Dave Swindell

You may or may not have noticed my comment was also a link, maybe I was being a bit too subtle. The Firebrand certainly wasn't the first single seat torpedo bomber, you could argue that was the Short Admiralty Type 81 of 1913, which although designed as a two seat floatplane, it was adapted to drop the first torpedo on 28 July 1914. With the torpedo fitted the aircraft was grossly overloaded and could only fly with a single crew member. The same applied to the Short 184, which was the first type to sink a ship with an aerial launched torpedo on 17 August 1915. The first purpose designed single seat torpedo bomber to enter service was the Sopwith Cuckoo of 1917, nearly 30 years before the Firebrand entered operational squadron service. Whilst the concept of a single seat torpedo strike aircraft wasn't obsolete with the inception of the Firebrand, it was approaching obsolescence when withdrawn from service, it's developement into the Firecrest never entering service and it's replacement the Westland Wyvern only ever carrying torpedos for trials and not with operatiional squadrons.

https://www.advancedpaints.co.uk/product/pantone-654-654/ Any use? Not cheap, but you should get a few models out of it and it should match the colour @NorthBayKid quotes.

Really?

L7284 - 8th production Manchester Mk 1 Delivered with FN21A mid under turret, 28' tailplane and triple fins 27 MU 29/10/40, 207Sqn 29/11/40, U/C failure 24/2/41 forced landing ex ops at Waddington, 43 Group Deposit Account 25/2/41, 207 Sqn 6/4/41, 61 Sqn 15/4/41, Avro Service & Supply14/7/41, 39 12/9/42, SOC undated, 1 operation. (Kirby, appendix E) Almost certainly kept short span tail and triple fins throughout it's life. Only 1 op, mainy used for conversion training. L7427 2nd production batch, delivered with FN7A mid upper turret, 33' tailplane and triple fins Avro Service & Supply 14/6/41, 97 Sqn 26/6/41 Cat R(B) 3/7/41 Stbd eng faailed in flight during intensive engine trial, yawed, unable to maintain height, forced landing in field 2 miles East of Spalding. 43 Group Deposit Account 3/7/41, 83 Sqn 9/1/42, Avro repair on site 10/2/42 no accident card, 83 Sqn 14/2/42, Missing from ops 8-9/4/42 coded OL*Q pilot P/O Morphett - 7 crew-1 survivor - target Hamburg. Crashed Ermke, Germany, at 0010. Rear Gunner died while PoW. 16 Operations (Kirby, appendix E) No note for conversion to Mk1a so most likely triple fin until loss.

Manchester Production Batches 2 prototypes, L7246 & L7247 Mk1 L7276-L7302 27 aircraft, 1st 9/10/11? delivered with mid under turret, 1st 20 delivered with 28' tailplane and triple fins, remainder with 33' tailplane and triple fins L7303-L7483 103 aircraft, all with 33' tailplane and triple fins R5768-R5841 43 aircraft, all with 33' tailplane and triple fins Mk1A L7483-L5726 27 aircraft, all with 33' tailplane and twin fins Mk1's retrofitted with twin fins became Mk1A's Ref Avro Manchester by Robert Kirby, Appendix E.

A single trunking would no doubt sound logically easier, but bear in mind that the cowling needs to be kept as small as possible and the trunking therefore has to pass between the cylinder heads. The frontal area available between two heads is fixed, and the simplest form of trunking (a tube) is therefore restricted in diameter by this available space. One tube of the maximum diameter wouldn't provide enough air flow for the required cooling load, and with two fitted this was marginal. The original cooling tubes had a square cut front opening (ie just a straight tube end), later builds had the conical extension on the front to use the ram effect to force more air through the same size tubes. This may have some bearing on why the cowling gills were originally straight but later cut away as illustrated above. With the quest to get more air flow through the cooler, the outlet duct was most likely enlarged as well to form a divergent nozzle to try and assist the air flow. The solution to the problem was to move the coolers into the wing in the Blenheim mkV/Bisley.

Correct. the bomb carriers covered the cartridge ejection ports for the next to inboard guns, if the prop blades were slightly further round the corresponding gun on the port wing would be seen as blanked as well

Life jacket?

Careful before you start sanding the ridge away, it's a design feature of the kit to help get a thin trailing edge. This ridge is on the lower surface of the upper wing half, and the aft edge is a (relatively) thin trailing edge. The aft edge of the lower wing is square cut and the wing is short in chord by the width of the ridge, the square cut aft edge is supposed to butt up to the forward side of the ridge, leaving a slight overlap of the top wing half forming a sharp trailing edge with a seam line running forward of and parallel to it. You might be better squaring off any flash on the lower wing half aft edge and thinning the inside mating surface so the wing half fits snuggly against the ridge as designed.

You don't specify whether you want a floating dock or a graving dock, but presume from the photo's you've linked to it's the latter. If you've got a substantial budget, there's a German company SSNmodellbau that does a drydock kit and various extensions/add ons in cast resin, otherwise, Nick's scratchbuild linked above is a good guide to constructing one. There's loads of drydock photo's on the internet, if it's just a generic dock you're looking to build use photo's as a guide and people/vehicles to get an approximate scale of features. If you're going for a specific dock you might be lucky and find photos taken in that dock. If it still exists, google earth will give an indication of size and layout, otherwise a contemporary aerial reconnaisance photo could help if you can find one.

The horizontal aerial on the upper wing centre section is the transmitter, the yagi aerials on the outer wing struts are the receivers.

Tables and chairs all set up, first few traders and clubs setting up now. There's a bit of wind and rain but not too bad at the moment. Drive safe if you're coming in the morning.

My apologies, Zak is correct. ZK-AVM was inside when I visited, ex SeaBeeAir and is being restored to fly. Another Widgeon ZK-CHG is outside in bits. I flew on one of SeaBeeAir's Geese from Mechanics Bay back in 1987, quite a memorable experience so always associate the 2 together.

First off, excellent model, look forward to seeing her maiden voyage Unfortunately the build log you link to is only visible to members Regarding the plating against the funnels around the searchlight positions, this is almost certainly to protect the crew from heat. Whilst holes in the funnel (except at the top!) are undesirable, it does vent to atmosphere so adding heavy armour plate so high up is even more undesirable for a stability point of view, for no practical gain. The funnel uptake drawing you've used above is for HMS Dreadnought, and the whole of the internal space is boiler uptakes with 6 boilers (fwd funnel) and 12 boilers (aft funnel) exhausting into a common uptake. With all boilers fired up the gas temperature at the top of the funnel would be in the region of 150-200C. You will notice if you look carefully there is an air space (4.5") around the funnel uptake with an outer casing which flares out at the bottom (cravat) and stops short at the top of an angled cover/shield (hood). Air is drawn in under the cravat, is heated up by the funnel uptake, and rises to vent out of the top under the hood. This flow of air keeps the outer funnel casing (relatively) cool, but I'd venture to say that this outer casing would still be uncomfortably hot for crew members touching it, especialy in the mid to upper regions. The pipes fore and aft of the funnel are waste steam pipes (ie vents from boiler safety valves) The link to Evert-Jan Foeths site mentions drawings of the internals of HMS Belfast's funnels. These are broadly similar in function (though of different cross section/plan), however they do differ in that the after most portion is plated off, leaving an enlarged triangular section of the outer casing which is used to route the auxilliary exhaust pipes to the top of the funnel, ie they are not inside the boiler funnel uptakes, but they are inside the outer funnel casing. Looking at Duke of York drawings in both Raven/Roberts and Burt books on Battleships of WWII, the internal schematic drawings of both show a space between the forward and aft boiler uptakes in each funnel, and this is supported by photographs which show auxilliary exhausts out of the sides and tops of both funnels midway fwd/aft. There are also exhaust pipes at the forward end of the forward funnel, I'd expect there to be a similar space here between the funnel uptake and outer casing. Access into these spaces whilst the boilers were steaming would be theoretically possible, but would require protective clothing and would be uncomfortably hot. Access into the boiler uptake spaces seen in the drawing above would only be possible with the bilers shut down. The access ladders are for maintenance/inspection and installing canvas funnel cap covers (rarely used) The funnel casings seen on modern ships contain separate insulated uptakes/exhaust pipes for each piece of machinery, and the casing is accessible whilst the machinery is running (but it can still be rather warm in there)

Just for a bit of perspective, here's what Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team actually said about the incident :-