GordonD

Ta! But what happened to the jazz hands?

I was trying to work out what a/m meant - finally the penny dropped: after-market! I thought it was something more complicated than that! However the answer is no, those are the kit parts. Airfix have moulded the muzzles separately so the ends can be hollow, which saves drilling them out.

As promised, pictures of the cannon assembly. There are 36 parts in this thing!

I'm currently watching this live link with the ISS. Some stunning images coming back... BTW if you're wondering where you've seen Mike Massimino before (he's the astronaut guest alongside the presenter) he played himself in a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory when Howard went into space...

I've only just found this topic. Enzo is right - in the book Moonseed by Stephen Baxter Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano at the heart of Holyrood Park, erupts when it reacts with some weird moondust. My house is 1.2km away and gets taken out in the first blast...

Thanks, Nigel. I'm currently working on the cannons - pictures in the next couple of days.

Simple solution - leave all your clothes behind. You can easily buy more in this country but the kits are another matter!

No, you're Lion...

That photo is a real Treet. (Giving my age away there!)

If you visit this website http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/messages/bennu/ you can have your name included on a disc which will be carried by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2016. The spacecraft will rendezvous with Asteroid Bennu and if all goes well will return a sample to Earth in 2023. Unfortunately you aren't guaranteed a window seat. But you do get this nice certificate of participation:

I missed this post and have just learned of his death. LOS, Bill - we'll see you on the other side.

I got one of these on its original release and the MLP definitely comes with it - otherwise the Shuttle wouldn't line up with the crew access arm and the Gaseous Vent Arm with the beanie cap.

I think this is the only place you can get the proper tail service units (the tombstone-shaped things either side of the main engine compartment) to support the Orbiter, rather than those hideous non-scale struts in the basic Shuttle kit.

Ta! The colour is actually screwed up in these photos - the firewall on which the engine is mounted is actually Interior Green (Humbrol 78) and not grey as it appears. Forgot to say that I'm not going to attach the nacelles to the wings at this point because there's a lot of manhandling of the fuselage still to be done, what with the bomb bay and the guns, so having the wheels sticking out the way they do would just be asking for trouble, not to mention the weight.

The port nacelle is all but complete, apart from things like the undercarriage doors and the prop blades, which don't go on until later. Here it is in all its glory: Close-up of the engine. And of the undercarriage. This has been designed to retract, so I built it that way out of curiosity, just to see how it worked. It did work, after a fashion, though oddly the primary struts are too wide to fit into the wheelwell! I wasn't overly concerned by this as I fully intended to glue everything solidly at the end of the build, before I risked putting the model on its undercarriage. As it turned out I did this sooner rather than later, because the secondary strut assembly kept falling out and the last time it did it the hydraulic piston broke and couldn't be found. I replaced it with a needle of almost the right size (possibly it's slightly too narrow, but I won't tell if you don't) which you can just make out in the picture. Overall shot of the other (inner) side of the nacelle. Looking down on the engine. Those copper pipes were something I was particularly looking forward to building, because of the contrast in colour against the aluminium and black of the rest of it. Unfortunately the longer one doesn't actually connect to anything at the other end because try as I might I couldn't get it to line up properly, particularly as the engine support struts got in the way. Where I went wrong is in connecting the top end first, because alignment was crucial where it met the radiator firewall, but if I'd hooked it up at the bottom the pipes are thin and flexible enough that I probably would have had enough play to get it to fit. Different angle on those pipes - sorry about the reflected light. The starboard nacelle is at virtually the same stage, and when that's done I'm going to suspend construction and finally get started on my Heinkel 162 in the Under-a-Tenner GB (only a month late!)

You're always hungry.

Can we vote on it?

I've been working away at this slowly but steadily since the last update, concentrating on the engines and undercarriage. The port nacelle is all but finished (pictures soon) while the starboard one is about 50% complete. However yesterday I reached a major milestone in the construction - the wings and tailplane are now attached! Overall view. Bear in mind that it's sitting on an A3 cutting mat. The wings may look somewhat emaciated because the ailerons and flaps are still to be added. (Flaps go on when the engine nacelles are attached.) Close shot of the tailplane Bomb bay Pilot's seat seen through the entry hatch

I remember queueing for ages to see it (Apollo 10). I also remember seeing a Mercury capsule several years earlier - I think it was Friendship 7, must have been around 1963. This website http://americanspacecraft.com/pages/aaindex/home1.html shows where each spacecraft ended up. It says that the museum in Edinburgh has a Gemini test capsule on display - one that was used in the Rogallo wing tests - I must check that out!

Didn't realise it was so long since I posted an update, but I've been working on the undercarriage. The port one is ready for installation in the engine nacelle and the starboard one isn't far behind.

I got a copy of this last week and was a little disappointed. The 'updates' consist of a few pages listing the kits released since the first edition appeared - I had hopes of seeing in-depth coverage of the big Airfix kit (which I'm currently working on) but it got scarcely a paragraph while there was a review build of an obscure vacform kit to the same scale. That said, I still found plenty of useful stuff inside and don't for a second regret buying it. I have several other titles in the series and this is up to the same standard, but in this case I feel the publishers have skimped a little in bringing it up to date.

If that's what you call a dog turd I shudder to think what your good models would look like!

Black and white, and no sound, but still worth watching. Only lasts a couple of minutes. http://www.videobash.com/video_show/the-first-years-worth-of-photos-from-mars-rover-curiosity-797011

Actually I was seriously thinking of withdrawing from the GB as I couldn't see the point of two identical builds going on at the same time. If they had been by different manufacturers, or if we were building different versions, it would have made more sense. Unfortunately that isn't an option as the only choice in the kit is one of markings! However I've thought better of it (thanks in part to the posts above) and I will be taking part - though as I said I won't be starting for a few days as I can't spare the time just now. As the build runs until June this shouldn't be a problem! We now return you to your regular build thread.

Agreed, terrific book. It doesn't portray the Germans as totally evil - there are good and bad people on both sides. (I kept wanting to give Sweet a good punch in the mouth!) It was adapted for radio a few years back, with Tom Baker as narrator.