I agree – there’s no substitute for volunteering. You’ll start out making the tea or sorting bolts into drawers, but bear with it.

If you mean qualified technician, then yes, get into the RAF – there’s nothing naive in going for a trade there, it’s still a viable route if I understand correctly. You’ll not be doing historics for a living, but down the line your services will be very much in demand if you still have a yearning to help with the ‘old stuff’.

Just bear in mind that people only get paid to do stuff they wouldn’t do for enjoyment anyway! That’s capitalism 🙁

..and yes, I sympathise about the lack of opprtunity in engineering-related trades. Stick with the writing, too – it’ll save your sanity. There’s always writing about vintage aircraft – there’s some on this forum who make the odd groat doing that.

For the sake of completion, tomorrow I’ll do a trawl of all pics and documents posted on this thread and copy them onto the ‘library’ section of project website UNLESS ANYONE HAS ANY OBJECTIONS to their re-use – please let me know if you do!

Check http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?p=768060

Looks like it’s the PRO for you, me lad….

A pedant writes…

Don’t know about that. Actual Alocrom (at least the yellowy stuff) comes as two chemicals that have to be mixed – Pagen didn’t mention that bit.

Alocrom is a trade name, though it has become a hoover/vacuum cleaner thing – it gets used to mean any alodining Chromate treatment – IIRC the yellow ones are usually Zinc Chromate.

Agreed about the Special Hobby model – lovely detail etc (those who left Airfix behind in their childhoods might not be aware of the level of detail common to the more expensive ‘grown up’ market models now out there) – it’s just a question of economics 😉

18 quid as against around a fiver for the Airfix (if it were available without the ‘gift set’ nonsense) – I want to generate money for the project and yet still come in at a price that means people will buy them..

Also, I want to be able to get a production line going – and the ‘simples’ (possibly a UK-only reference, that) Airfix kit lends itself to that. In fact – as is normal to Airfix – the actual SHAPE of the piece is very accurate, judged against available references.

As you can see from the pic above, I can and do invest a lot of time and money in making individual models for myself – around £100 per model – but this isn’t really what I had in mind as a feasible fund-raiser – just a well made display piece, better than Corgi and the like, for the same sort of cost and to the buyer’s spec.

However, if people want the luxury end, let me know!

By the way, there is at least one manufacturer of model kits on this forum. I will PM that person..

Port and starboard are just different names for left and right.

Nope. Stand on a ship (or plane, or elephant), facing aft. Your right hand is now also your port hand.

This is why the FAA did what they did. In order to avoid a scenario whereby, for example, an aft-facing aircraft had a wing that was simultaneously port and starboard they went with this ‘hand’ convention – so that in just the same way as a person facing aft, the right wing would also be the port wing without confusion.

Aeronut simply reversed this convention (in the sense of carried/carrier, not boat/aircraft) in his fascinating example, also for greater clarity.

My point was that should port and starboard have remained common currency there would be no reason for 41bronco to resort to compass points as these words were coined to deal with just such a requirement to universally describe positioning regardless of angle of viewing.

Last few.. Nice pic, Paul. Answers a few questions – looks like nacelle ‘flanks’ are also diagonal ribs. As you say, Qld.. Yikes!

Bed time.

Evening Paul! Good stuff. Rest of ribs coming soon!