Uh Oh! The old man is on about something Again

Dodgy, you didn't miss much by skipping the interview. It will fade into insignificance after a few weeks, and the Queen will carry on as normal with dignity and respect intact. In my opinion the interview could best be described as interesting to the public but not in the public interest.

Getting back to modelling a Spanish company Occre have just started to produce a kit of Shackleton's polar exploration ship Endurance.

Bugatti Fan

You are right, I missed something there Dodgy. Your sarcasm about the  'actress' went right over my head. 

Regarding the recent TV interview, to be honest I fell asleep with boredom about three quarters of the way through. I think that it would have been more interesting if it had been properly done in a studio by a tough analytical interviewer like the BBC's Jeremy Paxman, Emily Maitliss, or Andrew Neil.

 

Mate, I'm an Aussie through and through. My old man was a Scot and my mothers side in Aussie goes back to convict days. I have been married twice, both to redheads and Brits. I took an oath to Queen and country when I joined the Navy. She was my Queen then and she is my Queen now. I have no time for our 'actress' and Harry has lost me. I only honour him now for his service. Terribly, terribly disapointing. PS I didn't bother with the interview.

You are right, I missed something there Dodgy. Your sarcasm about the  'actress' went right over my head. 

Regarding the recent TV interview, to be honest I fell asleep with boredom about three quarters of the way through. I think that it would have been more interesting if it had been properly done in a studio by a tough analytical interviewer like the BBC's Jeremy Paxman, Emily Maitliss, or Andrew Neil.

Bugatti Fan

Dodgy, we do indeed have an actress married into the Royal family. Apart from a TV drama, 'Suits', what else is she known for beforehand? ? Whether she is a great actress is questionable, but certainly not a Hollywood A lister.

Sorry Bugatti Fan, I was being sarcastic about her acting ability.......

I think the fractions of a penny are the oil companies' way of making sure every bit of profit is squeezed out of every sale - if you buy one litre, it's nothing, but it's 3p if you buy 10 litres.  It must add up to a lot of money on all the petrol sold every day.  

Bugatti Fan

perhaps you could enlighten me about how 1/43rd scale popular with model car collectors is the equivalent of O Gauge?

I don't know that one, I'm afraid.  I think there is also some correlation between 1/87 & 1/76 scales with the railway model HO and OO gauge, but I'm not sure.  Could any railway modellers enlighten us?

You have made some good points there Hutch.

One of the things that puzzle me, and you might have noticed it too, is garage forecourt prices when they show a fraction of a penny as part of the price per litre. Weird! How am I supposed to pay 0.2 or 0.3 pence? It is clearly impossible!

You work on a railway, so perhaps you could enlighten me about how 1/43rd scale popular with model car collectors is the equivalent of O Gauge?

Bugatti Fan

although the UK has gone metric since the early 70's all our road signs are still in miles. Reckon it must have been on cost grounds to convert every road sign in the country that it was left well alone probably.

I'm not so sure, mate - we've wasted huge amounts of money over the last 50 years on stuff much less important than road signs.  The thing is, we still think in miles, so that's why the signs still show them.  I work on a railway, where the gauge is 4 feet 8 and a half inches, and we use terms like "4 foot", "6 foot", and "chainage" (a chain being 22 yards - incidentally, also the length of a cricket pitch).  We - reluctantly, I think - buy milk and petrol in litres, but the important stuff - beer- is still served in pints (and ordered by pubs in gallons).  Apart from miles, road signs still show distances in yards, and feet/inches (bridge clearances) and we still weigh ourselves in stones and pounds.  We never went metric, not completely.  Maybe I'm getting old.

Hey Don;

 I cannot fault your logic, only to say 1/192 IS NOT decent looking on these ships. The ladders are to short for one. And the longest ones just barely cut the mustard.Their angle in so wrong~Well, I won't go on, anyway, I figured out something else that works.

Now if you are an old computer it's easier to calculate 7,62mm instead of 1/3 inch, not to mention 5' 5 3/4''...

I know it's natural if you done this all your life long...

But it's not only about the distance measurements - the whole SI system (m, kg, s and then V, A, W, J, K, Pa and so on) is so beautifully consistent!

Good luck with your measurements and have a nice day

Paweł

Greg, funny thing that your Km to miles conversion reminded me of is that although the UK has gone metric since the early 70's all our road signs are still in miles. Reckon it must have been on cost grounds to convert every road sign in the country that it was left well alone probably.

re the Apollo. Must admit, never thought of Von Braun and his band of German rocket scientists who of course would have been brought up using metric.

Dodgy, we do indeed have an actress married into the Royal family. Apart from a TV drama, 'Suits', what else is she known for beforehand? ? Whether she is a great actress is questionable, but certainly not a Hollywood A lister.

As a cook, recipes can be fun.

"7/8 cup of cheese"?

Why,asks my boss.

"That's 150 grams", a sensible message.

HooYah Deep Sea

Yeah, remember, there are only two kinds of countries in the world, those who use the metric system and those who have put a man on the moon!!

 

Ahh my dear old mate, Brian. Here was me thinking it was a NAZI scientist and his band of merry men that the U.S. bought in illegally, who put the rocket together that went to the moon. Also you didn't invent the Spitfire, or penacilin, but you do have a great actress that married into the Royal family..............

Bugatti Fan

It would be very interesting to know why Metric was chosen at the time in the 60's on the Apollo, so perhaps some ex NASA person would be able to enlighten us.

I certainly don't qualify as ex-NASA, but it occurs to me to wonder whether it might have someting to do with the numbers of European scientists in our space program from its earliest days. Kind of like the Manhattan Project during the war, where much of the monitoring and instrumentation was at least 'doubled' in metric, since so many of contributors came from that background.

Purely as an aside, my father -- who went to school on the GI Bill after the war, and became an electrical engineer -- said they learned to work in the metric system at the U. of Michigan in the late '40s. He specialized in sports stadium and industrial lighting through much of his career, and said he used one system as much as the other, since a lot of the work involved dealing with non-US clients and suppliers.

Bugatti Fan

I got used to metric quite quickly, having been brought up on feet and inches, but the funny thing is old habits die hard. I still visualise 10 or 12 feet better than the metric equivalent, even after all these years!

Same here, on both counts. Maybe the old man's influence rubbed off on me, but I've always used metric for all my modeling work...just so much more simple and precise using mm instead of 16ths and 32nds...but I also 'visualize' in feet!

(I did, however, long ago commit to memory that a km is almost exactly 5/8 of a mile. Comes in very handy, that one.)

Cheers

gregbale

The readouts and communication were in feet/inches/miles because the astronauts -- ex-aviation test pilots -- had spent their careers with that standard, which is still used throughout international aviation to this day.

Unless you're Russian.   

That's really interesting Greg. Over here in the UK we converted to metric in the early 70's a few years after the moon landing in 1969, so I naturally thought that the engineering of the Apollo Spacecraft would have been in Imperial rather than Metric. In the early Metrication days most of the engineering drawings I worked to were simply converted from the Imperial, that is until new product designs enabled the Metric system to be utilised properly.

You live and learn something new every day.

It would be very interesting to know why Metric was chosen at the time in the 60's on the Apollo, so perhaps some ex NASA person would be able to enlighten us.

I got used to metric quite quickly, having been brought up on feet and inches, but the funny thing is old habits die hard. I still visualise 10 or 12 feet better than the metric equivalent, even after all these years!

HooYah Deep Sea

Yeah, remember, there are only two kinds of countries in the world, those who use the metric system and those who have put a man on the moon!!

Hate to burst your bubble, but much/most of the engineering for the Apollo program was actually metric.

The readouts and communication were in feet/inches/miles because the astronauts -- ex-aviation test pilots -- had spent their careers with that standard, which is still used throughout international aviation to this day.

They had enough to worry about without having to learn a whole new system of references.

Hello Don

I think that it may be ScaleWarship, a UK company that does a set of Photo Etched Shrouds and Ratlines for the Airfix Victory plus hammock netting etc if that is the kit you are thinking of. They also make ratlines and shrouds for the Revell Vasa and the Imai Cutty Sark, and on top of this a set of photo etched shrouds, ratlines and decking for the tiny Airfix Mary Rose kit.

HooYah Deep Sea

Yeah, remember, there are only two kinds of countries in the world, those who use the metric system and those who have put a man on the moon!!

Myamar & Liberia have put a man on the Moon? 

There is some generic PE- railings and stuff, for 192 scale (architecture scale).  That is close enough to use on 1:200.  There is even some 1:96 for small craft.

The big thing I want is more PE sailing ship rigging- shrouds and ratlines.  There is at least one company doing a few sets, but not enough for all the smaller sailing ships in my stash.  I do hand rig the larger 1:96 and 1:72 and such, but for the 1:200 , 1:400 and 1:600 ships, they are so tiny that PE stuff is the only practical way to go.  I forget who made the PE for the recent mid-scale HMS Victory, but that sure made the model look great.  I don't mind hand doing the running rigging, but no way I will tie that many ratlines!

Re Photo etch for ship models, there is a company named Aber who make ships railings etc in 1/400th scale.

Yoo Yah Deep Sea, I admire your patriotism, but the 'metric' countries you appear to dismiss invented television (look up Logie Baird), DVD and CD (look up Philips), computers (look up Professor Turin), invented the World Wide Web and cracked DNA sequencing at Cambridge (England not Harvard), the jet engine (look up Frank Whittle), steel (look up Bessemer Converter), penicillin (look up Alexander Fleming), the electric inventions of Faraday, the marine chronometer (look up Harrison), the motor car (look up Daimler Benz), radar (look up Marconi), the steam engine (look up George Watt), the telescope (look up Galileo) even the telephone by a Scotsman living in America (look up Alexander Graham Bell). To top all this includes the language you are using, English!

Incidentally, putting a man on the moon would have drawn upon the building blocks developed from many of the above discoveries.

HooYah Deep Sea

Yeah, remember, there are only two kinds of countries in the world, those who use the metric system and those who have put a man on the moon!!

 

Hey: Phbbbbt!

 Taint my fault I got fed up with war stuff and Titanics. War stuff.The time in Nam certainly helped in that! I didn't know about some sites someone mentioned so I will check it out.1/200? I didn't think about Metric versus SAE. Still wish an American site would do them. My 1/96 stuff from Providers here is so Killer!

Yeah, remember, there are only two kinds of countries in the world, those who use the metric system and those who have put a man on the moon!!

I looked at Megahobby. They have lots of stuff for the big Titanic model, plus things from Eduard, White Ensign and others. 

Tom's sells a 1/200 railing set for Yamato. They are very simple two bar rails.

Bill

With your background in paper models, you've probably come across these before, but Bill's right...you generally need to go European for that stuff.

Great place to start is the Polish firm GPM: lots of p/e in popular paper-ship scales!

https://sklep.gpm.pl/en/accessories/photo-etched/equipment

'Relinge' are railings (includes ladders and gangways):

https://sklep.gpm.pl/en/accessories/relinge/photo-etched

 They also carry stuff in laser-cut card.

Well I'm not inclined to do your research old man, but you know that 1/200 is a metric scale. Try finding a PE maker in a metric country. We tend to stick with the same sources, those we see that cater to our insane measuring system.

Bill