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You may or may not be familiar with the art of Ian McQue. If not, a quick Google will give you lots to look at. One of the subjects he likes is unusual flying machines, Tramp ships in particular. What if the oceans dried up on your world. You still need to move stuff. You have Ships lying around and you have an anti gravity drive. This is the third example that I've built. The scale is 1/48th. This started out as a Revell Flower class Corvette, Donated from a shelf of doom. I added Sailing ship parts and greeblies. What you are looking at is a refueling station up in the high deserts on an unknown world far far away. There are parts from all sorts of sources here. Mostly kits, so see what you can identify. I have to thank @Alex Gordon @MikeC @TonyW and @bootneck for their donations. Some of the freight in the hold. If the front of the wheelhouse looks familiar, It's from the Airfix Mobile crane. Down aft and the fuel hose is plugged in. The fuel is possibly a gas filling up that big orange tank. Meantime one of the crew is filling in his clipboard. The piece covered in rivets is ex 1/24 Airfix Typhoon. Donated long ago. An aerial view of the same. The orange 'Lollipops were Xmas tree decorations repainted. And here's how the fuel gets up there. The tower was a toy crane. On top of that is now a B-17 ball turret. That supports what was a Sailing Ships Bowsprit and so onto the hose. The orange thing sticking out here in the middle is a flaperon in homage to the Machinen Kreiger Falke which has similar ones. I made these (one each side) from the main rotor blades of a Revell Rotodyne. Under the winglets we find these thruster units. A donation from ages ago by @TonyW they're ex Airfix SRN 1 Hovercraft This could be a first for the RFI's A 3D print of a BM member. It's @bootneck When he was but a lad. Also we have a big winch in the bow. Scratchbuilt from various bits and pieces. All the dangling hoses are part of the Mc Cue theme as his ships have lots. No idea why! At the stern, Steering thrusters and contra rotating propellers. A bit of Anime there. The rudder is ex Matchbox He 111 Another view of the refueling station. The station crew live in the building at left. The pump unit in the middle was a large scale Motorbike engine. Mike's still there. I think they should have deployed the anchor to prevent drift during the refuel. Tsk! A better view of the pumping station. And you can see the transparent tube that the ship sits on. It's all rather rusty and ancient. A birds eye view, Down at ground level. Many thanks for looking. I hope you liked some of what you've seen. Feel free to ask questions etc. Many thanks to Alex Gordon for the Sailing ships, Bootneck and MikeC for the figures. Cheers, Pete Here's a link to the WIP https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235156099-misfit-3/

The Sci fi scratch building machine has been switched on again and It's dialed back to redo an old subject. A year or so ago @Alex Gordon passed on a couple of unwanted Airfix Sailing ships. Victory and Golden Hind. Parts had been painted or put together. It stirred the inkling of an idea. Many thanks again, Alex. Then recently I was given a half built mojo failure 1/144 Revell Flower class model ship by a brother in law. I've always liked the work of artist Ian McQue. I've previously built two anti gravity boats; Misfit 1 & 2 So why not have another go? Links to the previous builds below. https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234963278-misfit-is-done/&do=findComment&comment=1668744 https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235052278-misfit-2-is-finished/&do=findComment&comment=3293519 I've been tinkering with what I've got (Ooer!) for a week or two, trying to configure the superstructure, and I may just have it sorted. The scale will be 1/48th. I've put a figure on board here for clarity. First job was to dissemble the Flower. TET did that. So I made a hole in the bottom and built a card structure to hold the clear plastic pole. The paint is how I got the model. Not my work. I've cobbled together some superstructure. Boxed in a couple of holds and added masts from the Sailing ships. The smokestack is the original. The big black contraption is the thruster unit. It was a large scale motorbike engine part. The yellow parts were ludo counters and the green bits are from a toy. So this lot provides up/down/fore and aft thrust. And the other side. The McQue ships in his drawings don't have thrusters that I can see. but I liked the idea. They also don't have any visible anti gravity generators either. They're probably buried in the hull somewhere. These are just quick shots that I took today. I'll take better ones soon. You can find Ian McQue ship pics on line. What you've seen here may not be the final layout for the deck etc. I'm making this up as I go along! Thanks for looking. Comments and suggestions are always welcome. Cheers, Pete

Thanks to a week off work and a push this afternoon I've finally finished my floaty boat build, Misfit 2. Based on an ancient pre-built FROG Shell Welder tanker, This build has cost me very little, mostly just paint & glues as virtually everything came out of the spares boxes. And it has provided many hours of enjoyment. If you're wondering, the Maschinen kreiger universe is on Earth 800 years in the future, and resources are being fought over. I like the Ian McQue floaty boats & I like kreiger, so, what if the seas are dried up, you have useless ships and anti gravity devices, what do you do? Now without further ado, the pictures, and this time they're mostly in focus. It's a busy day down at the dock, unloading a mixed cargo.... Notice that the lower part of the dock can't now be seen. So much for my desert simulation! The blue fold down wings provide a bit of ground effect lift at speed. This probably counts as a diorama really. Don't tell the Mods. They'll all want one. That drum doesn't seem very heavy. This blokes a Bludger!* *(Aussie speak for Skiver) That's Radar from a Revell MASH set working the crane remote control. All the figures were on the original Misfit. The sharp end, See the leaping antelope up there? This ship is a product of the Springbok shipyards. I think it's intended to be a Reindeer, I nicked some from a table at Christmas! Underneath there is the ground mapping Radar bowl, ex-Harrier steering thrusters and a wonky (rusty/miscoloured) heat exhaust from the Fwd Anti Gravity unit. Below the Springbok is a thruster. (From a toy Space Shuttle, 20p at the car boot). At the back we have a similar arrangement except the heat exhausts are ex Ju87 Night exhausts, cheap from the Big H. In the centre is the main thruster. Back at the front, the figurehead is an Eagle. Actually ex Matchbox tank kit? Nazi Eagle with a missile head placed where the Swastika was. Some clutter behind the wheelhouse. Drums, jerrycans and a bucket. Meanwhile back on the dock. See that silver thing behind the bloke? Ex Revell Dambuster Lancaster and about 50 years old. Now it's a special container of some sort. The Skipper keeps an eye on the unloading procedures. The cargo net was just some mesh and was used (along with the crane) on Misfit 1. A pretty mixed cargo, I think you'll agree. The yellow thing with the 'ears' is a screw on cap for something that I found. Here's Dockyard Matey again, He's been with this since the start. The green wire is plugged into the gizmo for power from the dock. Blue gas bottles on Ju88 bomb racks. Don't ask me what they're for though. (They were bombs at one point). Another view down the old dock. Getting bored yet? Oh, the metal U shaped thing? Staples. Probably now a special part they are delivering. A last long look down the length of the dock. Oh, I measured Misfit, 16 inches bow to stern. And in case you were in any doubt, The name on the back. These were rub down letters I've had for years. Stick them on and add a coat of matt varnish. Result. They've pretty much come out the same colour as the side numbers. The main thruster can be seen better here too. I'm not sure what it was previously meant to be though. And thanks for looking. Any comments, and or money gratefully accepted Next up, I'll be in the vehicle section, with a modified Volkswagen pick up truck. Cheers Pete

And here we go again. Four years & 3000 miles after I presented the original Misfit floaty boat, I'm back with another one. Here's a link to the original which had to be left behind when I left Riyadh due to size & weight restrictions. I did strip certain key parts from the original and I will include most of them in this one. Now back in the mid eighties I found myself (& family) posted to RAF Laarbruch. We had a spare bedroom so obviously I had to build a model railway (bear with me here). With an interest in the Luftwaffe it had to be a WW2 airfield. Meantime I'd acquired a NOVO Shell Welder tanker ship model (probably from a Pound shop) so I upscaled it to 1/72nd and added a dockside to the airfield, as you do. I've wanted to redo the subject for a while & was looking at boat kits, but then remembered I still had the Welder. And here it is. With a 1/35th Dockyard matey giving it the once over. He is not impressed by the paintjob nor that most of the new superstructure is actually cardboard. When I stripped it down I found part of an Airfix Phantom box! Here's matey, still in the hold tutting to himself. The model has spent decades in various attics so is a bit dusty! Fast forward a bit (lots) and here is the remains of the hull. As can be seen, I've cut out parts of it. It's not much prettier underneath either. To brighten things up, here we see salvaged parts from the original Misfit. The A/C unit from the roof of the wheelhouse went off to a krieger walker build a while ago so I have to replace that. Here we have a side view. The hull cutout has been boxed in with plastic card (this time) and there is another hunk of it on the upper side. The crosshatched area shows me where I can fit the supports at the dockside. Here's the other end. More crosshatching (all will be revealed) and look, all that old paint has gone. Top view of the sharp end. Boxed in and paint sanded down. Under the boxed in part is a void. This corresponds with the crosshatch on the side. So I can drill a hole and inert a support rod easily. The blunt end. And it's all as above. These bulkheads/decks are not yet glued into place. As a break from you trying to figure out WTH I'm doing, here's a picture of a box of bits. Some or all will be used in this build. Yes, ping pong balls. At the top are bits from a Dapol signal gantry, bottom right, the red things are I beams (girders) for a model railway. These, and the gantry, I bought last week in Swineshead* (near Boston). Sorry, the picture isn't very sharp. *(Granary models) Here's something different. A block of wood. Next to a small brewery in Sheffield is a woodshop that makes the frames for staircases. They have scrap wood, I have a woodburner at home. A polite request & bingo. (saves them chucking it away). Now the floaty boat need a dock and the dock needs something to sit on. So this block of wood was saved. On the wood are three plastic things. A certain company that sells flatpack furniture (Four letters, starts with I) supplies these to cover the metal brackets used to attach shelving to your wall. Behind all this malarkey, it can be seen on the hull that the hold has been boxed in and floored. Again, not glued yet. The boat will be alongside (nautical term) this way around, if you were wondering. Now between the three brown bits I've cut down some ancient Airfix station platform bits as a fill in method. And the light brown bit standing at the back has been cut to fit. This will be the dock wall. It's actually a Faller station platform. Like the Airfix one, it's 30 plus years old. Another piece of the same will go on top of it to form the dock walk/roadway. The TET bottle shows the size of this endeavour. A closeup of the Airfix platform parts. The left end. The end of the Faller platform will probably be cut to conform with the Airfix one, like the other end. Obviously this would not be the entire dock, it's just a 'slice' of it but that bit will, I think, look better cut to fit. Here's a close up of the right end. The end piece curves around and looks better for it I feel. What I've done at the ends will also make them stronger. The boat supports will go into the wall around here. Although there will be additional structure 'behind the scenes' to help with weight support. If all goes well, as with the original misfit build, the viewer will not be able to see any supports. None of these bits are glued into place as yet. Things may yet change. The beauty of scratchbuilding! And that is where we are at the moment after a couple of months of snatched time building this beastie. The finish will be sometime next year at this rate! Ah well, slowly and carefully makes things better? Besides, with the Winter, it gets a bit chilly in the manshed despite the heater & insulation. I find I can ponder on the build as I drive around at work, so planning goes on even if no physical work gets done. As always, comments and queries are always welcome Thanks for looking, Pete