have to buy, because it is all provided in the kit. Richard

So far as I am aware, the Black Pearl was not a real pirate ship, but follows the film series of that name. I have large scale warships plans of that era, but anyone building from plans would have to have some idea how to go about it. The ratlines and rigging put me off any sort of sailing warship - perhaps a plastic kit is best with pre moulded parts. Richard

My father and I never got along and I don't have any fond memories of him, nor for that matter, my mother. However, he used to tell stories of his war, when his friends came to visit and since "children should be seen, but not heard", I listened and remembered much of the stories he told them. My father spent much of his free time on the upper deck, because he used to say that HMS Tracker rolled like a stuck pig in the heavy arctic seas and the men below decks used to roll from side to side along with their sick. There was a walkway around the ship, just below the flight deck and anyone on it always had to keep an eye out for approaching landing aircraft downwind, because landing aircraft always flew into the wind and the ship manouvered that way to assist with landing, because if crew did not duck, they could be knocked off the walkway and into the sea by a passing aircraft wing. One day he was on the walkway and a young man was up there and a plane came in which this fella did not see and he toppled off the walkway and into the sea. My father yelled out "Man Overboard" and threw the bloke a lifebelt, however the Captain said "another deserter" and HMS Tracker carried on, because, as I mentioned before, a ship could not stop to pickup crew, because of the possibility of attack by a U-Boat on a stationary target - and anyway the fella would have died of exposure within 2 minutes or so, in the sea anyway, so rescue was an improbability at best. Another time, my father was on the flight deck when he saw a group of men looking over the side and pointing to something in the sea. He wandered over out of curiosity and to his horror saw 2 torpedoes moving through the sea towards his ship. My father ran his hands through his hair and all of his hair fell out of his head in sheer fright. He always called his bald head a "flies skating rink". His ship, HMS Tracker heeled over to one side to try and manouveur out of the way of the torpedoes, however they must have been fired at HMS Tracker from a long range shot and ran out of speed before they reached the hull of his ship and sank instead. My father said aircrews and their aircraft were loaded at each port of call and by the time HMS Tracker reached its destination port, all of the aircrew and their aircraft were lost and a new batch of aircrew and their aircraft were loaded for the return trip, with the same results. My father said that after HMS Tracker, he was stationed at an airfield, over on the New South Wales side of Aussie and when the war ended, the aircrews flew their aircraft from the carriers and landed them higgledy piggledy around the airfield, jumped off their aircraft and walked over to the demob place, to be quickly repatriated to England so that they could return to Civvy life. My father was a Career "Erk", so he was always going to remain in the RAF, however he retired a Squadron Leader (Mechanic) and was working on Bloodhounds then and took a Golden Handshake when he was about 50 years old. He died of Cancer when he was 75. The aircraft carriers were covered in asbestos, probably because of the fire safety that asbestos gave and my father blamed his Cancer on the asbestos lining in HMS Tracker, as the cause for his disease and eventual death, 3 months after he was first diagnosed. At the RAF airfield, above, my father and other mechanics, moved the aircraft to hangars, where each aircraft was completely overhauled and then flown back to the aircraft carriers, where they were moored offshore and then the aircraft were pushed or bulldozed over the side, into the watery depths, because all of the aircraft were US lend lease and had to be discarded at the end of the war. Bearing in mind the aircraft were made of aluminium, I would imagine that the flights of abandoned aircraft, are still complete to a degree on the sea bed and probably quite possibly restorable if they could be recovered and in fact, I seem to remember reading about some of these aircraft which were found a few years ago in fishermens nets and there was talk of bringing them back to the surface and restoring them, although I don't know if anything ever happened. I seem to recall the Americans also had a lot of M4 Sherman tanks to dispose of and pushed those overboard by their hundreds, but I don't know where and then there is the aircraft graveyard in Arizona I think, where abandoned aircraft remain, back to WW2 I believe and the ships and warships which are laid up somewhere in America against a future war and where the Might Mo (Missouri) is kept, when it is not in commission. My father used to be on the Bloodhound display, down at Farnborough, some years, when I lived and worked in London, prior to 1974 when I left England for New Zealand and I used to go down to Farnborough, because my father was there and got free tickets for myself and my friend, whoever that was, back then. My father used to arrange for me and my friend to go up in the "display" passenger aircraft. These aircraft, with a full load of passengers, would rev its engines to full then launch itself down the runway as quickly as possible, shoot up into the sky, suddenly it would tip to the right, so that we would be looking at the ground below out of the windows , then bank quickly over to the left, ditto and then the pilot flung the aircraft down onto the runway and stopped it as quickly as possible, all within about 5 minutes. burst tyres were not uncommon. Back then, Russia was still the enemy and enemy agents used to hang around the Bloodhound displays, trying to take pix of my father and the other officers and crew working on the displays - my father used to point them out to me and whenever he saw one trying to take his picture, he turned his back on them. I would never have been able to visit a Communist Country, because I could have been snatched by the Security Services and used as a pawn to get my father to leak secrets to the enemy - I doubt if my father would have complied, anyway, because it was made clear to me from the outset, the condom broke and I was the result of the unwanted pregnancy my mother had. As the old saying goes, that is another story. Whilst my father was working on the aircraft bases, from time to time a siren would sound and my father used to run to an underground silo somewhere within the base, as the siren meant a 15 minute gap before the first nuclear missiles arrived from Russia and blew us all away. After a tense wait of an hour or so, another siren would sound and this was the all clear, to confirm it was another practice run - after a while we (the unprotected) all became used to the sirens and tended to ignore them and the nuclear attacks never eventuated as we all know, although the Cuban Missile Crisis was as near as it ever got to all out nuclear war. Found my fathers HMS Tracker pix and will post them here, once I've taken digital pix of them - if anyone wants to refer them on to historical sites, please do so with my pleasure. I will take some pix of my father's medals. I have no idea what they mean, so if someone out there has any idea, I would appreciate a heads up. Richard

Hi Mike, I have large completed card warships which I can separate at the waterline which will show my building technique and which I can clarify further, if required - the waterline or boot strap is the easiest place to hide the join, in what otherwise looks like a solid hull, especially if I make the hull an R/C model and seal the halves with silicon rubber......charging the internal batteries via a concealed charging point on the upper hull somewhere in the superstructure. If I can locate the book I wrote on shipbuilding a card model, but never published, everything is explained clearly there and if you build a model - I think I used the US Dynamite Cruiser plans as my construction base - I'm more than happy to provide that book as a freebie to anyone who wants to use it as a guide, to building their own card models. Richard

No, I'm not into aircraft, collecting plans and card kits, yes, but building them, no - also whilst I have some free space area, big planes and the dimensions of those, is a put off for me, irrespective of how finely detailed I can make them Richard

Read somewhere these planes were regarded as a flying fuel tank with a reputation for blowing up in the air - all it took was a spark. Think I've got a 1/33 scale card kit in digital format of one of those. Richard