Quote from: Gondor on March 25, 2023, 12:09:57 PM.........seeing that Olimp don't appear to exist any more.

So it seems. When you mentioned their turret upgrades I had a look for them and came to the same conclusion.

This is the set I am talking about Kit



I also have the Shvetsov ASh-73 engine set as well

Seen Here on Scalemates

Gondor

Looks pretty darn good. 

I will replace the gun barrels with brass tubing though, far sturdier.

Gondor

I'm not sure that haveing ideas all the time is a good thing. I was thinking about various things related to the Britmodeller site, my helping one of the modellers on there with some spare engines and the parcel waiting to be sent at the time, it's now in the post. One of the things that popped into my mind was someone who was building a B-29 only to find out that the upper front turret was one of the streamlined versions which are only found in the 1/72 B-50 kits by Academy I beleive. I had dug out the only one I have, I think the spare was given to someone else, and I took pictures for them so they could convert something to a simmilar shape. This then lead to my thinking about the RAF Washington B.1 or rather the B-29 that I recently bought to become a Washington, which is when I had an idea. What-if the RAF got some B-50's? 
I am thinking that it could be called the Washington B.II, so an ebay search only found a few copies of the kits in the US! OMG..... the postage costs!   

So anyway, I decided to watch a couple, you never know what might turn up or happen and they gave me refferences for price etc. So this morning I get a notification from ebay that the seller of one of the RB-50's I was watching was offereing 10% off. An hour later and I had closed the deal. I am going to have to get bigger storage/travel boxes for these larger aircraft 

Gondor

Today is my dad's birthday. Bought a card on my way home today and then took it around after haveing a bite to eat and packing away the rest of the shopping I did while buying the card. Not very many cards available for a Ninty Two year old so a general card was bought.
The sad thing is that he is showing his age, my mother although a few years younger is still very much in the hear and now where my dad seams to have drifted off a dit 

Gondor

Quote from: Gondor on March 31, 2023, 08:35:26 AMToday is my dad's birthday. Bought a card on my way home today and then took it around after haveing a bite to eat and packing away the rest of the shopping I did while buying the card. Not very many cards available for a Ninty Two year old so a general card was bought.
The sad thing is that he is showing his age, my mother although a few years younger is still very much in the hear and now where my dad seams to have drifted off a dit 

Gondor

Always a tricky situation when your parents seem to be fading away or drifting off...................been there, done that, had the worrying time!   I sympathise with you. 

My dad  started showing signs of vascular dementia a couple of years before he died.  He couldn't remember what he'd had for lunch an hour ago, but he could remember clearly the filling of the sandwiches at a VJ day party in 1945.  Try (if you are not already doing so)   chatting to him about early memories.......rationed food....rock & roll .....even VE day parties.    It may not work, but a sensible social worker I know (yes, sensible ones DO exist) uses what he call reminiscence therapy with older people with fading faculties to great success.   He's in his late 20's and keeps getting in touch with me to find out about  what he calls "potential trigger events" in the late 1950's and 1960's  that will get his clients talking.

Good to hear about social workers that know life examples and valid techniques exist outside of Universities and Government Procedure Manuals... do I sound a bit cynical? Oh well...

With some of my recent modelling related arrivals, I am getting very tempted to start even more projects 

Decals and photo etch for a Meteor F.8 of the RAAF in Korea as a r/w build, armed with rockets from an Airfix FR.9. This would also be handy for my PR.10 build as I would get the detail of the cockpit to look at from the new Airfix kit.

Also getting seriously tempted at building a Washington B.II since the etch for a B-29 arrived today and I have the necessary kit in the stash with a replacement on the way from the U.S. as this is a recent idea.

I will proably not be doing much D.I.Y., not that I do much anyway, before the Scottish Nationals as I have a few kits that I think I can get finished for then. Something new is always nice for the display.

Gondor

I managed to remember something 

Some time ago I managed to buy a Cobra Company detail set for a 1/72 KC-97. These detail sets are as rare as rocking horse poo but aparantly Lone Star Models have produced the same set. They apear at the moment to only be active on the Book of Face so I have dropped them a line asking if the detail set is still available and for how much. Now the question is, how ethical is it for me to copy the set for my own use only seeing the company that made the set is no longer around? This would also apply to the detail sets I have for the B-29 and Tu-4. Not only that, I have never cast anything in resin and have only ever made one mold of some fairly basic shaped items.

I posted the above originally in a build thread. That was a mistake as it should have been posted here.

I had found out that Lone Star Models took over the Cobra Company and has been produceing the set. This is good news as it saves me makeing an donkey out of trying to make the moulds and trying my hand at casting as well. The bad news is that untill their web site is back up in August 

At least I know it will be available again so I don't need to think about casting    Pitty that I have to wait untill the back end of the year to get another set but then there is no rush as the models are not going anywhere.

Gondor

So Lee thinks I'm a lucky sod for manageing to get my mitts on an AZ Models Bf 109H-1. Nothing to it really, lots of looking around and not finding any avaliable but then finding a link to King Kit which although they didn't have one, did allow me to get an email notification of any that may come into stock. Simple as that. I'm fairly certain that the kit is the same as the H-0 version, just a different box, decals and instructions, we will find out sometime fairly soon as I have an H-0 version on it's way via eBay so I will be able to answer that fairly soon.
One thing I am thinking of doing is a r/w Meteor F.8 in Korea which means Australian. I have decals for that in the form of Xtradecal X72071 and I have the new Airfix kit, both the F.8 and FR.9 so underwing rockets for the aircraft are sorted as are the main decals, just need to double and tripple check sources for a specific aircraft with rocket rails in place.
Thoughts of a Washington Mk.II are on hold untill later in the year when I can get hold of an engine upgrade set for Lone Star Models, should work out nicly for getting a bonus from work I hope, which should pay for a couple of sets as I have a KC-97, B-50D and an RB-50G with a second RB-50 G in the post to become the Washington B.II So I will need three sets in total as I have a Cobra Company set already. This also leaves loads of engine nacelles for whiffs, I have a mind to use a set on something B-26ish for Vietnam, maybe even a P-61 with that type of engine. I am sure there will be other ideas sometime.

Gondor

Whiffed P-61 as an alternate to the RW A-26, maybe?

Adding a pair of Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone engines rather than the Pratt & Whitney R-2800-10 Double Wasp engines that were fitted should increase the top end a bit if they can be persuaded to stay with the rest of the airframe or not to shake the whole thing to bits 

Gondor

Just found a kit I have been after for a little while. An AZ Models Bf 109G-12 based on the G-6. I already had the G-4 based version so I am quite pleased to have found the other version. Once it arrives I will be able to compare the instructions which I doubt will differ a lot other than the bulges on the engine cowling.

Gondor

Not much mojo for anything today so after catching up on YouTube late morning I finished a game of Civ VI between chores. After I won the game I did a few other chors and then started a new game once I looked up some parts to upgrade my PC.
I also decided to start a R/W build of a new Airfix Meteor F.8. It is getting rockets from one of the FR.9 kits I have which will be an RAF machine so won't need the rockets and the mounting holes are present in the wings anyway so a rocket armed F.8 in Australian Service duering Korea has been started.
The build so far has been quite easy, which is what I want at the moment, and as Kit has said elsewhere, the wing ribs etc are quite substantial but the undercarriage bays go together with only a few swipes of a file in a very positive and secure manner. I need to do some research before I can go much further as the kit gives two different types of aileron and as this is a r/w build I want the correct type but I don't care about the rivets!

Gondor