Pilot's Log

* Because my brother got me a smartphone to replace my flip-phone this week, I felt I had to return the favor and find a toy for him. I'll tell you all about it after I give it to him.

* Because my brother got me a smartphone to replace my flip-phone this week, I'm trying to figure out how to use it. So far, I'm way behind it and the whole touchscreen nonsense is somewhat counterintuitive to me.

* Because my brother got me a smartphone to replace my flip-phone this week, I went through Precious's soundfiles (and made some new ones by using a decompiler to loot soundtracks from .SWF files I downloaded over the years) in an ongoing attempt to generate ringtones. I still only partly know what I'm doing.

* In my travels to procure the toy for my brother, I saw a late-model Audi sedan outside Strange--the interior comprehensively burnt out. I started brainstorming hot rod ideas almost immediately.

* Still dabbling with reverse-engineering old Eastern-bloc paper models of aircraft carrier ships into much larger mixed-media models. I have seven downloaded patterns of a planned eight...but my internal math estimates that each "plate" in the scale I'm working with means $10 in materials. So I'll need funding of one form or another.

My sister visited overday, and we gave her more of Mum's stuff and I helped replace the windshield wipers on her car.

I'm playing around with the paper model files again. I wonder about the hobby possibilities of poster printer hardware. Who can I ask about that?

I went to the library's annual book sale and got a hardback copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which I'll probably spend the summer reading and re-reading.

What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.

The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.

Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"

1/6 scale authentic Lincoln Continental styling model in a museum collection. My buddy Paul Francis will be making molds of this for reproduction models. I'm going to try to get one of the prototypes for my own...and a little project from that.

Yet another chapter in the ongoing saga of taking Polish paper model scans and trying to find some worthwhile activity from them...

The aircraft carrier I acquired the other day is 1/200th scale as-is. To bring it up to 1/72nd (so I can pose my collection of airplane models on her deck) RonyaSoft ProPoster sez that by enlargening each plate to 23" wide (proportional scale) each graphics plate would take up eight legal size sheets.

If I were enlargening a 1/33rd scale plane to 1/6th (so that if somebody gave me a World Peacekeepers action figure pilot I could put him in a Hawker Tempest V fighter, for instance), that would mean a 45" wide plate and each plate would take up 30 sheets of paper.

If I wanted a 1/25th scale tank enlargened to 1/6th (so a WP tanker would be driving a Cromwell I happen to have on file), that's a 35" wide plate for 20 sheets per plate.

Whereas a 1/15th scale Volga car I've got enlargened to 1/6th (I've got my excuse) would mean a 21" wide plate and only eight sheets per plate.

I'm gonna need some ink.

One of my "someday" projects was a 1/72nd scale aircraft carrier model based on the Colossus--class paper model from Poland. Well, it turned out that another company also made a carrier model--the nuclear-powered Enterprise, as she looked after her mid-life refitting. So I downloaded that model as well. Of course, I have a titanic task if I try to upscale it to 1/72...800 legal-size pages of printout! (As opposed to a mere 270 for Colossus!)

On Wikipedia's entry for the Enterprise, it said that five other ships in the class were planned before the design was superseded in favor of the Nimitz-class, which was much more efficient. Still, that sparked a "What If?" question in my mind...what would be the names of such ships if they had been built? I did a little research, but really couldn't find a good answer as such. Instead, I looked to my own life for my own naval names. Specifically, I looked at where I went to school and their concepts for mascots.

* USS Thames. My first school was United Scioto in Chilicothe, Ohio. Their mascot is the Sherman Tank (yes, their football team is the Tanks!); naming a ship for General Sherman was possible. But the Shawnee Indian chief Tecumseh was from the area too, and he was defeated at the Battle of the Thames.

* USS Fort LeBeouf. Waterford, Pennsylvania. LeBeouf was the site of a battle in the French & Indian War that was important in the career of George Washington.

* USS Lancer and USS Trojan. Deer Lakes district, Pennsylvania; and Saint Petersburg College, Florida, respectively. Good names for Revolution-era ships, but never actually used by the U.S. Navy.

* USS Bald Eagle. Springstead in Spring Hill, Florida. At the time, the Royal Navy had ships named HMS Eagle, so specifying it as "Bald Eagle" made sense to avoid possible confusion in fleet maneuvers.

http://www.awiatsea.com/Privateers.html
http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/index.html

Yes, I turned 45 a couple days ago, and couldn't talk about it much here because of the fact that it was also the end of the fiscal month and I was out of bandwidth till the next day.

The cake was not a lie. Thanks Jessica!

My other main gift is a black hoodie. I tried to take a picture of myself in it, but was frustrated by the digital camera's failure to focus properly. It makes no difference as I plan to get some iron-on transfers and alter its aesthetics, and due photography will happen thence.

Bought myself some older model kits, which had been part of a stash that belonged to a modeler who is no longer with us. He bequeathed his holdings to our Knoxville IPMS chapter, and buddy Paul is selling them off with the proceeds split between the club and the man's heirs.

This week: All the 1/200 HBM WW2 airplane miniatures that I could either find on my list, or failing that, proxy.

I don't know if HBM is even still in business; their website hasn't been updated since 2007 and the e-mail I sent the webmaster bounced. I sent him a snail mail postcard on Monday, so I suppose either I'll hear from him or I won't.

Meanwhile, one of the main stores that sells Wings of War around here, HobbyTown USA, is clearing out their Nexus-boxed stuff for 50% off or better. And here I am with no cash to spend. Granted their selection was down to Vals and Dewoitines (which I have no prejudice against as such, but...).