Burn Down Their Hanging Trees (1/72 Airfix Lancaster B.III)

[Procopius]

I apologize for having so few cool pictures, but unfortunately, the last thing any child under the age of about thirty wants is to stay alive, and an airshow, with its panoply of whirring props, hungry jet engines, and large, red-faced older men recklessly driving personal mobility scooters like they're escaping from Folsom prison to see their dying mother, is a place especially likely to send them on their way if a parent doesn't pay constant attention to an area about two feet off of the ground, pretty much the opposite of where you'd want to be looking at one of these.

[AdrianMF]

Joyous!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[CedB]

A Grand Day Out - good news PC.

Glad you all survived had a good time and i'm pleased that Grant has acquired the 'Spitfire Love'.

Great post, as usual  

[Stew Dapple]

1 hour ago, Procopius said:

"I liked the little wooden plane that was just my size I could ride in." 

 

Be honest, isn't that really what we all want?  

 

An excellent post and possibly the best airshow review ever Edward, thank you for starting my Saturday with a good laugh  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

 

[Procopius]

Anyway, despite the lifeforce-sapping properties of a day out with the children and the fact that a series of misjudgements on the part of someone who shall remain nameless (Mrs P) meant that our 2.5 hour drive home became a nearly-five-hour-long Bataan Death March, (forcing tired children to leave a fast food restaurant because they're behaving badly to take them on a long quest to a fast casual place where they can really run amok is just threatening them with a good time), I got a teeny-tiny amount of work done tonight as I masked off the metal parts of the MLG:

 

 

Probably should have done this earlier, but here we are.

 

Oh! And re: whether or not the landing gear can be inserted later, it might be possible if you were willing to do a lot of surgery and felt like trusting a certain amount of the thing to chance. The top part of the gear is shaped like a wedge when viewed from the front, and is slotted down into two tabs on the main spar and then abuts the back of the engine firewall, like so, when seen from the side:

 

main spar |\| firewall  [front of the aircraft]--->

 

So there's kind of a lot going on in there.

[perdu]

Good airshow review PC, almost (almost) makes me wish I'd been tagging along with you guys

 

It makes you sound just like every other parent at an affair of fun, they don't have fun where you expect to and neither do you

 

Joyous tale chum

[Jonny]

14 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

 

Be honest, isn't that really what we all want?  

 

An excellent post and possibly the best airshow review ever Edward, thank you for starting my Saturday with a good laugh  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

Oh - caught us all out there.  I call my dream wooden plane a MOSQUITO.  If I can’t have that, I’ll settle for a Hornet.  Even if THAT can't happen, I’ll happily accept a Tiger Moth (and yes, I have flown (in) one as a passenger and once or twice as officially P2) - not quite a Mosquito experience ....  oh well, dream sequence ends.  Back to washing up ....

 

Edited July 27, 2019 by Jonny

[Cookenbacher]

An airventure indeed. Great stuff as always PC, glad you all made it there (and back). The Lancaster is looking awesome, the turrets alone are worthy of their own build thread, complete with fraught tales of the Mighty Procopius.

[rob85]

Lanc turrets look cracking me P, strong work!

 

i took my two to Fairford, they were pretty taken by the flanker which we saw fly from the ‘Fairford Eye’ (just a big fair wheel) and the chinook. The big jets were really loud, especially the f18, gripen, typhoon etc, ear defenders were a must for them. 

 

Im very jealous at how close you got to the spitfires and Corsair! We were disappointed at the lack of vintage AC’s so decided to try the flying legends show at Duxford next year.

 

have to say the most welcoming nation there were the Dutch, Monty and Olive came away with a big haul of helicopter posters, key rings and stickers! Olive even taught herself to fast rope out of a NH90.... don’t think the Dutch pilot or two British army fellas were expecting a 9 year old to fling herself out like that (it wasn’t flying obviously)

 

Rob

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

On 7/27/2019 at 4:28 AM, Procopius said:

Winston was more interested in a nearby Corsair, because it had folded wings...

That’s my boy!

[Procopius]

Well, yesterday, we got the report of the neuropsychiatrist that Mrs P's school paid for Winston to see, their assumption being that it would reveal whatever behavioural disorder my little guy suffers from; the head of school was very confident on this front. 

 

Winston has a problem, all right: his IQ is 134, or two standard deviations higher than normal, or to put it another way, at 134 on a scale that only meaningfully goes to 140, he's in the 98.9th percentile in terms of intellect, and this mighty engine is coupled to a very normal level of social development for a three-year-old, which is profoundly and deeply frustrating for him. He's not dyslexic or pre-dyslexic, which was a real fear for us, as Mrs P suffers from it, and he's not on the autism spectrum (which his teacher suggested). The neuropsychiatrist recommended we put him into the gifted kids' summer school at Northwestern University to keep his little brain running at full power. He also noted that because so many mental tasks are so easy for Winston, he's learned to hate and fear failure, since under normal operational conditions it's not something he experiences, but of course at three you're learning how to be every day, so.

 

I'd love to say this all came as a surprise to me, but I've known, I've always known. He doesn't know, and I intend to keep it from him for as long as possible, but of course it can't be hidden forever. Today he asked me if I would eat Mrs P's birds if they were bad, and how would they feel about it, and how can I keep that light under a bushel?

 

So yes, I'm proud, and a tiny bit smug, but of course none of this is going to make the next twenty years any easier. IQ is about as far from being the sole determinant of success in life as Jaffa cake, legal fig leafs aside, is from being actual cake. At best it's cake-adjacent. I still have to help him learn how to be a good and kind person, which will ultimately matter far more. But still, come on!  

 

Anyway, a little more work on the Lanc tonight.

 

I sanded down some of the filling I did the other night which I'd mulled over but didn't actually tell you I'd done (naughty!), added the nose turret, and put on the fairing for it. 

 

 

Stupidly, I'd popped in the tail turret while I was doing this, and naturally (naturally!) snapped off two gun barrels. Grrrrr.

 

 

Happily, I was able to find them, so I can fix it later. 

 

So that's where we are. I need to mask the astrodome, but after that and whatever further clean-up is indicated, we may be entering Primer City.

 

In a highly unrelated note, is anyone here ever in the area of Seven Kings, Ilford on Saturdays between 12.30 and 4 in the afternoon? 

[Stew Dapple]

That's an excellent news. I'm so glad someone else is prepared to admit that Jaffa Cakes are not really cakes at all!  

 

Very good news re: WInston too.

 

The Lanc is also progressing very nicely, apart from the tail guns, which was always a strong possibility looking for an opportunity to happen; at least it is fixable.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Procopius]

1 minute ago, Stew Dapple said:

The Lanc is also progressing very nicely, apart from the tail guns, which was always a strong possibility looking for an opportunity to happen; at least it is fixable.

Any pointy-out bit, as we all know, is born to die, as it were, in this hobby of ours, so all we can do is try to control when it happens.

 

I also neglected to mention I feel like the airshow did rejuvenate my mojo quite a bit. 

[CedB]

3 hours ago, Procopius said:

I'd love to say this all came as a surprise to me, but I've known, I've always known.

Takes after his Dad - obviously. Good news PC  

Intellect is to be encouraged IMHO - better get the Man Cave ready in case he's another Taylor Wilson… the Summer School looks like a good idea in case he can find his tribe.

 

The Lanc is looking good - pleased your mojo has returned!

[Procopius]

19 hours ago, CedB said:

Takes after his Dad - obviously.

Only in his inability to behave in a school setting. Hopefully that's the extent of our similarity. 

 

So, Mrs P has a habit of langorously lying in bed until the last possible second, an endearing trait when you have no children, but one which I'm hoping she re-evaluates in light of the fact that this morning after I left for work, Winston let himself and his brother out of the house and then opened the gate and escorted Grant out into the street. Mrs P only by happenstance managed to shift herself in time to see Grant toddling off happily down the median towards an incoming car, and bowled over Winston in her rush to retrieve Grant. (Said Winston: "If I knew you were going to hit me, I would never have come downstairs.") I've gotten a lot of chaffing for my strong belief that you can't trust children unless you can see them, but perhaps no longer. 

 

In any case, Winston, like the Lancaster, is still a work in progress.

 

I had a quick look over some photos of the actual aircraft and confirmed Phantom of the Ruhr had the earlier needle-bladed props as well as exhaust shrouds, so I got to fitting the former, which, grace a dieu, actually fit quite well:

 

 

And got started on the props:

 

 

And applied some Mr Dissolved Putty to the substantial gaps between fairing and fuselage for the nose turret.

 

 

 

 

 

[CedB]

Yikes! How do you find child proof locks for a genius?

 

Nice work on the Lanc PC  

[rob85]

So a few things I’ve taken away from the above...

 

amazing news you have a highly intelligent son! What a gift, and you will do fine teaching him right from wrong even if his clever little brain questions it, trust me on this one. My friend had the same issues school wise with his son, also very clever, and he’s a diamond now (unfortunately he really likes trains, I was hoping planes would be his thing).

 

I'm with you kid always need to be in line of sight or locked away, never trusted! At least it’s not a bad as my brother who at the same age went for a ride round Worcester on his trike without my mum even noticing.

 

you have two riders of the sky boxing 😱 jealous!

 

and if I gave you a sponge cake with a orange jelly top covered in chocolate you would call it a cake.... so if it was smaller it would still be a cake.... just saying

 

mojo very much restored the Lanc looks brilliant! Looking forward to that smooooooth primer

 

Rob

[AdrianMF]

Nice Lanc, good news about the lad (although intelligence is nowadays regarded as almost on a par with a "special need").

 

And I'll bite (but not on a Jaffa cake) (well I do quite like them). So what is so special about Seven Kings Ilford (apart from being just North of LCY)? It is within striking distance of my office.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Procopius]

3 hours ago, CedB said:

Yikes! How do you find child proof locks for a genius?

It turns out his formidable intellect is no match for a bungie cord stretched betwixt gate and post. A pleasant ten minutes may be spent watching him slowly puzzle out why it won't do more than budge for him.

 

2 hours ago, rob85 said:

and if I gave you a sponge cake with a orange jelly top covered in chocolate you would call it a cake.... so if it was smaller it would still be a cake.... just saying

If you gave me a cookie-sized unit of food that was discrete and unto itself entire, and you then claimed to me you'd given me a whole cake, what I'd be giving you in response wouldn't be a VAT exemption, let's put it like that.

 

23 minutes ago, AdrianMF said:

Nice Lanc, good news about the lad (although intelligence is nowadays regarded as almost on a par with a "special need").

Oho! Don't even get me started. Back in the mad, bad old 1980s and 1990s, when I was but a lad, the local schools got more federal money for classifying children as learning-disabled than they did for putting them in advanced classes, and I spent a lot of time in remedial math and other subjects until they gave me an aptitude test not totally unlike the one Winston had to take. That was...oh, let's see 1994 or 1995, I think. They offered to skip me to the end of high school, not so much because of any intellectual ability on my part as because the high school was a different school district and they could escape legal liability for what was in effect a deliberate misclassification for contemptibly mercenary reasons. (They didn't entirely succeed, and I was advanced only one grade then, and subsequently a further grade near the end of high school to get me off the books. I imagine they were pretty happy to see the back of me.)

 

32 minutes ago, AdrianMF said:

And I'll bite (but not on a Jaffa cake) (well I do quite like them). So what is so special about Seven Kings Ilford (apart from being just North of LCY)? It is within striking distance of my office.

Well, since you asked...Navwar, a purveyor of tiny metal warships, is located there, and they sell two small pamphlets of naval wargames rules that I like for nostalgic reasons. Unfortunately, they're also difficult to reach, and orders can only be placed via phone call from 12-4 PM on Saturdays, or by fax at any time. As I think I'd get fired for using the work machine to send a long-distance fax to buy some books on how to play with model ships, and 12-4 British Summer Time is, I believe, 7 to 11 in the morning here, peak Winston and Grant times, I held the vague hope I might know someone who wouldn't be unduly inconvenienced if they popped 'round for me. The thing is, Navwar's setup seems designed to inconvenience virtually all of humanity in that very organic way that occurs naturally, but seems like it could scarcely be bettered by careful planning to achieve maximal levels of obtuse unavailability. 

[AdrianMF]

16 minutes ago, Procopius said:

Well, since you asked...Navwar, a purveyor of tiny metal warships,

I  can get over there (from S London) in late August. If anyone is nearer or can do it earlier, feel free to volunteer...

 

Regards,

Adrian

[perdu]

37 minutes ago, Procopius said:

Well, since you asked...Navwar, a purveyor of tiny metal warships, is located there, and they sell two small pamphlets of naval wargames rules that I like for nostalgic reasons. Unfortunately, they're also difficult to reach, and orders can only be placed via phone call from 12-4 PM on Saturdays, or by fax at any time.

Wow PC don't they purvey a large number of said pamphlets, I fear that you must be very specific when you ask Adrian to help you.

 

"Oh I cannot remember best send me the lot!" might not be the ideal entreaty.

 

I shudder to think on what might have been for Grant, oooer as we say... 

[rob85]

Touché mr P

Edited July 30, 2019 by rob85

[Brandy]

Your tale of Grant's escapade reminds me of one of my own. My parents were chatting with the neighbors across the road when they spotted me standing in the window (it was open, and I was merely holding onto the window frames, standing on the bottom rail). That statement gains a little more perspective if I mention that it was the upstairs window, and our house was on the side of a hill. From that window to the ground was therefore about 3 storey's worth! I vividly remember one of them standing outside talking to me while the other crept up behind me and grabbed me. 

I have a terrible fear of heights to this day and can't even get close to the edge of anything that high, even with a pane of safety glass in place!

 

Ian

Edited July 30, 2019 by limeypilot

[Fritag]

1 minute ago, limeypilot said:

even with a pane of safety glass in place!

How about a cockpit window?

[Brandy]

I'm sitting down, and there's no vertical surface to make me feel as though falling forward. I did a static line jump from a C182 (when I was younger and stupider) and had no problem standing at 2,000' with one foot on the tyre and the other on nothing, hanging on to the wing strut!

Strange, these fears!

 

Ian