Procopius
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Posts posted by Procopius
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6 hours ago, jackroadkill said:
I think you and I may share several of the same personality traits, Edward.
My condolences.
A few years ago, before her obvious talent was recognized and she went off to write for the wildly-successful email newsletter Morning Brew, my deputy social media manager said to me "Everyone here is an Idea Man. I too have ideas. But I will never have time to bring them into this world, because I'm busy making everyone else's happen." I think about that a lot. I -- although I did my best to not burden Matty with this -- am more of an Idea Man myself, in that I'm pretty good at standing at Point A and envisioning a really cool Point B, but not so great at getting down the long line betwixt them. Anyway, today at work was a very long day of struggling midway along the path between them. Some big changes and improvements are within reach, but not yet within my grasp, and honestly, the unglamorous work to get there is really boring and it's hard for me, a grown man who should function a lot better, to stay focused or interested in the slightest.
Anyway. The boys wanted to model outside when they got home, so that they could use the "toxic glue" -- even small children know TET is the finest chemical going. Grant had meekly suggested maybe he could build a Spitfire, but amazingly, I'm fresh out of Airfix Spitfire Is, and all I had that I was willing to offer up was the mostly-done Meng F-102 Cookie sent to me. I felt like since it had been given to me in a generous gesture by the Senator himself, I should honour the spirit in which it was offered by coming out of my selfish, hateful self and offering it up. But it hurt a little when he told me he just wanted to put the decals on and not paint it -- after I'd gotten the nice New Wave mask set, too! -- and he asked me to add all the subassemblies I'd carefully set aside to paint.
I know the simple joy of a child is supposed to be worth a lot, but on the whole, I'd rather have the kit back. I'm sure my dad did lots of things like this for me as a kid, but all I can remember is him screaming "why can't you be normal?"* at me, so I know it's just so much wasted effort.
Winston delegated putting the lifeboats on the Hood to me, but I note he installed the pom-poms and what I believe to be the directors for the secondary armament. I got out R A Burt's British Battleships afterwards and he built a rather impressive lego replica of Hood referring to the plans in the book.
I eventually, far too late, made it down to the grotto and built the spinner.
I then attempted what is known in the biz as "light weathering", using oils and pigments, which I still struggle with.
It's late, so more tomorrow.
* A very fair question, to be honest.
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10 hours ago, stevehnz said:
I'm seeing a trend here, lets hope you don't get a sense of deja vu by the time you get to the end of the 3rd one.
I've read enough about British defence procurement to know it's a never-ending quest to discover the bare minimum, pledge to achieve it in a herculean national effort, and then quietly get about halfway there before giving up and revising downwards. As my own life is planned roughly the same way, I feel a certain kinship with postwar UK governments.
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4 minutes ago, jackroadkill said:
Well, that's....bleak?
I have a very sunny disposition, everyone says so.
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Good lord, that was fast.
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5 minutes ago, Paulaero said:
So disappointed with the Furball masks they are too small and the wrong shape, don't fit the canopy outlines.
They look to be vinyl masks, which have an unfortunate tendency to shrink over time.
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Just now, jackroadkill said:
I wish my face looked like that when I survey my work.
Winston has inherited his mother's disease of dangerously high self-esteem, though the universe is doing its best to do to him what it did to me and squeeze every last drop out of him.
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No progress last night, as this smug creature is difficult at night, and her mother is showing signs of cracking, eg suspiciously long showers, trips to the WC that require the car, etc. and I'm consequently a little too drained to feel my hands will be sufficiently steady.
HMS Hood did arrive for the boys the other day, and last night, to give them something to do, I suggested they get a start on it.
It's a very elderly Airfix kit, and so dad provided some aid and some modelling tips, but much of it was done with tube glue and sellotape to hold recalcitrant parts together, proper vintage modelling style. I thought about playing some Heath/Wilson exchanges for them to get the full effect, but stayed my hand. Grant and Win both built, but Win is older and by far more adroit, so I had to give a lot of my aid to Grant with the hull, while Win handled the 15" turrets. Fortunately I know a little something about warships, so was able to field their questions with ease, and later heard Grant proudly informing Mrs P that "This is the Hood." Win, who has a lot of me in him, suggested we get all the ships from the Bismark hunt in 1/600 to go with Hood (of course given how rarely Airfix reissues the damned things, this could get pricey), particularly Rodney and King George V. For his bedtime story, after we read a chapter of the interminable Duet, which Mrs P hates (hard to blame her, it's a virtually tensionless story, and Chopin is of zero interest to children with as little musical ability as ours), he had me tell him the story of the Sinking of the Bismark. We may read C S Forester's short novel on it next, though Grant, who does not like blood, has opted out.
This morning, Win got up at the crack of dawn and added the funnels and upper decking/lower superstructure, but Grant's allergies are exacerbated by tube glue, so construction is temporarily halted until some of that non-toxic citrus glue can wind its way here.
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I seem to recall learning the "thin the bejesus out of the wing" trick from one of your prior builds. I've always done it, and it really helps the look, but made the SH Meatbox enough of a chore that I look forward to the Airfix.
It is nice to see even the Great One can sand off a trim tab or two in his zeal.
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4 minutes ago, Piotr Mikolajski said:
Nothing new, this information has been repeated for a few years now.
I confess to having been unaware, but I'm sure this is probably not the first time it's been said -- I've just been distracted by children.
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"Modelers who work in 1:72nd scale often complain, and loudly at that, that we neglect them. I’m sorry for that. I confess that we are first and foremost a 48th scale manufacturer with a soft spot for the legacy of the old Monogram kits, but even so, we do have a segment of our plans dedicated to your scale. "
-- Info Eduard for November (emphasis mine)
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In response to an email inquiry to Sword, it appears that these kits will be re-issued next year.
QuoteHello Edward,
Yes, all versions of Lightnings will be re-issuee next year.
Best Regards
Milan
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2 hours ago, Heather Kay said:
Ed, apologies for the thread diversion. Normal service resumes in three… two… one…
I don't think one need apologize for going slightly off-topic in a thread ostensibly about a P-40 which has already featured a built Wessex and the Firestreak missile.
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3 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:
I have that and have already replicated it, as you know I can Edward, so does that make me a good Dad?
Are...are you offering to be my dad? I accept. Can I come stay with you now, pop?
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27 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:
Well, well, well - look at what the postman delivered today! Is there a word more exuberant than ecstasy?
Wait, where can this be obtained?!?
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Excited to see this come together.
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1 hour ago, AdrianMF said:
So it was Dad’s kit really…
As dad patiently explained to his children, were it truly dad's kit, he would have bought the fuselage/tail extension plug from Freightdog, and maybe some etch.
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Apropos of nothing, I came across this inadvertently truthful ad for Firestreak today:
It's missing the sun.
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5 minutes ago, perdu said:
Grant's Wessie, nice work young person. Welcome to the wondrous world of rotaries.
I should clarify that Grant performed only supervisory tasks, e.g. complaining that I was taking too long to build his helicopter. Grant routinely knocks over full glasses of liquid if they are placed within five yards of him, so does not get access to glue. He and Win were very interested in the Wessex, which all agree has a pleasing shape.
7 minutes ago, perdu said:I remember owning a Airfix Nimrod once, then askance at the looming massiveness of the thing I happily un-owned in Ced's direction.
I had one of those. You really should never sell any kits, I know now, you'll always regret it. Just live in a house made uninhabitable by piles of boxes of kits, no family because they abandoned you, just modelling and solitude. Sounds pretty good.
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8 hours ago, philp said:
While I didn't find HS*P I did come across several pics of 260 Squadron Kittyhawks.
Also this page.
https://www.vintagewings.ca/stories/kittyhawk-discovery
Yes, there seem to be lots of photos of their Kittyhawk IIIs -- and of course the unfortunate Flight Sergeant Copping's Kittyhawk Ia -- about, but not many to speak of from earlier. So weird that they, in the midst of a catastrophic retreat, while suffering unimaginable losses to try and save the army, failed to take any photos that would aid me specifically eighty years on. Greatest generation? Inconsiderate generation, more like!
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Also: page check of the 111 Squadron ORB for 25 January - 5 February 1965, to see if it has information on which Lightnings and pilots took part in Churchill's funeral flypast.
And, pre-prdered three books by Kristan Stoddart that have been available only as extremely expensive academic specialty publications, but which appear to be coming to reasonably-priced paperback editions:
Losing an Empire and Finding a Role: Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1964-70
The Sword and the Shield: Britain, America, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1970-1976Facing Down the Soviet Union: Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1976-1983
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5 hours ago, Terry1954 said:
Nice progress on the P-40 and a great purchase with the P-8A. Love those aircraft, almost as much as the good old P-3's! In 1/72 scale, thats pretty big I imagine, so hope you have room for the RC-135W Rivet Joint that surely must follow?
Terry
So before the Reaving of 2020, I actually did have one, and the resin update set. In my quest to get ZK-series serials for a Meteor-armed Typhoon, I did get the Hannants sheet with the markings again, so...maybe!
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5 minutes ago, 06/24 said:
My sole Poseidon photo, but sadly little use for research purposes:
Untitled by Jon Gwinnett, on Flickr
I actually saw one up close at the airshow in Oshkosh a few years ago. It was big, grey. Follow me for more modellers' notes.
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13 minutes ago, keefr22 said:
I've never found the early seats available separately anywhere else.
Subsequently, I learned Air-Graphics allegedly produce them and sell them via their website -- I've ordered two sets, hopefully they make it to me.
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1 minute ago, Stew Dapple said:
but it did set me up for years of failing at kits so was in some sense a useful lesson
I would be quite content to fail my way into the results you obtain.
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A flash of clean light hope (1/72 J F Edwards Kittyhawk I)
in Work in Progress - Aircraft
Posted
I have a second pair, but even so, I had very strict operating limitations imposed on them, which Grant in particular did not care for.
It started out a little pebbly, truth be told, but I spent the better part of a protracted bureaucratic battle in Sandbaggers (IE most of an episode) gently and slowly polishing it with 8000-grit micromesh, and for once it seems to have worked for me.
That's very kind. The line between enough and overdoing it has always been almost imperceptible for me, in this as in all things.
Ah Perdu, I have such fond memories of the dinner everyone had together, and getting to meet so many great people from Britmodeller there. As I told Troffa a day or two ago, this really is one of my favourite places on the internet, and almost all of my happiest memories involve a concentration of forum denizens of this site.
So my biggest fear is rejection. Shortly before I ran away from home, my parents called my other three siblings downstairs to excoriate me in front of them in pretty explicit and harsh terms before having me exorcised (as one does). Every child, I think, fears that their parents will stop loving them, and for me, in that awful moment, it happened. It doesn't feel great! I mention this, because, I think, whenever introducing your children to something you love, when introducing anyone to something you love, you give them a chance to hurt you -- the Hedgehog's Dilemma: you must have warmth, but to do so you risk being pricked -- and I had already known this long before my contretemps with Procopius pere et mere, because as a fourteen year old in a college class with those giant, worldly-wise eighteen year olds*, you suss out pretty quickly how small and vulnerable you are on every single level that can be imagined.
And that's the true terror of being a parent, maybe only for me: you're creating someone who is in a position to know who you truly are, and to hate you for it. Mrs P may someday decide she despises me and leave me, but in my heart of hearts I have never believed any adult could truly love and care for me, and I know I can take it. But someday Winston may despise his name and namesake and excoriate me for choosing to give it to him, which is of course his right, because his namesake existed and therefore it's only our choice to despise him, and not merely mandatory. Grant could walk down to the basement one fine day when he's sixteen and smash every kit in there with a hammer, and that's not even the worst or cruelest thing a sixteen year old boy is capable of, and I would have to count myself lucky. Everything I am, and everything I believe in, is laid bare to them, and they can ridicule me for it and there's nothing I can do. Winston's was too young when it happened to be able to remember when he concussed himself and we thought he was dying of a skull fracture, and there was no time to wait for a lead smock for me, so I held him down as he screamed and screamed and above me that big CT detector array made a sound like the end of the world. And maybe he'd be right to not care, even if he did know, because being a parent is every day, forever. You don't get to win at being a parent so hard one day you can just stop then and relax. It's never over. You can be rejected at any time.
Walter Hill, famous for directing 48 Hours, which has not aged well, and Streets of Fire, which managed the double feat of launching and torpedoing the career of Michael Pare, said about directing that ""You are very privileged...There is a great quote I'll get wrong of Samuel Johnson, the English poet and essayist, that: 'We come to the arena uncalled, to seek our fortune and hazard disgrace. That's the game, those are the rules.'** So I say to you...if you wanna feel sorry, feel sorry for the people in Syria, but don't feel sorry for [me]." So too of parenting, I suppose. I chose this***.
* I now know, based on lengthy exposure to them then and since, that they were and largely remain, quite stupid, even by my very generous standards. Shimer was not a very good school.
** The actual Samuel Johnson quote, from his Life of Pope, by the way, is "An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace." But I think Hill's version might actually have bettered the good doctor.
*** Indirectly, but if you'd seen Mrs P at 28, you could understand why I wasn't thinking super clearly.