Paul821

I don't know how common the overflying of disused bases is, but every now and then we get an Herc' (now gone) or a400 Atlas flying over Wethersfield. They tend to fly over local villages at very low altitude which leads to various uninformed comments on village Facebook pages, Such as "it just missed our chimney"

Thanks @Mjwomack for your post with suitable subjects and being co-host My favourite to add to the list are buildings, which would certainly be part of my contribution if this passes the stages needed to become a GB. Don't forget that Ford's at Dagenham falls within the area. Please don't forget the 9th AF who were present in Essex As you could see RAF Wittering from the road, I think's its allowed (actually as Host I make the rules so it is allowed!). Also Harriers used Sculthorpe in Norfolk for training purposes

Looks like on of my possible builds for next year's Frog Squad GB may now not occur. I'm just starting on a 1944/45 Luftwaffe intruders build of types seem over East Anglia in thaperiod and a Me410,is certainly on that list so this fits the bill. As to Airfix'snew policy of announcing kits when they are ready for sale is good in my view and takes me back to the 1960's when the first news would be the announcement in Airfix Magazine.

17/11/2023 - A couple of new recruits this week - Thanks. @Toryu has been asked to review his offering. It maybe because I am located there but it seems to me that we have a number of members who either live in the East of England or model subjects from the area. So my proposal for a 2025 GB is for models of subjects that have some link with the East of England. Area: England north of the Thames and south of the Humber and East of the A1/Great Northern main line Subjects: Anything that has a proven link with the area, Note for aircraft etc.. the markings must be correct for the region. Other rules are per other GB's So any takers? Yes - 6 7 9 @Paul821 Host @Mjwomack co-host @Chrisj2003 @vppelt68 @theplasticsurgeon @PLC1966 7 @Jabba 8, @John Masters 9. @rafalbert 10. @CliffB 11. @Ray S

Please do vote for this one as I have an entire train of animal themed wagons ready to build. See this list for how many creatures are on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Western_Railway_telegraphic_codes

I know the wizest minds on Britmodeller are currently working on plans for 2024 via the bunfight and it's bloody outcome but I foresee an issue for 2025. We may have a number of overlapping proposals in the months to come all focusing on the end of WW2. I feel it's worth discussing this early before threads proposing such possible overlaps start appearing.

I was going to reply but others got there first. However I am taking a Remembrance Day service in a village close to Ridgewell in the 12th November so I will try to remember to pop into the 381st Museum on the way home (as it's their last open day in 2023) and make some enquires. My copy cost me £5 on a charity stall at Clacton Airshow some years ago I read it and then resold it for slightly! more. It's excellent as a book about people at war but most of the reference points are covered in other books. Perhaps @danbuoy might be able to get round to some modelling if we stop interrupting.

Thank you @FalconFan24 for posting this video. I have had a long term phobia of using my air brush. I have put in an order today for flow improver and retarder and will try to follow your advice.

After the OK from @Enzo the Magnificent to include further stages of my Never Ending Diorama in KUTA I thought I would start with a shelf of shame item. These should be part of a street scene in the aftermath of an air raid. The two buildings were given to me and still show some of the original painting. Apart from removing the garage on the right hand building and demolishing part of the other one - little work has been carried out.

Set this thread to follow - not so much for the build but for the general chat about the 8th Air Force. I volunteered on a coupe of tasks during the 8th in the East project a few years ago. Unfortunately their domain name seems to have been taken over by a Turkish web-site but it did contain some valuable resources. I did actually start the build of a P-47 (42-8442) as this was the assembly monitor for the 481st and Ridgewell is one of three airfields close to my house. One of the aviation highlights of this year as a P-47 flying over our house on it's way from Duxford.

As my has been an armchair modelling exercise for nearly 40 years it really does need a KUTA but including that in this GB would not be right and it certainly would not be finished by February. However there are a number of elements of the build which are certainly sitting on the shelf of shame so do qualify. Therefore I expect there will be one or more entries from me. However I must not get distracted from my current builds otherwise they will be candidates for next years KUTA.

Which did appear on the Southern Region working the Waterloo - Exeter services. These were then replaced by the Class 50 diesel electric locomotives some of which gained the Warship names. I was travelling with a work colleague to a meeting in Basingstoke and as we left Waterloo we passed "Rodney" on the stabling point. At that time his son was into Thomas the Tank Engine and he was convinced that Rodney was one of Thomas's friends and could not wait to get home to tell his son. Although the railway scenes were filmed at Weybourne Station on the North Norfolk Railway which is part of the Midland & great Northern Railway not the GER. At the time of the writing of Dad's Army people were still aware that if you were in the front couple of compartments, with the window open, on a train that picked up water from a trough there you would get a soaking, There's probably where the joke came from. I'm not a great fan of the various shades of Southern green which tended to turn me off Southern loco's in general. I dii spend some time in 2010 working on the NNR when King Arthur Class (N15) "Sir Lamiel" no:30777 was present and that loco in BR green impressed me.

Great another excuse for wish lists that can be ignored. Before I leave haven't Airfix now adopted a rolling programme of releases as per SRN1, Black buck Vulcan and Sea King? At that rate we could have more unexpected releases in 2023.

I must come to the defence of trains. There are many manufacturers, such as Dapol (ex Kitmaster/Airfix) and Revell who make injection moulded loco's that could be displayed on a shelf or in a very small diorama akin to your generic model runway.. As to the layouts needing lots of space. Take a look at: https://micromodelrailwaydispatch.com/ and there are plenty of layouts in A4 box files.

I can recognise myself in many of the earlier posts, a child of the 1950's bought up reading the Victor etc.. But my father was a modeller of buildings both in card (Mircomodellor) and plywood. My earliest memory of modelling myself was constructing scenery for my model railway and farm, Dinky toys and Britain's lead figures. Why did I move towards planes and AFV''s? Mainly space and availability it's only in the last year that I now have the space for my long planned representation of wartime rural East Anglia. As to availability in my peak building period Airfix and Matchbox were churning out kits faster that I could build them. In my new project there are trains.planes and AFV's but they will not be the main focus it will be the scenery and buildings.But the second element, availability, has not been addressed outside of die cast and increasingly expensive white metal kits there is little available, in 1/72 or 1/76 for the general vehicles such as farm machinery carts etc. Even Airfix re issuing their farm animals would be a help.

The next stage was to start ballasting. Up until now I have used washing up liquid to improve the flow of the diluted PVA glue. I recently read about putting drops of IPA on the ballast first so tried that. The ballast was put in place using an old strainer and after the IPA was applied the entire trackbed was subject tot he dilute PVA glue and I was happy with the outcome. As I wanted to experiment during the build the sidings were to be in the form of hard standings made from Scalescenes papers. The surrounding level as built up using some expanded poly' from the packaging from a freezer that we had recently purchased. The fence was placed there to be measured for a future step. Lastly for this update the ground level at the rear was built up using yet more freezer packaging and cereal packet. I could not resist placing some AFV;s and Nissen huts on the layout. And here we have the biggest failure in the build to date. I have an amount of air dried modelling clay which I decided to use for field at the front. Firstly it would not adhere to the base and then as it dried large cracks appeared which need covering in plaster.

As others have said it's not always the modelling that causes the hiatus it can be other things in your life. So look at the whole picture. My return to modelling this year has required two approaches: 1) To identify those things that bother me and remove them. In my case these included using an air-brush and kits with PE in them. My failures in this area can be seen in a couple of GB's earlier in the year. 2) I set myself the task of a diorama that took me through a number of stages of difficulty. I that way I could address various elements: scenery, simple model build etc.. Is an interesting comment and obviously down to individuals as @ckw said. In general I find that Britmodeller contributors are extremely positive and helpful. In addition most people will forget who they commented on which sometimes can be useful. Having some form of support can be very useful I am lucky in having an LMS who where the owner when he is is not too busy is happy to chat over issues. In my case on one occasion I got a tutorial on cleaning my airbrush with no pressure to purchase anything, As the gambling adverts say "when the fun stops, stop" modelling is only a hobby and during those times it is not fun I have found other activities.

One aim on this diorama was to improve on my previous attempts at track laying and ballasting So the first step was to cut the track bed from foamboard and lay it out. At each stage I re-laid the track and tested. The entire board was then sprayed with, the pre tested, Halfords undercoat. Also a fiddle stick was added to hold the old style Peco loco lift. This would be long enough to hold the engine and two wagons that the track layout could handle. The next stage was to add two Peco point motors and test again. This was where the only expense to date was incurred as even a 14v AC supply does not deliver enough power to reliably so I purchased a CDU off Amazon which worked fine. As I currently have a free Amazon Prime account it was delivered within 16 hours of ordering. Next I will work on the ballast.

I really enjoyed the last Frog Squad GB but exhausted most of the I remembered from years past so am unlikely to join next year unless I come into a fortune and can afford to purchase one of these. https://www.scalemates.com/kits/frog-f128-r-100-airship-with-mooring-mast--162676

Although I have a number of wooden baseboard units ready for this project my starting point was this: An A1 sheet of 5mm foam.board Having used this before I am aware of the big issues regarding this medium.1) Warping, 2) the surface can be affected by certain glues and paints. 3) The need to use a sharp blade to avoid tearing and 4) Cutting to a 90 degree angle. So even before setting off I used a small off cut to test out the paints and glues that I intended to use. Following the success of that I then started bracing the main sheet. There was no particular science applied here as the braces were the width of the ruler I used for cutting. The full cross sections were evenly placed but the diagonal braces tended to be the size I cut them to. Anyway the final outcome seemed to be strong enough. After a few iterations the track layout was a simple shunting puzzle. which was wired up and tested.

Various circumstances seemed to stop me modelling during the summer. Some was modelling fatigue in that I have worked on a number of “group builds” as above but also the size of the task I had set myself in the never ending diorama (NED) of the railways during the Second World War on the home front. Although the overall concept remained sound to me the execution seemed to have too many pitfalls. Everything was on hold until Rails of Sheffield has this on offer. The Bachmann Warflat with tank. When it arrived I quickly resolved to build a suitable element of the NED to display it. The two criteria I set myself were a) that all the elements would come from item I already had stored somewhere. And b) that I would try out different modelling techniques during the build. As it turned out some worked and some didn’t The other criteria was that I would not post the build until it had reached at least 80% completion. In the past I have been as guilty as others in starting to document a build on a forum only for it to complete. So I will post this as a series of instalments rather than the end product.

There's only HE in sHEd no HER

I know @Enzo the Magnificent has requested that consideration is given to putting proposals on hold due to the number currently in the bunfight. For me there aren't many possible GB's to vote for so... Put my name done for this one as I loved the Airfix Magazine conversion articles in the 60's and have a number of soft skinned vehicles I could do. I would also support the 25% rule applying to the conversation element of the build as I have a few donor chassis/cabs available.

When I first read that line I thought you were having to walk backwards and being of a certain age this came to mind: Good to hear you continue on your recovery path.

Having built most of the Airfix tanks when they first appeared in plastic bags I recall that the instructions suggested you used the staples from the header to join the tracks.