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The Night Believes it is Endless (1/72 Lysander III)


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4 hours ago, Procopius said:

I (v e r y  carefully) put a piece of thick plasticard with a spare set of Airfix instructions as a cushioner in the space between the seatback and the framing, and got out my trusty micro-chisel

If ever something sounded like a recipe for disaster, it’s this but you have somehow managed to end up with an intact, nice looking cockpit. Good job!

 

Craig. 

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Hello again folks, still depressed, even worse, honestly, but I managed to force myself downstairs and to force myself to do some work tonight.

 

The MMP book (which has arrived and is now in my possession) shows the folding-down seat for the observer in the back, which is wooden and almost pentagonal in shape. Naturally, I'd just finished making and installing my own bench seat, painted interior green at time of reading, but fate was with me, and a subsequent paragraph on Special Duties aircraft seems to imply that this was removed and replaced by bench seating for two agents. And since nobody's shown me a photo so far...

 

IMG_20200116_211942

 

So what I did was I took a thin piece of plasticard, cut it roughly rectangularly, and mounted it on the seat mount that comes with the kit. Then I dug out the remnants of an Eduard Lancaster seatbelt set and got to work.

 

Much swearing later:

 

IMG_20200116_212301

 

The seatbelts were bent down and into position, neatly obscuring the clever work I'd done in phase 1. But you've all seen it and you all know. Now, live forever, and carry word of my deed on to successor civilizations. 

 

Then, it was time:

 

IMG_20200116_213204

 

First I plugged everything into one side of the fuselage, and after all my sanding down and chiseling earlier, it mostly fits.

 

Annnnd now:

 

IMG_20200116_213824

 

Folks, we're in business. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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25 minutes ago, Procopius said:

still depressed, even worse, honestly

Tis winters bleakest days PC, you will recover soon enough my good man. Till then know you are amongst friends, and we’re here if you need to talk. Im always available to talk so just let me know. BTW the Lizzie is looking great so far. 
 

Dennis

Edited by Corsairfoxfouruncle
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Nice rear bench! :thumbsup: As you wrote, no contemporaneous photos and only text descriptions.

 

I made something similar, but I completely spaced out about some belts for those passengers! :banghead:

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Nice work PC :) 

 

Chin up matey. As Dennis says it's probably the dark days of Winter. Spring will soon be here and you know what happens to young men then.

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Speaking as some-one who the Black Dog visits quite regularly, I hope you're seeking medical advice. Easy for me to say as I have the NHS.

 

Nice work on the Lysander. I'll be copying some of the internal when I get round to kit-bashing a Matchbox one with a Frog Blenheim cowling.

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3 hours ago, Beard said:

 

 

Nice work on the Lysander. I'll be copying some of the internal when I get round to kit-bashing a Matchbox one with a Frog Blenheim cowling.

I think I'll be going down the modified Matchbox route too. The Dora Wings kit just isn't half the kit I hoped it would be, especIally at the price. 

I really hope that Arma decides to turn their hand to the Lizzie. Imagine what a great job they'd do.

 

Cheers,

Mark.

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It could be worse, Edward. You could be up here, on The Backside of Beyond, where the sun doesn't fully clear the horizon until about 9:20 am this morning and will be completely below the horizon by 4:15 this afternoon. And that's not the shortest day. That was a month ago, in December. Our days are getting longer now.

 

 

 

Chris

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13 hours ago, limeypilot said:

Lovely job on the insides pc, and chin up, we're all here for you. All will be well once the newly ordered kits arrive....

Honestly, I have to hold off for a while. I have two Revell Shackletons, the Special Hobby Mirage two-pack, an Airfix Victor, and the Sword five Seafire set at the office, all waiting for a day Mrs P is out before they can come home. 

 

15 hours ago, lasermonkey said:

I think I'll be going down the modified Matchbox route too. The Dora Wings kit just isn't half the kit I hoped it would be, especIally at the price. 

I really hope that Arma decides to turn their hand to the Lizzie. Imagine what a great job they'd do.

Oh no, have I made it look that bad? I don't think it's terrible -- though it is definitely below the quality of an Arma kit, they seem to really go out of their way to make construction clear and logical for us -- just let down very badly by the instructions. The only real clanger for me so far is the omission of the oil tank above the fuel tank. That's prominent and it should have been hard to miss. 

 

17 hours ago, Fritag said:

Very nice interior PC; I’d be chuffed with that woz I you. :D

 

Pfft, you'd be soldering teeny-tiny belt buckles onto fabric seatbelts sewn by a mouse who pledged his life to you when you helped him out with a tricky legal issue.

 

19 hours ago, Beard said:

Nice work on the Lysander. I'll be copying some of the internal when I get round to kit-bashing a Matchbox one with a Frog Blenheim cowling.

I still owe you a Blenheim cowling, don't I?

 

 

 

 

20 hours ago, CedB said:

Spring will soon be here and you know what happens to young men then.

I look forward to poisoning pigeons in the park again. Or did you mean the Cole Porter song?

 

 

Anyhoo, did a tiny bit more work tonight. The ground is covered with snow, and a car got stuck in front of my house for a time, and we had a showing and went out for dinner because Winston had a good week at school -- he is on some sort of heinously expensive reward program where if he does well each week, Mrs P takes him to do something she wants to do for herself.  He was pretty pleased about it, and I'm proud of him. Here's my little Win-Pin (he likes to be called Win, Win + Kingpin - King = Win-Pin) a few days ago:

 

IMG_20200111_114059

 

On Thursday I worked from home and had to drop off and pick him and his brother up from their respective schools, as our sitter was on leave. This meant that when I trundled Win in with me to drop off Grant, we were intercepted by the toothily-grinning Stepford-Wife-esque head of school, (who had previously threatened Winnie with expulsion) and when she greeted him, Winston flatly remarked "I like my new school better." I made a noise sort of like a dog barking and sort of like his name, and hustled him off. On the way back to the car, he asked me why I'd said his name so strangely, and I wearily told him I loved him and to keep speaking truth to power. (Not me, of course, but I have no power. He'll realize that soon enough.)

 

I had to work and Winston is clingy, so while Grant was down for his nap, he cuddled up to me and amused himself by randomly pressing the touch-sensitive screen of my Surface laptop, in the hopes that this would make me let him use the stylus to draw rather that doing all the boring work I do to pay for everything. Since he was asking me if airplanes had guns in the back (yes, sometimes), I showed him a c.1943 film strip starring an already-long-in-the-tooth Burgess Meredith and one Ronald Reagan entitled THE REAR GUNNER:

 

 

Gentle reader, he was engrossed. He followed the story very closely and was desperately concerned for the titular rear gunner (whom he referred to by surname) when the shooting started. I got a bit of work done, and then mostly fielded questions about bombers for the rest of the day.

 

Anyway, you want to know how the kit is going:

 

The spine of the fuselage behind the canopy is two separate pieces, I presume to permit different variants, since there are alternate parts in the box. They actually fit into place pretty snugly, like so:

 

 

IMG_20200117_211207

 

Regrettably, the panel lines don't quiiiite line up:

 

IMG_20200117_211216

 

I added some more TET, and I think it looks a little better now, but we'll see.

 

I also decided to add some 0.4mm lead wire to the back of the instrument panel (which I forgot to put in earlier), to simulate the wiring going back from the instruments. 

 

IMG_20200117_212859

 

 

In other news, we received an insultingly low offer for the house, which was then raised to within $5000 of our minimum asking price, and then, before we could respond, bumped up again to our minimum asking price on a contingency basis. We also had someone brave the snowstorm tonight and someone else coming tomorrow, so maybe we will sell this damned thing after all (and then move even further from work and pay even more for the privilege, hurrah?).

 

Also, weird question. Has anyone seen the 1987 film Eat the Rich, starring among others Nosher Powell and Lemmy of Motorhead? If so, could I impose upon you to reveal the ending to me? I can safely say I will never, ever see it, but I am curious to know how it played out. I have my suspicions.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Procopius said:

I still owe you a Blenheim cowling, don't I?

I don't think so but I have all the spare Blenhiem cowlings a man is ever likely to need (two).

 

1 hour ago, Procopius said:

[...] then mostly fielded questions about bombers for the rest of the day.

That sounds like a good day. I once had the pleasure of visiting the tank museum at Bovington with two small boys and my knowledge of WW2 German AFVs was severely tested. 

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Nice work PC - fingers crossed for the fairing :) 

 

A (fairly) good day with the boys and movement on the house front - things are looking up (rude things!) 

 

3 hours ago, Procopius said:

I look forward to poisoning pigeons in the park again. Or did you mean the Cole Porter song?

In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love what he's been thinking about all year :wicked:

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@Procopius honestly, I think you're doing a great job on the Lysander but, as you say, there are some notable omissions that, considering the variant, really ought to be there and the instructions look so vague, they could almost be 1950s style Airfix instructions, minus the "locate spigot A into locating hole B and cement thusly" annotations. My dislike of etched brass for anything other than seat belts also has me *really* concerned about those cooling gills and that alone is enough to put me off the kit.

 

Incidentally, I did watch Eat The Rich at the time, but can remember only snippets. My life was far more hedonistic in those days and parts remain fuzzy. I vaguely remember Lemmy as a hitman (ends up getting shot in the head?) and maybe something about a restaurant where the rich do end up on the plate, if not actually named as such on the menu.

 

I have very fond memories of those Comic Strip Presents episodes, especially The Yob. My favourite cult comedy from the 80s was a very little seen show called The Little Armadillos, which may have not been anywhere near as funny as my memories would have me believe due to the er, let's call them "enhancements" I was so fond of at the time.

 

Anyway, I'm sure I have seen photos of Lysanders adorned with small Polish insignia, so maybe there's hope......

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Thanks for the familial update. I've kinda missed those. As for selling the house, if we ever do decide to sell ours, we paid so little for it in the depressed housing market of 1987, we'll just get an estimate, ask for that, then sell it for the closest offer and get the hell outta Dodge!

 

As for the Lizzie, it's looking good. There is another build of this that I'm following on Hyperscale. That dude just attempted to put the engine/cowling together but the engine is too large for the cowling. There is a gap of at least a full millimeter at the join line.

Have you tried a dryfit on your engine yet?

 

 

 

Chris

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I bought one at SMW but haven't fondled the plastic yet - those panel joins do look a bit awkward, although it looks like sanding the join surfaces down a little might help. A case where CAD says it's perfect but the plastic needs a little wiggle room?

 

18 hours ago, Procopius said:

I have two Revell Shackletons, the Special Hobby Mirage two-pack, an Airfix Victor, and the Sword five Seafire set at the office

That's a small truckload right there - the trend for bigger boxes isn't always necessarily a good thing! I believe that this Monday is officially the most depressing day of the year, so I hope you start to feel better as the depths of winter recede, and that you don't get caught ;)

 

Regards,

Adrian

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4 hours ago, dogsbody said:

As for the Lizzie, it's looking good. There is another build of this that I'm following on Hyperscale. That dude just attempted to put the engine/cowling together but the engine is too large for the cowling. There is a gap of at least a full millimeter at the join line.

Have you tried a dryfit on your engine yet?

Yes, I checked on that ages ago, having come to grief with the Airfix Blenheim earlier. It didn't fit at first, but by god it fits now.

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So we've tentatively accepted an offer on our house. Some details have to be hashed out, and no contract's been signed, but we have a verbal agreement. Looks like I'll be trading Hedgehog Manor for new and more expensive (possibly ruinously so) digs by April-May, depending on when we find something. The goal is to have a home with a bedroom for us, one for the boys, a guest bedroom, and a study (ostensibly for me and Mrs P, but I have more books by a factor of ten and will soon triumph). Side effects: lifelong house-induced poverty, possible membership in a homeowners' association (fascists), and who knows what else. Hopefully, Ced, Bill, and Cookie will be able to visit now, even in the hot summer months, since we're gunning for central air. Yes, the Family Procopius may end up with a house designed within the last seventy years, instead of our crumbling 1921 hovel. 

 

We are going to be so poor for so, so long.

 

Now, as for the Lysander, I started test-fitting the clear parts, and, uh, you recall that lovely scratchbuilt oil tank I did?

 

IMG_20200119_212838

 

It's gone. It prevented the side panes from fitting properly. I had to veeeeeeeeeeery carefully extract it with my scalpel, cutting in all sorts of unsafe directions, but I got it out okay. The replacement will either be part of a Mk117 bomb from Hasegawa Weapons Set 1 or one of the cigar-shaped Eduard Spitfire droptanks as used over Normandy by some squadrons. I'm leaning towards the former. 

 

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Shame about the oil tank but well done for extracting it without damage. I'm 4000 miles away from my copy of the kit so I don't know, but would it be worth drilling into the centre section spars to add wire stubs to support the wings? it looks a bit butt-jointy to me and I can't tell from online pictures of the instructions how secure the join will be.

 

Please bear in mind that on a UK forum, telling us your house was built in 1921 will most likely evoke "Oooh hark at him - living in something all modern". :) In all my adult life l have yet to live in a house built after 1900 (or to be warm in winter).

 

Regards,

Adrian 

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