Fritag

Silvano, I agree with your Italian colleague! I am am sorry for not spotting this before! I can’t believe I missed it (Giorgio had to PM me!) Exquisite. A very beautiful Hawk. The neatness and finish would be astounding - but it’s typical of you Bellissimo. Steve

Handsome, stylish and very Italian (BTW. Let’s be clear here - I’m talking about the Macchi, Giorgio )

The bucc always was an impressive jet. A Bill build always is an impressive thing. You can have some more if you fit mine to the Hawks................

Well you took you’re time Tom Oh - hang on - you posted it in March...... The other haven’t left any superlatives unused for me to be original with It’ll have to suffice to say it’s a mini work of art and I forgive you for the Peters and Lee earworm..........

Thanks for all the thoroughly undeserved welcome back messages chaps. Distraction technique Failed....... As Bill says. All wrap around camo in the Fritag Flying days. No self-respecting 80's mud mover needed a LAG belly. No one looking up at the belly of a Jag in the 80's..... At the present rate of progress none of us'll be around to see that. Possible exception for youngsters such as Vulcanicity..... Did come across this in a junk box in the attic the other day tho' Can't say that the starting procedure for an F16C/D has stayed fresh in my mind........ Was quite interesting reminding myself of the acceleration limits of the jet tho'. +9.0g/-3.0g and 800kts/Mach 2.05. 800kts! Jag - IIRC was +8.0g/-3.0g and 675Kts/Mach 1.4. So - now I'll have to see wot the rest of you chaps have been up to over the last year. Might take a while......

Okay - so where was I?........... You just turn away for a moment, and a whole year's gone by…….. ... ... ... Mind you; I think this thread is rather more interesting without me……..It certainly has a life of its own independent of me. Bit like a snotty teenager leaving home..... ... ... ... I can but offer a heartfelt Mea culpa. I neither made a decision to take a break from the hawks nor from BM itself.....but after Telford last year I didn't have any spare time for a few weeks.....and then I thought I'd better tidy away the modelling stuff - just for a bit, so as not to annoy the wife - and then........well, I didn't like to post smart-ar*e comments on other folks builds without offering my own work to be laughed at - so I sort of kept quiet and then it wos now Oh go on then; seeing as the last few pages of this thread has had nowt to do with Hawks anyways (or me for that matter )....... A brief summary of the Fritag non-modelling year would have to include: A few skiing trips Including skiing the Vallee Blanche from Courmayeur to Chamonix. Which I'm afraid began with a bit of a muppetry........( me in blue and yellow)_ I wos taken out guv! Honest! But things got better (It's not me as has fallen over this time.....) Andalusia (this is the gardens of the Alcazar in Cordoba) Some Mountain Biking in the Cairngorms. Bit bumpy for an old codger like me. Cycling in the Azores. That's more like it...........Even with the hills. We should've known that a volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic would be hilly..... Walking in the Shetlands; with a couple of days spent on Fair Isle - awesome. And there are the remains of a crashed Heinkel 111 still visible. Cycling the canal tow paths from Edinburgh to Glasgow (and back): Walking in the Alps; from Chamonix, near Mont Blanc. Achingly beautiful. This is a view on the walk from Montenvers to the Aiguille du Midi cable car mid station. And just Last week, cycling in the Lake District....It rained a fair bit....but it was worth it. This is Wastwater, and anyone who's climbed Scafell Pike will be familiar with it. Oh. And last weekend I had a go in this..... The brother of a friend of mine is an ex Phantom/F3 Nav; and he bought (yes) the carcass of an old F3 Sim when the MOD was getting rid....... He's combined it with a powerful PC and sophisticated flight simulator software plus a virtual reality headset. And Bob's your uncle! I've never barrel rolled an F3 around a TU-95 bear before..... And for the first time in more than 30 years I took a Hawk at low level down the A5 pass in North wales. .... Now I'm not at all knowledgeable about flight-sims - but I was gob-smacked at how good the graphics were and how realistic it seemed with a VR headset on. Mrs F and I also visited the old RAF Neatishead for an open day in September, where she met up with some old Fighter-Control buddies and reminisced over day spent in the Nuclear Bunker during the cold war...... There's a RAF Colitshall Room in the little museum at Neatished - and they have some of the scrap books that someone at Colt must have been deputed to keep all the press cuttings that mentioned Colt in. I found an old article from when I took a local press photographer up. He could have taken one of the front of my head! And less amusingly some earlier clippings: .... Speaking of Hawks. I've sort of forgotten where I've got to with Airfix's finest........... IIRC The pair of them are in this state. Remember all them HGW positive rivets? Merely an echo of Crisp's epic Sea King riveting of course (Has he finished the Sea King?) There are a bunch of sub assemblies already done. Some home brew etch to go on: I think I was working on the coamings when things ground to a halt. And the work station got tidied up. There I have at least opened the work bench door! Time is still in a bit short supply at the mo. Mrs F's latest scheme is to get us out one night a week practising cross country skiing around a tarmac bike track in leeds on simulated cross-country skis with rollers on the bottom! Madness...... But I promise that i will get back to some proper hobbying when I can.............

Now that's just pedantry Keith........You a lawyer or summat?

Even later with the congratulations Crisp - but likewise glad to hear it. I expect there’ll be an inexcusable absence from BM for a while now

Ha. Over 3,000 ft a day was wot I said (or should have said if I didn’t say - if you see wot I mean). About 10,500 ft in 3 days now actually. Ain’t that a Munro a day? (don’t like these new smileys......when did they start?) Anyroad up - that’s more’n enough ‘going up’ for us more used to the flatness of the Vale of York cycling types.......... So to stuff more important than the Fritag saddle-soreness and questionable climbing capability... Having been Whatsapp’d by Bill and caused once more to be drawn within the gravitational sphere of The Hive I feel I should apologise for inexcusable absenteeism. It’s a dispiriting truism that the older one gets the faster time passes (subjectively - before them intelligent types with physics degrees mathematically disprove my theory) and the last time I substantively engaged with BM wos about the time of Telford last year. Which by my reckoning was about last week....... So - whilst I’m just about to set off for some more cycling fun (aka torture) I promise to catch up better when back in the UK. Of course - I have no doubt that you’ve all moved the skill set of our hobby on umpty ump % whilst I’ve been AWOL - I look forward to the mortification of checking everyone’s progress....

S'true for any period really. When I stopped flying FJ's I lost over an inch from my neck and went down two shirt sizes - and the last bone dome I wore was the lighter U.S.version Been scrawny necked ever since. Don't pull a lot of 'G' as a lawyer........ Strange - I'm loving this build at at once removed........P'raps the Airfix Hawk's is just more fun when built by someone else? Nah - I did some measurements from a photo to try and fix the dimensions - all the way back at post # 35 on page 2 here. Dunno who the yoof in the photo is - I don't remember ever having been that young.............. Airfix made a bit of a mess of the whole cockpit really. Perfectly good for the ceiling tho' The pilot looks a bit to big for the seat to my eyes. His head shouldn't stick so far above the seat head box. I s'pect the answer for the ceiling is that he's leaning forward and pushing himself up out of the seat (harness unlocked) to improve his look out Onwards and upwards Ced - a Hawk on the ceiling is worth 2 on the bench.........

Red 10 flies the spare don’t (s)he? and (s)he’s on the ground for the display ain’t (s)he? Anyroad up I wouldn’t suggest it was impossible for 2 redbaggers to be in a Jet together - just not typical. Not untypical to see a blue suited ground crew in’t back tho’ ’course I don’t remember wot they did in the far off gnat days anyways.....

Small lawyerly type smart-aleccy point to ease myself unobtrusively back in so to speak...... If there are two red grow bags in this one gnat.......who's flying number 9? I'll try and muster something more sensible and/or constructive when I've actually given Ced the courtesy of reading what I have no doubt is a suitably Cedpressive thread........

Just adding my appreciation for the prop work to that of the mob other fine gentleman BM’ers Tony One thought. Seems to me that that could have been a classic job for resin casting. Make one blade and cast several identical copies. Resin work would be a walk in the park for a man of your calibre Tony.

No Bill. Thank you. For demo’ing - once again - just how 1/72 scale aeroplanes should be built!

My pleasure. The only problem was costa took so long to make it that it reduced my cross-examination time of the witness as to his Spitfire flight said witness had better not forget the details by next year....... Not me. I wouldn’t not want one. I wouldn’t not want one very much even tho’ I don’t want to paint roundels and can’t think of any other reason I need one.....it’s loooovely. It’s being beamed from Berlin too.... Phew. Maybe this feeling of need will pass........