Reading the book For Your Freedom and Oursreminded me of something that happened a couple of years ago.
When I used to do R/C modelling, I had a Spitfire painted up as BM597 more or less (save for the fiddly 317 Sqdn badge behind the cockpit!), and while I did the majority of the work, sometimes my grandad would help out with his soldering services, particularly if it was for the throttle, or an engine overhaul.
Anyway, my grandparents take foreign students into their house when they come over on educational trips – French, Czechs, Hungarians, a few Germans, Spaniards and, quite often, Poles.
So one day, I’ve got some work to do on 597, so I carted the whole airframe up the road for grandad to fiddle with, and unbeknown to me they had these two Polish gents there, in their mid-40s, who had just finished their dinner.
As soon as they clapped eyes on the Polish chequerboard marking on the nose, they instantly stopped talking amongst themselves and asked if they could take some photos of the Spitfire, to which I said yes. I didn’t see it for the best part of an hour!!
Afterwards, when I got the model back (and the cat had stopped chewing the rudder!!), we sat until about 11pm talking about Spitfires!!
Just something I thought I might share with y’all – it made my day as well as theirs! 🙂
By: Whitley_Project - 9th March 2004 at 13:15
When i was younger and thankfully before i got access to real aircraft i bought a balsa hurricane kit – one of those rubber band powered ones.
I made it and it looked quite good but i got a bit bored with it so bought one of those rocket motors from beaties. It was one of the self ejecting jobs and the plan was that once the rocket had burnt out, after accelerating the hurricane to almost unknown speeds, it would eject from the aircraft which would then glide in for a safe landing.
I went up to Crystal Palace with a mate and we set super hurricane up on a vertical stand and stood well back waiting for the spectacular take off.
It took off with a great woosh climbing skyward, the ejection charge fired, but the motor was a little too snug (a bit too much pva!) – the propellant only had one way to go – forwards! A glowing ball like a minature sun ripped through the lovingly made fuselage and shot out through the cockpit – my poor hurricane exploded…!
We rolled about creased up with laughter as charred bits of balsa fluttered down around us.
Ohh life was so simple then… 😉
By: DazDaMan - 9th March 2004 at 12:46
Dark earth/dark green, I’m afraid! 😉
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March 9, 2004 at 12:35 pm