Christopher Brown

The original tooling included the “Blenheim” turret but it was not mentioned in the instructions. Hopefully they have modified the clear parts to include the turret doors.

Hi Folks This is a very interesting discussion. It is a bit of an open secret that we have been working on a new tool Canberra for a while. It has been progressing slowly between Mirage versions and whenever I get a chance to do a bit of measuring. The current state is that we are happy with the CAD model of the basic outline (first consideration) and are now working on the interior and panel lines. With the current High Planes limited run kit we had all the various lines etched and provided instructions on which to fill for the various marks, which we might do again. The interior is proving challenging to simplify and model in 3D. It's a real jungle in there and my hat goes off to anyone who flew in the back seat. Graham's comments hit the nail on the head about the commercial aspects of the kit. I would love to be able to price the same as Airfix. Working against us though is (obviously) the lower production volumes, but also the current low value of the pound and the high VAT rate. This will make all kits imported from outside Europe seem expensive, at least until things improve economically. Which does raise the question - how attractive is a multimedia kit (with plastic main parts, resin interior & engine faces) compared to an all plastic kit? Chip in with your view at our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/questions/525407087510909/ The upfront tooling costs are much lower on a multimedia kit, but we are worried the market may be too small. As an aside, the tooling for our next kit (the Mirage IIID two seater) shows a big jump in the finesse of the panel lines. There is a learning curve on this stuff and we are having fun with getting better at it. All the best Christopher HPM Hobbies http://www.hpmhobbies.com

David My copy of those plans is buried in the archive, but my memory is the angle of the tail leading edge is off and possibly the area around the exhaust. I recommend cross checking the tail with appropriate photos. At the time I didn't double check panel lines and access points. Hope this helps Christopher

Hi Guys Has anyone got clear manual images or drawings of the blast plates fitted to Hurricanes & Swordfish when using RP-3 rockets? Many thanks Christopher

Primarily, yes, but it was also sold as still film by Ilford. Unfortunately my references don't give the formats available, but I have seen roll and cut sheet images.

True, I forgot that! Dufaycolor was still in production in the UK until after the war, though Illford was losing interest by 1936. There was a subsidiary in the States (Dufaycolor Inc) and apparently production for the movie industry - though I don't know whether they made roll film there. So to be fair we can't discount that Mydens was using it. y personal feeling is that it is not Dufaycolor as the still images I have seen have a distinct magenta bias. As supposition, limited regional processing facilities (one lab in Bombay) and demanding light qualities (a shot like the one we are looking at would need somewhere around 1/25 sec at f8) would make it an unattractive choice for a news photographer.

Hi Everyone I have meant to chime in on the discussion, and Dave's comment seems most apposite. There has been some very interesting ideas put forward and I hope my thoughts add something here. The images were most likely to have been taken on Kodachrome second version which was released in 1936. I think it is highly unlikely he was using Agfacolor (the only other contender) in British territory due to the war. I have been unable to find any information on the spectral sensitivity of this version of Kodachrome and can only assume it was similar to the confusingly named Kodachrome II introduced in 1961. As Dav points out Kodachrome II when scanned is considered to have a blue cast. As I see it we have seven impacts on the 'colour' of the image: 1. - the 'absolute' colours of the scene 2. - the ambient light at the time of recording 3. - the spectral sensitivity of the recording device (i.e. lens & filters) 4. - the spectral sensitivity of the recording medium (i.e. film) 5. - the 'fixing' process (ie.e development) 6. - the reproduction process (scanning, printing etc) 7. - the viewing environment (monitor calibration) We are attempting to unwind this knot backwards. Fortunately, it is not as hard as it sounds to get a bit closer to what the absolute values probably were. First, we can establish the ambient light at time of recording. We know Singapore is on the equator so there is no seasonal variation in light due to the angle of the sun through the atmosphere, unlike Northern Europe where there is a big difference between summer and winter. From the shadows we can tell it was photographed in the mid-afternoon or mid-morning. The only unknown is the amount of moisture vapour in the air. I live in Singapore, so I chose a day with similar cloud cover to measure the ambient light. Interestingly it was 5500 Kelvin (compared to 6500 Kelvin in Europe). Secondly, we can only hypothesis about the influences of the devices & media (2-6). We can take a stab at this if we know the absolute values of the scene. Obviously, as this is what we are trying to work out the argument is a bit circular. However, my first reaction on seeing the images on a calibrated monitor (i.e. correcting for item 7) was that grass in Singapore isn't that colour. To make an estimate of the colour shift, I compared the grass at Sembawang to a set of Pantone Colour swatches. These are an absolute value, and the grass hasn't changed here, so there is a good chance the match will be useful. The shadows were a good match to 574C, midtones to 575C and highlights to 576C. I now realize I didn't update the swatch labels on the images, but they run 574C, 575C, 576C L to R. I then made some adjustments to the photos. First, increasing the exposure by about 1 stop, next correcting the white balance (from a known neutral - the white on the roundel), finally adjusting manually to match the hue of the grass with the Pantone colours. I did this by choosing zooming in on one area of shadows & highlights, then sampling its colour before and after adjustment. I think the result is not perfect, but somewhat better, particularly the shadow values. I leave it to others to draw conclusions about the colours compared to various standards and paint shades, but my thoughts are: - to keep things consistent, measuring the paint chips and samples using a 5500K light is appropriate. Most colorimeters and spectrophotometers default to 6500 K [D65] or 6000 K [D60]. The measured chip can then be very simply compared to the image in a color managed environment such as Adobe Photoshop. I personally would love to see this, and am happy to send the original TIFF files I made to anyone who wants to play with this. - some paints and coatings are near impossible to measure with colorimeters or spectrophotometers. I was fortunate enough to be shown a piece of Catalina skin by Ian Baker which if viewed from one angle was blue and from another had a greenish tinge. At the end of the day, unless you are there with the colour measuring equipment we cannot get total accuracy. We can just try to make our margin of error smaller. Hope this is helpful Christopher Original Image White Balance & Exposure Adjusted Tint Adjusted