The true old times are dead (1/72 92 Squadron Lightning F.2)

[Navy Bird]

Bad timing - I literally just sold my Sword F.3 a couple of weeks ago. If I had known you would need it, I still would have sold it. But to you - at a discount. A big discount, like maybe 100%.

 

The guy I sold it to is a dealer - let me see if he still has it.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Troy Smith]

3 hours ago, Procopius said:

Somehow obtain the etched fret from a Sword Lightning F.3

Have you tried asking them?   They may have some leftover etch.

2 hours ago, Procopius said:

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.

Ah, brashly American as I suspected.... 

 (ducks for cover...) 

 

reading the start.... I guess that 4 squadron formation photo maybe from this?

 

PS in the days of vinyl records being obsolete and thus being able to find interesting records in charity shops, I picked these up for 50p...

 

 

I don't know I ever played them.....  

Edited November 23, 2022 by Troy Smith
added a PS

[Mr T]

Very impressed by a) the bang seat and b) the musings of life at chez Edward.  I understand that are hedgehogs are not indigenous to the Americas, so I assume that you had a pygmy African one as a pet. Mrs T is very fond of hedgehogs and they are regular visitors in our garden (although hibernating at present, they have sense). We put hedgehog food out for them, usually after the cat is in, as otherwise he will eat it. 

When she retires, she is threatening to foster them from our local hedgehog sanctuary. Given that they are nocturnal and Mrs T is usually asleep somewhere between 9 and 10 pm, I cannot see this ending well, at least for me. 

[Navy Bird]

2 minutes ago, Mr T said:

We put hedgehog food out for them, usually after the cat is in, as otherwise he will eat it.

 

So, will the cat eat the food or the hedgehog?   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Mr T]

Ambiguity is what comes of writing comments near midnight, when I should be going to sleep. 

I meant to say that the cat would eat the hedgehog food. Most cats, ours included, will tackle a hedgehog once, and then realise there are lot of easier things to kill. We set up a trail camera in the garden in the spring and summer and it is interesting watching the neighbourhood cats completely ignoring the hedgehogs, on the cat principle of if you ignore something you don't like, it doesn't exist. Even the local foxes, who could kill one, obviously think there easier ways of getting a meal. 

[Killingholme]

Everyone has a Lightning recollection. Mine is singular, and very late in the aircraft's career. With only months left in service I was a 8 or 9 year old passenger along for a fun ride in a Cessna piloted by a relative who was doing archaeological aerial survey work. We were returning home back over North Lincolnshire when he told me we had been instructed to climb to avoid 'traffic'. A few moments later a brace of Lightnings came howling past what felt like touching distance BELOW us. It was the most exciting thing I'd ever experienced.

 

Look forward to following the build.

 

Will

[Hook]

4 hours ago, Killingholme said:

Everyone has a Lightning recollection. Mine is singular, and very late in the aircraft's career.

Ditto - I saw their last deployment to Leeuwarden AB, on exchange with our 3222 / 323 Squadron F-16's, which must have been around '87. Glad I managed to catch them.

 

https://www.airliners.net/photo/UK-Air-Force/English-Electric-Lightning-F6/1296246

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

[Procopius]

On 11/23/2022 at 3:23 PM, Navy Bird said:

Bad timing - I literally just sold my Sword F.3 a couple of weeks ago. If I had known you would need it, I still would have sold it. But to you - at a discount. A big discount, like maybe 100%.

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,

 

On 11/23/2022 at 3:23 PM, Navy Bird said:

The guy I sold it to is a dealer - let me see if he still has it.

Please do! I am over a barrel here in the stupidest and most self-inflicted manner.

 

 

On 11/23/2022 at 2:59 PM, Terry1954 said:

For b, what do you need on the etch that is different from the etch fret for the 1a/2 ? Would a photocopy of the etch on the 3 help you construct the 3 parts from thin card?

 

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

 

 

On 11/23/2022 at 2:59 PM, Terry1954 said:

c. That's the one I want to build, despite your controversial abhorrence of that particular scheme. A flying peppermint! How could you say that Edward! Just shows when we abandoned the colonies, perhaps we knew what we were doing? 😉

 

I mean, look at it, Terry! Just look at it. It looks like the jet Dick van Dyke would fly in Mary Poppins. 

 

 

 

On 11/23/2022 at 2:59 PM, Terry1954 said:

d. Now you are talking, and I may have some Modeldecal for those very machines, but would need to delve deep. I think mine are for the topside green varieties, not sure. You would possibly seek an NMF, blue tail 92 sqn jobby?

 

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.

 

On 11/23/2022 at 5:50 PM, Navy Bird said:

 

So, will the cat eat the food or the hedgehog?   

 

As the cat discovered in pretty much about the way you'd expect, hedgehogs are very difficult to eat. 

 

On 11/23/2022 at 5:47 PM, Mr T said:

Very impressed by a) the bang seat and b) the musings of life at chez Edward.  I understand that are hedgehogs are not indigenous to the Americas, so I assume that you had a pygmy African one as a pet. Mrs T is very fond of hedgehogs and they are regular visitors in our garden (although hibernating at present, they have sense). We put hedgehog food out for them, usually after the cat is in, as otherwise he will eat it. 

When she retires, she is threatening to foster them from our local hedgehog sanctuary. Given that they are nocturnal and Mrs T is usually asleep somewhere between 9 and 10 pm, I cannot see this ending well, at least for me. 

 

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. 

 

 

On 11/23/2022 at 4:29 PM, Troy Smith said:

Have you tried asking them?   They may have some leftover etch.

 

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.

 

On 11/23/2022 at 4:29 PM, Troy Smith said:

 

reading the start.... I guess that 4 squadron formation photo maybe from this?

 

 

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. 

[Stew Dapple]

That turkey does look good 

 

I'm glad you had a good Thanksgiving, bit unsure on how it was that you came to be the one who got 'thanked' but obviously I'm pleased for you  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Procopius]

1 minute ago, Stew Dapple said:

I'm glad you had a good Thanksgiving, bit unsure on how it was that you came to be the one who got 'thanked' but obviously I'm pleased for you  

 

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

[Mr T]

I am glad you had a decent Thanksgiving meal. This is a bit of a closed book to us on this side of the Atlantic, my only experience is vicarious, when my daughter did a semester of her history degree at Kansas University and had Thanksgiving with Mrs T's cousin in St  Louis. 

In Britain, turkeys are for Christmas (although if you get a big enough one, they can last until New Year at least), although traditionally goose was eaten. In my home town (Nottingham), there is an annual fair in October called Goose Fair when geese were sold to fatten up before Christmas. It is just a very big funfair these days. Mrs T is very much taken by Madeleine, in a way that only mum's can be. 

Talking of all this has reminded me that is past time to put the sprouts on to boil, they will now never be ready for Christmas (memories of driving to work listening to Terry Wogan). 

[perdu]

Nice Churchill, mention it to the fellow will you.

 

Oh yes, posted.

 

 

A fixation on photoetched oddball things for modelling, I just cannot understand such a fetish.    

 

The only time in history that I get and understand etch is when it nestles on the fuselages of a pair of Hawks, presently of this parish.

 

Oh yes and when perpetrator of said etch made two million vortex generators for a project I had, years ago...

 

 

Also, nice turkey, s'lookin' good.

 

 

 

[Hook]

I am innately suspicious regarding food that is only eaten for special occasions.

 

After all, if the stuff would actually be any good, we'd stuff it down all year round.

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

[Terry1954]

Great to see you had a good Thanksgiving. The food looks very very tasty!

 

And it does look like you could sort the differences looking at the two etched panels

 

6 hours ago, Procopius said:

It looks like the jet Dick van Dyke would fly in Mary Poppins. 

 

I'll give you that BUT I'm not sure he could have handled a Lightning, cos he didn't do very well in an F-8 Crusader. Look at around 0.16 in this clip......

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Procopius said:

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.

 

A wise decision I would say. I have the Tamiya 1/350 KGV, and just looking at it in the box scares me crazy!

 

T

[Procopius]

20 hours ago, Mr T said:

I am glad you had a decent Thanksgiving meal. This is a bit of a closed book to us on this side of the Atlantic, my only experience is vicarious, when my daughter did a semester of her history degree at Kansas University and had Thanksgiving with Mrs T's cousin in St  Louis. 

In Britain, turkeys are for Christmas (although if you get a big enough one, they can last until New Year at least), although traditionally goose was eaten. In my home town (Nottingham), there is an annual fair in October called Goose Fair when geese were sold to fatten up before Christmas.

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.

 

20 hours ago, Mr T said:

Mrs T is very much taken by Madeleine, in a way that only mum's can be. 

 

 She's for sale, if you're interested. 

 

19 hours ago, perdu said:

A fixation on photoetched oddball things for modelling, I just cannot understand such a fetish.    

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. 

 

17 hours ago, Hook said:

I am innately suspicious regarding food that is only eaten for special occasions.

 

After all, if the stuff would actually be any good, we'd stuff it down all year round.

 

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. 

 

16 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

I'll give you that BUT I'm not sure he could have handled a Lightning, cos he didn't do very well in an F-8 Crusader. Look at around 0.16 in this clip......

 

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.

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Somewhere on line last night I found an old American recipe for thanksgiving Turkey.

The stuffing includes half a cup of dry popcorn. When it blows the backside off your Turkey, the meal is ready.

 

3 hours ago, Procopius said:

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.

🤣

[Brandy]

1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

The stuffing includes half a cup of dry popcorn. When it blows the backside off your Turkey, the meal is ready.

I've always wondered what would happen if one fed pigeons or seagulls on unpopped popcorn, then microwaved them as they flew off. Would there be a spectacular in-flight explosion as the popcorn popped, followed, of course, by a gentle fluttering of feathers as they sink earthward?

 

Ian

[Procopius]

4 hours ago, Brandy said:

I've always wondered what would happen if one fed pigeons or seagulls on unpopped popcorn, then microwaved them as they flew off. Would there be a spectacular in-flight explosion as the popcorn popped, followed, of course, by a gentle fluttering of feathers as they sink earthward?

 

As poetic as it is worrisome.

[Pete in Lincs]

Small pieces of sodium. Apparently. Does the trick. At least with seagulls. 

[Procopius]

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

1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Small pieces of sodium. Apparently. Does the trick. At least with seagulls. 

Two of my cousins claimed to do this. They are both in the ministry now.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

3 hours ago, Procopius said:

XR711  Lightning F.3 coded A

Just realized this is the one I built and shared a photo of. I had no idea that it was a part of such a piece of history. 

[Cookenbacher]

9 hours ago, Procopius said:

Broth Aficionados Revanchist Gang

They've really gone downhill, I remember when they used to be about the broth.

[Learstang]

Nearly bald - check.

Huge blue eyes - check.

Adorably toothless smile - check.

Yep, PC, you've got a real cutie there! I have to admit to being rather fond of babies and small children (it's the adults I can't stand). I suppose this is at least partially attributable to the fact I've never actually had to deal with them on a day-to-day basis, where I'm led to believe they can become a bit tiresome. However, during my limited contact with them, I find them to be rather cute.

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason

Edited November 27, 2022 by Learstang
Minor changes.

[Procopius]

5 hours ago, Cookenbacher said:

They've really gone downhill, I remember when they used to be about the broth.

I love you, Cookie.

 

5 hours ago, Learstang said:

I suppose this is at least partially attributable to the fact I've never actually had to deal with them on a day-to-day basis, where I'm led to believe they can become a bit tiresome.

 

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?

 

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Rest assured Edward that I cannot agree more with you. Avatar is a horrible film and James Cameron owes me 3 hours of time that I wasted on that and another 3 for Titanic. Of which he essentially cloned the 1950’s movie and added a stupid love story.