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1/48 Tamiya Lancaster. RAF Squadron 101


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Becareful Chuck on the 'salt chipping' most Lancasters show hardly any chipping at all !

just generally getting very mucky and the only parts where the paint came off was around

the lower edge of the sliding windows of the canopy and the rear turret spent shell shutes

would get chipped too.

Also the inside of the metal frames on all the turrets would get chipped due to taking the 303 guns out.

ian.

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Make yourself some spent shell shutes for the bottom of the turrets ! another easy addition to the rear turret only very thin plasticard is needed.

Heres three pictures of the rear turret showing the shutes......

yorkshireairmuseum018-1.jpg

yorkshireairmuseum017-1.jpg

canadianlanc17.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

"February 21, 1945. Target: Duisburg marshalling yards. Light flak, coned by many searchlights, but escaped by evasive action. Large incendiary creepback (fires creating more fires). Bombed by GEE through 7/10 cloud."

A little diversion from the model itself with some unique pics. First, and foremost, is the only pic my uncle has of the Lanc he flew in. As bad as the old pic is, it gives me several clues about the exact nose art (pretty funny eh), the type of side window on the cockpit, the type of aerials on the nose and the type of nose blister used for bombing. It also has the letter "V", hence the nose art, so I know the code lettering must be "SR-V". I've got a relative making the nose art right now, so that I can make a good home-made decal out of it....

VirginVicky.jpg

Although my uncle flew with an ABC operator, it's clear from this pic that it lacks the ABC chin aerial, which is huge. I asked my uncle about this and he told me that he only flew in a few sorties with the ABC operator, so it must have been another aircraft. He also gave me most of the names of his crew as follows (previously posted in Prop forum):

Pilot Wilf Schenk (Canadian)

Flt. Eng. _____ Davis (English)

Navigator Bill Dane (Canadian)

Bob Aimer Williard Sawyer (Canadian and my uncle)

Wireless Op. ______ Gill (English)

Upper Gunner ______ O' Halloran (Canadian)

Rear Gunner ______ Skuce (Canadian)

ABC operator Bob Hoffstetter (unknown)

"Ianlanc" has tried to find the serial number, which he has narrowed down to the following:

DV194 missing 16/3/44

DV291 swung on take off 22/11/43

DV308 missing 2/1/43

ED375 missing 23/3/43

ED660 missing 26/5/43

ED697 missing 9/7/43

LL779 missing 21/7/44

PA237 missing 24/2/45

PB258 missing 13/8/44

PB457 caught fire 3/2/45

PB673 SOC 3/11/45

RA597 SOC 25/3/45

So it looks like either PB673 or RA597, since all my uncle's sorties were in early 1945. Cool!

After doing a little Googling, I found my uncle's pilot, who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Here's what I found in the archives about his citation:

SCHENK, F/L Wilfred George (J29097) - Distinguished Flying Cross - No.101 Squadron - Award effective 23 November 1945 as per London Gazette dated 4 December and AFRO 212/46 dated 1 March 1946. Born May 1915 in Kitchener, Ontario; home there; enlisted in Hamilton, 16 June 1942. Trained at No.1 ITS (graduated 20 February 1943), No.9 EFTS (graduated 17 April 1943), and No.14 SFTS (graduated 20 August 1943). Commissioned August 1943. Award presented in Hamilton, 27 July 1949. No citation other than "completed... numerous operations against the enemy in which [he has] invariably displayed the utmost fortitude, courage and devotion to duty". Public Records Office Air 2/8772 has recommendation dated 2 June 1945 when he had flown 29 sorties (179 hours five minutes).

2 Jan 45 Nuremburg

28 Jan 45 Stuttgart

1 Feb 45 Ludwigshaven

2 Feb 45 Weisbaden

7 Feb 45 Cleve

13 Feb 45 Dresden

14 Feb 45 Chemnitz

20 Feb 45 Dortmund

21 Feb 45 Duisburg

23 Feb 45 Pforzheim

1 Mar 45 Mannheim

2 Mar 45 Cologne

7 Mar 45 Dessau

8 Mar 45 Kassel

18 Mar 45 Hanau

25 Mar 45 Hanover

27 Mar 45 Paderborn

31 Mar 45 Hamburg

3 Apr 45 Nordhausen

4 Apr 45 Lutzkendorf

9 Apr 45 Kiel

10 Apr 45 Plauen

22 Apr 45 Bremen

30 Apr 45 MANNA (The Hague)

3 May 45 MANNA (Rotterdam)

7 May 45 MANNA (Rotterdam)

9 May 45 Melsbroeck (EXODUS)

10 May 45 Melsbroeck (EXODUS)

11 May 45 Melsbroeck (EXODUS)

Flight Lieutenant Schenk, a Canadian, is an extremely skillful pilot of proven ability. He has completed a highly successful tour of twenty-none operations against a wide variety of targets in Germany. Most of these officer's targets have been fiercely defended, and on several occasions his aircraft has sustained damage.

With cheerful confidence and superb disregard for personal danger, Flight Lieutenant Schenk has never allowed the enemy opposition to deflect his determination to inflict the heaviest possible damage on the target.

This officer's keenness for operations has been outstanding and this together with his excellent leadership has set a high standard to his crew. The excellent qualities displayed by Flight Lieutenant Schenk are worthy of the highest praise and well merit this recommendation for the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Very cool find. If that doesn't give me inspiration, nothing will!

Another cool find is a bomb sight my uncle used while training to be a bomb aimer. I cleaned it up and took a few pics of it in my back yard. My uncle showed me how you turned this knob for elevation, another for windage, another for direction and aircraft speed, etc. and then you would look down through a sort of gunsight at the target. If all went as planned, you got good "prang" on target. Here's a few pics...

Bombsight1.jpg

Bombsight3.jpg

Bombsight2.jpg

Back to modeling!

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So my first attempt at the complicated canopy didn't go so well. First, the side windows are too wide without lots of trimming, so I cracked the canopy on both sides trying to fit them in. What makes this step even harder is that it's almost impossible to glue the side windows in without leaving some glue residue on the windows. The fix, as I learned the hard way, is to trim those sides windows a lot until they just drop in and then mask off everything before glueing. Be careful! If you screw this up it can be quite a mess.

And then I did my salt weathering routine. As neat a paint job as it created, it's far too intense. It might work on a Japanese Zero, but this Lanc canopy has to be more subtle, so I started all over from scratch.

Here is Canopy 2.0. How do you like it now? Pretty good hey?

Canopy14.jpg

I'd like to take credit for the above, but that's an OOB canopy I ordered from my supplier that's already painted. It comes with the Tamiya "Grand Slam Bomber" kit (61504), along with a few other painted parts below....

Canopy15.jpg

The cockpit color is a bit too light and I need to paint the Dark Earth on the front starboard corner, so, here we go again with all that masking.....

Canopy16.jpg

.. and the results, which I can take credit for.....

Canopy17.jpg

Canopy18.jpg

Like the clarity? Shockingly, I did NOT use Future, because there are no seam marks to sand then hide. I used a prodcut that I've been using for years on the plastic rear window of my wife's convertible sports car called "Plexus". It's an amazing polish that you just spray on then wipe off- and it's non abrasive to plastic or paint. It smells and looks like a lemon furniture polish and it removes finger prints and fine scratches. From now on, all of my canopies get Plexus before installation

Canopy20.jpg

While I was waiting for the replacement canopy to arrive, I did spend a little time getting other stuff ready, like the landing gear. Don't worry, It won't stay gloss black. That's just the base coat for future Alclad aluminum. These parts take a LOT of attention to get rid of mold and pin marks, which are everywhere!....

Gear1.jpg

The rear stabilizers required the usual seam filling and new rivet detail....

Stabilizer1.jpg

I've read a lot about how bad the kit nacelles are. Well, it's really true- they truly suck and the seam fit is terrible. Fortunately there's the Belcher Bits to the rescue to fix some of that (top part)....

Nacelle1.jpg

Thanks for checking in.

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Great progress Chuck. Where do you get that Plexus polish?

I wanna know that too ? and i bet you can't get it in the UK :deadhorse1:

Good going with the canopy.

No word yet on the correct serial number for your Lanc'

ian.

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I wanna know that too ? and i bet you can't get it in the UK :deadhorse1:

You can buy Plexus at many different places here in North America on the internet. Just Google "Plexus Plastic Cleaner" and you'll find it at Amazon.com, ebay and many automotive sites. Below is the propaganda provided by Plexus which, coincidentally, was originally made for real aircraft windshields. Having used it on plastic windows for 2 years now, I can attest to the fact it really works- and I should have been using it on my model canopies years ago. I'm going to stick this over in the "Tools and Tips" section while I'm at it.

http://www.plexusplasticcleaner.com/frames.html

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Excellent work so far, Chuck! The extra info and history in your thread surely is inspirational and makes me want to try a modelling Lancaster myself.

However, seeing the various shortcomings of the Tamiya kit takes away some of that inspiration, but maybe Revell's new 72nd scale Lanc could fit the bill for me... :unsure:

Keep it up, Chuck! :thumbsup:

Cheers,

Anders

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Excellent work so far, Chuck! The extra info and history in your thread surely is inspirational and makes me want to try a modelling Lancaster myself.

Cheers,

Anders

Thanks Guys- and thanks to Anders for checking in. I'm really looking forward to you getting back in the F-14 saddle! Guy ( geedubelyer) can be a pretty intimidating act to follow, but from what I've seen of your build so far, you're very much up to the task. He's such a show-off anyway! :thumbsup:

Now some more canopy pics. I know, the canopy deal is getting old, but I always pay extra special attention to the canopy area because, to me, a crappy canopy is a deal killer. One thing I've noticed when researching builds of this kit is that few show close-ups of the canopy, likely because the modelers just glued it on, leaving some small but obvious gaps. The real deal has a definite seam to the canopy to fuselage join with lots of rivets, but there really isn't much of a gap line at all.

Usually I seal up the cockpit and put the canopy on last, but to get rid of the very obvious gaps to the kit parts and to protect the cockpit (especially the pilot's seat), I'm gluing the canopy on now. To fill the gaps I use Tamiya putty, which can be quite a mess to my rivet and re-scribing work, so I use masking tape to limit the putty distribution. Yes, I used too much tape, but I had a lot of extra bits hanging around that were going to be thrown out anyway.....

Canopy21.jpg

Next, I use some nail polish remover on a rag and press the putty into the seam, then remove the masking tape before the putty has a chance to dry. Since the nail polish remover has acetone in it, be careful to not get any on the canopy. Although still rough, the putty line is thin and manageable....

Canopy22.jpg

After the putty dries over night, I mask off the canopy, leaving a straight line at the bottom of it to demarcate a canopy molding at the base. I then sanded it carefully and added several rivets. Not up to geeubelyer standards, but a whole lot better than some.....

Canopy23.jpg

Now for a REAL discovery if you build this kit. Unlike my usual 1/32 modern fighter jet builds, I've had difficulty getting many detail walk-around pics of Lancs. I have a bunch from the usual sources and a few books, but there's always some detail missing I'd like a pic of. Not any more! I saw the DVD below in the back of a magazine from Flying Zone Publications, so I gave it a whirl. Their website is here:

http://www.flyingzonedirect.com/index.html

LancExpl1.jpg

This DVD has EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about Lancs. Here's some cool things it has, to name a few:

  • Over 1,800 detailed pics of every part of the Lanc. If you want to see detail of the wireless operator's station, it has at least 60 photographs of every angle of this part of the rear cockpit. If want to see the engines, there's pics of 12 different variants.
  • 320 unique detailed color diagrams.
  • Camouflage Markings of several different types of Lancs. Every type, including Airbourne Cigar (ABC)- it's all here.
  • Technical specifications and even Pilot and Flight Engineer Procedures. I'll never read this stuff, but maybe somebody might like it.

Being in DVD format, you have to load some software to run it, probably to restrict access to the photographs to those with the DVD. It's no big deal for me, because my PC is always right beside my modeling bench for this purpose. It's a little pricey, but well worth it, especially since all the pics are large and much better than what a book could provide. If you're going to build a detailed Lanc, just buy it! I just ordered the one for the Spitfire, because you never know when this stuff suddenly becomes unavailable.

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Hi Chuck;

Very nice work on sealing the canopy to the fuselage btw. I have a quick question on Plexus. I take it you use it ordinarily prior to painting the canopy or do you it after... My question deals with adhesion of tape and paint once the clear parts have been polished. Any problems? I use future to coat the canopies, and sometimes the paint comes off the future when I unmask which is very frustrating to say the least.

-Al

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Hi Chuck;

Very nice work on sealing the canopy to the fuselage btw. I have a quick question on Plexus. I take it you use it ordinarily prior to painting the canopy or do you it after... My question deals with adhesion of tape and paint once the clear parts have been polished. Any problems? I use future to coat the canopies, and sometimes the paint comes off the future when I unmask which is very frustrating to say the least.

-Al

Thanks Al,

This is the first time I've used Plexus and although I'm very pleased with the results, it will never totally replace Future. If you've got a big seam on the top of a canopy that required a lot of sanding and buffing, you'll still need to dip it in Future to smooth out all the imperfections. Some have good luck with just rubbing compounds on plastic, but I can never get things smooth enough without it. I have not had peeling paint issues with paint on Future, but maybe that's because I always use enamels.

You can still use Plexus on Future as a final "coat", but I wouldn't use it until you've finished painting. If your canopy is fairly clear to begin with, use Plexus after you paint it to clean fingerprints and fill tiny scratches. Consider Plexus a "final finish" vs. a replacement for Future.

Edited by chuck540z3
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thanks to Anders for checking in. I'm really looking forward to you getting back in the F-14 saddle!

Me too. :cheers:

He's such a show-off anyway!

Hey,........I represent that remark! :whistle:

:huh:

Nice work on the canopy Chuck. Very clear finish. :coolio:

:salute:

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Chuck,

First may I say what an excellent job you're doing with the Lanc & what a great tribute it is turning out to be.

Before you crack on with the camouflage painting, I'd like to chip in with something I was told some years ago by a curator reponsible for supervising the refurb of a famous Lancaster. The Australian War Memorial (www.awm.gov.au) refurbished their Lancaster in the early 2000's. Part of that refurbishment included removing paint that was applied in the 1950's and 1970's. This was done by 'micro-sanding' the two non-authentic paint layers back to the original layers. Short story: this meticulous work revealed that the camouflage scheme was applied as a pattern, but as part of the construction of the individual components at various factories. These pre-painted components were then shipped to the factory for assembly.

The result of this (& relevant for your build) was that there was a variation in paint tone and 'connectivity' between the camouflage pattern on an aircraft. Think of it like painting the camouflage on the wings or fuselage halves before assembly and the resultant (& inevitable) mismatch.

I've never seen this represented on a Lancaster in model form before, thought you'd like to know.

Regardless, keep up the great work.

Regards,

Greg

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Before you crack on with the camouflage painting, I'd like to chip in with something I was told some years ago by a curator reponsible for supervising the refurb of a famous Lancaster. The Australian War Memorial (www.awm.gov.au) refurbished their Lancaster in the early 2000's. Part of that refurbishment included removing paint that was applied in the 1950's and 1970's. This was done by 'micro-sanding' the two non-authentic paint layers back to the original layers. Short story: this meticulous work revealed that the camouflage scheme was applied as a pattern, but as part of the construction of the individual components at various factories. These pre-painted components were then shipped to the factory for assembly.

Greg

Thanks Guys! I appreciate your encouragement.

Thanks for the heads-up Greg. One thing I have found for all of my builds is that there are always exceptions to "the rules" and the Lancaster is no exception to the exceptions! As a matter of fact, the more I research it, the more I know that almost anything goes and that there are many, many versions of this classic bomber with all sorts of different hardware and paint jobs. All that matters to me, is that you try to replicate something that was really built and flew many missions.

The book (magazine really) I noted in my first post, called "Aviation Classics, The Avro Lancaster" has a section on page 40 called "Wartime Color". In it, there are some fairly rare color pics of Lancs during their assembly at Woodford, Cheshire, UK in 1943. Although the Lancs are being assembled in sections, each section looks like it is painted the same as the rest of the sections in the very same paint colors. This may not be true of other Lanc factories, including the one in Canada, so this is probably not a universal fact for all Lanc construction. I'm going to use this as my template for the camouflage paint scheme I'm going to use, including flat black paint for the undersides, which is in many, many pics of wartime Lancs. The survivors all have gloss black underneath, but from what I have seen, flat black was way more common a color on the belly. Right or wrong, I like it better than some other builds and I promise everyone, it will still look pretty good- or at least I hope!

I'm working on undercarriage and nacelle stuff which is a challenge. Update pics fairly soon.

Edited by chuck540z3
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" February 23, 1945. Target: Pforzhiem factories (which made precision instruments and fuses). Light flak, good visibility, bombed visually. Very good prang. On return flight, I noticed Lake Constance in Switzerland which has heavy anti-aircraft artillery. When I pointed this out to our pilot and navigator, we immediately altered course."

Thanks to my new DVD on the Lancaster, I have LOTS of pics of just about every part of the Lanc. In researching the landing gear, I found all sorts of straight aluminum to almost all black combinations of colors on all the strut pieces. Wartime pics of the landing gear shows mainly aluminum, but I found a few that had quite a bit of black on them too, so that's what I went with, mostly because it looks more interesting. If this is a big time boo-boo, please don't tell me- there's no turning back now.

The landing gear parts require a lot of work before painting. There are mold and pin marks EVERYWHERE, so you need to trim and sand just about every part. I went with Alclad aluminum for the aluminum color and gloss black for the black parts, then toned everything down with flat clear lacquer. I used gloss black instead of flat black because it lays down smoother over the small parts without getting that "dusty" look that flat black can create. As a wartime bird that went on many missions and landing in dirty fields, I dry-brushed some silver paint on most of the parts to give them that well-worn look.

Here's some pics....

Gear3.jpg

Gear4.jpg

Make sure you paint the top of the inside of the wing before gluing the gear. This is only dry-fitted at this stage.

Gear5.jpg

Now for the tough part- the nacelles and engines. The instructions for the Belcher Bits engines call for you to assemble the nacelles on the fully assembled wing before cutting the forward part of the nacelle off with a razor saw. I think it's going to be easier to cut the nacelles before assembly, because there is a lot of trimming and dry fitting to get everything fitting fairly close. Doing this on a fully assembled wing means that the landing gear will likely get stressed or broken and I plan on doing some pre-painting of the radiators within the engines before I glue them in place. Painting them as separate pieces will be a lot easier.

I think the reason the BB instructions ask you to do it this way is because the engine alignment must be done on a flat assembled wing that's attached to the fuselage. There's a lot of give, one way or the other that could result in crooked engine alignment, so you have to be careful to not glue the engines until you've got the alignment figured out. I plan on gluing the nacelles to the bottom wing half, dry fitting the top half of the wing, then dry-fitting the wings to the fuselage. Once I getting the angle of the new engines figured out and marked, I'll take everything apart and glue the engines from the INSIDE of the nacelle. Being resin, you need to use CA glue which can be a real bear to sand smooth along a joint, especially ones with lots of detail and clips along the edge of the join.

The engine to nacelle fit is quite variable according to how you cut the nacelle and individual aberrations of the resin engines. Each nacelle/engine pair was therefore numbered to make sure I get the right one in the right hole later. Note the inner engines have larger carburetor intakes than the outer engines....

Nacelle1-1.jpg

The fit of the outer engines is pretty good......

Nacelle2.jpg

But the inner engines are a bit too tall- note how I've tried to file off the bottom a bit. This should be fun getting them to fit later, especially if I want to preserve some of that detail of the panel clips right at the join.

Nacelle3.jpg

Thanks for your interest.

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Its always good to see different modellers approach of dealing with fitting aftermarket gear

some have fitted the nacelle fairings to the wings then attached the belcher engine nacelle

only to find its a very poor fit, i think your way is a better way of fitting them.

ian.

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"March 1, 1945. Target: Manniem Transport Supply Center. Light flak, no fighters. Bombed pre-set smoke puffs with 10/10 cloud cover"

Its always good to see different modellers approach of dealing with fitting aftermarket gear

some have fitted the nacelle fairings to the wings then attached the belcher engine nacelle

only to find its a very poor fit, i think your way is a better way of fitting them.

ian.

I think this method turned out pretty good. An experiment that turned out right for a change.

Before I fool around with fitting the engines though, I got rid of those HUGE ribs on the ailerons, both top and bottom. Thanks for the tip Ian!

Looking at pics of the real deal, I noticed a small little panel on the inboard side of the port aileron, so I scribed one in according to my eye. Well, when I placed the starboard aileron next to it after to take this "before/after" pic, low and behold there's one scribed already on this side, so Tamiya either missed it on the port side or there are some differences in aircraft. I can't see why there would be, so my bet is a kit mistake. Unfortunately my eye isn't the exact same width as the kit, but you'll never know 10 inches apart later. Make sure you put this panel on both the top and bottom.....

Wings1.jpg

Although there isn't a big rib like the kit parts, there is a bit of a raised rib, so I sanded off the ribs until there was just a shadow of one left. I then added rivet detail and voila, fixed ailerons. Make sure you avoid sanding off any of the wing detail outside of the ailerons. Oh yeah, this took me about 3 hours!

Wings2.jpg

Wings3.jpg

Next up is engine alignment using the Belcher Bits. To do this I attached the nacelles to the bottom wing half and then dry-fitting the wings together using elastic bands. What was Tamiya thinking?....

Wings4.jpg

Then I slid the wings into the fuselage and suspended the wings in my modeling box I use for my 1/32 fighters. For those who may be interested, this is just a cardboard box with foam pipe wrap so that nothing gets scratched. Once I start putting wings onto my models, it pretty much lives there to protect landing gear, cockpits, etc., until I'm finished......

Anyway, I taped the Belcher engines into place and got everything lined up properly. Those wings, BTW, fit very nicely on top and very bad on the bottom. I'll probably have to use plastic card as a spacer on the bottom later.....

Wings5.jpg

.....and, according to the instructions that came with the resin parts, eyeballed the alignment so that nothing was crooked. Unlike the instructions, I didn't glue a thing- I just made marks with a felt pen of how I wanted the engines to hang. If you just use panel lines between the kit and resin parts to align things, you'll be right about half the time and very sorry half the time...

Wings6.jpg

Once I figured out how the engines should hang, I sanded the kit parts where required to make a flush fit. This is because the nacelles can widen when you attach them to the wings (from prior dry fitting) and you don't want to sand the nice resin detail next to the join. Since the kit detail is sort of crappy, it gets sacrificed.....

Wings7.jpg

I will add back some of the kit detail that is lost later, after I finish with glue and putty....

Wings8.jpg

Now the gluing part. Since the resin parts require CA glue- and lots of it since they're heavy- I took the wings apart and glued them from behind. No worries about fit and alignment since that has already been attended to, and you can really get a good bead of glue on the back without worrying about a mess......

Wings9.jpg

With a fit on the sides like this, I'll need hardly any putty and the resin part is unscathed- or at least so far. The bottom of the inboard engines will, however, need some big-time sanding and putty, just like the top, but there is little detail here to worry about anyway.

Wings10.jpg

Thank you guys for your kind words of encouragement.

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Hi Chuck!

That was a great idea to use foam pipe insulation as a support for the model. I also like the idea to use a cardboard box to run in the centre of the foam insulation. I'm on my way to get myself some of that for a support device of my own.. Thanks for sharing through your pictures!!

-Al

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