A Happy 2022

Another year over, a new one about to begin.

I wish you all lots of wisdom, health and prosperity for 2022.

--PK

X-20 Dyna Soar (part 4): What if?

Spring, 1980. On the long runway of Kennedy Space Center a horde of photographers stands around two small space planes together with one impressive big one behind them. One of the small planes is faded black all over, the other one looks like it is a child of the big one, although it is the other way around.
This photo-op is the last chance to see the two Dyna Soars and the result of their effort, the Rockwell Space Shuttle Orbiter OV101, together. The black Dyna Soar is shown in its former USAF livery. The black and white one is called Enterprise and the big Space Shuttle Orbiter is called Constitution.

More on the story and the build after the jump.

X-20 Dyna Soar with Transtage 1/48 (3)

Well, one moment you have all the time in the world and next it's like a pandemonium. We're working on the last bits of the documentary film about ANS, the first Dutch satellite, and we both have our daily jobs to do too. So there's little time to glue some paper there days.

Anyway, it did so happen this week I actually made some time and the Dyna Soar is finished.

 
Here's a picture of the finished model, for those who want to see more, just click on where it says "Click here to read the rest of the story!" and voilà.

Life sometimes takes over...

One moment you are living in seas of time. Maybe even some sort of vacuum. The next, it is perhaps even busier than before Covid struck our planet down to almost a halt. Our film is nearing completion and I had a film job for the regional archives. So The X-20 had to stay on the backburner for a while. It still is a little hectic, and I presume it is because I am not used to anything any more after almost two years of isolation and relative quietness. But soon, I will pick up the build. Don't worry. And I will keep you informed about the upcoming film.

Thanks for the patience.

--PK

X-20 Dyna Soar with Transtage 1/48 (2)

Where were we?
Oh yes. Wings. The X-20 was a sturdy little wedge shaped machine. The paper wings were cut out and with the help of a little dab of water on a wetted Q-tip, traced one time along the back of the paper where the wing needs to be curved works miracles. I should do a little tutorial about that one day.

You can read the rest of this story when you click on the orange text below, saying  "Click here to read the rest of this story!" 

Een heldere hemel, Jan.

 

Jan de Koomen, 2016 © De Loods mediaproducties / Stichting Beeldlijn

As a filmmaker you often have the weird experience to feel acquainted to someone without really actually knowing them.
For most of the persons who are being filmed for a documentary, their experience with the makers mainly is just a couple of phone calls, an initial conversation and the film session, which often is not more than one or two days in total.
But the filmmaker on the other hand, has to work with that material to create the film. And by doing so, they are working with the filmed people for a much longer time. Sometimes months. You get to know their little gestures, their way of speaking, their way with words. And they become a part of your life for quite some time.
We initiated the ANS film project back in 2014. In 2016 we filmed the first three interviews. One of them was with Jan de Koomen, the engineer at Fokker Aircraft who, as project manager, supervised the construction of the first Dutch satellite.
When we were at his home to film the interview, he initially had a little trouble remembering stuff, but when we started getting into the matter of things, he still was clear and bright. He told great stories and anecdotes with a lot of insight into how the satellite worked and came to be. And with that, he provided us with a great foundation for our movie.

He has told his story often, for space enthusiasts, at lectures about the Dutch space-efforts, but I like to think he was happy to tell his story one more time to have it on record for, well, eternity.
When Jan started work at Fokker he was involved in the process of designing the Fokker F.27 Friendship. He told us how he always has been fascinated by spaceflight and, as a young and curious engineer at Fokker, he wanted to know how to build a satellite. He was sent to Republic Aviation in the U.S. to learn about all the ins and outs of satellites and came back as maybe the only Dutch engineer at that time who really knew how to build a satellite. He could put his knowledge to the test a couple of years later, when Fokker and Philips got to build the first Dutch satellite, which would become known as ANS. 

Jan de Koomen in 1974, in the Scout Launch Control Center at the Western Test Range in California,
during the countdown of ANS' launch into orbit. (a still from a NASA-made film about the ANS)

After ANS, Jan de Koomen also supervised the construction of IRAS, the second satellite built in the Netherlands, this time together with the U.S. and the U.K. After he retired, he got involved in the National Space Museum, together with a group of retired aerospace engineers and space enthusiasts. It was there, in Lelystad that I met him for the first time, in january 2014, when I brought one of my paper models to have on display in their museum. He pointed at ANS, the backup model, that was suspended from the ceiling and told me he helped in building it.
He was, in fact, the one that sparked the beginning of this film.

After the interview, we did not have much contact, but I did see him lots of times, during the editing process, on screen. And I had the feeling I knew him a little more than I perhaps actually did. At least I knew a part of him which was a very important piece of his life.
Early this morning, I was saddened to read in an email that he passed away.

I am very grateful I had the chance to meet him and talk to him. Jan de Koomen is one of the people that actually opened the door to space for The Netherlands.
As a boy he wanted to become a pilot. but because of his bad eyesight that wasn’t possible and he became an aeronautical engineer instead. I hope he’s flying free now.
Clear skies, Jan.

X-20 Dyna Soar & Transtage 1/48 (1)

A legendary spaceplane. Never flown, never realised. In the late 1950s, when the X-15 made its first powered flights, the U.S. Ministry of Defense already dreamt about spying on the Russians from outer space. And what would be a nicer idea than a reusable space plane? Long story short, Boeing was chosen to create the little manned space plane called the X-20 Dyna Soar (dynamic soaring). But after creating a full scale mockup, selecting six Air Force pilots to become astronauts for the plane and lots of training equipment and space suit designs, senator MacNamara cancelled the project.  Reason: spysats had become very efficient and cheap(ish) and otherwise Gemini spacecraft could do the job equally well. No need for a space plane. Bye bye Dyna Soar.

Dyna Soar mock up with two suited men, presumably Boeing officials.
Photo: Wikimedia commons

But look at it. Just. Look. At. It. Isn't is beautiful? Paper model designer Mark Cable designed a beautiful 1/48th scale model with the so-called Transtage, a kind of kick-booster stage of the large Titan rocket family. A weird-looking contraption with protruding tanks having pointy ends, rocket engine bells on a trapezium tube construction and checkers on the sides. Hypergolically fueled, it had a simple and reliable propulsion method. No need for elaborate turbo pumps, the rocket was just pressure-fed and the fuel ignited when mixed.

Dyna Soar and its transtage in orbit. The forward facing windows were covered with a protective shield that would
be jettisoned after re-entry. The X-20 would land on a dry Californian lakebed using metal skids.
Image: Buran.ru

This is how the X-20 might have looked when arriving in orbit.
And that is how I am going to build it. Here's an initial photo, after the jump you can see the rest of the first session of building the Dyna Soar.

Yay, a rant!

Space tourism versus space exploration - Let’s differentiate!

Lots of people, those who say to be in the know and those who plainly aren’t, have shown their outrage and discontent against billionaires going into space in their suborbital toy spacecraft.
And I can’t not agree, actually.  The gratuitous display of wealth and decadence is too much. The necessity for this is non-existent. Apart from showing off your wealth and waste it on silly stuff. But let’s make things a little more clear.  Although Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are doing their silly suborbital microgravity hops, people also rant aggressively about billionaire Elon Musk’s space efforts.
And I think that just is wrong.
Let’s make one thing clear beforehand, I am not an Elonite, I don’t really care whether he calls his child F-16 º40##9%5f((()))<>”\|/?jhdhldlk8*- C 34384738, ɯnsK, or Johnnnny, I don’t care about his personal life at all. I am also not a fan of Tesla and I do not care in general for the cult of personality around Musk. I do however, admire SpaceX’s giant steps in the common space effort.

SpaceX is a company, founded by billionaire Musk, but he stepped back as CEO some time ago and the company now is run by Gwynne Shotwell, a very capable woman. But Musk still is involved in the development of the rockets. He also actually really knows a lot about aerospace technology, orbital mechanics and other techniques involved in the launch and space industry. He also is constantly keeping ahead of things. And that is where the big difference is in comparison to Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.
SpaceX builds actual useful and technically advanced rockets for spaceflight. Actual professional spaceflight. The Falcon 9 launch vehicle is now getting close to 100 perfect flights. It has delivered hundreds of satellites into orbit and is used for manned and unmanned flights to the ISS and back. SpaceX develops hardware to get humankind further into space, is actually innovating space hardware and very rapidly indeed. Something NASA is not capable of doing any more.

Nevermind Musk is a billionaire, his company is way ahead of those little toys of Bezos and Branson. And SpaceX is important for NASA in a way B-boys Bezos’ and Branson are not. Bezos might be developing a big launch vehicle too, but there’s nothing to be seen yet and Blue Origin has yet to reach orbital capacity. Besides, that, Musk isn’t flaunting his wealth with his rocketry in the way the other two are doing.
Musk invests in new engine developments, he hugely invests in the Starship and Superheavy development (which isn’t profitable, it just costs money, because it all is test material). He might be miles ahead of NASA in the sense of NASA being incapacitated to be able to  innovate, rejuvenate and plan ahead.

Nevertheless, journalists and ignorami all around are generalising “The Billionaires”. They’re all Dr. Evil. They all should stop wasting tax payer’s money. (They don’t. It’s their own money and that of tourists who are foolish enough to pay millions for 5 minutes of micro-gravity.) NASA granted SpaceX millions, but only after they had proven themselves a space-worthy company with an orbital rocket and with the grant also came assignments to fulfill. (any company involved in a governmentally organised challenge can apply for subsidies.)
They should all stop flaunting their wealth like that. (That only goes for the B-boys, Musk isn’t planning a space trip any time soon.)
And they should stop polluting the environment with those polluting rocket exhaust gases. How polluting are they? Branson uses a rubber compound for his rocket. Which is very polluting indeed, and a flight up in a jet-powered aircraft. Less polluting, but still polluting. Bezos is flying on Liquid oxygen and hydrogen (Hydrolox) which, in the end, produce only steam so that is not polluting at all, or you should incorporate the production process of liquidising the gases, which is not polluting itself but costs lots of energy.). Musk is using RP1 (kerosene, basically) and oxygen, so SpaceX might be a little polluting, but all in all, with their rocket efforts, none of them aren’t really big polluters. Not as much as those big oil tankers are, or all the airlines are. So pollution is realtive and more or less negligible. Only Branson should think and should switch to Hydrolox.

Where the B-boys are just having fun with their toys, SpaceX is developing material to get humanity ahead. Something NASA cannot do, like I said before. NASA nowadays is a slow moving, Red tape top-heavy, politically dependent organisation, where decisions take years, decades, sometimes. And NASA has their arms and legs tied to senate and aerospace companies.
SLS is a dead end but NASA is forced to build and launch it because that way the former Space Shuttle builders people keep their jobs. It is extremely expensive and if you compare the development costs of SLS to SpaceX’ Starship and Superheavy, the latter is almost peanuts.
Okay, SpaceX did sell a spaceflight on a Falcon 9 to some millionaire. But that isn’t a SpaceX effort in itself. They just sell rockets and rides. But selling flights to millionaires is not even their main business model. NASA also buys lots of flights on Falcon 9’s, as do commercial companies that build satellites. SpaceX too is a commercial company and so private persons should perhaps also be able to buy a ride. The money will be mainly invested in the development of new hardware. The Russian Space Agency also sold seats to space tourists.

Even more so, if the US wants to keep going into space, I think they need to rely on SpaceX. Boeing’s euphemistically named Starliner capsule keeps having troubles with its operating systems .Starliner appears to me as a messy engineering project by a company who trusted too much on their reputation in the past,  and is resting on its laurels, but now gets careless and sloppy and makes mistake upon mistake. Blue Origin is developing a big new engine for the new rocket in development by ULA, the Old-Space company pact between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. But neither Vulcan, the rocket, nor the engine are anywhere near a first launch. From the pathetic little suborbital hops of tourist vehicle New Shepard to the launch of orbit-capable New Glenn (nowhere near launch either), Blue Origin still has a very long way to go. And Branson’s toy is forgettable. It isn’t innovating, it isn’t lucrative, it just is a very expensive fairground attraction.

If you want to boo unnecessary space-related things, boo the B-boys. Do not boo SpaceX. I think they are really useful. More useful in launching capabilities, and much, much faster than NASA will ever be in the development of new rocketry. and (human) spaceflight.
They might have their own sometimes unsympathetic ways of doing things too, like every company has, but SpaceX really is a company that is innovating the orbital space market.
Boo to Branson, boo to Bezos. Two flaunting billionaires with too much money on their hands, one parasitising on his employees in giant warehouses, one being just an obnoxious boomer. Boo. Boo. Boo to space tourism. Boo to billionaires. But...
Viva SpaceX.

20241202 EDIT: Of course I now have to add that I really really think Elon Musk is even more evil than Bezos and Branson combined. His support of The Tangerine Wankstain is appalling and shows his lack of common sense.  Still I think what SpaceX achieves is okay.

Fokker F. XXXVI - 1/100 (4)

Yeah, I guess we'll speed things up a little. Why not? So there we go:

Yay! it’s finished! I finished it yesterday, to be honest. Really. True.

The almost finished model.

Here's a nice picture of the finished model. The process of how I finally got there is after the jump.

Fokker F.XXXVI - 1/100 (3)

Well, that was not what I intended. Hiatus after hiatus. On the other hand, not a lot was happening build-wise, too. Anyway, here’s a follow-up.
Here’s a nice photo for you to enjoy, after the jump you’ll read the rest of the story.

Look! It's a propeller!

Fokker F. XXXVI - 1/100 (2)

 

 
Time for wings. 

I glued a strip of sturdy paper on the wing skeleton over the place where the two wing parts will meet. This way they'll have more grip and glue surface. Careful not to press too hard, you don’t want to show the frame through the wing.  The wings actually were really thick on this big Fokker. In fact, it had one of the biggest wing surfaces of its time. While folding the wing over the leading edge, some wrinkles appeared in the (just a little) too sturdy paper. Drat! Expletive!

But Chris told in his thread on Papermodelers he used a little water to bend the paper at the leading edge. Water? Yes. Well, I had to give that a try. Never tried it before so what did I have to lose?
I poured some water in a little cup and dipped a Q-tip in it to apply it to the inside of surface I needed to fold over without a crease. Just a little, one quick streak over the complete run of the inside of the leading edge. And it worked a charm. Just calmly curve the paper and lay it, curved, to rest with a little weight on the trailing edge. It will dry in the new shape and from there is is easy to bend around the wing frame. Great technique! No wrinkles, and even nicer, it is actually just like plywood is bent, of which the Fokker wings originally were made.
Then I glued the wing’s trailing edge carefully, just the outmost edge of it, and shoved the wing structure slowly inside. Empennage is done later on with the same principle. 
With my first build I found the placement of the wing into the fuselage a little tricky. It is shoved between two bulkheads and the skin has a little of the curvature of the wing in it, so you know where the wing should go. (orange side down!) I reinforced the inside of the upper part of the skin a little to help carry the wing and not bending when it is pushed into place. That went all right. The second version had a better fit, too and didn't need any encouragement to go into place.

Fokker F.XXXVI - 1/100 (1)

Hi there. I realised what was wrong with my blogging stuff. The last years I only tend to post after I finished a model and that often can take a long time nowadays. I have many other things to give my attention to so I do not have as much time as I like for making paper models. And when I do, I often am not able to concentrate enough. Might be the isolation restrictions from these days (I have had my first jab this very week, though) but also the things I have on my mind. Anyway, I decided to start a build report although I already am in a much more advanced state in the build now. Let me take you back to April.

A second coming, this is. No one has seen the first one.Well, until now. It is not bad. it really isn’t bad at all. The shape is great, the parts all fit extremely well. It was the print quality that made me stop.
I must have messed up the settings. With printers these days, I always end up being like a Quixotic figure, fighting, shouting and cursing the damn machines. When the robots finally will take over this messed-up world, I will be put on trial for insulting them so severely, I am sure.

Anyway, Far advanced in the building process already, fuselage, wings and empennage finished, I looked at the original sheets on my laptop again. And I discovered so many detail that was missing, I immediately was disappointed in my build. I just couldn’t go on. There wasn’t any other option than to abandon it. Right after that decision, a moment of doubt followed, as always: Should I actually abandon the build? Start something new? That often causes disinterest, because of having to do all those steps over again. But no, this plane has something special. It is a wonderful shape, a very rare plane as a model - and it is Dutch. The design is very well executed and so i decided to try again. Quite unique.

More photos of this version in the previous post. I didn't destroy it, it now lives in the pile of abandoned and discarded models.

Fokker F.XXXVI - Some history first!

 

The silver and blue Fokker F.XXXVI PH-AJA "Arend" in flight. Photo copyright Wikimedia

In the nineteen-thirties, Fokker was one of the biggest aircraft builders in the world. Really hard to imagine nowadays, The Netherlands being such a small country, but Fokker really had orders from all around the world. However, his reign at the top would be over by the end of the decade.
When Anthony Fokker ordered his personnel in 1934 to start building the first of the F. XXXVI (36) aircraft, he didn’t know the CEO of the KLM, Albert Plesman, never intended to buy more than just that one. He was more or less tricked into buying Fokker’s latest plane, which - in his eyes- already was obsolete when it was drawn. Not because of its intended luxury, that was quite all right for the time. It was dubbed “The Flying Hotel” and actually was extremely comfortable inside.
No, it wasn’t the luxury. It was the construction itself. A hand-welded steel frame, clad with linen and a very large wing made of plywood. Oh, and non-retractable landing gear as well. Fokker’s biggest problem was he didn’t adapt to include  modern techniques in building his aircraft. His head designer, Platz, was a self made aircraft engineer. Good, but old-fashioned. And both of them couldn’t figure out all those new modern gadgets. Blown flaps, de-icing mechanisms, retractable gears, stressed metal skin, it all went over their heads. They really were wood, fabric and wire pioneers.

Plesman on the other hand already had fallen in love with the sleek aluminium Douglas DC-2. An all-metal monocoque plane, streamlined with retractable gear, modern cockpit and very sturdy.
The sole Fokker F.XXXVI with the registration sign PH-AJA and the name "Arend" (Eagle), was delivered and deployed on European routes, instead of Fokker’s intended role for it on the Dutch East-Indies line. But Plesman wanted to use those new DC-2’s for that. The success KLM-DC2 Uiver had in the famous Melbourne race was a decisive factor to do so, but also the much higher fuel consumption of the F.XXXVI.

The big Fokker F.XXXVI "Arend" pulled by a tractor over the ramp on Schiphol Airport, 1934.
(behind it you can see the beautiful Fokker F.XX "Zilvermeeuw", which in fact had retractable landing gear.)
Copyright Wikimedia

While Fokker’s factory kept going well with military aircraft orders because of the looming war, and Fokker’s business boomed like never before (because he had arranged the sole license of selling Douglas’ aircraft in Europe), Fokker himself got bored and frustrated. Afraid for the inevitable coming war, Fokker left the Netherlands around 1937 for New York. He died, 49 years old, of respiratory ailments of which he already suffered for quite some time. His ashes were repatriated and placed in the family grave at Westerveld cemetery in Driehuis.

The last aircraft design Fokker proposed to Plesman was in late 1939, he showed a sketch of a modern-looking, all-metal plane, with retractable landing gear and a nose wheel, called the F.XXIV (24). It has some resemblance to the Douglas DC-5. It wasn’t until about ten years after the war, the plane eventually developed from this sketch took to the skies: the Fokker F.27 Friendship. (FYI: The F.25 was an odd egg-shaped twin-boom push-prop business plane and the F.26 was a proposed but never realised odd-looking airliner with two jet engines (!) mounted below the fuselage.)

For those of you who like (a bit compacted and romanticised) historical drama TV-series about aeronautics, I can really recommend “Turbulent Skies” (“Vliegende Hollanders”’ in Dutch). An eight-part series with very high production standards and superbly reproduced imagery of the times between 1919 and 1940, in which the flammable friendship between Plesman and Fokker is shown. But also their families, the planes, the struggles, the journeys and all of that. Very well done and historically quite accurate. There are only a few things that are just plain wrong. But those actually are forgivable. And that is a unique thing for me to say because I am a nitpicker. But I really liked this series as a whole. Because in the end this is a good, well-told story with some very decent acting. Here's the trailer.

Now, the model. I will build a Fokker F.XXXVI. That will be in the next entry! What I already can tell you about it is 1/100. it has been designed by Chris Palmer and I think it is beautiful. So pretty, I decided to redo it after I already had the fuselage and wings together. More next time! (very soon!)

Here is a sneak preview of how it began. (Began? Yes. This was in April. (-; .. But that model looks almost done!  Yes. I know. But it isn't. By far. More to come!)

Oh, and never mind the hand bandage; I had some temporary issues with the joints in my hand...

Well, thanks for stopping by and until very soon!

--PK

Een heldere hemel, professor de Jager.

Today I was saddened by learning of the death of astronomer professor Kees de Jager. He was 100 years old, and he has lived a long, good and healthy life, but still is it really sad to know he isn't here any more.

For almost seven years already, my SO and I have been working on a film about ANS, the first Dutch satellite. The faculty of Astronomy of the University of Utrecht, where De Jager was working, designed one of the instruments aboard the ANS. So he was one of the people we really wanted to have in the film. In spring 2016 I interviewed him on the island of Texel, where he lived. Just a couple of weeks before the interview would be held, his wife passed away and we had to postpone everything. Luckily, he soon mailed us and said the interview would be a welcome thing to take his mind off of things. So we arranged for our crew to set sail to Texel.

We went to Texel on a very sunny day. I had a very nice conversation with him about ANS, the development and the instruments on board, Kees told a couple of very amusing anecdotes and used layman's terms to explain all the different types of discoveries ANS made in space. He showed us around in the small observatory on the island which was named in honour of him.

However, things went off track for the film when the broadcaster pulled out of the project and with it, we lost our fundings. We had to start over again. But we already had these interviews. Jump forward to 2019, the film finally was well on its way and fully funded. We could finally start filming the rest of the things we needed, when everything suddenly grounded to a halt again, when COVID-19 hit the earth and we couldn't do anything for quite some time. Were it not for that, Kees would have seen the film finished and all. I really really hoped he would have been there at the première and I could shake his hand one more time. As I have experienced him, he was a very likeable man. Very approachable, amiable even. Happy to tell you about what he knows. I was really glad I had the chance to meet him.

Usually reserved for pilots and spacemen, but very appropriate for astronomers too: 

Clear Skies, Kees. Thank you for your time and inspiring presence. You belong to the discoverers of the universe.

Kees de Jager in 2016 during the interview at his home on Texel.
© 2021 De Loods mediaproducties / Stichting Beeldlijn

Clear Skies, Mike.

Michael Collins has passed on. He was the silent one, the one who stayed behind. The first one who had to consider returning alone if his two colleagues would not return from the moon. before Apollo 11, Mike had flown a successful Gemini mission with John Young on which he did a spacewalk.

After leaving NASA Mike Collins, amongst other things, became director of the National Air and Space Museum. 

Photo: NASA / Wikipedia Commons

 

But his most significant thing to me of what he did after leaving NASA was writing Carrying The Fire. His autobiography, not even aided by any ghost writer, just him. And it is the best astronaut book of them all. It is witty, comprehensible, full of great anecdotes, exciting stories and great insights into the world of the astronaut and his daily business. It really is the best book written on how it is to be an astronaut. Period. I recommend it to everyone.

Michael Collins was 90 years old and died of cancer. But he really had an awesome life. I wish him clear skies and godspeed. Thanks for your time with us . And that awesome book. 

Read it people.

a Random Zio appreciation moment.

Have I ever told you how I just love to build a paper model plane designed by Fabrizio Prudenziati?
Yes I have. And I think I will tell it again some day. And maybe again after that.

Here's this pretty Tiger Moth, designed by Fabrizio Prudenziati I built this week.

After a long, almost tedious big build, there’s nothing as good as a quick result which also looks awesome. Zio’s planes always look the part, are done in a couple of hours and look a million euros (especially with some extra little tweaks, like a spinning propeller). They actually really make me happy. There are things that make me happier, like when I hear the full-hearted laughing of my girlfriend. That really is the happiest I can get.
But Zio’s planes are really good in keeping me sane and for keeping my state of mind in a positive mood, especially in these crazy and challenging times. Why don’t I build more of them?

Their way of constructing is odd at the beginning, the two-sided glue tabs still are counter-intuitive to me. But they are able to give a good closed hull when you get used to it. The scale differs a bit from model to model but I don’t bother any more, I just build them. I love the way Zio has designed the curvatures from hull to wing in his Spitfire model. I love the way you have to keep on shaping and bending the paper during glueing and suddenly there’s the shape of the plane. I love the simplicity of the mostly just one-page kits. I think they’re ideal for holidays, otherwise lost hours, and any day you cannot get out because it’s raining or there’s a lockdown in your country.

Every time I start a model made by Zio, I also am amazed by the colouring. The older models almost look hand-painted. Some, like his early Spitfires, have a grainy, yet pleasing quality to them the later models do not have. As if they’re coloured in with pencils. The lines and colours get more and more crisp later on. The metallic models have a lovely shine to them. They are quite hard to recolour because of this artistic quality of his original colouring. I have recoloured a couple of his models, like the Saetta. But I almost had to redraw them completely on the computer to make recolouring more easy. So mostly, I don’t bother. The pleasure in Zio’s models is building them.

I am happy I never get bored by building or re-building these magnificent little kits. They’re easy to tweak, for example, I often use cereal box card to thicken the tail section’s leading edges, I often use the carve-and-roll technique to accentuate the wing ribs of the WW1 planes, I sometimes detail the engines and I almost always use Leiff Ohlssons magnificent propeller model for more realism. The propeller always need to be able to spin. I have a couple of older models that do not have a spinning prop and I am going to redo them soon. I also gave away my spitfire I built on holiday some years ago to a friend. So I need to do that one again, too. Plenty of models left!

I have this plan to create a big mobile of all the WW1 planes one day, hanging from the ceiling in an everlasting dogfight.

Zio has shuffled off his mortal coil in spring 2014, but his memory is kept alive by all of his vividly coloured and fun to make models. And by them he will not be forgotten. He left us with the biggest joy a paper model builder can have. a few dozen of really good-looking, easy to make, little one-page miracles.

Mille Grazie, Fabrizio Prudenziati!

Thanks for stopping by and until next time.

--PK

(After the jump some more photos of this joyful little Tiger Moth.)

Shuttle Endeavour & ET & SRB's last build report

Well, after the single photo of yesterday, here a more in-depth story on the last leg of the build. First a photo to better estimate the size of the model, the rest of the story is after the jump.

Shuttle Endeavour with External Tank and Boosters: Finished!

 Finally. Finally I have finished the Shuttle stack. Some kind of build report of the last leg will follow later, here's a photo which proofs it's done. As we Dutchies say: Hè hè!.

The photo is a biggie so click on it and see the stains and blemishes! (-:

See you soon for some more in-depth talk about the shuttle. I now have to do some grocery shopping in this neverending lockdown.

Stay healthy, stay happy, keep your distance, be nice (and don't storm any capitols, even when some pea-brained orange wankstain tells you to.)

--PK