TheBaron

Cheers G. Time to move on from that region methinks! Merci on both counts Ced. Clearly he is still a long way from picking up one of these Bill.... Ooohh you're a subtle one H! That took a few minutes for the penny to drop. That must be a male rite of passage Keith as there was an Annie for me too (from Scotland whom I worshipped from afar....) We're talking trains aren't we Pheonix? Even better! *In Dalek voice* AVIATE! AVIATE!!!! Forgot to bring the adapter home from work with me tonight so laptop battery running on electron-fumes, let's hope this gets out as not a long entry. I got to work on the sunshield for the nose thermometer earlier: an odd-looking rectangular panel on the port side of the nose. Started out as some 0.1mm sheet curved in the rolling rig: Thence some scrap sheet and rod soldered-on to start building up the required structural detail: This ugliness was then ground and filed down to something much more approaching the actuality in terms of shape and thickness: A quick test-fit: The sunshield still looks a bit wide in these photos tbh so I'll give that some further action with the needle file next time; in terms of depth thoughit looks ok when seen from the front: The connection from the top it loops inward but I'll adjust that for size and angle once the shaping of the part is finished. Thanks for looking in! Tony

Almost Roger! (That's if I can stop discovering detail that can't be lived without....) Thanks on both counts Pete: you're a diamond geezer. Thanks Ced. Yes - you're right! Experience has taught me that that sleeping on a problem is often a short-cut that the conscious mind is too logical for. You're quite right to ask Giorgio. There's meant to be a *slight* discontinuity in that region where there's a semi-circular plate that acts as a fulcrum for the rudder to rotate on, buuuuut...at this scale that structural change shouldn't look like a dent as you point out so I've remedied that now with a smear of Humbrol filler: Just time for a vintage British Rail sandwich then! Waverly Station, Edinburgh. Just out of shot in that photo above is a young @hendie turning a cruet set into a Wessex engine... Beautiful. Always love to see your photos Benedikt. Love the melancholy biomechanik feel to this mixture of natural and the man-made: Glad to hear your mum's health has picked up. The landscape where we are in Connacht one of the main native trees is hawthorn like these that in winter look like ink spilt across the Western skies at dusk: Caspar David Friedrich would have had a field day here with all those gnarly forms against winter skies I reckon... In high summer, rapid heating of the air near the Atlantic wrings lace from blue skies. Soon the only green will be ivy on the hawthorn's arms: Whilst I was remedying the flawed rudder, I also took the opportunity to use some CA/flour to reinstate a properly 'sharp' apex to the back of tail above the rear light. The fairing for this needed to be sharper and more blade-like both vertically and horizontally at the terminus: Still in repairing mode,I wiped some PPP around the tail surfaces: You can see how badly battered Annie has gotten in places with all the modifications to her over time but just gently rubbing the excess PPP away with a moistened finger I find lets you feel as well see when a surface has reached the required uniformity. I'll have to go over the whole aircraft like this before priming of course as it never ceases to astonish me how much I overlook such matters when engaged on other tasks.... Hope your weeks have gotten off to a good start mes braves. Tony

Is thankfully now a past disaster Bill. You knew I wouldn't settle today until it was put right didn't you? Quite. That's what I meant to say of course H! 'From tiny acorns do great butterflies emerge' as the genetically-modified saying goes... Entered the kitchen after posting that last update Ian to find momma cat up on the worktop and poised to strike over the joint of smoked ham I'd been slow cooking for lunch overnight, whilst four of her offspring sat in a circle on the floor around her in expectation that Operation Joint Endeavour was about to commence. Reckon 5 minutes later and it would have been five well-fed moggies, a very hungry Baron and some uncharitable expletives.... Dear friend, how could one fail to with the unflagging encouragement at such times on this site. The Iceman Cometh! Amazing how a good lunch and afternoon nap can put a different perspective on a Sunday afternoon. Been drizzling all day here and for the first day you see the tinge of Autumn in the birch leaves (which are usually the first of the trees in the garden to tell of summer's passing. Seemed like a good time to return to the site of the ealier crimes against construction and rectify matters: Not a plectrum and electrical resistor but the repaired trailing edge of the rudder and a revised plan for the trim tab actuator. The flour/CA matrix hasn't failed me yet for repairs of that kind on thin cross sections and withstood sanding, scribing and drilling with fortitude. The decision to switch over from EZ line to a thin fuse wire was a confluence of factors relating to both the difficulty of threading the elasticated line through a 0.4mm opening as well as concerns over snapping it during painting later. Once the actuator was glued into place: - the wire threaded through and pulled taught beautifully: Fixing the forward ends of the wire tightly into place and at the required angles was accomplished by popping a drip of Rocket Hot into the hole in the rudder through which they thread and then keeping the excess pulled taught on either side with small pliers whilst the CA curred. A further blob of Rocket Max into the hole on either side to fill and strengthen and then a little work with a needle file to tidy away any excess glue around the cable runs: Not an exact replica of the Anson trim actuator but to do so would mean having something so fragile that even in brass it would readily break when lightly brushed; this should however express the structure adequately when painted and viewed at this scale. In many photographs of Annie you barely notice it but that's never a reason for not trying in my book. Rear aspect looks ok: - and with all the added brass gubbins for hinges and so forth, I'm calling the rudder finished at this point: It's been safely tucked away in its own compartment in the bits box for the build now lest I cause any further damage prior to painting. Always nice to end on a positive note. Tony

Also lethal! (see below) I've long ago given up on the idea of normality Keith: there is only variety.... Pity it's just a different memory now Johnny. Sorry tale follows.... The Proops crowd are the modelling equivalent of a pub lock-in for me Ced. Seldom leave the site without it turning into a long session.... Thanks Giorgio. Though the Fates have been at work this morning! Thanks Ian. I've also done a special demonstration in what not to do with the tool for the benefit of readers.... The morning started with a fair wind for France as it were in that I had a decent plan for making the rudder hinges. These are small and nestle into recess in the rudder but not so much that their absence wouldn't detract from a sense of structural realism. At 1/72 they're too small and delicate to cut the shapes for and then mate successfully so as on many occasions in the past I cribbed from the elegant logic that @hendie brings to such engineering problems and initially fabricated these from larger pieces for steadiness and accuracy of assembly: Basically I cut a couple of notches into 0.8mm tubing and then soldered some flattened 0.6mm tubing securely into place for the hinge pivots. Once cut down and fixed into place these provide a basic expression of structure for those notches in the rudder: Most pleased with progress at that point I subconsciously decided to make finishing the rudder more challenging by promptly dropping the ring vice on to the floor from a height whilst trying to tension and glue the trim tab cables into alignment: As you can see it all hit the ground with all the inertia of a stick grenade and landed straight onto the trailing edge (the modelling equivalent of butter-side-down), the extra weight of the vice ensuring that this was comprehensively bashed flat. Things could clearly have been worse if it had landed and knocked off all of the mass balance assembly for example but nonetheless this has set back plans today. I've begun repairs with CA/flour along the trailing edge: - and if mojo picks up later I may have at that with the Dremel and files. Scoring the trim tab outline into the CA/flour matrix might not be easy though, but we'll face that task when we come to it: another piece of research under the belt if nothing else. Off to try and make the Sunday lunch now without dropping any of that on the floor. Laters I will catch you. Tony

Tricky. Those 'several dimensions at once' problems always give me nightmares Bill and ye dreaded 'spring' is no friend to the yearning modeller. Is that brass thick enough to be annealed in order to make it more liable not to spring-back after shaping?

Hope you hade a great birthday Terry.

That island is a feast for the eyes Crisp: the amount of positive and negative detail you've squeezed into such a small region is utterly compelling. You won't regret that PE rolling set. I've a non-posh version and find it invaluable for curvature of all kinds. He's not wrong you know. Any excess solder is impressively easy to spruce up with a file and W& D to a final polish should the need arise.

'Dorset man in outstanding bandstand saraband.' Superb Terry.

Pleasant purposeful painting and steadfast solid soldering Ian - nice catching up with progress on this as always. I've a Revell boxing of one of these I hope to build as a balloon-cutter one day.

Lovely catching up here Giorgio. You're well on top of this. Watched one of these in RAF colours drifting around in the cirrus above Lyme Bay at the start of the summer and amazed at how quickly it would appear and disappear from view against differing backgrounds, even when watching intently through binoculars.

Stop showing us your gun bay. I'll never get anywhere near as good a look as that! Beautiful pigment work all round Johnny - a joy to behold and to aspire to oneself.

I might be in love with those seats Bill. Superb work mon brave. Basically a mail-order tyre dump! (Just need somebody in the brass business to send me a scrapyard in box form too...)

You have been proceeding apace on this zooming piece of noir Ced. Curious about what paint you'll use for that anthracite-like finish.

Keith & Terry - my thanks to you both lads. The vertigo seems to have stemmed from a deep sinus infection that got embedded butafter 10 days on the antibiots am feeling resurrected. Made for a hard week at work but glad it's over now. I know what you mean! I guess like many people there's this section of my consciousness that always sits to one side of an illness taking mental notes of all the shifts of consciousness and sensation involved. Even observing the feelings of pain, you're aware of just how many shades and gradations of intensity flow around the CNS. Back in modelling action today for the first time in what feels like ages Pheonix. Thanks for your thoughts. Kind of you Ced. Your bedside manner Johnny. It's.....not overly reassuring...... Thanks. I've missed you all muchly. *crowdsurfs into the audience* If you're referring to my mental state Steve then I should point out that we are conversing on Britmodeller where it's the norm to have an origjnal and innovative relationship to reality.... Vasectomy? The doctor didn't mention that as part of the treatment Giorgio! Cheers Roger. Nice one Ian. Father? is that you? Hope your mum is doing ok Benedikt. Thanks Adrian. Gosh. The pressure to perform is a terrible thing sometimes.... All mended now Simon bar feeling a bit tireder than usual. Hope you're keeping well yourself mate. Spent today out in the beautiful Autumn sunshine and zephyrs getting some physical therapy in the form of tidying up the vegetable patch part of the garden. We used to have a lot of raised beds but have had to bow to the inevitable lack of time we have for gardening these days and concentrate on just a greenhouse and polytunnel with a couple of herb beds thrown in for good measure. The greenhouse bricklaying all got finished and I managed to barrow in half the soil for the internal beds today. I'll top it off with compost from the two large heaps that we're going to relocate to a different part of the garden. The lads will have to erect the framework and install the glass for the greenhouse over their half-term (though they don't realize this yet) but it makes sense to fill the beds before this goes up. Making it seem like some kind of country mansion here but it's only a standard size for a site here in the W. of Ireland of half an acre. When we moved in in the early 2000s it was just a bare field of mud but now a decade and a half later, is a mature wildlife garden of fruit trees and native shrubs and relatively low-maintenance. Seems yonks since any progress on Annie but didn't dare go near her with the old vectors rotating for fear of damaging something. Earlier this evening though I got cracking on some more detailing of the rudder. Here's where I pencilled in the rib sections in order to work out where the trim tab goes: At this scale it isn't going to be a massively prominent detail so the tab outline was scored in lightly with a razor blade to keep the line thin. You can maybe discern in that rather disgracefully soft-focussed shot above a hole in both tab and rudder where the actuating arm and control line will go. Being an expert in damaging existing structures during this detailing part of a build, I'd invested in a jeweller's ring vice for holding pieces like the rudder when working on them: I'd seen them used in making rings and now find this indispensable for holding such awkward shapes without the danger of crushing fragile edges as a bench vice might. This one was only a few quid from Proops Bros. and hasn't lef tmy hand all evening, so useful is it. Notches for the rudder hinges cut out: I'll add some hinge detail into those recesses later from brass For the trim tab control I added some 0.5mm tubing for the actuator: - which was then cut to size and some EZ-line (fine) threaded through for the control cable: In the next session I'll tension and glue that line into place before crimping the tubing vertically with pliers to give a flatter appearance to the actuator. The actual one is a kind of bracket affair but It would be pushing luck too far at this scale to try and cut a notch out of 0.5mm tubing to replicate this - it would just buckle so this seems the best compromise. Sorry it's nothing more dramatic to return with but it'll take a while to build up stamina again. Hope your own builds are going well - I'll put aside some time tomorrow to catch up with you all individually. Nighty-night. Tony. PS. Beautiful Harvest moonrise here last evening. The sky an amber sea:

Vertigo. Been diagnosed with bloody vertigo of all things. Thought only San Francisco detectives got that sorta thing but there you go - no wonder had been feeling a bit 'off' the last fortnight or so. Medicated. Comfortable. Creeping tentatively through each day like a nauseous golem. Be back to u as soon as the planet stops swimming right round baby right round like a record baby right round. Thanks for all your kind words. Much appreciated from such a fine bunch of gentlemen.