Wonwings Diary-a blog with a difference.

[wonwinglo]

Wonwings diary-Vintage Diecast Ship Models needing identification.

Warship#12

Dinky Toy HMS Delhi,sadly fatigued





See how the metal just pushes itself outwards,the model will crumble into dust,this is why early Dinky Toys in good condition are scarce,there is nothing that can be done to save them.

Warship#13

[wonwinglo]

Wonwings diary-First new production Blackhawk helicopter delivered.

With a new airframe, avionics and propulsion system, the UH-60M is the latest and most modern in a series of Black Hawk variants that Sikorsky has been delivering to the army since 1978.

The UH-60M will provide reduced pilot workload, increased lift, better protection and enhanced survivability,Jeff Pino,a retired U.S. Army Master Aviator with 26 years combined active, reserve and National Guard duty outlined the facts on this new generation combat helicopter. The new UH-60M Black Hawk is ideally suited for its mission and provides a safer, more responsive, deployable, versatile and effective weapon system for the army.

The army currently has more than 1,500 Black Hawk variants with more than 4.6 million combined flight hours in inventory, constituting the world's

largest and most battle-tested Black Hawk fleet. The UH-60M variant is slated to replace older Black Hawks and form the foundation of the army's future utility aircraft fleet.

The Black Hawk is a great aircraft, the nation's battlefield transport of choice,With the UH-60M, the army and Sikorsky are ready to build upon that tradition and ensure the Black Hawk will continue in that role for generations to come.

The UH-60M is currently in Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP), the final phase in a defense acquisition program before a full-rate production decision is made. A decision by the Pentagon and army to enter full rate production of 1,200 or more UH-60M Black Hawks is scheduled for 2007. Exact procurement numbers year-to-year and across the life of the program will be determined by budget authorizations and specific contract awards.

The initial LRIP aircraft delivered today is the second 'new-build' UH-60M Black Hawk. Seven of the eight UH-60Ms produced in the previous Integration

and Qualification phase of the program were made from older aircraft taken from the fleet and rebuilt to the new UH-60M configuration. The eight IQ aircraft have compiled more than 850 flight hours since September 2003.

The first and second LRIP aircraft along with four of the IQ aircraft will enter army Operational Testing and Evaluation (OT&E) in October. The army plans to equip a combat unit with the UH-60M shortly after completion of OT&E.

The UH-60M provides additional payload and range, advanced digital avionics, better handling qualities and situational awareness, active vibration control, improved survivability, and improved producibility.

The UH-60M's new composite spar wide-chord blade will provide 227 kg (500 lb) more lift than the current UH-60L blade. The new General Electric T700-GE-701D engine will add more horsepower and allow additional lift during external lift (sling load)operations.

The new cockpit contains four Rockwell Collins' multi-function displays providing primary flight, navigation, and tactical information including a fully integrated digital map, Blue Force Tracking, Stormscope lightning sensor, radar/laser warning system and a fully coupled autopilot. The narrower cockpit instrument panel will also significantly improve chin

window visibility.

The UH-60M represents the army's third standard baseline Black Hawk version in the 28-year production history of the program. Sikorsky delivered the UH-60A Black Hawk from 1978 until 1989. Sikorsky has been delivering the UH-60L since 1989 and is nearing the end of production of that variant for the army as it transitions to the UH-60M.

Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., based in Stratford, Conn., is a world leader in helicopter design, manufacturing and service. United Technologies Corp of Hartford, Conn., provides a broad range of high-technology products and support services to the aerospace and building systems industries.

[Guest]

Well Barry, you've got a lot to answer for here, I've now got the bug and so consequently bought a copy of:

Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906-1921

from Amazon USA today.

Once again second hand but a bit steeper this time at $56.00 but still a bargain compared to a new one. Anyway lets see if this volume can shed any further light on some of the missing ships!! I don't know how I'm going to get the things home as the first one weighs a ton!!

[wonwinglo]

I was just thinking the same yesterday,could this be the start of 'Bunkers Ocean waves library' ?

Was quite surprised to hear that you had them delivered on ship,they do weigh a ton,the book was still a steal even at that price,thank you for the assistance with the identification,more pictures to come.

[wonwinglo]

Wonwings diary-Swing or sink ? When action could save your life.

A while back we showed a photograph of a pilot standing on the wheel of his Piper J.3C Cub and tinkering with the engine,the picture appeared in our ever popular 'Captions quiz' section and brought forth some very interesting suitable captions,apparently the idea of craking over the propeller of a Cub in flight is nothing new,in fact only recently Maurice Kirk on his England to Australia flight had his engine quit over the sea,he unstrapped himself and opened the door and with his feet on the tyre pulled the engine over,it thankfully burst into life,something he says was possible because the bores on the engine were so sloppy ! anyway the incident propbably saved his life and those of others who have attempted this trick,here is another story related to swinging Cub props in flight-

Not many years ago, an ex-marine named Walter 0. Geary was up in a PiperCub for his final check ride before becoming a civilian pilot, his instructor, Roland Maheu, in the front seat. As a marine, Geary naturally had lived an adventurous life, and, as far as he was concerned, Maheu was just another pilot who couldn't possibly know what real danger and excitement were. The engine suddenly stopped, and there they were, 2,500 feet up over a sea of green forest near Auburn, Maine, with no place to land.

"What'll we do?" Geary yelled.

"Get out and crank it!" Maheu grinned back at the Marine.

"I'm serious!" Geary retorted. His flight test forgotten, he was visualizing what would happen when the Cub came down in the midst of a clump of pines."Well," Maheu replied, "so am I!"

As the marine watched in amazement, Maheu unfastened his safety belt,flipped the door open and swung out, balancing on the landing gear and holding onto the wing strut with one hand. Then with the other he reached forward and gripped the propeller blade from behind.

"Contact!" he yelled.

Geary turned on the ignition switch, Maheu snapped down on the prop and in a moment it was purring in a steady rhythm. Maheu climbed back inside,and after admonishing his student pilot to be sure to use carburetor heat next time he started a glide on a humid day, to prevent icing, they flew back to the airport and landed.

As shocking as the stunt appeared, it was old stuff to Maheu, who had been doing it for years as a barnstorming act. Only once did he find himself in a tight spot, and that was when the propeller came to rest in a vertical position, out of reach. By turning over and reaching his leg out as far as he could, he caught the top blade with his foot and pulled it through until the engine came to life."

[wonwinglo]

Wonwings diary-Building and improving a Spitfire kit.

Jewels from a sour purse.



Having just completed the group build Spitfire that should have been completed back in April 2006, it was time to reflect on exactly what has been achieved with what is probably the most spartan of all Sitfire kits currently on the market,many would probably have consigned the heavy clydside rivetted mouldings to the trash bin without even considering the hard work getting rid of those rivet heads alone ! the Israeli company Starfix are not exactly known for the best kits available today in an intense detailed scale model marketplace,but always one for a challenge I set about with a few sheets of wet and dry paper and a razor saw to see what could be made of this model,and above all make something a bit different.



The kit came cheap as chips all of £1.50 together with another Spit kit and a Me.109 for the same price,so even if things went bottoms up I would loose very little,so the long job of rubbing off those rivets came about,two weeks of it in fact working on and off with other projects on the go,inspection of the cockpit showed very little detail whatsoever,well there was a seat of sorts ? so before glueing the fuselage halves together I set about making instrument panel and bezels,control column,throttle lever,rudder pedals and dummy former where the instrument panel was anchored on the full sized machine,pizza dish metal cut with a pair of nail scissors was used to fabricate most of the bits ala as commercial etched fittings except this little lot cost me a delicious real Italian pizza as a by product to get the metal and not an arm and a leg !



You can simulate rivets,fold it over onto itself easily and above all bend and stick it easily with a miniscule drop of cyno,and when painted up it looks excellent,the cockpit work took me about another week working from a photograph in an old wartime publicity publication,the cockpit canopy benefited from a dunk in Johnsons Klear/Future to give it that real optical look after first trimming carefull with Swiss files to get it to fit,framework was masking tape pre-painted onto a piece of glass and cut into strips with a razor blade,then sealed again with more Future,a now time proven way of getting the right effect.



The awful gun shrouds which were not even in line were ground away with a Dremel tool and then polished out with fine wet and dry,a few blemishes sorted out with Squadron green putty,the undercarriage legs needed extending a little with fine brass tube pushed over the ends of the legs and trimmed off with the razor saw and given the correct rake,the wing is as good as I could get it after reshaping the root ends to bring the wings in line,at one stage I almost resorted to making new wings it would have probably been easier in the long run but I got there in the end.



After weeks sitting unpainted I decided to make the colours a bit different on this one,everyone builds R.A.F Spits,I have plenty of those so opted for a blue example when in service with the Royal Thai Air Force,well why not be a bit different ? after all nobody else would be mad enough to rework a Starfix kit so lets celebrate the occasion with a colourful model ! so I found the right shade of blue in my Tamiya stock and applied a precious set of decals obtained as a door give-away at a long gone and forgotton IPMS nationals meeting,you just cannot beat cherry picking and mixing your decals from the spares box,so here are the results of my labours,probably a unique model of a Spitfire 21,another one for the collection,which despite the hard work was enjoyable to see what could be achieved,she is far from perfect but hopefully conveys the clean lines of this beautiful aircraft,there are plenty of other blue painted Spits to model,including the THUM Flight ( Thermal & Humidity research ) aircraft that were based at R.A.F Woodvale,those were the well known PRU Cerulean blue of a dark hue,those were to be the last Spitfires in Royal Air Force service.











You do not get many Spitfires over my house but here I have created one,the building just visible in the background is an old prison.

[wonwinglo]

Wonwings diary-Building a model time warp-The Percival Proctor.

Percival Proctor



This model of a Percival Proctor was modified from a Frog kit,the kit is basically modelled around a military Proctor 5 which the Royal Air Force used as radio and navigation trainers during World War 2,the bulky radio set was stowed behind the front seats and took up a lot of room,this particular mark of aircraft was designed by Percivals in response to a military requirement to get radio operators through the course as quickly as possible,in order to get the order through the aircraft used the same wings as the pre war Vega Gull but there the difference ended ,where as the Vega Gull was a beautiful touring aeroplane with docile handling characteristics the extra weight of the radio gear in the military version made her tricky to handle and a few were lost in spinning accidents.



A much nicer aircraft was the Proctor 3 which was virtually akin to the pre war Vega Gull except for a new wider more roomier cockpit,my model depicts an aircraft dear to my heart as I used to maintain this particular machine G-ANPP owned by pet shop owner Harry Fanshawe who flew her all over including an epic flight from the UK to South Africa and back,Harry told me that the Gipsy Queen engine never missed a beat the whole of the trip and he loved this aircraft which served him well,on another occasion whilst on a flight to France from the UK he hit fog near Le Bourget and had to put her down in a field,when the fog cleared the next day the aircraft was literally feet away from a ditch ! he had to hire a lorry and a crane to lift her and with a gendarme escort trucked the Proctor to a proper airfield to take off again,as the lorry took the aircraft through the streets he sat in the cockpit waving to the French public looking at the strange site in curiosity.



So back to my model,the decision to use the Proctor 5 kit and do my best to make her into a Proctor 3 was taken,with a bit of slicing and filing plus the inevitable filler, she evolved into my own miniature model and is a passable likeness to G-ANPP as I once knew her,with this aircraft I worked late into the night to keep her flying for her proud owner,she was made from plywood and spruce covered in fabric,that is the way that they built them then as the pressed aluminium aircraft had yet to arrive on the scene.



Anyway here she is in all her glory in flight once again over my house here ! it is just like turning the clock back 45 years with these re-enactments in miniature.







You can hear that Gipsy Queen,G-ANPP flying at low level,what a pretty colourscheme.







Duck ! off again on another cross country trip.

[wonwinglo]

Wonwings diary-Fairey Fulmar,Fairey Swordfish & Westland Wapiti.

Fairey Fulmar



This model of the Fairey Fulmar was built from a Vac-Form kit,I believe it may have been Rareplanes now long since out of production,these old vac form kits can sometimes be picked up for a few pounds in those boxes that appear underneath the tables at model meets,usually unloved and with tatty packaging and a bit dusty,the amount of extra work in my opinion is well worth it,to see how they are put together then see the tutorial that was done a while back on the subject,place Vacforms in the search box and various material will emerge from our trusty and well used archives.







Fairey Swordfish.



This one is the original Airfix offering,it came in a box of bits looking very sorry for itself with broken wings and no undercarriage,so I made up a scratch built undercarriage,built up a jig to re-glue the wings and generally tidied up the paintwork,so the model was saved from the scrap bin,probably not the most fine of Swordfish models but one with great historical significance.











Westland Wapiti.



This model was built around the bits from a Frog Westland Wallace,the fuselage is scratch built from Plastikard,wire and bits from the scrap box,it is my second attempt at this important subject.

[Guest]

Lovely models Barry and the photo's do them justice. They make me want to start making some planes again but I can't allow myself to be distracted from my steam ship yet!!

When I think though of the number of model planes I have made over the years. When I was a teenager I gave a carrier bag of them to a neighbours young son to play with!!

[Guest]

Barry it may be no ways near your amount but i worked it out between the ages of 8 untill 14 i built 204 model kits mostly airfix and frog 1/72 what is so very sad is each one ended up either given away or shot up with a .22 air rifle

[Guest]

Mine used to hang from the ceiling and i would have air raids at night by flashing my torch at them!!

I remember the Short Stirling used to look particularly good.

[wonwinglo]

***Just think there must have been types that would have filled the voids in my collection ? some of the models I am now building from tat to fill those gaps

Barry it may be no ways near your amount but i worked it out between the ages of 8 untill 14 i built 204 model kits mostly airfix and frog 1/72 what is so very sad is each one ended up either given away or shot up with a .22 air rifle

[wonwinglo]

***The Stirling was a good offering from Airfix,sadly nobody else has bothered to do a kit of the subject in recent years,Airfix really excelled with the bombers,I remember asking my dad why it had such short span wings ? the reason was to get it into the hangars of the day.

Mine used to hang from the ceiling and i would have air raids at night by flashing my torch at them!!I remember the Short Stirling used to look particularly good.

[wonwinglo]

Wonwings diary-Osprey's complete their Trans Atlantic crossing.

MV-22 Ospreys completed their trans-Atlantic flights to England and back,one aircraft was diverted to Iceland during test after engine problem.

The pilots of the MV-22 Osprey won't knock Charles Lindbergh from his perch atop aviation history, but then, they have very different goals.

After Lindbergh made the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, his triumphant journey was marked by celebration and ticker tape. Marine Corps Osprey

pilots, who completed their own jaunt across the icy northern Atlantic and back last weekend, plan to make similar flights and then go to war.

The Osprey - the tilt-rotor aircraft the Marines are resting their aviation future on,will not be released into the wilds of combat until sometime next year. But when it is, the fleet will receive a $71 million dollar aircraft touted self deployable, meaning crews can load the birds up and fly them straight into the fight. Refueling happens midair along the way.

One of (the Osprey's) unique capabilities is its range and speed,With the V-22, they can actually fly anywhere in the world.

The recent trans-Atlantic flight was just one more test to prove the Osprey's worth. The aircraft rests on shaky history, reaching a low point in 2000 with two fatal crashes, including one in Jacksonville that killed four Marines.

The 4,000-mile journey to England began at New River Air Station on July 8, when three Ospreys with Marine Tilt-rotor Operation Test and Evaluation

Squadron 22 left for Goose Bay, Newfoundland. Then two of the Ospreys, accompanied by a pair of KC-130J Hercules refueling aircraft, took off for Farnborough, England, where the Ospreys were scheduled to perform at an air show.

The Osprey participated in two air shows while in England, flying a total of 17 events, according to a Marine Corps news release. The aircraft left England

on July 25 and returned to New River on July 29.

Maj. David Lane, the aircraft commander of one of the Ospreys during the trek, called the flight "fantastic."

As a CH-46 pilot, I didn't get a chance to fly at those altitudes, said Lane, who has been flying the Osprey since early 2004 and has clocked 518 flight hours on the craft. We got to see some cool places. I was amazed to see there was so much water between Canada and England.

It's fantastic to be that small piece of history.

The flight did have some kinks. One of the Ospreys - not Lane's - had a compressor stall on its right engine during the nine-hour flight to England. The aircraft diverted to Iceland, and the engine was replaced

before it continued on.

Aircraft diversions are nothing new,the ocean provides limited places to divert in an emergency.

Also, if the situation would have been a real-world tactical mission, they could have continued, VMX-22, the squadron designated to put the Osprey

through the wringers to investigate its capabilities and safety following the fatal accidents. The Osprey passed its operational evaluation and was approved for full scale-production in September.

The Osprey, is ready to bring its advanced capabilities to the battlefields of the future.

The Osprey will be a tremendous asset for the

Marine Corps.

[Guest]

I remember i bought my first Stirling just because it had a bomb cart and bombs