Finished model 2025-VI

I’m not sure if Tintin et le lac au requins is considered canon, it is not an Hergé script, but the final comic book was produced by Studios Hergé and it is close enough to the spirit of the original Tintin books. And, there are quite a few aircraft in the film, and it just so happens that the first finished subject in my project to build all aircraft shown in Tintin books became the Aero Commander in which Tintin, captain Haddock and the Thompson twins crash in the Syldavian mountains.

Aero Commander, yes… The closest fit is an Aero Commander 680, but the animators have taken considerable liberties with the layout. While the cabin is not exactly cramped, it is not the airliner cabin with room to stand up and a lavatory at the back depicted:

Aero Commanders have their doors on the port side, but in the film there is a prominent door on the starboard side, so that the plane can move towards the right (forwards, according to Western image conventions) while the pilot makes a dramatic exit with the parachute he’s suddenly wearing:

Aero Commanders normally don’t have wheel well covers either (though some have had them added as rebuilds).

There was only a single seat for the pilot (as opposed to the double-command of the real aircraft), so apparently captain Haddock is kneeling on the floor next to Tintin when the latter takes over the command:

The livery of the aircraft, as well as the inside colour, is inconsistent between different shots, compare the front view above with a distance shot:

I decided to go for the bare-metal underside, as that fits with the general airlinerness of the subject.

Up until recently, there was only one choice if you wanted to build an Aero Commander, Aurora’s venerable offering in 1:81 scale. There is now a resin kit of an Aero Commander 560 from Croco Models which perhaps could be converted into a 680. But, I ended up with the Aurora. The kit is considerably older than I am and rather simplified. It does not have an extended undercarriage option, so it has to be mounted on a stand. Worst of all, it has the affectation of many models at the time that the outlines of the decals have been engraved in the surface (who came up with that idea, and why!?). On reasonably flat surfaces this is just a matter of puttying, but with the corrugated tail of the Aero Commander it was just about hopeless to get a decent surface. I spent considerable time creating an interior approximating the one in the film aircraft, scratch-building seats and modifying a set of random scale figures I had purchased from a noname Chinese company for a couple of crowns to look like our heroes (I found a nice pilot in airline uniform in my spares box). I even managed to replicate Snowy in Tintin’s lap. Needless to say, none of this is visible through the windows.

I also scratchbuilt the wheel wells for the undercarriage, including the engine exhausts that are routed through here in rather prominent ducts, but had to cut off large parts of the laboriously constructed parts as they wouldn’t fit in the very narrow wheel wells of the model. At least I did manage to create some rather neat landing lights with little-lenses and Kristal Klear, and navigation lights from the HOBBY + PLUS offering.

Finally, I decided that the aircraft had to have registration codes, as that is legally required. From other albums, we know that Syldavian aircraft have a SY prefix followed by three letters, so generating a random registration I came up with SY-UJU in a suitable typeface.

The less said about the painting with my nemesis white, the better.

Finished model 2025-V

Hawker Sea Fury T.61, by PM Model, 1:72.

The Hawker Sea Fury was the last propeller fighter used by the Royal Navy¹, but as such things go, things are more complicated than that—the Westland Wyvern was actually in service longer, though classified as a strike aircraft; then again, the distinction between a strike aircraft and a fighter-bomber, as the Sea Fury was used as, is mostly arbitrary. The Mark 61 Trainer was a de-navalised (without tailhook) version of the Sea Fury, of which a handful were delivered to Iraq and Pakistan. The sources I have consulted give contradictory information on when the deliveries to Iraq were made (around 1950±some years) and if they actually were the same version as the Pakistani trainers, but this is the assumption PM have made.

I built the model as aircraft number ٢٦٣ (263) of 1 Sqn of the Iraqi Air Force.

The kit is about the quality of a 1970s Matchbox kit, in particular it has very shallow wheel wells with overscale detail. I did not do anything about that, but spent a bit of time creating transparent navigation lights. I also ended up having to scratch build the undercarriage covers that had gotten lost at some point.

Kit donated by Tankman, who considered life too short to spend on it.

---

¹ The RAF cancelled their order for the landbased Hawker Fury towards the end of WWII as being surplus to requirements.

Literature

Aircraft Archive: Fighters of World War Two, Volume 2, 1988, Argus Books.

Finished model 2025-IV

Finally something in plastic: the ancient 1:28 scale Revell SPAD XIII in the markings of 2nd Lt Frank Luke of the 27th Aero Squadron of the US Army Air Service, based at Saints in August 1918.

I have made no effort to make the model correct, but have basically followed the instructions, interpreting the colours “tan”, “dark earth”, ”olive drab” and “gray” as Humbrol 9, 29, 116, and 40, respectively, with 49 as matt laquer. The fit wasn’t awful, but some amount of putty has been necessary. I added clear plastic panes to the windshield, which was just empty frames otherwise. For some reason the struts have had a tendency to mysteriously disappear, so I’ve had to reconstruct a few of them from scratch. I decided my usual fishing line was too thin to use as bracing wire at this scale, and didn’t want to use sewing thread, so I decided piano wire would be best. Approximately 2 m of 0.5 mm wire turned out to be needed. Somewhat to my surprise the decals were good and hadn’t even yellowed. I did my best to cut away clear decal film and think I mostly succeeded in avoiding silvering.

Incidents and accidents

Every now and then I end up reading crash reports in some detail. I am not quite sure what attracts me, ghoulishness or the sobering descriptions of how seemingly trivial things end up ending the lives of hundreds of people. Chekhov’s missing bolt, as it were. An excellent online collection of analyses of aviation accidents is being produced by Admiral Cloudberg. I will never have the time to read them all, but it is good to know they are there.

Shameless

Because reasons, I was watching a radar plot of the airspace around Stockholm, when I noticed a small jet moving fast and high over the Baltic. Out of constant curiosity I googled it, and found that someone was commuting between Leer-Papenburg and Turku—out from Germany in the morning, back in the evening, a flight of less than two hours one way. Who could this be? The plane is registered to an unnamed private owner, but after a bit of discussion with a German colleague the connection became clear: Meyer Werft is located in Papenburg and they have since 2015 owned Meyer Turku, in Turku. Apparently the CEO of the latter, Tim Meyer, prefers to live in Germany and commute to his office in Finland every day. Meanwhile Stockholm public transport is struggling financially.

Finished model 2022-I

As mentioned long ago Pilot 13/1977 contains 3-plan drawings of the Cavalier Turbo Mustang III, and suggestions for how to build one, based on a P-51D Mustang kit. I thought this was a cool-looking aircraft that should be built at some point. Later, I decided I would build it in 1:160 scale for a train modeller friend of mine. When I found a 10 mm scale Minifigs white metal model of a P-51C Mustang, I thought maybe I could use it as the base for a conversion and started collecting references. A fellow modeller, whose name has been unfairly and unfortunately lost in time, mailed me his entire collection of magazine clippings on the Turbo Mustang III. I designed decals in 1:160 scale and had them printed by Al Superczynski. Then I spent several years angsting over how to do surgery on the metal model. I had studied the Heritage Aviation Models conversion kit and had some ideas, but it seemed a daunting prospect anyway, so in the end nothing happened, until I recently noticed that the Shapeways Marketplace contains a number of aircraft models of varying quality and wwitalik has a Turbo Mustang III model which is printable in 1:160. (The model claims to work as a Piper PA-48 Enforcer as well, which isn’t true—there are numerous differences between the two types, not the least being that the Enforcer’s engine exhaust is on the left side of the fuselage.)

I ordered the model printed in “White Natural Versatile Plastic” and it soon arrived. In order to be printable, several features of the model was grossly over-scale and I did my best to adjust these. The propeller blades and tailwheel were cut off, as they were mostly just plastic lumps. The main landing gear is also overly thick, but I felt uncertain about replacing that with anything sensible, but maybe I should have tried. The trailing edges of wings, stabilizer and fin had to be sanded down, which turned out to be difficult—the plastic is rather elastic and tended to just follow the sanding stick and then left grainy fibres along the edge. In the end I had to call it a day and consider the edges as thinned as I was likely to succeed with. In contrast, drilling out the exhaust was actually quite easy. Another things I left off was milling out the landing gear wells, as I wasn’t convinced I would be able to do it well—I would need some kind of way of carefully steering the cutter. Likewise, I briefly considered heatsmashing a transparent cockpit canopy, but apart from the technical difficulties of that, that would also have required milling out the cockpit without accidentally going through the sidewalls. There is a not-particularly expensive milling attachment for my Dremel, maybe I should invest in that.

I fashioned thin propeller blades out of Contrail profiles, cutting and carefully twisting them in warm (not too hot!) water to get blade shapes, landing gear covers were fashioned out of Plastruct sheet, tail wheel covers out of a slice of some aluminium can I had lying around, and a new tail wheel was made from a bit of Plastruct rod and piano wire. I primed the kit with Mr Surfacer 1200 and eventually started painting it. The Turbo Mustang III was intended as a COIN aircraft and at the time it would have meant deployment in Vietnam, so was painted in the then-current South-East Asia camouflage. This meant Humbrol 28, 116, 117, 118. I tried Maskol, again, to mask the colour fields and it seemed to work better now, but the Tamiya masking tape I used to mask off the bottom colour managed to lift a bit of the paint, and even some primer. With the uneven surface that the Mr Surfacer hadn’t managed to improve, airbrushing didn’t make much of a difference, and since I had to touch up scuffed paint at several points, I finally gave up and just brush painted the lot. The control surface hinge lines were accentuated with a pencil. (I need to get me a 0.3 mm pencil again, it has its uses.)

The result will not win any prices (I tried), but it felt good to finally get the old project out of my system, even if in a somewhat different form than originally envisioned.

Ship spotters

Reading up on aircraft carriers, I ran into scores of codes indicating the convoys the carriers were protecting. I could distinguish certain patterns, but the full information is of course available at ConvoyWeb

Flotsam and jetsam

Some time ago, my mother and I were out walking on a crisp autumn day. A contrail crossed the sky, and my mother, as she always does, pointed it out and said: “Look, a jet fighter!”

Now, people often say stuff that is incorrectly specific, to try to be funny or whatever. (The OBCM, for example, will refer to all birds as “ducks”, to underscore that she’s a city girl and can’t be bothered with the details of non-asphalt-based organisms.) But this time, just to make conversation, I said: “Heh, yeah, but properly speaking it’s a passenger aircraft, clearly going to land at Arlanda.”

My mother was surprised. “It’s an aeroplane?”

I in turn was surprised. “Uh yes, or well, aeroplane exhaust. If you look carefully, you can see the plane itself at the tip.” I gave a brief explanation of how contrails form in the cold air at altitude, and my mother marvelled at this new information. I for my part realised that she had been a child when newly-purchased Vampire jets probably would have been the only aircraft flying high enough to form contrails in the skies of Finland. Presumably her elders would have pointed out the streamers in the sky, excitedly referring to them as “jet fighters” [suihkuhävittäjiä], but not making it clear that a jet fighter was a type of aircraft rather than a strange name for a strange celestial phenomenon, and somehow the misunderstanding had gone uncorrected all this time.

I wonder what misconceptions I have that people think are just me trying to be funny.

Finished model 2016-I and II

Porco Rosso is the best aviation film I know and is set in a 1920s whose æsthetics, both in aircraft design and clothing, appeal to me. FineMolds make exquisite models, often based on films or games. It so happened that I by different persons was gifted 1:48 scale FineMolds models of both Porco Rosso and Fio Piccolo from their based-on-the film aircraft models. Originally the plan was to build Porco Rosso’s aircraft for the 1920s theme exhibition at the club's yearly competition, but as usual I didn’t get it finished in time. Instead, inspired by the club’s figure painting course, I painted the pair of figures and eventually entered them at VIII Atvirame Vilniaus stendinių modelių konkursas, placing 3rd in the “Plastic, figurines and busts” category.

Finished model 2013-II

While I arrange modelling competitions, I don’t compete, mainly because I’m just not good enough, but when we were at Model Expo in Helsinki last year, one of the IPMS Finland guys pressed a Frog Fokker D21 in my hand as a parting gift. I could but take it as a challenge.

I presumed the idea was that I would build a Finnish Fokker (as FR-92 was one of the decal options), but that seemed too easy, and instead I decided I would make a Danish Fokker, inspired by the picture in [Munson 1969]: J-50 of 2. Eskadrille of Hærens Flyvertropper, based at Værløse. A historical note is that while the Fokker D.XXIs in both Dutch and Finnish service acquitted themselves well in the beginning of WWII, the Danish ones were never used in combat, for reasons that are fully covered in [Ancker 1997, 2001a].

The Frog model, while older than I, is not completely horrible. The shape is OK and it has separated control surfaces, which, when offset, would make for a nice effect, as I decided to build it in flying configuration (which otherwise would not affect the exterior, considering the fixed landing gear). But there are deficiencies: The cockpit is completely bare, there are no wing guns (not relevant for the Danish version, but definitely for the Finnish), the engine is such a pathetic effort that all around the building table burst out laughing when I showed it, and the rather prominent exhaust pipe is completely missing. All of this is of course amenable to scratch building, which I did (I didn’t bother with the engine, though) and in addition I made elevator actuators and the large landing light present on the Danish aircraft. The rather shapeless original pilot figure was replaced by a Matchbox pilot, sculpted and painted to look as much as possible as flying suits I found in [Ancker 1997] (photographs of Danish pilots in 1940 are really rare, not to say nonexistent, on the web). A length of thick soldering wire turned out to be perfect for making the exhaust. The hemispherical landing light lens was created by heat-smashing a bit of transparent sheet. (Or rather, heat-smashing several sheets until I got a decent shape.)

By this time it was just a week left before the competition was on (as getting my Tunnan done had had priority up to that point) and I had to start the painting process. Since I persist in using Humbrol colours, which take considerable time to dry, I set up a schedule where I would paint a layer in the evening, get up before dawn to paint the next layer, go to work, come home, paint another layer, sleep a few hours, etc. In the middle of it all I ran out of adhesive tack for masking, so had to run out and buy some, but my favourite Sense 60 g tack just didn’t exist anymore, all shops suddenly carrying Pritt Multi Tac instead. I had to buy this instead. To my horror I found the next morning it would actually lift the underlying paint. I’d never seen Humbrol do that, but apparently I was cutting it a bit too fine with the drying times. In all, the paint job is pretty horrid, you can even see a couple of obvious fingerprints in the photo below. I added the decals the same morning as we were leaving, using some leftover Danish national insignia, unfortunately somewhat undersize.

For the camouflage I went with [Eberspacher 1994] and its suggested colour scheme of Olivengrøn/Brun/Skyblå, which is not inconsistent with the high-contrast camouflage apparent in contemporary photographs, using Humbrol 131 Satin Green, 9 Gloss Tan, and H.G.3 Hellgrau 76 as matches. Acquaintances frowned at this and wondered if I’d purposely chosen the most garish combination.

So, it’s not a great model by any means and will never win anything, but I did get it done in time for the competition.

Literature

De danske militære flyverstyrkers udvikling 1910–1940, Bind I, Paul E. Ancker, 1997, Odense Universitetsforlag.
De danske militære flyverstyrkers udvikling 1940–1945, Bind II, Første halvbind, Paul E. Ancker, 2001, Odense Universitetsforlag.
“A Design of the Times—The Fokker D.XXI in Development and Service”, Srecko Bradic, in Military Aircraft Monthly International 9(7), July 2010, pp 32–41.
Fokker D.XXI—Dutch & Danish Service, Vol. 1, Warren Eberspacher, 1994, Phalanx Publishing.
Fokker D.XXI, Suomen Ilmavoimien Historia 3, 2. uusittu painos, Kalevi Keskinen, Kari Stenman & Klaus Niska, 1977, Tietoteos.
Fighters 1939–45—Attack and Training Aircraft, Kenneth Munson, 1969, Blandford Press.
Fokker D.21, Seria „Pod Lupą” 10, Przemyslaw Skulski, 1999, Ace Publication.

Finished model 2013-I

This year’s modelling competition had the theme “What if…Sweden” and Kipper had one of his brilliant ideas—he bought up every 1:72 kit of Saab Tunnan he could find and pressed them in the hands of all modellers he met against the promise that they would build it, but not in the kit configuration. Mulling things over, I had a brainwave and accepted a bagged Heller Tunnan.

Several things came together in my head: the Prusa Mendel 2 3D printer I had just bought together with some friends (including Kipper), my interest in the Saunders-Roe SR.A/1 flying-boat fighter, the rotund shape that gave the Tun its name, and the wonderful diorama of a wartime S-17BS base in the Stockholm archipelago at a previous 08-Open, so I thought:
What if the Chief of the Air Force had been to the British Gas Turbine Week in 1951, where the SR.A/1 was displayed [Jones 1993], and had decided that it would be possible to convert the all-new Saab 29 Tunnan into a flying-boat reconnaissance version that could deploy from easily-constructed archipelagic bases, the road base system not yet having been built?

I decided that it would have been designated S29H, obviously popularly known as ”Vattentunnan”. Perhaps this would be a proposal interesting enough to extend the production run of fpl 29 beyond serial 29976 in 1956 [Flyghistorisk Revy 27], so I could depict an individual palindromically serialled 29992 (coincidentally $992$₁₀ = 1111100000₂). Like all other seaplanes in the Air Force, the S29H would obviously be operated by F2 at Hägernäs, extending their life as aircraft operators. F2 aircraft did not normally wear squadron-specific colours or numbers, instead using the two final digits of the serial number on the fin [Hellström & Fredin, 2000], and I presume that F2 already being special in their marking schemes, they would never bother transferring to fin letters, so 2-92 it would be. However, they probably would use the high-contrast olive green fields prescribed for A29 and S29 from 1954 onwards (not least because it would add a little splash of colour). The result would be a Tunnan as it would have looked in the late 1950s.

For the actual design of the aircraft I foresaw giving it a boat hull directly based on that of the SR.A/1, retractable wingtip floats that could double as wingtip tanks, and a couple of holes in the wings for the cameras. The cameras mounted in the actual S29C recce aircraft were pretty bulky, necessitating an entire new nose section, but this design was dragooned by Colonel Beckhammar, whereas the original plans called for a rather simpler solution, so the S29H can be taken to be based on these original plans and some clever optics. The model turned out to have a convenient panel line running all the way from air intake to exhaust and I set the razor saw to work on this. Now I could tape together the two fuselage halves and scan their outline for later use.

Then I scanned Barrie Hygate’s SR.A/1 plans [Aircraft Archive, 1988]. Kipper tipped me off to Rhino 3D, which happens to have a free beta version for OS X, and during a modelling day at the Army Museum, showed me how to loft the hull profiles into a 3D structure. Then I stretched and squashed that structure in order to match it to the previously scanned Tunnan outline. I now clearly saw how much smaller Tunnan was than the SR.A/1. I created the wingtip floats, which had fewer constraints, so did them more or less free-hand. (All this took considerably more time and fiddling around than is obvious from this short description.)

The plan had been to print the hull and floats on the 3D printer, but that was a project in itself and I hadn’t even managed to get it to communicate with my MacBook yet. On the other hand, Kipper had gotten access to a Roland 3D router, and used it to produce the desired parts for me. The material used looked like some kind of light wood, but apparently was a resin. The resolution of the router was outstanding and I was very pleased with the bits. Except for the wing-tip floats, whose size I had completely overestimated—they were just little pods. I would have to rescale them by at least a factor of 2. Still, that could wait for later.

I continued putting the model together. Heller models from the 1970s, such as this, are really not bad, with good fit, and the cockpit was reasonably well detailed. I still added a thin copper wire for the ejection handle and a bit of plastic to represent the quite prominent canopy opening mechanism.

The new hull had a big lug left from routing which I had to spend a few hours to sand away with wet paper, as I’m a bit wary about resin dust, but eventually it was in a state to be mated with the (remains of the) Heller fuselage. It fit surprisingly well—I had apparently done a careful job scanning and lofting. The only trouble spot was at the air intake, where I’d sawed through the bottom part of it, this necessitating a bit of scraping and puttying. In retrospect I should have kept the intake as was, but so it goes.

In the wings I took out a section of each lower part, in order to create the attachments for the floats. I added various tubing to represent the retraction mechanism. In the meantime, the router had broken down, so Kipper was unable to supply me with resized copies, but being the man of bright ideas that he is, he came up with an emergency solution: pilfer the wing floats from a Tamiya 1:48 Rufe, and indeed they were perfect in size.

Soon it was time for painting. I went with straight Humbrol 56 overall, and Humbrol 30 for the olive green fields (really too green a shade, I should rather have used 116, I made a thinko). Finally, the day before the exhibition, it was time to add the decals. The kit-supplied national insignia went on without problems, but my Specialtryck Swedish numerals completely disintegrated on contact with water. On this short notice I had no option but to leave the aircraft unnumbered. As I arrived the next morning, looking very glum, older hands laughed at my ignorance of the short shelf-life of Specialtryck decals. Still, there it was, and so were all the other ones! Kipper’s campaign activity had paid handsome dividends, the What if competition category had to be divided in two: one for Tunnan entries, the rest for everything else and then about as many additional entries in the hors concours exhibition. This caused some amount of excitement even abroad, and I was chuffed as nuts to see my flying boat singled out for comment.

A couple of weeks later I brought the Tunnan along to the Helsinki competitions, where it received IIIrd prize in the Jets 1/99–1/51 category, though that was really an artefact of their no-sweeps rules, it was in fact way down the list, but all the entries ahead came from only two builders…

Much later, with the help of Microscale Liquid Decal Film, I managed to get the numerals to stick together, and then scratch-built beaching gear for the aircraft, trying out the hairspray method on it. And here it is:

Literature

“SAAB 29 Tunnan” at Aircraft Walkaround Center, 2003.
Aircraft Archive: Post-war Jets, Volume 3, 1988, Argus Books.
Kronmärkt – Målning och märkning av svenska militärflygplan under 1900-talet, Leif Hellström & Leif Fredin, 2000, Allt om Hobby.
J29-klubben, 2010
“Saro’s flying-boat fighter”, Barry Jones, Aeroplane Monthly, 22(7), July 1993, pp 34–41.
Flygplansritningar 4: Svenska Flygvapnets Spaningsflygplan 1926–86, Björn Karlström, 1988, Allt om Hobby.
”Saab 29 Tunnan · Västerås Flygmuseum”, at 4πsr, Lennart Möllerström, 2011.
Att flyga är att leva: Flygvapnet 1926–1976, Gösta Norrbohm & Bertil Skogsberg, 1975, Bokförlaget Bra Böcker.
Flyghistorisk revy Nr 27: SAAB 29 Tunnan, 1977, Svensk Flyghistorisk Förening.
Gula Divisionen, 1954, Terrafilm.

Nor glom of nit

The weather didn’t look very promising, so I thought it best to call J and check:
“Are you on?”
“Of course I am!”
Well then! Soon we were on the train to Linköping, J nodding off and I reading. As we arrived in Linköpingand looked for our bus, we were greeted by staff from the local public transport who showed us to the bus to Malmslätt and quickly instructed us how to buy SMS tickets. The entrance to the airfield was through the museum (where I had to briefly stop to photograph the Tp 85 that had appeared outside the museum since our last visit). And there it was: The Swedish Armed Forces Air Show 2012.

The weather had gotten worse, which not only affected the aerial displays, some of which—like paradrops and replica pioneer aircraft—had to be cancelled due to the high winds. I realised exactly how inadequately I had dressed as a horizontal rain started. J calmly dug out a wind- and water-proof ski suit for himself from his bat pack. He offered me an umbrella, but it threatened to be shredded by the wind, so back it went into the pack. Instead he took out a plastic bag for me to cover my camera with, as he was concerned it wouldn’t take well to the rain. At least my hearing protectors doubled nicely as ear muffs.

Not so much a picture of the 6-group Sk 60, but of the cloud formations that day.

The Saab Historic Flight, Gripen leading, followed by Sk 60 (which has never had a proper name), Tunnan and Lansen, finally flanked by Viggen and Draken. Teared eyes all over the airfield.

The flight on the ground, augmented by a Hunter.

I’ve always been fond of the MU-2, here in a target tug version.

No airshow is complete without a Spitfire.

But well, an airshow is an airshow, so even though my teeth occasionally chattered, we had a good time. We threaded a weaving path about the airfield, as I tend to be mostly interested in the static displays, where you actually have a chance to see the aircraft close up, whereas J didn’t want to miss any of the aerial displays, so wanted to be close to the flightline. I for my part tend to be a bit blasé about aerobatics and wasn’t all that impressed until the performance by the Baltic Bees, which had the right components for an aerial display: fast jets and a well-trained group. They had been preceded by the Swiss PC-7 team, which, while doing a nice display, had a speaker who had me groaning as he repeated for every manœuvre that it was executed with Swiss precision (well yes, but we got it the first time) and managed to mention the team’s web site probably eight times during the display.

Then of course, it was this was a PR event for the Armed Forces and the speakers, while knowledgeable about their subject (not necessarily a requirement at some Swedish air days I have been to), underscored what a great job it was to be a military pilot, or military anything, really, especially as you got to protect Freedom, Democracy, and all that in faraway countries. I did not appreciate the demonstration of a helicopter-supported attack on a terrorist holdout, heavy machine guns rattling off blanks into the audience during the entire display. (Yeah, I know, but we’ve talked about the cognitive dissonance thing before.)

Finally the day wound down and I decided it was time to have a look at the stand selling model kits. As I stood there going through the stacks (eventually going for RS Model’s brand new D-3800) the Saab Historic Flight started their engines one by one in the enclosure I was standing next to, in preparation for leaving. Hot exhaust washed over me. I was warmed in all respects though grateful I still had my ear protectors on. And then, with great roars they returned to their lair, and so did we.

The people from the bus company were standing by the bus stop, requesting extra busses according to need. I chatted a bit with the guy, who demonstrated that Linköping indeed is Air City, as he had initiated comments not only on the day’s display but also of aviation in the city in his youth. He also had some acerbic comments about Saab putting on a big show, but not having the courtesy of hiring coaches, instead letting the bus company cover the bill for that.

Entourage on tour

We had decided early on to repeat last year’s trip; to the Helsinki Model-Expo. Honeybuns couldn’t come along because she had to go on a job trip—to Helsinki. Still, an expectant band gathered up by the harbour and off we went.

We had booked the cheapest cabins. What really should not have been a surprise was that they were also preferred by youngsters, saving them money they could spend on booze. While not being exactly rowdy, a couple dozen kids spent the night talking quite loudly in the corridor. Round 05:30 our neighbour snapped and rushed out of his cabin to give them several pieces of his mind, which however they just ignored so eventually a call to ship security was required to put the young to bed.

Still, a fresh new day awaited us. We bundled into our rented car and drove out to the Exhibition centre. The modelling exhibition was in the all-new hall, sharing it with the crafts exhibition (not very far-fetched a combination). The competitors lined up their entries and then we dispersed in the halls to see what we could find.

When introducing a new R/C plane kit, of course you need to bring it to the flight area accompanied by mood(y) music, soap bubbles and uniformed men looking very emo.	An utterly delightful kajak vignette.
Horror models: a tiny organ.	Over at the pet fair: little kitties sleeping despite the surrounding din.

We had vaguely thought about riding out to Suomenlinna, but the exhibits proved plentiful enough that we realised we wouldn’t have time for that. Still, eyes bleeding and brain full I eventually decided I’d had enough for the day and headed back into town on my own. As I got to Pasila station, the train pulled in, I ran for it and got on just in time. There were big signs in every car giving the ticket prices and carefully noting the fines for failing to buy a ticket. Yet I could nowhere find any instructions on the actual mechanics of purchase and found myself at Helsinki Central before realising I could simply have asked a fellow passenger. (Talking to commuters, what a bizarre idea! I probably could have gotten thrown off the train for that, too.)

The weather was sunny, though rather too windy to be warm, so I was quite impressed by the boys I saw playing icehockey in their shirtsleeves as I strolled out to Hietaniemi to tend to the family grave.

Back in the city centre I found myself in the middle of a little open-air rock concert, the final set just starting with The Death of Gagarin. The stage was quite small, but the band did their best to look as if they were playing at Woodstock. The lead guitar jumped around and kicked at the loudspeaker stack, but as they weren’t exactly the heaviest Marshall speakers, they rocked (too) in danger of falling over. For a fraction of a second the guitarist looked as if to reflexively put out a hand to steady the stack, but immediately realising that that wouldn’t look ultracool, so he just stared fixedly at the stack until it was steady again. A couple of minutes later his toddler child crawled up on stage:

“Not now, sweetie, Daddy’s supposed to be playing a solo.”

Finally the rest of the gang returned from a full day at the fair and we set out to find something to eat. “There’s a pretty good Spanish restaurant just around the corner here. Oh, looks like they’ve closed.” ”But the one we were to last year, the one with the knockout waitress? That was…over there somewhere?” [zig, zag] ”Look, there it is!” “Sorry, we are fully booked. Sorry, no, we won’t toss out the little ladies over there even if they look harmless. May we recommend the restaurant around the block?” [trudge] “Table for six…? Uh, yes, there’s a company just leaving, give us a minute to clean up.” It was Asparagus Week, but we didn’t have to eat the slimy asparagus (except for those who wanted to) and were quite satisfied as we walked back to our hotel.

The next morning we headed out to the aviation museum. This was a classic aviation museum in the style of “We have x m² hangar space, let’s pile in as many aircraft as we can.” Nothing wrong with that.

A bit of a jumble… Visible are a Caudron C.60, a Sääski, a Tuisku, a Viima, an I-16, a Safir, two Vampires, a Draken, a Hansa, an Utu, a Kanttikolmonen, an SG 38 and so on…	I did a careful photographic walk-around of the Mi-1 for an upcoming modelling project. Here are the rotor blades: note that they are canvas over a steel and wood structure, just like any WWI aircraft.
This really knocked my socks off: 40 hand-carved wooden 1:100 models of world speed record holders. Here the Macchi M.C.72.	From the collection of all Finnish air force aircraft types in 1:72: the SPAD VII. Compare this with my rendition.

Having had our fill of the museum, we headed back to the expo, picked up our prizes, did some (additional) last minute shopping (good SEK/EUR rates) and then headed to our ship home. No drunk kids on this trip and when we returned, it was spring in Stockholm.

Another place to go

Here is another aviation-related museum I intend to visit as soon as I have figured out where it is located: The Sci-Fi Airshow.

You can board the Orion.

H/t Thnidu.

Showing off

I was sitting with Carl when I noticed a bag with plastic parts on the table.
Whose is this?
“I don’t know, they were just lying here. [expectantly] Can you tell what they are?”
Uuh, looks like floats.
“But for which aircraft?”
Oh, ah, Junkers F.13 I’d say.
”Yes, yes they are. Oh, hi, Stieg, can you see what these are?”
Oh, looks like floats…, for a Junkers F.13.
Carl looks a bit put off. Rick comes by, sees the bag.
“Oh, who’s left all these Junkers F.13 floats here?”
Carl is dejected:
“What’s a man gotta do to show off around here!?”

Useful maps

Jon Griffiths is not a very prolific blogger, but he has made a nifty Google map of locations Biggles visited during WW I.

Ask The Pilot

A frequently referred-to, but now obsolete, volume in my bookshelf is Titta, vi flyger!, the Swedish edition of The Flier’s Handbook, which covers most of what you need to know as an airline passenger. Now I found an excellent replacement, replete with opinions and anecdotes: Ask The Pilot. Do not miss the story about the exploding toilet.

Strange machinery

Brower Propulsion Laboratory is like an aerospace version of Bonk Business, making machines whose mere existence is more important than their absence of functionality. However, what caught my eye was this beautiful water colour of what seems to be a J-7.

H/t thnidu.

24 hours of air traffic

Туполев Ту-144

Before the arthritis got too bad my mother constantly knitted and usually asked me to design the patterns for my own sweaters. For one of these I copied a picture of the Tupolev Tu-144, with the appropriate Cyrillic caption. It caused some consternation at school when they couldn’t read the text.

Since then I’ve been to and in the Concordes at Duxford and Yeovilton, but have not had the opportunity to see the Tu-144 IRL. However, I just found they have one at Sinsheim. I consider a pilgrimage there, but I’m somewhat put off by the realisation that even the Tu-144 uses the mandatory hideous Soviet cockpit turqoise. I don’t understand why the designer of that particular shade wasn’t executed as a Western saboteur or something.