Kallisti

His Dark Materials is very good, War of the Worlds... I'm suspending judgement for now... An attempt has been made to modernise, ie its got female characters where there were none in the original. However, there seems to be an attempt to make the relationship 'relevant' and confrontational with society at the time, which is utterly irrelevant to the main story. I also wanted to hear Richard Burton's voice in the opening voiceover

This evening has been about research for the interior. To this end I HAD to watch the movie again - well at least the part of the movie where they arrive on planet... "In the pipe five by five". Due to the problems I have playing the DVD on the PC, I've rented it from Amazon for 30 days (£0.99) which means you get their X-ray overlay on the movie which CAN be useful at times but one of the most irritating things is they list the goofs! I HATE goofs, I want to suspend my disbelief and be transported so someone pointing out <start nasal whine voice>If you look carefully at this bit of the screen you can see a reflection of the camera<end nasal whine voice> I DON'T CARE!!! I just want to enjoy the movie!!! Okay rant over... so I managed a couple of new screenshots, specifically inside the APC: Here is the command console which is located directly opposite the exit door I lightened this a bit as its quite dark in the movie as you can see from the following which I forgot to lighten before uploading... This shows the rear compartment, some of which will be visible from the door. The final screencap for now is of the front of the APC which becomes important later... So today's main job on the model has been to try to get the front built up. The parts the provide don't fit very well - there are two triangular panels that are supposed to attach the angled piece in front of the windows with the gun platform, but neither are the right shape or fit so int he end I scratch built a panel and added a bit of filler When that all dries I'll sand it back and make sure its a good surface. As you can see, this green plastic is not very good at taking sanding, it generates a lot of dust and will need some fine surface polishing later. The final job for this evening was to start making improvements to the existing castings, namely around what are supposed to be engine intakes/exhausts on the port side, but which in reality are directly behind the command console. These are moulded grilles and look pretty awful so.... Out came the Tamiya drill - the first time I've used it since I bought and built it earlier in the autumn, and along with a razor saw and some round files... I'll need to cut some mesh to fit in the holes and then cover the back again. Thats a job for tomorrow...

groan!

Its good to be back enjoying building something again - recently I have struggled to maintain interest in the models I've built and have ended up abandoning three in a row that I lost interest in due to various reasons. So now its about getting the initial shape of the APC put together to support the work on the interior. First the floor and it has this interesting pit of moulding... So since this will be covered by a piece of textured plastic card, it will have to come off!!! This is what will comprise the floor of the APC - not sure if you can see it in the white but this plastic card has industrial style floor hatching which will make a good surface I reckon Next we have the wheels as I mentioned before. I put together one of the wheels from the kit to compare with the resin ones so here they are What is most noticeable is the tread pattern - the kit ones are straight cut whereas the resin ones are more accurate angular, compare with the earlier pic of the real thing Finally for today, here is the floor with the two sides added along with some of the front panels This now gives me an idea of how much needs to be detailed inside that will be visible from the door, so combine that with the blue prints and pics I'll screencap, this will give me the basis for the scratch building I need to do. Can't wait!!!!!

There is an image on the italian isoshado site that they give permission for anyone to use to print their own decals - i used it on mine if I can find the link... yes found it, on this page http://www.isoshado.org/4/4_attivita_files/intercettore_2000/intercettore_2000.htm Scroll down to near the bottom and you'll find it

I've got this kit, it looks lovely and I plan to do mine in all white with Spectrum logos on the side... I've even managed to get hold of a 1:48 scale female pilot figure...

Well I managed to get a version of the movie to play and screencapped this: So I was wrong, its not Drake and Vasquz deploying first, but it appears to be Frost with his back to us, then Vasquz then Crowe (at least thats what Amazon overloay claims). Behind Crowe came Apone. So at least I have Vasquez and so Hicks and Hudson will have to suffice! The first task is done, cutting the moulded side door out: Now since I built both the Dropship and USS Sulaco I've treated myself to this marvellous publication: which is still available at Amazon (no link, go look for it yourself!) Its a fabulous book that has blueprints for everything from the Nostromo to Prometheus (less said about the latter the better!) and the reference pages on the APC are superb (photos deliberately a bit rubbish to avoid copyright claims ) The main issue we have with the APC internal is of course there is no way they'd all fit inside the actual vehicle. For those who don't know, this was a converted aircraft tractor sourced from Heathrow: It was a Hunslet Air Towing Tractor, Model ATT77. It contained remote starting equipment for the 747 and could be driven from either end, with both driver compartments able to elevate to facilitate reversing under the nose of aircraft. The raise mechanism was pneumatic as was the clutch and gear change. It was claimed at the time to be the most powerfull vehicle in the world on 4 wheels! Its original weight of 72 tons was reduced to 28 by removing the lead ballast, lead lined wheels and 4 inch steel plating. it was then dressed up with 1/4 inch steel to make the APC. My plan is to add SOME internal detail that represents at least part of what would have been seen inside the APC and possibly a light or two... I've got a small base in preparation which could accept a couple of coin batteries and a switch underneath with a bit of luck! Everything is in place so time to get on with it!!!

So after my dismal failure with the RAF F-16 from Independence Day, I've decided to pull out from the stash a kit I've been wanting to build for several years, namely this: This kit makes hen's teeth look commonplace! I've had it for several years since the time I built the equally rare Dropship in a previous Group Build back in 2012. Here are the contents of the box Note: at some point in the past I sourced some replacement resin wheels with the correct tread pattern. If memory serves I got these from someone one the Eagletransporter forum, but its so long ago I can't remember the details. More on these later I'm sure! Finally some extra bits to complete the diorama idea I've got Now we are getting into the realms were rare becomes even rarer! These are some rsin figures made by AEF Designs in the 90s and here we have Vasquez with heavy weapon pulse rifle, Hudson and Cpl HIcks. My aim is to make a diorama of the next scene along from my previous dropship diorama, namely the deployment once the APC arrives at the complex on LV-426. I'm going to have to use some artistic licence here because I believe the first out of the APC were Drake and Vasquez, both carrying the heavy weapons, but since I have never managed to find a Drake figure, I'm going to go with these three deploying instead. Hmm, just discovered that my PC's DVD drive won't play my old DVD of Aliens to screencap the scene... hmpf! Speaking of technical difficulties, please bear with me if images in any of my threads are a bit flaky lately, my hosting company insisted on upgrading the version of PHP being used on my sites to a version that breaks the gallery software I've been using for almost 10 years! I'm in the process of configuring a cloud sever with the correct version of PHP to bring everything back to life, but its a non-trivial exercise that bores me to tears!

Oh I like this a lot! I built this kit a few years back and did a similar thing for the cockpit, although yours looks much busier than mine did! I just used some cheap photoetch (for a 1:72 Wellington bomber if I recall correctly!). Don't forget to sharpen the tip of the missile a bit, that is the only major problem with this kit - well apart from the risible cockpit and the dodgy decals - do you have any plans regarding those in their weird Spanglish or something equally unintelligable? Yes its the Bandai kit that usually sells on ebay from between £50 and £80. Looking forward to watching this progress further!

This is one of the reasons CERN want to build the Ever Larger Hadron Collider so they can dig deeper down into the structure of the elementary particles. There are lots of theories being developed because when you get down to that level 'common sense' evaporates and you are left in the quantum realm which seems to have lots of similarities to Alice through the looking glass! Theories will come and go, its the way science works - a theory will last only so long as it will fit the available facts and can make some predictions that can be verified. As soon as it fails that test it either gets modified or abandoned. There has always been a desire for that 'Eureka' moment, but this stuff is so complex nowadays that it is unlikely to happen. Even after confirmation of the Higgs Boson, a huge milestone in quantum mechanics as that DID confirm a whole set of theories that up to then had been simply conjecture, even more questions are derived from those discoveries. My head spins now on the difference in what we know now compared to when I did my degree in the early 80s! I remember the excitement of Voyager passing Saturn (I still have a signed manuscript from Patick Moore which he wrote for me 2 weeks after returning from the JPL Labs after Voyager 2 passed Saturn for the in-house physics magazine I was editing back then), but now we've had probes landing on Titan and asteroids - its simply astonishing!

I wouldn't call myself a professional but I do have a BSc in Astrophysics (best bit of the course was getting drunk with Patrick Moore in the pub at lunchtimes when he came to guest lecture!) Energy and Mass are just versions of each other so the question HOW has no real answer, it just does. The classic equation from Special Relativity E = MC2 Is derived from a large number of other other equations and shows that mass and energy are equivalent. As for Atoms, there isn't yet a 'base unit' that we have discovered. Atoms are made up of subatomic particles called Quarks, which in turn seem to be made up of other things. One of the theories that one of my old professors came up with is String Theory which to be honest I don't understand. In the end its all lumps of energy, but with different properties that interact in weird ways. The big goal is theoretical physics is what is known as the Grand Unified Theory which will link General Relativity which is all about how gravity works on the large scale - ie Planets, Stars and Galaxies and Quantum Mechanics which is all about the subatomic world where other forces come into play instead of gravity. I had a friend who used to work with Stephen Hawking (and didn't have many complimentary words about him!) and she tried to explain this stuff to me years ago and it went over my head... theories about us actually living in a 7 dimensional space but because 3 of the dimension were really small we didn't notice them... do what?

Would either an Angel Interceptor from Captain Scarlet or a Moonbase Interceptor for UFO count?

Its too fragile to transport nowadays, got too bashed about travelling around shows over the years. I've got another copy of the TB3 kit in the stash with the silo they did a few years back... one day...

Yup totally predicable response to a totally predicable whine that comes out every year.

Well you know what to do, if you think you can be a better judge,volunteer next year.