Chewbacca

Your work is stunning Bob, don't let them get to you, don't give up. As someone who spent over 30 years at sea in the grey funnel line, I still have an interest in anything that floats (well, almost anything, don't get me started on sailing dinghies!). There is so much variety in the merchant fleets of the world. I've recent started my first ever merchant ship scratch build. Well, I say merchant ship, its HMS BULOLO which was requisitioned from the Burns Philp line in 1939 and converted first into an armed merchant cruiser and later into an amphibious headquarters ship. But fundamentally what I'm building could be painted grey to represent her as HMS (as she was when my father served on board) or white as MV. I wonder though if you have ever documented how you build your steamships? Not only is this my first "merchant ship" it's also my first scratchbuilt hull to which I'm just about to start adding the plating and I'm not entirely sure the best way to do it to get the complex curves around the bow and stern. Any tips gratefully received.

Missile command link aerial perhaps? Or was that housed in the radome on top of the bridge roof? Unfortunately my 2 Leanders were Sea Wolf and Exocet respectively so I have no great knowledge of Ikara. Interestingly I can't see a comparable structure on any images of BRISTOL when she had Ikara fitted. There's something there between the Ikara launcher and 4.5 but it looks somewhat different to this.

Well said that man, even if I was flying from one of the "targets". Still wish I'd been there the day that a certain Lynx Observer dropped 6 marine sound signals strapped together close to a German (I think) 205 or 206 that was at periscope depth. So close in fact that it landed in the fin and because the boat was so shallow, it did not go off...until the submarine dived deeper a short while later at which point I am led to believe there was an awful explosion and the submarine did an emergency surfacing. We shouldn't laugh because looking back it was extremely dangerous, but at the time... Didn't stop his career though, retired as a Rear Admiral

One thing to add to Crisp's excellent explanation of 182. They cost £125,000 each. I found that out when as quartedeck part of ship officer in HMS ALACRITY I landed our 2 182 bodies on the jetty while we were doing some maintenance. When we came to re-embark them, they had gone walkabout on the jetty, nowhere to be seen. In short someone had come along and taken them but to the best of my knowledge they were never found. I found out how much they cost because I had signed for them and the CO decided that as the responsible officer, I must be invited to pay for them and I was presented with a piece of paper known in the Navy as a "126" totalling £1/4M pounds for 2 182 bodies. Quite how he thought a Sub Lieutenant was going to pay for them I do not know but fortunately our Supply Officer had a far greater degree of common sense and wrote them off charge. Great work on both of these Leanders

I must confess you had me slightly worried for a minute when I read that at work Rich, thinking have I miscalculated when scaling the drawings but no she's 412 ft long which equates to 360 odd mm in 1/350 and having re-measured at home this evening the length is spot on. Panic over!

Thank you - my pleasure!

Thanks both

1914 Dennis Fire Engine finally complete. Full details here: Sorry about the background on this one - I thought it would be blurred and out of focus but modern cameras are too clever!

Finished! Not overly happy with the cobble street base. I tried a technique recommended here https://davidneat.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/model-making-basics-creating-surfaces/ after asking for advice in the Diorama forum on here, but it didn't quite work as instead of using a foam base, I made one from mdf covered with a skim of plaster of Paris. I made up a plasticard template to match a rectangular cobble from a photo of a Coventry street in 1912 to use instead of a fixative pipe, but after the first 3 or 4 presses into the plaster of Paris, the mould filled with the rapidly drying plaster and it was useless, so I simply pressed the now rectangular block into the plaster to try to create something vaguely reminiscent of a cobbled road. the result is almost a negative of what I was trying to achieve with indentations and raised edges. In slow time I will have another go but this time try a foam base. or bite the bullet and buy a pre-made resin example. Looking at these photos shows me that I also need to blow away some of the dust from the engine bay. Close up photographs show far more than the naked eye. But overall I am reasonably pleased with it. Mainly because it took me back to my Gran's living room in the late 1970s when I knocked this out in probably an afternoon but at least that had a working ladder, more than mine does now! it also goes some way to show what is achievable from these aged moulds with a bit of thought. It was also pleasing because both wife and daughters commented that it was nice to look at something in the cabinet that wasn't painted in ship's side grey or EDSG and sky. I've still got the 1910 omnibus to do from the same set so will look at that at some point in the future. Thanks to everyone who has helped, encouraged and set this GB up. On now to Pacific at War GB and a scratch built 1/350 HMS BULOLO (but back to ship's side grey again!) More photos in the gallery

Well the Dennis Fire Engine is close to completion for the Airfix Classic Years GB - just waiting on the paint to dry on the diorama base before declaring it complete and putting it in the gallery - so it was time to cut plastic on BULOLO, Started off with a couple of pieces of 1.5mm plasticard (60 thou) as the waterline - I only have A4 in that thickness. Cut to shape for the fore and aft ends and then join together with a doubler plate ensuring that the doubler sits clear of the frame locations. Then start work on the frames. The central ones are relatively straightforward having vertical sides so they are basically rectangles of plasticard 50.5mm x 18.5mm. Each frame has a brace to ensure that they remain perpendicular to the base. Either side of them it starts to get a little more tricky as of course I've got to get the correct shape of the hull - which at least as one approaches the bow have some fairly complex curves in there. You can see the first curved frame far right towards the stern. I'd forgotten how difficult it is to work in plasticard that thick as I usually use 10 thou, 20 thou at the extreme. So 3 weeks late in starting and 3 hours work completed.

Almost there - in fact if we still had the original deadline I could call this finished and get it in the gallery! The fire engine itself is complete save the final coat of Klear over the decals once they've dried. Just need to finish painting the crew figures (which should be done tomorrow) and make the diorama base which I looked at doing today but there was no way I was getting power tools outside in the rain we've had today to cut the MDF base! More photos to follow once everything is truly complete. Unfortunately, despite it being gloss paint with 3 coats of varnish and copious quantities of MicroSol, I still think the age of the decals means they are going to silver.

Simply stunning. I've got one of these (the Matchbox boxing) in the loft that I started in the late 70s and then stopped when I joined the Navy. There's a chap who exhibits at a lot of the local shows around our way who's done a cutaway version with full scratchbuilt interior and every time I see that I keep thinking I should I get it down and restart. But seeing this actually gives me more inspiration to get it down and see where I've got to and whether its worth trying to restart or just bite the bullet and buy a new one. Unfortunately its been up there for so long the box has started to deteriorate, its fallen over a couple of times and I'm sure many of the parts are missing. I've seen a build thread on another forum (ATF?) of someone who's building a 1/72 USS ENTERPRISE complete with full air group. But where do you put something that's nearly 5m long!

Matt, If you do that, don't forget that the hangar door is only 1/3 open during flying operations so there won't be much to see inside the hangar. There's a really good photo here (scroll down about halfway): https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/hms-queen-elizabeth-sails-for-the-united-states-heres-the-plan/ I had an email last night from my colleague who was WESTMINSTER's CO (shortly after this period I found out) and apparently he's taking the photos to work today to scan. He didn't think there were many significant differences between her upperdeck configuration between 1996 and when he took command in 1998; the main difference was they had fitted her command system!

Me too.

No, it was just one of those things. That failure could have happened at any other time and it would have caused no issue whatsoever. It was just bad luck on timing. I seem to remember that the CO was commended by the BOI for his handling of the situation.

Thanks everyone for your prompt responses. I really like those Fields of Glory bases but at the same time, given that I'm very familiar with working with Plaster of Paris for my usual seascape bases, I think my first attempt at this will be using the "fixative pipe" technique, but I will make the "pipe" from plasticard to represent a rectangular cobble. If that al fails, I can always turn to Fields of Glory as a fallback plan. I'll post some photos as I go.

Apologies if this has been raised previously but a search for cobbles, cobble and cobbled failed to come up with anything. Anyone have any suggestions/experience on how to best represent a cobbled street in 1/32 scale? Thanks

We'd completed a near text book fast back down with speed perfectly aligned and RAS points within about 5 feet of longitudinal separation of one another. The OOW ordered Half Ahead and the Bosun's Mate pushed the telegraph levers forward. Unfortunately his hand slipped and he inadvertently pushed the stbd lever into the Full Ahead position. He realised his mistake instantly and pulled it back to Half Ahead. The subsequent Board of Inquiry determined that it was in the wrong position for probably less than a second. But as he pulled it back, as luck would have it, that was the exact moment that the telegraph repeater relay failed and so although we had both engines Half Ahead of the bridge, in the MCR they were showing Full Ahead on the outboard shaft. And so with Full Ahead being an emergency order, the engineers did exactly what was asked of them and gave us maximum power on the stbd shaft. You can see exactly the point that that happened on the video at about 16 seconds when the large plume of smoke erupts from the stbd uptake

Thanks for that, Managed to finish the ladder last night after much swearing as the guide horns that allow the ladder to slide into the trolley kept falling off. And then I found out that despite fitting when I dryfitted them on their own, now they were attached to the ladder the fouled the guide rails. It's amazing how you don't spot mistakes until you photograph them. I finished the ladder quite late last night and took a couple of photos to post on here. despite having checked and double checked the work, it wasn't until I looked at the photo that I realised the angle of the top stays was different. The left stay correctly goes to the bottom ladder but the right stay in this photo incorrectly goes to the middle ladder. That has now been corrected.

Wow, you learn something everyday. I will have to get some and give them a try.

With hindsight, she was old and rusty when I was onboard in 1981! But as a first ship you didn't really have anything to compare it to. Guardrails are not easy, but WEM PE makes them possible. I remember as a teenager trying to add them from stretched sprue without any great success

Or even, dare I say it, 1/600! I could never understand why Airfix didn't do one in the late 70s when the TV series Sailor was attracting millions of viewers a week But I must say this looks really nice.

Difficult to tell from the photo even on a big monitor but even though she's at harbour stations and coming into harbour, she doesn't appear to have either Jackstaff or Ensign Staff rigged and I can't see her sea ensign on the stump mainmast so it's possible that the flag at the masthead could be the White Ensign.

You're indeed correct there. I think what made this scary was the fact that we were in a fjord so not really moving at all and then bang, over we went coupled with the sound of running water (which turned out to be the firemain which was breached on the port side by PRESERVER's anchor!). I think the damage is obligatory! Probably none. As far as I can recollect no pipes were made before we came around the other side and steadied up. I know talking to the poor chap who was the OOW and had the con for the RAS approach, who was an aviator chum of mine on board for 6 months to get his watchkeeping ticket, he said that the CO took the conscious decision not to hit the main broadcast alarm or pipe emergency stations as we were rolling around her bow because the risk of injury of people moving around the ship was greater than leaving it until things steadied up. With hindsight, it was a sensible call. Again, if I remember correctly we only had one casualty and that was the Leading Regulator who was on the wheel and who went into severe shock thinking it was his fault (which it wasn't, it was pure mechanical failure at just the wrong moment).

Which particular details are you looking for? I may not know the answer as the kit OOB represents FEARLESS as she was built in the early 60s and I served in her sister ship in 1981, but I can try if it helps.