Procopius

Sadly quite numerate these days, I sold off almost all of it in 2020. I have less than a hundred kits now. Which I appreciate is still a ton, but nowhere near where it was.

No worries, Bill! I'll just have to buy ten when they're re-released, then forget all about them and sell them in a decade's time. The circle of liiiiiiife I will, however, be stuffing the rest of the bullet with weight, somewhat complicated by the fact that there's nothing walling it off from the gear bay, so glue can seep down. Indeed! I'm considering buying their book for the F-4, but...can I afford to?

Over here it benefits from what is known as the "Piers Morgan Effect", where the accents allow us to disregard the content and pretend it's really high-class entertainment. Indeed, though the very tippy-tip tip of the shock cone is metal. The turned metal shock cone for the model comes with the metal intake ring and adds some noseweight, as well as being beautifully symetrical. I started work on the cockpit tub tonight. The etch, amazingly, fits quite well, though the two side panels have rather vague placement guides, and it took me two goes to figure it out, and I sanded the bejeezus out of the styrene backing for the instrument panel. Incredibly, the seat fits: I've not glued it (or the coaming) in, because (a) I need to finish painting it, and (b) I want to wait until the tub is in the fuselage, so I can confirm canopy fit. Then, brimming with misplaced zeal, I added the tub to a fuselage half. To fix my oversanding of the radar bullet, in true 1970s modelling style, I added a piece of thick plasticard, so if we choose, we can delude ourselves that some proper modelling is going on here. It was then sanded to shape: It actually appears to work! (Some final refinements will still be needed, of course. I may -- but probably won't -- attempt some Daco-inspired superdetailing here.) In a fun discovery, Sword has left any instructions for adding the cable ducts -- which are separate parts -- out of the building directions. This would be less of an issue if it didn't appear, from the length of the three pieces for each side in the kit, that one is expected to cut part of one off and use it, as otherwise it's impossible to make the short cable ducts for F.1A and F.2 Lightnings.

I trust you've seen this one?

I love you, Cookie. Just a bit. A long day today, bagging leaves, taking the children to get groceries (and being forced to utilize a now-deprecated teaching tool known as the "Montessori Grip" while swearing at Winston in the cereal aisle, not one of my finer moments), teaching the boys to clean toilets in the hopes it will improve their aims, and then foolishly taking a family walk to get more leaf bags, only to blunder into the middle of the "Winter Holiday Festival", featuring arts, crafts, and Michael Buble songs being blared at a volume loud enough to abrade flesh from bone five yards away from the craft table. I think I saw a bird explode when its flight path intersected one of the mighty pulses of festive cheer emanating from the faintly steaming speakers. We got home about ninety minutes after our fifteen minute errand was supposed to end, and the children went inside to watch Avatar. This was not my doing. Avatar is one of the worst movies ever made, and if you disagree, well, I hate it so much I can't even muster up the thin veneer of Hyacinth Bucketesque manners I normally wear like that guy in Silence of the Lambs wears plus-sized women. Unfortunately, I did not realize that Mrs P likes it unironically, because of her insane compulsion to like the stupidest crap our species can churn out*, and as usual when she's upset by something I've said, she went relentlessly on the offensive. I show the children war movies all the time, with dead bodies and blood. Yes. War movies. PG-rated war movies from the 1960s, Avatar is PG-13, features the finest impalements possible on an early-2000s budget larger than the GNP of Dubai, and the whole movie revolves around a guy betraying the whole human race because he found a blue cat alien sexy. This isn't implausible, per se, but it's also not exactly heroic in my book. I was told to take my colonialism elsewhere (and didn't help my case by interjecting that that's the whole idea of colonialism, yes), and that the children were going to enjoy a fun movie that she liked for once, and I could go downstairs if I liked. The thing about insisting a film is perfectly benign for children is that it pays to have rewatched it after you've actually had your children, or indeed, in the last decade. They didn't even make it twenty minutes in before Mrs P had second, and then third thoughts, and turned it off rather abruptly after the boys learned an exciting new combination of swears and, after she told Grant not to say it, he replied, cooly, "I'm saying it in my head, over and over." And we got pizza for dinner, so double win! Anyway, this evening, I finally got down to the grotto. I think, given the difficulty of sourcing F.3 parts for now, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and do XN768/S, one of the F.2s from 92 Squadron. It's insanely frustrating to do all the research for the build, and then have it totally, radically derailed after it starts, especially because I feel like it's happened several times. as with that Fw190D-9 at the beginning of the year. Hopefully when Sword reissues the F.3 next year I can grab a few. So with that determination made, it was time to plunge onwards towards disaster and frustration. The kit radar bullet, plus the metal shock cone, is naturally designed to work with the Sword intake ring, which as you may recall was part of each fuselage half (criminal, but I assume Sword knew they couldn't reliably produce a single-piece intake ring separate to the fuselage halves that wouldn't look rotten), and which we cut away to use the metal ring I bought. The metal ring was intended for the Airfix kit, which has rather thinner plastic. Some sanding down of parts of the shock cone was needed: It more or less looks like it will work now, but the lower section will need work, and probably a shim in the fullness of time. I had sprayed the Reskit jet pipes with AK gloss black enamel, but I must not have cleaned them very well, for the paint sort of bubbled and failed to adhere in places. No problem, I dunked them in lacquer thinner, which should solve both the patchy paint issue, and napalm any remaining residue into carcinogenic oblivion. I also assembled and test-fitted the wings: Because the Sword Lightning is essentially a hollow tube with a few intermittent more or less free-floating parts that are placed according to the very vague instructions, and because the slots for the wings in the fuselage sides bear only a tangential relation to the tabs on the wings themselves, hard experience has taught me that the wings should be added before the fuselage halves are closed up, which in any case is going to be a hellish process requiring eight or nine long and thin tentacles to have a hope of getting everything properly in place. The cockpit tub has been sprayed Colourcoats Dark Admiralty Grey, so once it dries we can start with the etch. I'm beginning to feel a bit anxious about the build, as NMF combined with a roughish short-run kit can be a pretty bad time. Getting the jet pipes, front engine facing, radar bullet, and cockpit tub all into the fuselage and closed up properly is going to be stressful. * Why do you think she married me?

Great result, and good to know about the landing gear! I plan on doing UkrAF and Polish MiG-29s using the Trumpeter kit.

Success! Via a gentleman on the Lightning facebook group, the BARG (presumably British Aircraft Research Group, rather than the dreaded Broth Aficionados Revanchist Gang) assembled a list in January of 1965 of the aircraft involved: 111 Sqdn. XM992 Lightning T.4 coded Z XR711 Lightning F.3 coded A XR712 Lightning F.3 coded C XR713 Lightning F.3 uncoded 56 Sqdn XM171 Lightning F.1A coded A XM174 Lightning F.1A coded D XM177 Lightning F.1A coded G XM181 Lightning F.1A coded L 19 Sqdn XM991 Lightning T.4 coded Z XN775 Lightning F.2 coded D XN778 Lightning F.2 coded F XN791 Lightning F.2 coded P 92 Sqdn XM995 Lightning T.4 coded T XN733 Lightning F.2 coded L XN768 Lightning F.2 coded S XN796 Lightning F.2 coded D Two of my cousins claimed to do this. They are both in the ministry now.

As poetic as it is worrisome.

Likewise, a tip I picked up from Cookenbacher.

Would you believe that I've never had goose? I've probably had turkey only about forty times in my life, pretty much once a year on Thanksgiving with a handful of outliers or black swans -- the event, not the bird. I have not eaten a swan. She's for sale, if you're interested. I'm etch-agnostic. I like it for ready-made seatbelts, because I don't trust tape and have never managed to get foil right, and I like the feeling of satisfaction when I actually bend some properly (my greatest achievement in life will certainly not be my children, but rather than I once managed to successfully fold the PE upper-wing machinegun mount for the Eduard Nieuport 17), but I'm happy to work with whatever medium the cockpit parts are in, vacform aside. I have limits. Unfortunately, presumably due to the limitations of their toolings (or to allow the maximal number of variants) Sword chose to make all the cockpit detail PE. This is definitely not ideal for say, the radarscope with its weird little leather hood, and after a perusal of the DACO book on the Lightning, which finally arrived today (and which, to be honest, I'm glad I didn't have for any earlier builds, since it gives so much information on every version, ideal for inducing paralysis in a modeller), probably a resin cockpit would be the best option for the kit if one were made for the F.3. While I agree in principle, anything that takes eight hours to cook and which effectively replaces all meals for four people for two days straight is not likely to be a regular meal, simply because of the effort involved on both ends of the process. Mrs makes an amazing pizza which I'd cheerfully eat for every meal, but which, out of consideration for the labour involved when she makes it, I only request for my birthday or if I've been especially good. You know, I'd never heard of this film before now, and I can see why. No progress again tonight, I regret to report, as I spent most of the day at home with a very gassy baby so Mrs P could pump our other children full of sugar at a movie theater. Things went fairly well until she peered suspiciously around the bottle and realized it was not, in fact, attached to her mother at all. The situation deteriorated rapidly from there.

The only two kits that could tempt me to build 1/48 at the bottom of that haul, too.

I benefit from almost unbelievably low expectations, which I frequently struggle to meet.

Well, in that case, I'm glad you sold it and got the cash, rather than wasting a perfectly good kit on me and paying for the privilege. That said, Please do! I am over a barrel here in the stupidest and most self-inflicted manner. So, on the etch front, it would seem the F.2 (included in my boxing) and F.3 etch are very similar: The main instrument panel for the F.3 (parts 1 and 2) differs somewhat to that for the F.2 (parts 1 and 2 as well), as do part 9 for the F.3 and part 20 for the F.2. Unless I'm very much mistaken, part 6 for the F.3 has no analogue on the F.1A/F.2 fret. So I suspect, given how etch-dependent all the cockpit detail is, it wouldn't be possible to steal or swap that and still be able to build an F.3 and look at yourself in the mirror. Well, probably you could, you magnificent man, but you know what I mean. The F.3 instructions, at least, are online, so once can see that the etch does a lot of heavy lifting for the cockpit. https://www.scalemates.com/products/img/2/4/2/535242-56-instructions.pdf I mean, look at it, Terry! Just look at it. It looks like the jet Dick van Dyke would fly in Mary Poppins. In fact, I'm covered for virtually any other squadron, that's the damnable part. I have pretty much any decal I would need to do any Lightning. Just some tiny thin pieces of metal stand in my way. As the cat discovered in pretty much about the way you'd expect, hedgehogs are very difficult to eat. I have indeed had a succession of hedgehogs, having purchased my first, an aged store pet no longer small enough to easily sell, for $1 and the price of his house and appurtenances for a further $99, in 2005 after calculating that if I ate nothing but peanut butter toast for a week, it was eminently affordable. Phillippe was followed by Edith, then Oliver, and finally Madeleine, who passed away two years ago. The boys were very fond of her and still remember her. I'd love to have another, but it wouldn't really be fair to it, as my children consume almost all of my time and I would be unable to give it the attention it would merit. They're delightful little creatures. I have not, though I did email them recently to inquire if the kits were coming back ever, and they did say they were reissuing the kits this coming year. So I just have to work very, very slowly. Afraid not. 56 still had F.1As at the time. In any event, no updates on the build over the last two days, as I had to help prepare and participate in the first Thanksgiving held at our house, including, but not limited to, eating the worst cherry pie in the world and claiming the reverse, for which vile deceit I subsequently received a reward beyond my wildest imaginings* in the basest currency possible. As mentioned, we normally spend Thanksgiving with my family, since they don't celebrate Christmas**, and we'd thus be fools not to spend it with the people who do, ostentatiously and enthusiastically. This year, we chose to start some family traditions of our own, which I expected would end in a series of small disasters culminating in possibly one or two larger disasters, but aside from a single bottle of Corona that's been in the fridge since before Madeleine was conceived taking a header out onto the basement floor and exploding like a grenade, the day went horribly, awfully right. Mrs P, who has never before in her life cooked a turkey, a bird which, as far as I can tell, is only cooked on special occasions because it gives us time to forget how hellish the experience of attempting to get it to an internal temperature that won't kill the person eating it while somehow also imparting some flavour is, decided to attempt to cook it in our slow cooker, with an untried recipe sourced from the internet and selected over its confreres on the basis that it had the fewest ads between steps. This proved to be an amazing choice, and it was by far the best turkey I have ever eaten. Normally turkey is only a vehicle for gravy to me, but this was actually quite good on its own. The scotch tape on the table is courtesy my idiot children, who've never met a flat surface they wouldn't waste a roll of tape on. They were astounded when I refused to give them any more. A good time was had by all. We also managed to sort out presents for the boys. Grant has been on a gardening kick, and is getting two Playmobil sets, one of a farmer's marker, and one of a garden and toolshed, and Winston is getting, after much deliberation, a 1/35 Tamiya Churchill and the Haynes Icon book on same. I had considered getting him the 1/350 Prince of Wales, long and hard, but the box is nearly as big as he is, and I worried it would be too daunting a kit for him, and never get finished. At his age, the building is probably less than half the fun, whereas for most of us, we have to be furtive and surreptitious about zooming our planes and such about and making engine and cannon noises, so the build approaches 90% of the fun. * I have a very limited imagination. ** You know those killjoys who fall all over themselves to let you know that Jesus was probably born in October? That's my family, with maybe a bit about the excruciating pain of taking the spear of Longinus in the side, and then, unless you move away very quickly, something about those Freemasons, always up to summat.

I realise this may be controversial, but I think the red-and-white checked fin with no fin flash looks stupid, like a giant flying peppermint. Whenever I see it, I think vaguely of Christmas and after-dinner mints. That said, I don't think they had the checks on the F.1A.

I've masked and painted roundels before, which means that anyone can. When it works, it's immensely satisfying.

I should confess to you all now that I stole the seat, fully painted, from an itinerant peddler, who cursed me with a horrible curse: my wife would insist upon having a "family Thanksgiving"* on Thursday, despite having never attempted it before. I begged him to accept my apologies, the seat, and vast sums, but it was too late; he had said his piece, and he turned his back upon me and left. I could already smell the worst cherry pie in the world cooking. Anyway, the thrust of it is: the rest of the kit will look...different. And by different I mean bad. Lower your expectations accordingly. (In truth, any credit is due to Barracuda's casting -- the seat is very nicely made, and cleverly formed so that with a decent brush, even wielded by someone whose hands shake as much as mine, you can quite easily paint the details and then let a wash do the heavy lifting. It's not called "liquid skill" for nothing, you know.) In any case, a bit of a blow today. The folks at the Lightning facebook group have informed me that 111 Squadron used their new F.3s in the flypast, and that as far as they know, the serials are not known. The etch in the kit is really only suitable for an F.1A or F.2 (I mean, there's a slight difference, but I'd know, and an avoidable imperfection, as opposed to one due to my lack of aptitude for this, a thing I do for fun and relaxation, would kill me), which means my options narrow to 56 (F.1A) or 19 and 92 (F.2s). And, of course, I have not requested any pages from the ORBs for those squadrons. So as I see it, I have four options available to me: a. Give in to despair, abandon project. Cons: Craven, weak, disgusting. Pros: Truest to my nature. (Unacceptable, given the subject.) b. Somehow obtain the etched fret from a Sword Lightning F.3 or in direst straits, the Trumpeter kit, despite the cockpit being constructed differently. Cons: Sword Lightning F.3s mighty thin on the ground. Serial numbers for the F.3s used uncertain. Pros: Aesthetically the most pleasing scheme worn by any of the flypast Lightnings. Can more or less pretend I meant to do it this way all along. c. Build a 56 Squadron F.1A. Pros: Was already building an F.1A. Cons: 56 Squadron has had exactly one good scheme in its history, and it was a Phantom with a shark mouth. Would need to ascertain serial number/code. d. Build a 19 or 92 Squadron F.2. Pros: Can use the F.2 cockpit bits for the kit I have. 92's scheme is almost as good as 111's. Cons: Good as it is, the blue fin is less sombre and would lessen the elegiac quality of the build. 19's scheme looks like they remembered they needed one the morning of. Would need to ascertain serials and aircraft letters. * Principally to avoid my sister Emily, who she went to high school with and despises.

That was my guess as well, and a guess it must remain, since I was unable to find the photo DK used for their reference. My only other (wild) guess would be maybe a half-hearted attempt to keep the radio bay from getting too hot? I'm so glad to hear it! I admired him immensely for his achievements for many years, but I always felt very self-conscious about writing him a letter, and then of course it was too late.

I spent a large percentage of my evening reading Sink the Bismarck by C S Forester to Winston, who has inherited his mother's incredibly disconcerting habit of offering exactly zero feedback, even down the level of a shifting of the facial expression out of neutral, and so I have absolutely no idea if he enjoyed it or not, but perhaps it will ensure a cushier nursing home when the time comes. Eventually I escaped downstairs, where, in the manner of a man who knows he's in over his head, I puttered about with minor bits of the build rather than really getting cracking. Also, if the aircraft were F.3s, they'd have Dark Admiralty Grey cockpits, rather than the black one of an F.1A. Richard from the LPG promised to ask George Black -- Ian's father -- who lead the formation during the funeral, what aircraft precisely 111 Squadron were flying, and (a) how could I possibly refuse that offer, and (b) say what you will about the internet, and I do, but it's kind of cool that this opportunity is afforded to me via the same technology that allows utter buffoons to reach vast untapped reservoirs of other buffoons, just waiting to be discovered. But this buffoon might be getting his Lightning questions answered! Speaking of the family Black, the Firestreak Books Lightning Manual is really gorgeous. And mine came with a postal cover that was flown in an F.3 in 1972! Anyway! I assembled the tiny flame holders for the reskit exhausts: This was honestly a lot easier than it looks, but you have my permission to be impressed. Are they visible in the pipes? Amazingly, yes. All the photos of Lightning jet pipes I've seen have been on examples that were decades past flying shape, but I know several are in good nick, so I will continue my efforts to find some inkling of how these damned things should be painted. Then I decided to get started on the Barracuda seat. I opted to paint it with fancy brush and all these overpriced Citadel paints I have leftover from getting shellacked at Warhammer, followed up by some Agrax Earthshade wash, AKA "liquid skill". That's close enough. Oh, fine. That, perhaps, is too close. I didn't paint the seat pan exterior yet, because I'm not sure if it would be black on an F.1A, or Dark Admiralty Grey as is portrayed in the colour photo that comes with the seats. Or, if it IS an F.3, perhaps it needs to be DAG, but black for the F.1A, I'm also a little hazy on how the parachute pack(?) on the top of the seat ought to be painted. I also didn't paint the bright rescue yellow hemorrhoid cushion or possibly flotation device under the reddish brown seat cushion yet. I have no compelling reason why beyond a man can only brush paint so much yellow in a sitting before his courage fails him. You can tell I'm a little nervous as to how all of this will pan out, because I'm wasting immense amounts of time on very minor parts of the build. I am, however, starting to run out of them and will need to get going soonish. EDIT: Forgot to mention that as Christmas is coming, we're contemplating getting Win the Tamiya 1/350 Prince of Wales for his present, it being in about our price range for a Major Gift -- Major Gifts to be dispensed to the men at a rate of one (1) per Christmas or birthday per year -- and him seeming to have greatly enjoyed building the Dragon HMS Invincible in 1/700. I will be absolutely honest with you: what may stay my hand is that as a young man, I walked into a hobby shop in Evanston, Illinois, back when those still existed around here, and came face to box art with a massive array of 1/400 Heller kits, including their King George V (tied for my favourite battleship with HMS Resolution), and I was seized with a great and fearful longing, never to be fulfilled. The memory of it has haunted me to this day, and even though I now make my own money, and could buy many peanuts, I've never been able to escape the nagging feeling that I didn't earn it. So my fear is that the kit would, in my heart of hearts, be for me, and that I would be unable to resist stealing his joy and building it myself. Mrs P, amazingly, is all for it.

My order from Firestreak Books came today, including their The Lightning Manual, which very fortuitously has a photo of all Treble One's F.1As lined up for the switchover to the F.3. It confirms that XM190 had the same markings and aircraft letter in 1965 as in the 1964-dated photo I have, most gratifying. However, in email conversation with a very nice gentleman from the Lightning Preservation Group named Richard, he sent me a photo of one of the four-ship formations of Lightnings during the funeral which appears to show three of 111's black-tailed Lightnings lead by a T.4, and the tails look like they might possibly be the later F.3/F.2A.F.6-style tail. So I wait with bated breath for my PDF copy of the 111 Squadron ORB to arrive, or for further amplification from any Lightning cognoscenti who answer my post in a Lightning facebook group. The good news is that if it was an F.3, I can probably handle that, but the pre-printed coloured etch for the cockpit will be wrong, as it's for either an F.1A or F.2. Truly the life of a scale modeller is one of high adventure, if you're an incurable neurotic. Last night I didn't manage to get down to the grotto to do anything, as Mrs P was on the brink of a nervous breakdown after a long day with all three of our glorious children, and so I (heroically, if I do say so myself) volunteered to clean the kitchen, including the sausage she forgot was broiling in the oven and which had assumed the rough composition and flavour of fine coal from the Rhondda Valley. (I also thoughtfully released a large quantity of thick, choking smoke which had inexplicably been imprisoned in the oven with it.) Then I sat with Gargantua, our massive bundle of joy, and watched her wave her arms in a futile attempt to flip onto her belly so she could face certain death in the only position she'll reliably sleep for any length of time in. During this, I amused myself by reading Out of the Blue, which has a lot of amusingly-related anecdotes of events that probably weren't terribly funny while they were being experienced. Hopefully Mrs P is in finer fettle today and I can escape to the grotto later.

This is why I sold all mine, at a loss, shortly before WNW itself went under. Well, I never was much good at making the right choices. But I daresay WNW kits are especially unlikely to be built compared to most.

Looking jolly nice, Ali, if I may say so! Quite crisp.

Yes, that's quite true, but the effect is less poetic if I write "like luring a hedgehog out with dry cat food", which they will eat with immense relish. Much to the dismay of my cat Jellicoe, when my first hedgehog, Phillipe escaped from his house and hid successfully in the apartment for several days, living off the food intended for an increasingly hungry and harassed cat. Indeed, one of my greatest fears, outside of something happening to the children. I must say, I'm quite jealous of all of you who had a parent or other family member introduce them to modelling; my parents bought me models from time to time, but my dad had lost all interest in childish things sometime around 1969, when he discovered golf. That and home repair are his only true joys in this, his one precious life.

Six pages from 111 Squadron's ORB, covering 25-30 January 1965, from the National Archives.

Is that the MkIII* there on the bike? Mine is a postwar BSA from 1928. Always wanted a P14, but they're far too rare here and I've made do with an M1917 Enfield by Eddystone.

I'm happy to report that, thanks to Grant's tender ministrations, the wallpaper has gone long before I have.