Weekly Photo Challenge: Entrance

The entrance to the Lodge when we arrived in 2004...

...and as it is now, looking back the other way...

Yes, sports fans, it’s another WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge post…all that maintains my presence in the blogosphere recently…I’m enjoying my first real weekend off since February and so, apart from checking for booking requests for the Chalet, have been staying offline and recharging batteries… This is the busy period for ASIC and so much of my time is spent hammering the keyboard managing our part of the programme and also drafting various products…maybe too much of this work has got me in a mindset of thinking I need blog posts to be more like articles so I might look at going back to more but smaller items just to keep up the steady patter of ambient noise… Please don’t forget though that it is the bi-ennial Scale Model Expo in Lower Hutt, Wellington this weekend, where this will be on display (with Hawkeye UAV sponsoring a prize as well)… …from the 2009 Expo…

By land...

...by air...

...and by land again (couldn't find any good shots of ships from 2009 ( they were there just my dodgy photos)...

Better start building then, I guess….

Scale Models Wellington IPMS is pleased to be able to invite the modeling public to participate in the 2011 Scale Models Expo Model.

The event is to be held in the centre of Lower Hutt (approx 15minutes drive north of Wellington, New Zealand) in the Horticultural Hall adjoining the Town Hall in the civic centre. The expo will also feature a separate competition for the IPMS Nationals which will gather some of the countries top modelers as they battle it out for top honours.

In addition to the competitions we have lined up some interesting displays and a full complement of trade stands from the regions leading retailers and manufacturers.

Entries must be delivered and registered between 9am – 11am Saturday 20 August in the foyer of the Lower Hutt Horticultural Hall. Please remember to bring your completed entry form to speed up registration. Spare forms will be available on the day. Late entries will be at the sole discretion of the Contest Chairman.

There is no entry fee for models and modelers may enter as many eligible models as they wish.

Previous place getting models in the Wellington Scale Models Expo (ie 1st, 2nd or 3rd) are not eligible to re-enter the Scale Models Expo competition but may enter the IPMS Nationals if eligible. Similarly previous place getters in an IPMS Nationals (ie 1st, 2nd, 3rd, Gold, Silver or Bronze) are not eligible to re-enter the Nationals but may enter the Scale models Expo if eligible.

Entries may be comprised of any generally accepted modeling material (ie plastic, resins, wood, metal). All models must have been built and painted by the entrant.

Final class and category placement of models is at the discretion of the Contest Chairman.

Junior class entrants must be under the age of 17 (ie not reached their 17th birthday) at the time of the competition

Any entries that are considered offensive to generally held standards of taste and acceptability may be excluded at the discretion of the Contest Chairman.

Entries may not be removed from the tables until 4pm Sunday at the earliest unless prior consent is given by the Contest Chairman.

All entrants in the competition shall receive a free pass to the venue for the duration of the event.

Prize giving for the competition will be 4pm Sunday. Competitors must be present to accept any awards or prizes. Awards will be made for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and Highly Commended ( as applicable) in each of the categories along with overall best in Class.

To be eligible for “Best NZ Subject” the model must be entered in the appropriate NZ section. The only exceptions to this will be NZ subjects in Diorama, Ships Sci Fi/Miscellaneous and Junior classes.

Models will be judged by Scale Models Wellington IPMS appointed judges. Entries shall be judged according to Scale Models Wellington IPMS judging criteria. All judges decisions are final. No correspondence will be entered into.

Scale Models Expo/ IPMS Nationals Classes 2011 Unless stated all categories refer to all scales.

Class A: Aircraft
A1 NZ Aircraft
A2 Aircraft smaller than 1/48 – prop
A3 Aircraft smaller than 1/48 – Jet
A4 Aircraft 1/48 – prop, single engine
A5 Aircraft 1/48 – prop, multi engine
A6 Aircraft 1/48 – jet
A7 Aircraft larger than 1/48 – prop
A8 Aircraft larger than 1/48 – jet
A9 Helicopters
A10 Box Stock

Class B: Military Vehicles
B1 NZ military vehicles
B2 Smaller than 1/48 – military vehicles and equipment
B3 1/48 – military vehicles and equipment
B4 1/35 and larger armoured vehicles – WW2 and earlier
B5 1/35 and larger armoured vehicles – Post WW2
B6 1/35 and larger softskin vehicles
B7 Towed artillery and misc military equipment
B8 Box Stock

Class C: Civilian Vehicles
C1 NZ vehicles
C2 Vehicles – Open wheel competition
C3 Vehicles – factory stock
C4 Vehicles – modified (custom/hotrod/tuner)
C5 Vehicles – closed wheel competition
C6 Motorcycles
C7 Box Stock
C8 Trucks/Commercials

Class D:Dioramas
D1 Diorama – All types

Class E: Ships
E1 1/500 and smaller
E2 Larger than 1/500
E3 Submarines

Class F: Figures
F1 NZ Figures
F2 Under 120mm (1/16)
F3 120mm (1/16) and larger
F4 Busts

Class G: Science, Sci Fi and Misc
G1 Fictional craft, real spacecraft, missiles and vehicles
G2 Any subject not covered elsewhere
G3 Collections

Class J: Junior
J1 Aircraft
J2 Military
J3 Civilian vehicles
J4 Figures
J5 Ships
J6 Sci Fi & Misc
J7 Diorama

Collections will consist of 5 or more closely related items (eg five different WW2 fighters would not be a collection but five Spitfires would). Past place getters may be entered as part of a collection but must not constitute more than 40% of the group. The collection must be the sole work of the entrant.

Bases are allowed in all categories. They will not be considered in the judging except in the diorama classes or where 2 models are tied for a placing. Any models entered on bases must be securely fixed to the base.

A diorama shall generally be vehicles or figures on a single scenic base depicting a scene. Note a single figure, vehicle or aircraft displayed on a base with ground cover will not usually constitute a diorama.

Box stock classes are intended to recognize excellent models produced from the materials provided in the box from the manufacturer. For those entering Box Stock please note the following:
– Original instructions must be supplied with your entry.
– Alternative decals may be used.
– No aftermarket or scratch built detailing allowed.
– The modeler may fill gaps and seams, sand off rivets, drill out gun ports, exhausts pipes or other appropriate openings; thin to scale such parts as trailing edges, flaps and doors; and add rigging and antennas
– Panel lines may be repaired if damaged during construction. Extensive rescribing of panel lines is not permitted.

Come on plane spotters!

So it wasn’t just me…I was looking at the Reuters images in the Wall Street Journal of the OBL compound this morning and being a bit of a train spotter wondered about the angle that this image of wreckage from what was allegedly an SO Blackhawk was taken from…had a lot on today and just figured that maybe it was some sort of noise or signature reduction shroud around the rotor and went back to work. But it’s been niggling away all day and I was glad to see this Wired article asking the same questions.

My second guess was that it might be one of the trial RAH-66 Comanches out into SO service but Comanche, from memory, has a fenestrom enclosed tail rotor like Gazelle and Blue Thunder…hmmm, this will be interesting to watch…and maybe it leads towards a better explanation of why the helicopter crashed in the first place (experimental and or prototype) and b. why it was blown during the raid and not simply left for recovery post-raid while Pakistan taps dances around the big question of who knew?

I guess the design engineers at Italeri and Testors will be gearing up to get an extrapolated full version into the market before Christmas, noting their previous experience reverse engineering stealth design…or maybe something in paper…

It would be so great to think that something cool, new and nice was part of this operation…it all just adds to the almost fairy tale feel of the whole story, regardless of how poorly it is being handled by the White House…to paraphrase Princess Leia “When you went in there, did you have a plan for getting the information out?” Some interesting speculation over at Secret Projects

A slow morning over DC…

…even the airline pilots were lining up for a spot of noughts and crosses…

This was the view that greeted me when I drew back the curtains this morning….and great intro into what has been quite a painless day…an EKO which allowed me to wander along the river to the Iwo Jima Memorial…

This is only a klick or so from where we have been working and I had thought I might not get time to visit it – the memorial is in a great location in a park not far from the Potomac, lined up pretty much with Lincoln Memorial and the Mall across the river…

 

We went to a Kiwi work dinner tonight, Flying Fish in Old Alexandria, very nice but typical mega-sized US servings – even the appetiser would have done me for a meal…great beer too…something called Dogfish Head…I’ll try to bring some home but my last experiment with beer in the checked-in luggage was kinda messy at the other end…we drove past Arlington Cemetery on the way to Old Alexandria – if I had realised that it was so close to town I would have pushed on in that direction this afternoon….

This is my third visit to DC and each time I explore a little further and learn a little more…I think I am back here a couple more time this year so am planning on exploring further…hoping for another EKO tomorrow so that I can finish off domestic shopping obligations – already I have stocked up the library with a few books that I had been unable to find back home…and speaking of stocking up, I was unable to resist Heinkel Model’s latest work…

It is the Nautilus as she was envisaged by Jules Verne…I was unaware until the design thread for this version appeared on Paper Modelers that the most common and available version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was not actually the complete novel as crafted by Verne in French…that “…the 23% of text that had been expurgated by the original translator for political, ideological and other reasons…” (a modern translation is available at Black Cat Studios) nor that the design known to most people from the Disney movie bears little resemblance to the Nautilus as described in the book…

Lastly, Dean @ Travels With Shiloh has put me onto a new intel-related tome to review as a possible guide to unraveling intelligence in the contemporary environment…it is a hundred + pages and again I find myself tempted to grab one of these new-fangled e-reader gadgets so that I can read on the move….Intelligence Analysis for Tomorrow: Advances from the Behavioral and Social Sciences can be found here…I am very interested to see what insights that another discipline might add to the analysis conundrum just as I found Beniot Mandelbrot’s The (mis)Behaviour of Markets last year…(yes, I will get to finishing my review of this…)

Getting back on top

Nobi XF-103 and XB-51

I didn’t build these and that’s part of the problem: just like with blogging, sometimes it is all too hard to just get on with things (I should be mowing the lawns at the moment but I’m telling myself it is too hot) and so one just keeps putting them off again and again and again…

I bought these two models from Thaipaperwork when I first discovered paper models in 2008…they are both well-designed models and the scale of 1/48 makes for impressive completed sizes. They print out in grey but can be printed on silver-tinted or aluminium-coated paper for the results you see above…I started off with a big hiss and a roar and never really went anywhere with them. Of course, part of the problem is that the selection of paper models that are legally available is amazing and it is also to easy to be distracted by new releases, more so when many are free downloads or inexpensive in either digital or printed forms…my largest one to date, an unstarted Tu-160 Blackjack that is 1.7 metres long when complete was only US$20….

But the real issue is really one of motivation, of committing to doing at least one smaller thing each day…a senior officer for whom I have a ton of time once advised me to aim to do two things each day – I very likely might do more but achieving two things a day is always mild progress…

So when WordPress kicked off the Postaweek and Postaday challenges for 2011, I felt I really had to rise to the challenge – or maybe give up the blogging game is I couldn’t do it justice…

WordPress has The Daily Post that contains, each day (as the title may suggest!), a challenge that a blogger may or may not take up. It was Erica’s post on 8 February that really invigorated me to give this Challenge a shot – she quotes Jamie Wallace of Live to Write – Write to Live:

I had intended to get back to journaling…I had meant to get back to work outlining my novel, working on character studies, and creating a fabulously retro “map” of my story using markers, sticky notes, and some very large pieces of paper. But, these intentions were all summarily slaughtered by the demands of my Real Life.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I felt disappointment, anger, and guilt.

Yeah, baby…tell me about THAT feeling!!! Been there and got a drawer full of T-Shirts…fortunately, I’m not a criminal mastermind bent on taking over the world (I’ll leave that to Dean and the Squirrels to do all the hard work first!) but am prone to monologuing my ideas but often not really going much past that point…something always comes up, I’m too busy with this or that, or have deadlines for someone else to meet…first lesson, I guess, is that if it’s worth monologuing it might be worth recording is some form…just like the old tip to keep pen and paper by your bed for those world-beating ideas that come to mind at 3am…the second lesson is that it is quite definitely OK to set deadlines for yourself to meet for your projects i.e. deadlines are just not things that other people can set for you – just keep it all practical and achievable – it is unlikely that you will achieve world peace by next Tuesday…

Jamie Wallace covers it pretty well in A confession and 7 steps to better writing habits summarised here from the Daily Post’s coverage of it the following day:

1. Find, make, or steal writing time
2. Have a purpose
3. Avoid the shoulds
4. Start small
5. Be consistent
6. Measure progress
7. Find your joy

For the detail read the full text on Live to Write – Write to Live….it’s worth the effort…

And the ‘so what’ for me…well….

1. I’ve been letting everything else steal writing time from me – time to reset the balance…I need to spend at least as much time as I give myself each day for reading – guarantee myself 5-10 minutes each night for recreational reading: writing will be the same…Make better use of the tools that I have – more on this in a future post – there’s more to it than just a desk and a PC…

2. Have a purpose? Yes, but if not one, then only a few – Vegemite’s mean to be spread thin not writing skills…

3. I should avoid the shoulds – ha! Joke(tte)…Jamie defines shoulding really well in her post…something to identify and avoid…sense and avoid is as important in the study as it is in the cockpit…

4. Start small – as above – work within your limitations…

5. Be consistent – form (good habits) for writing as you should(!) for healthy eating, physical fitness or financial prudence (if you are a guy)…

6. Measure progress – hey! I know this one – right out of COIN 101…keep your measure of success and performance practical, relevant and well-grounded in reality…

7. Finding my joy? Hmmm…once upon a time it was telling stories (in a good sense, of course)…I think we’ll just have to see where the journey takes us on this one…

Some of the blog post ideas on The Daily Post leave me cold but that might be a tinge of comfortzonitis kicking in…we’ll see…there are some that appeal and there’s a new one every day…my travel routine won’t let me do one a day but I can certainly do a post a week and grow from there….

On the R&R front…

A slow day today, just taking advantage of it being the weekend to catch up on some work  – I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather this week so haven’t gone home for the weekend and have stayed on base to just have a quiet weekend without the 600+ km round trip home…I also don’t really want to drive the little red car too much until the ding I put in it during the snow storm on Wednesday morning is repaired – well, actually, I didn’t ding it…there was this old guy, see, who jammed on his brakes on the snow and slid across the centreline – all I did was broadside trying to get out of his way and he smacked, tapped actually into the rear panel between the passenger door and the rear wheel – fortunately only pushing the panel in and not inflicting any sort of mobility kill: an MX-5 is the last thing I’d be wanting to shelter in waiting for the snow to clear and the towie to arrive…I have pictures but they are stuck on the camera as I left the (cursed proprietary!!!) cable at home…

Leon Scott Kennedy from Resident Evil

Saw this picture on Paper Modelers this morning: a pretty good effort, I thought, considering that it is, of course, ‘only’ constructed from folded and curved paper.

Also, in ‘tidying’ the study on Tuesday, I found the manual for the big Dora which has been hiding for a couple of years…this means that this monster should rise somewhat on the production schedule over the next few months…

It’s a monster!

After a number of (dis)organisational issues i.e. I needed to get my act together and arrive on base with both model parts AND tools, I have made some progress on my upscaling of the Modelik Udarnyj…this is start #3 after the first two attempts aborted after I found that I had made some serious error s in the upscaling conversion process…anyway, now back on track and this is my on-base project when I am away from home…it’s working out to be a little bigger than expected as seen by the CD case for size comparison…the parts here are just sitting in place hence the slightly out-of-kilter appearance…

First hull formers

It was Carmen’s birthday the other weekend and one of the things that she got from the kids was the Ultimate (with the two pistols) version of House of the Dead for Wii – we both miss not be able to use the Xbox guns on the plasma TV so this brought this capability back – we both really like the Wii because a. you have to get up off your butt to play and b. you don’t have to be a competent thumb twiddler to play as you must with Xbox and Playstation…

A bit of a disappointment…

While blasting away at the screen is a ton of fun, the game itself is a bit of the disappointment…the video cutscenes that players are forced to endured are not only poorly rendered and constructed but the add nothing to game play and are riddled with bad language…so I’m now on the hunt for a better (which wouldn’t be hard) Wii shooter…I did see Marines Urban Combat on the shelf in JB Hifi the other day but we’ve got enough hand cannons now so just want the game on its own….

Nice


I see that the lads at Hawkeye UAS have updated their website from cool to uber-cool…(click above)

Also on the cool front…

From some very talented and generous folk in Poland…a new release in large scale paper planes…a Hawker Tempest V in 1/33….

Nice

…and something completely different…

While I totally lack anything like the hand-eye coordination needed to play even outdated computer games, let alone modern ones, I do really like the weird creations that seem to populate some of them…this too in in paper…

 

Y

Ugly but cool

Keeping above the radar horizon

Real life has really been impacting on my post-writing time in the last fortnight or so… definitely not part of the annual plan which is for 3-4 contemporary posts each week…such is life…so this post is really just to keep my profile above the radar horizon…

On the up side I have been accepted into the RNZAF and I have been very pleasantly surprised at how painless this process has been on the Air side…what has been tying up a large proportion of my time is getting out of the Army Reserves in order to join another service…which has not been anything like as simple as you might think…

31 March is also the end of the commercial financial year here and I have been doing the year end accounts for Carmen’s business – this is the first time I have done it all from scratch and getting all the bits and pieces organised into a coherent picture for the accountants has been ‘interesting’ – that’s interesting in the same sense as the Chinese curse…and, yes, I am getting soft: while renovating the study, I’ve had to shift the computer down to the dining table. An upside of this is that I can have TV or a movie on while I am working as I do seem to function better with some background activity; the downside is that the chairs around the dining table are hard wood and not that comfortable on butt or back…any extended periods of work tends to become feats of endurance…like I said, getting soft…

Winter’s first snow 9 June 2010

Winter is quite clearly here now so we’ll also gearing up to run the guest house over the ski season so we’re doing final tidy-up and touch-up projects around the property before the season opens…

I’m off to a workshop on aspects of hybrid war next week (touch wood and so long as the snow doesn’t close the road) and am thinking that the nights, rather than spend them in the bar, might be an opportunity to progress so paper projects like the Kitakami which is a rather unusual looking cruiser with four gun turret and ten quadruple torpedo turrets, designed against the requirements of naval battles like those around Guadalcanal in 1942 and 1943…this can be my night time away project…

…and the big 1/32 Heritage Aviation Vulcan will remain my at-home spare time project…this thing is a real pig…it was my gift to me after Carmen sold a property in 2008…at the time it seemed like a great project and an impressive attention-getter when completed and on display…as one of only 25 models built it cost an arm and a leg and it’s size meant that just getting it to New Zealand from the UK was a major pain..

…but that pain was nothing compared to finding that it only bears the flimsiest resemblance to any version of the actual aircraft and that by the time all the errors are fixed, I might as well build it from scratch…but…due to the cost involved and the lack of a local market to sell it on (especially since it’s reputation as model now precedes it), it has had to become a builder as the domestic issues arising from keeping this level of investment as a hangar queen in the garage are just too great. So, slowly, piece by piece, I’m building it as close as I can get it to an original straight wing Vulcan before they started to do all sorts of ugly things to the wings…with parallel build threads on Large Scale Planes and Paper Modeling – a completed build can be seen on Britmodeller

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho…it’s not snowing or raining at the moment so it’s off to (outside) work I go…

This is for real

HMS Victory in paper

This is for real – details on PM here

…but are these guys?

There have been a growing number of reports from Afghanistan that senior ISAF commanders are losing in their desperation to win the information war with the Taliban on collateral damage. Two of the latest ‘initiatives’ include the creation of a medal awarded for not using lethal force during war and ordering soldiers to conduct patrols without a round chambered in their weapons. It seems clear that the ‘commanders’ fail to grasp that the role of the military in this environment is the application of force in support of national objectives – everything is subordinate to this role, unique to the military amongst other instruments of national power.  If the situation in Afghanistan is now so benign that soldiers no longer need to keep their weapons in an ‘action’ state, then we should be seeing an immediate transition from a military campaign to a civil campaign.

Of course, the fact that applying restraint in the use of lethal force in Afghanistan implies that there is still a significant threat against which lethal force might be used; and both ‘initiatives’ are is stark contrast to the indifference to collateral damage inherent in current cross-border UAV strikes into Pakistan. Possibly the further you are, and can keep the media, from collateral damage, the more palatable it is.

The Rules of War provide for the right of every soldier to use force in their own defence should they believe this to be warranted. Both of these ‘initiatives’ seek to undermine this right. Training provides both the means of applying that force and the means to determine a proportionate level of response. This training builds upon the organisational ethos and values developed throughout an individuals career. Maybe, in seeking to win what appears more and more tobe an unwinnable war, ISAF commanders are leading their own ethos and values be eroded in placing their soldiers at risk in favour of a population that doesn’t appear to be particularly supportive of either ISAF or the Karzai government.

One of the reports quotes one source linking this to the rules of engagement that contributed to the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon: this line is interesting…”…do not chamber a round unless told to do so by a commissioned officer unless you must act in immediate self-defense where deadly force is authorized…” …and we all saw how well that turned out…There’s never an officer around when you need one which is why most credible armies rely on the training and experience of their NON-Commissioned Officers to apply their judgement to any particular tactical situation. There must be a balance between experience and qualification which is a point that Dusty discusses in Security NZ this week.

On reconstruction

I see a recent note in the Marine Corps Gazette (real land forces have professional journals) that “…officials told lawmakers in Washington Thursday the reconstruction of Afghanistan is poised to become the largest overseas rebuilding operation in U.S. history…” Is there any point in rebuilding anything that is unlikely to last beyond that last helicopter lifting off the Embassy roof…? Who really gains from this rebuilding operation, the people of Afghanistan – or the corporate parasites clambering over them in search of profit before President Obama turns off the tap…?

Incidentally, I’m not sure that rebuilding Afghanistan will be a larger operation that the rebuilding of Germany and Japan and the Marshall Plan post-WW2…possibly only in terms of modern dollar levels…?

On networking…”

Michael Yon has been reporting from Bangkok and offering a distinct contrast to the pro-Red Shirt line taken by most of the mainstream media. One thing I have noticed is that large number of Thai people commenting on his Facebook page posts. Even accepting that Thailand is far more connected than Afghanistan, it is interesting to compare this with the number of Afghans commenting on his page which appears to be minimal at best. The  Sicuro Group report from 19 May states that there are 3.8 million Afghans subscribed to Roshan, the largest telecommunications operator in Afghanistan. You’d really think that if any of those 3.8 million people cared, they might offer up some comments; that they don’t might be an indicator to the true level of support for ISAF and the fantasy of a central government led by Karzai or anyone else.

Hanging in there…

Take you to our leader?

Man, the Russians come up with some cool looking machines…this is the…Obyekt 279, a Soviet prototype heavy tank developed in the Kirov industrial plant, Leningrad. Work on the tank started in 1957, and was based on a heavy tank operational requirements developed in 1956. The special-purpose tank was intended to fight on cross-country terrain that was inaccessible to conventional tanks and act as a vehicle to break through enemy defensive positions….(cheers to Wikipedia)…

I came across this beast in a Paper Models thread asking for ideas for new armour models so if it tweaks a designer’s imagination, maybe it’ll be a builder…I’d have a crack at the design myself but at the moment I am running at capacity doing year-end accounts, working with Hawkeye UAV, gearing up for the Winter season, and completing some of my COIN-related review commitments…I finished Benoit Mandelbrot’s The (mis)Behaviour of Markets on Monday, am almost done with Amanda Lennon’s Fourth Generation Valkyries, and have a local work on hybridism to read…

So, the blog has taken a back foot for the last week or so and this state of affairs will most likely last until next week when normal services should be resumed…

In the meantime, Dean @ Travels With Shiloh has returned from the COIN Symposium at Fort Leavenworth and started to upload this thoughts and findings..please head on over and value-add to the his comments and observations…it’ll be interesting to see what Kiwis attending the symposium took away from a  national perspective…

PS…forgot to mention that Michael Yon has left Afghanistan (probably best for all concerned) and is currently in Bangkok covering the troubles there…if you’re on Facebook, it is well worth subscribing to his page where he has been delivering a steady commentary – a dozen + feeds each day – on the situation there…he offers an interesting counterpoint to the more sensationalist news media ‘reporting’ and depicts the human side of this drama very well…it is great to see that Michael has returned to the type of .boots on the ground’ that he is so very good at…