Eric Mc

I'm always fiddling with something at the bench. It's finishing that's the problem.

When I was a keen plane spotter in the mid 1970s, there were still plenty of early generation jet airliners still in service - although by then many of them had been offloaded by their original users and were now being flown by charter and 3rd level operators. One of these airlines was Air Spain who were an early player in the charter market and were regular sights at British (and Irish) airports taking holidaymakers to sunshine destinations such as Spain or Tenerife. Air Spain was an early casualty of the rocketing oil prices that scuppered so many of these 1970s charter airlines and went bust in early 1975. Indeed, these 1st generation turbojet powered airliners were themselves nearly all gone by the early 1980s as their operating economics just didn't make sense by that time. The Revell kit is very old with Scalemates showing the original release as 1959. It would have been a "box scale" kit at the time but, for once this isn't too much of an issue. The "scale" of 1/143 is pretty close to what later became the more common airliner scale of 1/144. So it won't look too out of place lined up against an Airfix 707 or VC-10. The version I am (re) building is from an early 1990s issue from Revell's Mexican affiliate, Lodela. I bought, and built, this actual kit back then. It was originally finished using a set of decals for the Eastern Airlines Golden Jet livery. It looked very attractive at the time but after about 30 years sitting on a shelf gathering dust it wasn't looking its best. Rather than junk what was a perfectly complete but fairly rare model, I decided to strip it back, update it where necessary, and repaint it in the colours of Air Spain. I was able to obtain a nice set of resin Pratt & Whitney JT4 turbojets from F-RSIN. I really needed these because, even though the original Revell engines are perfectly presentable, they don't feature the moveable noise reduction "rings" which were a unique feature of these early DC-8s. Revell were not wrong. When they released the kit back in 1959, the few DC-8s flying weren't yet fitted with these devices. So, if you wanted to depict one of these early DC-8s as they looked later in their careers. they are essential. Here are some pics of the project - The first picture shows the model in the process of being stripped back. At this stage the original Revell engines were still fitted. These are the F-RSIN engines with their rings - The 2-6 decal sheet I will be using - The new engines (minus the rings) have been added, the fuselage and wings stripped, sanded, filled and primed ready for the next stage. Getting the resin engines and their pylons to fit properly and blend in with the wings was quite time consuming

That looks very nice.

Very nice. It may not be an absolutely state of the art tooling but it looks a lot better than the old Hasegawa version - which lacks the cannon exhaust grating that is so prominent on the port side nose of the F-105..

Reusability comes with its own set of limitations and, at the moment, with the exception of the Falcon 9 and the 1st stage of Starship, is not in general use yet. There is still life left in non reusable systems for a while. The problem with SLS is that it has arrived WAY later than originally envisaged so I think will have a service life of less than ten years. Hopefully, it will manage to achieve some of the programme aims - assuming the programme aims stop chopping and changing.

Lovely. I have a few of these to build. I actually saw (and heard) a REAL Aztec fly over only a few days ago. They are getting a bit rare these days.

Lovely rendition. And really nice to see a Battle that really looks like a Battle.

So the Airfix one seems a bit more expensive.

Watched Episode 1 the other night. Decent story - but certainly the chaps could do with sorting their haircuts out. Otherwise, worth a watch. When I last saw it back in 1972/73, we only had a black and white TV set. So watching the episode the other night was the first time I'd seen it in colour.

How much is the Airfix one going to cost?

Where I am this morning. Got the fuselage and SOME of the wings together along with the front engine cowling. Also, a bit of filling and sanding carried out. I won't bother having a rotating prop so the cowling could go on earlier in the build sequence than Airfix say in the instructions. It wasn't a great fit so getting it on early allowed me to fill the gaps.

It's an out of the box build with minimal modification.

Bought this not too long ago. It's the Airfix Vintage Classic release of their Fokker Dr1 v' Bristol F2B "Dogfight Double" - originally issued in the 1960s. The kits inside the box are even older as the Fokker and Bristol were both originally issued in 1957 (per Scalemates). So, as you can imagine, they aren't the most up to date or accurate toolings around. However, as most kits of that era, they are fairly simple and basic and don't contain too many parts. This applies to the Fokker in particular. So, that's the one I've started on. It has the added bonus in that it doesn't have too much in the way of rigging. Anthony Fokker was a very clever chap in that he used cantilevered box structures to provide strength and stiffness to his designs rather than relying on canvas, wood and wires. The cockpit is barren of any detail whatsoever so I will just fill it with the pilot, Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen himself.

It would be great if Airfix did acquire the Horizon moulds - not holding my breath though.

Looking forward to this. One SLS has already flown, mostly successfully too. However, the project is progressing slowly and is always in danger of cancellation by incoming Presidents. So far, since its inception as Constellation 20 years ago, it has survived four Presidents (Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden) so maybe there is enough momentum to get to at least a few launches. I think it is a brave move by Airfix and I will definitely acquire at least one.

That would be a blow. Really looking forward to seeing the kit - if not the real thing.

Always impressive.

Looks lovely. Matchbox small scale armour is very fetching - especially with the diorama bases they provided.

I've currently got a couple of 1/76 Revell (ex-Matchbox) French tanks on the bench. I don't have much modelling time at the moment so it will be a few weeks before I get back to them.

I'm not really an AFV person and I don't know a huge amount about them but now and then I like to bash together a simple small scale tank or truck. I find them a great antidote to more complex aircraft or spacecraft kits that I usually build.

Looks good despite the difficulties.

Absolutely gorgeous

Gorgeous.

Apollo 15 was the first time the Lunar Module liftoff was shown live. As I explained above, it was possible because they could mount the camera on the Lunar Rover and use the rover's batteries to power the camera. The rover also had its own S Band transmission antenna (the umbrella type object on the front of the rover) which meant it could transmit images directly from the rover, independent of the tripod mounted dish plugged into the Lunar Module used on Apollos 11 to 14. Previous TV cameras also depended on getting their power from the Lunar Module's batteries - so could not be used when the Lunar Module was in the process of lifting off. The camera was on a motorised pan and tilt head which could be operated by a joystick being used by a controller back at Houston. As has been said, due to the 1.5 second time delay, timing the movement of the camera was difficult, especially when trying to capture a quick moving event like a Lunar Module lift off. Apollo 15's Lunar Rover was low on battery power at the end of the mission so it was decided to not try to follow the Lunar Module upwards due to lack of power. It wasn't until the last mission, Apollo 17, that the camera operator got the timing spot on and was able to follow the Lunar Module Ascent Stage for a good proportion of its vertical climb from the surface.

You didn't miss much to be fair. There was no TV footage of the actual Apollo 11 Lunar Module lift off because at that stage in the Apollo programme they didn't have the ability to broadcast live TV during lift off. The TV images shown during Apollo 11's lunar lift off would have been a live shot of the controllers at Houston sitting at their consoles and the audio from the radio communications. Live TV coverage of the Lunar Module taking off had to wait until Apollo 15 two years later. Because Apollo 15 had a Lunar Rover, the TV camera on the rover was aimed at the Lunar Module and captured the take off live. This was also done for Apollo 16 and 17.