Clunkmeister

Ain’t that the truth. Oftentimes up north, ADF was all we had, as VOR was line of sight. Having no idea of the winds aloft and you only had one weak ADF signal, which was often a commercial AM radio station, you could carve the great comma in the sky tracking towards it. 🤣 Dual ADF receivers and two actual ADF signals was an absolute luxury. We could hit the outer marker with just that alone. VOR was such a pinky-in-the-air luxury. 🤣

Another article on this. Apparently, this was super secret for many years. Dad was a radar tech in the RCAF, so I spent many of my childhood years on these small stations, as well as at Tinker AFB where the training center was located and he got posted every few years. We moved all around. Moosonee, Gypsumville, Alsask, Dana, Yorkton, Penhold, etc, we moved around a lot Most of these Stations were in very remote areas in the forests, and had a population of about 300 people, a mixture of USAF and RCAF. They were called the “Pinetree Line”. These Stations were all a part of NORAD, which at the time consisted of 3 distinct lines of distant early warning (DEW) lines: The Mid Canada Line, the Pinetree Line, and the DEW Line. They all fed info back to NORAD HQ in Cheyenne Mountain and it’s backup bunker in North Bay. This was all a part of our protection system agains Soviet bombers and ICBMs, and gave Cheyenne Mountain it’s info needed to launch the bombers, missiles, or scramble the NORAD alert birds. The entire system was called SAGE, or Semi Autonomous Ground Environment. It was a BIG DEAL back then, and was super secret. Intruders would be shot on site. That U-2 was an integral part of the system, and losing it intact would have been catastrophic. At least Power aircraft was destroyed. The Soviets got a lot of scrap metal, that’s it. If you ever get bored, read up on SAGE and the DEW system. I lived it as a kid, and to me, rock solid security became a way of life. Today, most of it is gone SAGE was superseded by AWACS as they became capable enough and technology reached a point where it was reliable. Some DEW stations are still in use, but most were decommissioned my the 1990s. The Mid Canada and Pinetree Lines are completely shut down. Today’s AWACS does the same exact job, but is mobile and compact. Those were the days http://lswilson.dewlineadventures.com/u2/

http://flinflonheritageproject.com/wp-content/wppa-depot/pdfs/1022280.pdf

Looks great, Luke. Looking forward to see your work. We have a forum here for that called LSM Work in Progress, feel free to post there, and you can also check out our other gifted builders there as well. If you are posting some tips and such, we have a Hints and Tips sub forum as well that you can post in. Some of our builders here are true masters of the art.

I have a friend who was a very young helicopter pilot who worked out of La Ronge a couple years later, and he had said that it apparently was a nicad battery that had an internal short, which overloaded the generators and shut everything down. It was find a place to park it real quick or give it back to the taxpayer.

A U-2 on a frozen lake isn’t something you see everyday.

We have a similar “Newspaper” here cal “The Babylon Bee”. It’s stories are pure fiction, but they still seem to rev up the easily triggered and/or gullible. Funny stuff

THE YORKSHIRE HERALD Buttock Tattoo Terror Lands Rotherham Pair In Hospital A furious row has broken out between a local tattoo artist and his client after what started out as a routine inking session left both of them requiring emergency hospital treatment. Furious film fan and part-time plus-size XXXL model Tracey Munter (23), had visited the 'Ink It Good' Tattoo Emporium in Wellgate, Yorkshire last week, to have the finishing touches applied to a double buttock representation of the chariot race scene from the iconic 1959 film, Ben Hur. Tattooist Jason Burns takes up the story. "It was a big job in more ways than one", he told us "I'd just lit a roll-up and was finishing off a centurion's helmet. It's delicate, close up work. Next thing is, I sense a slight ripple in the buttock cleavage area just around Charlton Heston's whip, and a hissing sound – more of a whoosh than a rasp – and before I know what's happening, there's a flame shooting from her arse to my fag and my beards gone up like an Aussie bush fire." Jason says he rushed to the studio sink to quell the flames, only to turn round and see Tracey frantically fanning her buttock area with a damp towel. The flames had travelled down the gas cloud and set fire to her thong which was smoking like a cheap firework. "To be honest", said Jason, "I didn't even realize she was wearing one. You'd need a sodding mining license and a torch to find out for sure. She could have had a complete wardrobe in there and I'd have been none the wiser." Jason and Tracey were taken to Rotherham District Hospital accident and emergency department where they were treated for minor burns and shock. Both are adamant that the other is to blame. "I'm furious" said Jason, "I've got a face like a mange-ridden dog and my left eyebrow isn't there anymore. I don't know about Ben Hur – Gone With The Wind would be more appropriate. You don't just let rip in someone's face like that. It's dangerous." But Tracey remains both angry and unrepentant. "I'm still in agony," she said, "and Charlton Heston looks more like Sidney bloody Poitier now. Jason shouldn't have had a fag on the go when he's doing close up work, there's no way I'd guff (fart) on purpose. He'd had me on all fours for nearly an hour. I can only put up with that for so long before nature takes its course. My Kev knows that I give him my five-second warning, and I'd have done the same for Jason, but I didn't get a chance – it just quietly crept out." Ted Walters from the South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service wasn't surprised when we asked him to comment on what had happened. "People just don't appreciate the dangers," he told us. "We get more callouts to flatulence ignition incidents than kitchen fires these days now that people have moved over to oven chips. We have a slogan 'Flame 'n fart – keep 'em apart'. Anyone engaging in an arse-inking scenario would do well to bear that in mind in the future On behalf of the entire Fire and Rescue service, we wish them both a swift recovery." You couldn't make this up if you tried! Cheers !!

In 1960, a U2, returning from a photo mission over Russia, suffered an electrical failure and had to set down on a frozen lake by La Ronge, Saskatchewan. Service Members from RCAF Station Cranberry Portage went out and took the pilot to the station, then covered the aircraft with tarps and posted 24/7 security. Then, they cleared an area on the ice to serve as a runway and the USAF flew in a C-119 with techs to repair the Dragon Lady, which was eventually flown out. Here’s a few pics taken by the RCAF security detail. That pilot and the Air Force were mighty lucky, as there is almost nothing up by La Ronge other than lakes and pine trees.

I’ll claim the same, Kevin, except when it comes to a subject I love, like a Helldiver. Otherwise, I like to just build them with little to no correction other than commercially available stuff. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this turns out

Or like this?

My only question is: will it end like this?

I’m hoping that Martin’s work here may give us some ideas to at least juice it up a bit. I still have my stalled HK BOAC kite sitting on the SOD. Martin’s fearless, so let’s see what happens…

Yeah it’s barely the second time I nuked a topic, but on with life, I say.

That flying boat is amazing! I’ve seen that kit around, but never looked close. I’d love to build one in its originally intended Lufthansa colors. It sure has a low aspect ratio wing, much like the Sunderland and Sterling. What’s amazing is that several survived the war and were all scuttled or broken up. There were even a couple in the US, and despite the Smithsonian’s desire to have one of everything, they never picked one up for preservation. Did I hear right that there was one in low oxygen water around Norway that allowed it to remain pretty much perfectly preserved?

It arrived!!

I let it run a couple days, and that's it. IF you want to talk politics, please use PM or any other instant messenger service. Let's keep it off the forum. Thank You, Ernie

Has anyone ever built this kit? I looked at it last night, and the moldings don’t look too bad. I’m just not used to the super tiny parts and lack of detail that seems to exist in 72 scale.

A close friend gave me this and asked me to build his Dad’s plane, so once I’m done my present builds, I’ll knock this out, assuming I can locate a suitable Elektron Microscope suitable for viewing the subject

Yes, I see that. Crazy! I did pop a seam on the turtledeck, so fixed it along with a skim of brushed on Mr. Surfacer 500, I’ll let it cure overnight, the touch up that area tomorrow. I put some oils on paper towels to sit overnight, and will do some staining as well….

That brown has become almost white-tan in places. And the background of the cartoon tiger has always been gotten wrong by decal makers. It is inevitably portrayed in black, where in fact, after application, a varnish was applied over top, which discolored the surface and turned it dark.

Thanks, Gazz. I’m a bit out of my comfort zone with a hard edge camo and all, but hopefully I won’t bork it up

I’ll look closely at those gaps, but I have a feeling I’ll be closing them up. And I knocked an exhaust stack out of alignment cool.

That was a big mystery when it came to WNW that made me scratch my head. CSM gave us almost every single variation of the basic Nieuport XVll, so they did us all good. The G.lll is one nice kit as well, and it’s on my list of kits to build. I’d like to see the N.Xl Bébé as well, along with covering the entire SPAD line, including 2 seaters. Maybe then a Voisin bathtub would be in the works as well? WNW missed some obvious candidates as well, as they totally missed the Be.2’s, Vickers Short and Longhorns, Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter, and the universal DH.4.

It surprised me as well. But it makes sense when you look at the fact that this group was in existence for barely a year, and they used up or destroyed almost every single one of the original 100 aircraft they were issued from Camco. Plus a bunch of E’s they received in 1942. They were almost like a Flying Circus, hopping from base to base, staying just out of range of the Japanese advance. My next one I build will have to have the engine open.