Chewbacca

Acupuncture needles? Can you elaborate please Jamie why these are better than a pin or cocktail stick?

Well, it was 30 years ago last week that this happened (I meant to post it last Tuesday but ran out of time): Full video (shot from HNlMS ABRAHAM CRIJNSSEN who was in the waiting station waiting to come in on PRESERVER's port side once she'd finished that RAS) here: Most dramatic shake I ever got. I was the Flight Observer in PENELOPE and we'd been night flying the night before. I knew we were RASing that morning and so I knew the CO and XO would be busy on the bridge so I decided to have a lie in. Mistake! Woke up to find my cabin at about degrees and the sound of rushing water beneath me. One of these days I'm going to try to recreate that scene in 1/600 scale

I agree they do look good. Now all we need is 1/600...preferably with some in No8s as well

So the new lighting gas tank has been completed and fitted as have the headlights. All ladder sub-assemblies now painted and ready for assembly and then rigging. No parts are now left on the sprue so with a fair wind this should be complete this week without the figures. They might get done next weekend if I'm lucky. Finally found some very fine mesh (from a small netting bag that contained a wedge of lemon with a meal while we were on holiday!) so cut off the solid strainer end of the suction hose an made a new one from the mesh netting. First of all I soaked it in thinned down PVA and when that was dry it gave it sufficient strength to hold its shape when cut and folded. Its looking good so far but I still need to add the endplate and then paint.

Work has progressed though few updates. The kit dashboard is very simplistic and unrepresentative as I showed above in #22. So all of the detail was chiselled off and over the weeks I have been slowly scratchbuilding the various dials, switches and so on and printed some decals for the dial faces. That finally all came together this week: I've also now finished off the seat and got all of the brass fittings on the body. Ladders are base-coated with a light sand and I've spent some time this week topcoating with a thinned wash of Vallejo burnt umber. I did try the oil paint technique to replicate wood but it proved just too fiddly with the rungs all moulded in place to get an accurate representation so I opted for a simpler solution. Not sure yet if it will work. The gas tank that I also scratched in #22 was next to go on but although it was a perfect dry fit when I originally made it, I hadn't allowed for the mudguards/running boards. When I came to marry it all up the tank fouled the front mudguard and although I looked at whether I could modify it, in the end it was simpler to just start again and make another about 20% smaller. I'm waiting on the paint to dry and then that will go on. Neither the sidelights or the headlights are glazed and so the former were simply hollowed out some more with a Dremel to give a more representative outer shell thickness (still way too thick but better than the original) and then had a small disc of clear acetate glued over the front face. The headlights were slightly more complex as they had a separate front face so I had to drill out the centre leaving the outer ring and then sandwich the acetate between face and the main shell. Sidelights are now in situ (you can see the back of one of them in the photo above), the mounting yokes for the headlights are now drying and will be going on later today. More photos to follow later

Thanks everyone for your encouragement. Nothing like a bit of pressure! I tried to make a start last night to mark up the frames but the modelling area is just too cluttered at the moment to be working with large sheets of thick plasticard so I will have to finish off the Dennis Fire Engine for the Classic Airfix GB first. It's getting there and should be done in a couple of weeks so while on the downtime for that I will continue with the research for this and try to draw up other plans so that I have a running start when I do cut forst plastic.

I seem to recall that the 25 pdr in the IWM has an explanation of how it all worked but I'll be blowed if I can remember and I can't find any of the photos I took when I was last there

+1

Thank you.

Well this is going to be a challenge! For many years, I have wanted to build a model of HMS BULOLO. Originally built in 1938 by Clyde shipbuilders Barclay, Curle & Company Limited as MV BULOLO for the Philp Burns Line, a passenger/cargo/mail vessel operating between Sydney, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, she was taken up from trade in the weeks immediately following the outbreak of WW2 and converted to an Armed Merchant cruiser equipped with 6 inch and 3 inch guns plus a depth charges and a wide range of close range AA weapons. From January 1940 to March 1942 she operated on convoy protection duties between South Africa, South America and UK, based mainly out of Freetown in Sierra Leone. On sea trials in the Firth of Clyde, 1938 In March 1942 she was converted for a second time to an amphibious headquarters ship. The long range armament was stripped off and in its place went a complex communications array for land, air and maritime comms. This was an idea supposedly originated by the then head of Combined Operations, Commodore Mountbatten and after conversion, BULOLO deployed to the Mediterranean where she was employed coordinating the landings in North Africa, Sicily and Anzio. She returned to UK and was then prepared for Operation Overlord where she was the headquarters ship for Gold beach in Normandy. Entering Grand Harbour, Valetta. I presume this must be sometime in 1943. At a buoy in the Medway, I think just prior to Op Overlord After Normandy, BULOLO was updated yet again for operations in the Far East and in early 1945 deployed East of Suez with the Eastern Fleet, later to become part of the Sea East Asia Command flying the flag of Admiral Lord Mountbatten as Supreme Allied Commander. During this time BULOLO was the coordinating unit for the British operations in Malaya, Borneo, Burma and, most famously, the flagship at the Japanese surrender of Japan on 12th September 1945. She remained in the Far East until December 1946 when she returned to the UK and was decommissioned and handed back to Philp Burns Ltd in whose hands she did sterling service in the Pacific for 22 years. So why BULOLO? At the outbreak of WW2, my father was just finishing his apprenticeship as an electrical engineer working for one of the UK's leading suppliers of switchgear to enable power stations to keep the electricity flowing to industry and as such he was barred from military service because his skills were deemed to be a reserved occupation. He tried to join the Navy many time in the early years of the war and every time his employer successfully prevented it. Eventually, in late 1943, with the effects of the Luftwaffe diminishing, he was finally allowed to join up and after basic and some trade training, he passed out and owing to his experience was immediately promoted to Petty Officer Electrical Artificer, despite only being 21 years old. He joined BULOLO as she was preparing to deploy East of Suez and remained onboard until he was demobbed in December 46 when she returned to UK. At some point he was promoted to Chief Petty Officer. He also spoke fondly of his time in "the mob" and loved the time he spent in BULOLO. He would have liked to transfer to regular RN but his former bosses had already been pushing to get him back - after all there was still lots of electrical repair/replacement work across the country and they needed the people whom they had trained. He also spoke extremely highly of Lord Mountbatten. Incidentally there is another family connection in that his father helped to both build HMS KELLY (which of course was commanded by the then Captain Mountbatten) and rebuild her twice, firstly after she struck a mine near to the mouth of the Tyne and secondly after being torpedoed in Norwegian waters. And so the model, which is being built in tribute to my father who sadly is no longer with us. Well, there is no kit that I could find that even vaguely resembles her for conversion and precious little detail. There are a few photos of her in military service but not really enough to build from. I am indebted to fellow BMer David Swindell for pointing out that there is a 1/48 sale ship builder's model of her in the Glasgow Waterfront Museum and as I was up there on business a couple of months ago I was able to pop in and take some photos. It's in her "as built" civilian configuration and unfortunately was about 10 foot up in a display case so cracking photos of her keel but upperworks are a little hazy! I always do my ship models as waterline so the keel photos are not really needed. However, based on those photos and some generic merchant ship frame drawings I did manage to spend yesterday pulling some outline hull plans together so that I can start to at least get the hull moving forward. Although I have done a lot of conversion work in the past including some fairly extensive scratchbuilding of superstructures, I have never before attempted a full scratchbuilt ship. I did originally think I would go for my usual 1/600 scale but there appears to be a greater availability of generic merchant ship fittings in 1/350 from places like Northstar/Tom's Model Works so I'm going with that instead. Wish me luck!

I've got one in the stash but the last time I made one of these, when I was perhaps less anally retentive to detail that I am now, took six months; two years now, minimum. In any case the Pacific Theatre GB starts tomorrow andI'm commited to a scratch build in that of my old man's ship at the Japanese surrender in Singapore.

As a Sea Cadet we were affiliated to COURAGEOUS and went on board many times when she was in the refit complex in Chatham. I had no idea she was a museum - I'd assumed she was tied up with all of the other old SSNs waiting for someone to decide how to deal with the reactor. In fact my time spent on board her and talking to her ships company convinced me to become a submariner when I joined up and so on day 1 at BRNC as a spotty Midshipman I was a volunteer for SM. That stopped mid way through the first term when an O Boat came into the Dart for a few days day running and all those of us who were volunteers were offered the chance to go to sea. I was throwing up from the smell of the diesel before we go to the mouth of the Dart and became a Wafu instead.

A very good friend of mine was CO of WESTMINSTER in 96/97. I'll ping him an email to see if he has any photos of her from that time which might help. Good luck with it

And there was me thinking that a TVR radiator recore was expensive! Thanks for that. In the end I've gone with a blank inside face - there comes a point when some compromised have to be made to get things moving along (and I suspect my scratchbuilding skills would max out well before I got to trying to build the radiator core). So back on with this now that I've returned from leave

Sorry, been incommunicado for 2.5 weeks. Have been away on hols and hadn't realised that neither my phone nor tablet had my BM password stored so although I could read what everyone else was doing, I couldn't comment. Must crack on now with "Dennis" - I need to start drawing up some plans for the scratch build in the Pacific Theatre GB in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks Crisp. On reflection it was a bit of a dull question really!

Some seriously good PE work going on there. Interesting that you don't paint the base coat before adding the detail. My hand is nowhere near steady enough to paint around all that detail so I have to pait as I go. I'm looking forward to ANDROMEDA being released as I spent 7 months in her as a Sub Lt. I also hear rumour that Peter's working on BOXER as a future release.

Thanks. Not one I'd come across. That's probably my fault. I'm so used to referring to Batches because that's how modern ship classes are broken down. My apologies for causing confusion.

That's an interesting historical perspective on Anti-Ship Missile Defence (which is what this is now called) though not entirely accurate. As a former Electronic Warfare Instructor I used to teach this stuff. The Flight Global report is, shall we say, a little optimistic about what chaff was capable of in those days. The key thing is that the missile homing head on any active (or for that matter semi-active) missile cannot see the ships beam or waterline. All it sees is the radar cross section (RCS) which is greatest- the spike or flash - where there is the greatest radar reflection - probably those areas that are at 90 degrees to the incoming radar signal or areas where there is a natural 90 degree corner but it is to a degree relative to the radar wavelength. Look at any modern stealthy ship or aircraft and you will see that there are no 90 degree angles. By turning away from the incoming missile, Ian Inskip instantly removed the beam RCS flash. But of course by doing so at 24 kts, he caused the ship to heel quite markedly to port which presented a nice 90 degree reflector where the hangar door meets the wide waist just aft of the Sea Cat launcher. I can't remember if the hangar door was open or not - if open it would be even worse because the open hangar would enhance the return. Would chaff have helped? I don't think so, not with the chaff rockets that were available in 1982 in this particular scenario. That's not to say that chaff doesn't work because it does. It saved my life in 1991, but that's another story that I won't go into here.

This is looking seriously good, especially the PE masts. I thought trying to do this sort of stuff in 1/600 was bad enough! One of the most distinctive features of ARK were those extensions forward of the cats to the catch the bridle after launch. I can see the waist cat one is in place. I assume its a separate piece still to be added to the bow cat?

Acoustic hammers only work against acoustic mines! As far as I am aware, ABERCROMBIE twice struck contact mines for which the only defence is a good lookout and a good turn of wheel! I remember flying minesearch around USS TRIPOLI around 2 hours after she struck a contact mine off the Kuwaiti coast in 1991. Damage shown below: To be honest, I'm not sure quite how successful the acoustic hammer would have been. In theory the concept is sound (no pun intended) in that you create a sound source ahead of the ship to trigger the mine before the ship passes over the mine. But for the ship to be outside of the damage area, the acoustic source would have to be a considerable distance ahead and from all of the photos I have seen the booms don't look especially long.

Thanks for all your kind words. I look forward to seeing the Atlantic Models' offering. She will have to go on the Christmas wish list!

This is looking really good. I remember making one of these with the Hercules, must have been for my 7th or 8th birthday. I seem to recall the whole thing - missile, trailer, landy and C130 - probably took no more than a couple of days to complete. Oh how things have moved on! Mine certainly looked nothing like as good as this. I've been after a couple of those for ages. just missed one on Fleabay about 6-8 weeks ago for a sensible price but the ones on there now are starting to push the bounds of what I would deem reasonable for a kit that I will throw at least 50% away and replace with plasticard

Unfortunately time is against me as I am off on holiday shortly for a couple of weeks, otherwise I'd try to track down one of the Honda 750-4s. I owned the smaller version of this, the 400-4, in the late 70s and loved it. it'd be nice to have a go at building its bigger brother but I think I will struggle to finish the fire engine in time

Hi Bryn, The Torquay Show in May is quite good - I exhibited there a couple of years ago. I seem to recall there's also one over in Barnstaple in North Devon though I've never been. Also if you head over into Somerset there's a new show in Yeovil that started this year for the first time in April (I was on holiday so couldn't attend but friends tell me it was very good. In Dorset we have the 2 Bovington Tank Museum shows (February and October) and Poole Vikings in April. I find attending these offers inspiration - if others can achieve this/that effect, then so can I, and there is no doubt my modelling standard has improved from engagement with others better than me. Progress on this is looking good. Not made one of the T23s yet but this is making me think that perhaps I ought to get one.