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Post by phil on Oct 26, 2011 23:04:34 GMT 12
We had them parked up in 6SQN hangar last night, they've been conducting some trials with Canterbury.
They look like someone read the scale of the drawings wrong and made them too small. I reckon we've actually got 3/4 scale replicas of helicopters instead of real ones.
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Post by phil on Oct 22, 2011 18:18:38 GMT 12
Off the top of my head I'd say 123 Extra Dark Sea Grey is too dark, I've used this on a SHAR and although it is fairly close it would need to be lightened a bit.
125 should be about right (since it is 26118!).
I can't comment on 176, but it's called 'Neutral Grey' which doesn't sound promising as the Iro grey has a distinct blue hue to it, and the photos I've seen so far of the NH90 look like it has a similar blue hue.
I'll be working with a couple of A109s this week so I'll see how their colour compares to the Iro Grey.
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Post by phil on Oct 20, 2011 20:51:34 GMT 12
I'm not sure there isn't a little bit of optimistic propaganda in that article, especially the bit about the armour.
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Post by phil on Oct 16, 2011 14:12:31 GMT 12
It looks like the same grey as the Iroquois, FS26118.
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Post by phil on Oct 10, 2011 20:14:57 GMT 12
Excellent shots Sam. I'm surprised to see the blank still has Ned on it, the Seqsprites haven't belonged to No. 3 Squadron for years. I guess we've got other priorities. We still have bonding leads with squashed frogs on them too. These things just tend to get used for years. |
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Post by phil on Oct 9, 2011 20:09:07 GMT 12
I think there are two versions of the Revell NH90 kit, one is an older one that is based on the prototype, the other is the retooled version that should be a production aircraft (exactly how close to ours I'm not sure).
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Post by phil on Oct 5, 2011 21:32:34 GMT 12
so it was just like it when a sqn gets all their aircraft up, only this was all their ships. imagine if we got all our air force up. Yeap. Except only three Seasprites were serviceable and Manawanui was not present.  No, 02 was serviceable too, it was just in the hangar at WP. |
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Post by phil on Oct 5, 2011 20:24:15 GMT 12
I imagine it was from memory. I can still recite the firing sequence of the Mk10, which is very similar of course.
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Post by phil on Oct 2, 2011 17:16:52 GMT 12
We went on adventure training there last year. Nice little place.
We did the obligatory community project, sorting out a playground at the school.
Young boy comes up to us and starts chatting (we were in DPMs), can't recall quite how the conversation was progressing, but the lad comes out with the fact Willy Apiata is is Dad.
Normally you'd dismiss that with a Yeah Right, but since it was Te Kaha it's quite possible he actually was.
The Kiwi Experience bus that turned up with the British backpacking chicks was popular too.
Especially when they decided we were far more fun that the bus and hung around for the rest of the week and came back to Bulls with us to catch their bus on to Welly from there.
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Post by phil on Sept 29, 2011 21:59:10 GMT 12
I'd have had no issues banging out of a Macchi (I used to work on the Mk10), but I wouldn't trust an Escapac as far as I could throw one.
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Post by phil on Sept 26, 2011 21:14:24 GMT 12
Just saw the promo flyer in the DomPost today. Looks like a big affair. Will be great for the people of Wgtn. Thumbs up to the navy boys!  And Air Force. Te Kaha and Canterbury will have their full flight embarked, and Te Mana will have a reduced flight as well. |
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Post by phil on Sept 17, 2011 10:20:31 GMT 12
In relation to wearing uniforms, 6 SQN is unique in that it actually has a navy rig that we wear on a day to day basis, but we wear it with 'AIR FORCE' identifiers replacing the 'NAVY' and we wear Air Force rank slides as well of course. We also wear the air force baseball cap or FS cap with it. No silly white hats for us. The uniform is known as GWD, or General Working Dress and is the navy's standard daily seagoing rig. It replaced the old grey overalls a few years ago and is made of the same aramid fibre the flying clothing is made from so is fire retardant.
While at sea we still wear our Air Force blue maintainers overalls rather than the the Navy overalls, since ours have velcro covering the zips etc to prevent the zips damaging the aircraft and velcro closed pockets to limit FOD.
When required to wear SDs or blue working dress we do of course still wear our Air Force uniform, however one funny combination we found ourselves wearing recently was GWDs with SD hats! One of the official navy rigs is GWDs with their white caps, but of course we don't have that as an option. We were doing a parade practice for the fleet review in Brunei and the dress of the day for that was GWDs with white caps, so we had to wear the closest equivalent which was of course our SD caps. Looked a bit funny.
From an administrative point of view, while we are posted to a ship and actually on board, all our admin (leave, pay, allowences etc etc) is maintained through the ship's writers and ship's chain of command for approvals, but when we aren't embarked everything is managed through the SQN like any other air force unit.
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Post by phil on Sept 16, 2011 17:07:27 GMT 12
Although there are common articles of a Purple nature that feature in all three magazines, the rest of the content is quite different and catered to each service.
A better saving would be acheived by printing far less of them, the serving members can read them online each month as a PDF, we don't need as many hard copies.
We used to get one AF News as soon as they were available, everyone would read it, then about a week later another dozen copies would turn up. These would just end up in the bin.
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Post by phil on Sept 15, 2011 21:32:55 GMT 12
All three mags are produced by DCG, not by the seperate services themselves.
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Post by phil on Sept 3, 2011 16:40:54 GMT 12
I seem to recall the Microscale kiwis are missing their legs! Feet are there, just not connected to the bodies, so that set of kiwi roundels listed above is a bit of a must have anyway.
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Post by phil on Sept 1, 2011 15:59:54 GMT 12
That was a cold war, war of attrition theory. When faced with fanatical nutjobs, you want them dead.
The Americans found out in Mogadishu that 5.56 didn't stop drug addled militia. There wasn't anything wrong with the US marksmanship, it's just that the one round they had time to fire at the fleeting target wasn't doing enough damage.
The Royal Marines in the Falklands found out that 5.56 doesn't have the legs required for fighting on open battle fields, some of them were armed with M16s and struggled to hit argentinian troops that their SLR armed mates could hit.
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Post by phil on Aug 26, 2011 10:12:03 GMT 12
Wingnut had a new kit on display, see Brett Green's piece here:
(Sorry, tried embedding it, but it just pasted as html and not the actual embeded youtube frame)
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Post by phil on Aug 23, 2011 21:51:20 GMT 12
Got the kit, just need the decals....
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Post by phil on Aug 19, 2011 17:52:44 GMT 12
Do you mean the grey FLIR Turret?
All the frames have FLIR, two of them have a different type (that are grey rather than the older model which is black).
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Post by phil on Aug 18, 2011 8:38:23 GMT 12
I'll be there sometime on Saturday.
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