Warbirds over Wanaka

At easter the family and I travelled up to Wanaka for the day.  A 4am start and left Dunedin at 5am.  Much of the time between Dunedin and Roxburgh was plagued with low lying fog which reduced visibility terribly, not much fun then little is at that time of the morning.  Aside from a stop at Roxburgh to use the facilities, the new automated toiliets which along with the sign in a nearby window indicating coin operated washing machines, which in turn led my children to believe Roxburgh some futuristic town, …perhaps the early morning start…, the trip was without highlight.

Arriving at Wanaka had a poke around all the vehicles.  Much of the warhorses stuff I’d actually seen at Tairei’s Wings and Wheels a month or so earlier,   still would have happily looked longer.  A display of fords including and old and new ford GT, some tractors a bulldozer (yay for bulldozers!).  Headed over to the hanger with the FW-190, purchased a cap from Gilles Kupfer, so much smarter than the lame warbirds caps and given how bright it was and my lack of hat I figured I’d need it.

Walked around the parked aircraft and then took a spot by the fence and spent most of the rest of the day watching the sky with the odd toilet or food break.  Alas because of such breaks I missed some of the RNZAF stuff, annoyingly most of the Hercules display, the Augusta helicopter and Kiwi blue,  (though saw bits of it from where I was)

Anyway the photographs I can be found here.  They’re not great, alas not the best camera in the world I’m afraid particularly for taking photos of things moving about on a sunny day.  http://www.lighteffect.net/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=1715

Spitfire Mk IX

So having recently watched an episode of James May’s toy stories where he built a 1:1 scale plastic (/airfix) spitfire it occurred to me that I had never built a spitfire.  In fact I have never owned or built either a lancaster or a spitfire, the two archetypal model kits that all boys of that bygone age had done.  So anyway when I went into Aargon games next my wife convinced me to buy a kit, was only like $15 so I thought I might as well.  This is the result.  Not quite an unmitigated disaster but what I would consider pretty close.  I’m not happy with it.  I made a mistake with assembling the kit (missed a piece), the gunsight had a molding defect, got excess glue on the wing surfaces, but worst of all was the application of the decals which were just horrendous.  Even with micro-solv I was unable to get them to conform properly, some split, needed lots of cutting, which was difficult to say the least….. it was all very frustrating to be honest and I now remember what it was like and why I don’t make them anymore.