D is for Don't Forget The Best Toy Soldier Show On Earth!

It's the 39th year - ignoring the hiatus of SARS-Covid19  - of the Plastic Warrior magazine's toy soldier show tomorrow, and I know for a fact a couple of new table holders have sorted out piles of new to market stuff, and other people have sorted out equally good stuff, so there's going to be lots of stuff! If you're looking for toy soldier stuff, you'll want to be there, you need to be there!

 

The next Twicker's match is first of June, so we should be safe from rugger-bugger's and there'll be plenty of parking. Gareth reported a rail replacement bus service to Whitton -

 

Replacement rail bus, Saturday.
If travelling on the train from London there is a bus service

from Feltham to Whitton

So worth setting out a bit earlier if that was your intended mode of ingress! All other details are on Brian Carrick's page - 

https://toysoldiercollecting.blogspot.com/2024/05/plastic-warrior-show-2024.html

To get us in the mood, here's a few shots I found languishing in a folder in Picasa, taken at the 2018 show.

 

Vehicles.

 

 

Timpo and early British bits.

Gun-line!

Steve Weston's tables, he'd started packing-up.

I bought the chariot . . . the next year!

Elastolin fort and their 40mm figures.

Britains Herald & Deetail

 

Jean stagecoach and two East German sets

(Georg Blechschmidt KG or Friedhold Fischer KG,

I think it's GB figures in FF boxes?)
 

Hope you make it, I'll be there, and I shouldn't be, far too much, more serious stuff happening in real life, right now, but you can't keep an addict down!

B is for Bounty-Hunter Brickmen

I'm not a great fan of Lego (the corporation, as you might have noticed), and don't buy it like I used to, having given most of it away to friend's kid's, who have all graduated from University now! One of my mates bought all the big 100+quid jobs, and became a fully-fledged AFOOL; Adolescent Fan Of Old Lego . . . I think, something like that?!!

 

But I archive the ephemeral Lego stuff I encounter, and look out for sets with a decent figure-count, nearer the budget end of the brand, not that it actually HAS a budget-end any more, but you know what I mean!

So when I saw that there were four Kardashians (or whatever they're called) in this set, which was on a post-Christmas clearance price in Sainsbury's, I grabbed one, and took a few shots which have been in Picasa for two years! The Disney logo just doesn't look right there, does it?

 

The three bags of bits and an instruction manual, which is so simple, they appear to be expecting people with learning-difficulties to be helping two-year-old's trying to violate the 6+ or 5-99 rules!

 

These are two of the - previously mentioned here at Small Scale World - bricks which came AFTER the equivalent Megabloks design, even as Lego was chasing Mega through the worldwide courts! Have you seen their Daleks? Next to the lovely Character Options one's, they are shit! And that's a very English 'shit' with the emphasis on that last 't'.

 

Contents of the bags, are quite confusing with the figures unequally split between the two main bags, while some bits in the same bags are smaller than the helmet details which get a bag to themselves! And because they use the same holes you can only have a peak or a periscope thingy, but not both?

I forgot to photograph the assembled model!

F is for Follow-up - MPC's Moon Mission Mouldings!

A few shots which escaped the post the other week, and which might as well go here, as I said at the time we'd return to them properly/more fully, in a year or two, which is still the plan!

The storage sample of the larger 'goldfish bowl' clones, so I think I'm still looking for a blue one? And the fourth pose is the guy with the weapon, which doubles as a very lightweight sextant . . . I think!

 

When they are not being sold as paratroopers, they came in various other packagings, of which this is quite colourful, probably one of the first, and seems to be a complete set of the four copied poses.

 

Another of the dodgy sets going though Vectis a few years ago, home-printed card, referencing the old Britains half-moon cards, all fake! We looked at another here, all believed to be from the same chap!

 

And I had the answer to the one with an added base, I can't read a brand, but suspect there may be an importer ID'd somewhere on the card, but it's such an old shot it won't enlarge clearly enough to see, another will turn-up though (if indeed, there isn't already one in storage), none of this stuff is rare!

F is for Follow-up - Dragonbird Whirlyflies . . . Well, Actually, 'Helicars' & 'Helijets'!

Just got in from work to find this treasure in the inbox from Brian B in New York, on the subject of Sikorsky S-51's (previous post, below) and their relationship to Dan Dare! In his own words:

"It was delightful to see the blog post on Tudor Rose helicopters, as I coveted them as a kid but never owned one. 

I remember being aware of the S51 from the movie 'The Bridges of Toko-Ri'

When Frank Hampson created the world of Dan Dare in Spacefleet, he based the helijet on the S51.

When I built my train layout 'Northern Heights', London in the 1950's, I had to have a hint of Spacefleet so adapted a model of an S51 into a Helijet, just as Frank Hampson did."

And obviously that's what I was remembering when I mentioned Dan Dare in the other post, you can see where Fairy were coming-from with their Rotodyne too, and the similarities betweens names and designs extends to the IM 'Rotorship'.

I really love the conversions of railway figures (?) to Spacefleet personnel, including two Treens! From the left I think we have Dan, Digby and Sir Hubert Guest, arguing about how to do the dangerously impossible, and save the World . . . again!

Cheers Brian, a real treat!

Two hours later - Brucey Bonus as the rabbit-hole provides!

https://downthetubes.net/unearthed-early-dan-dare-designs-by-frank-hampson-inspired-inspired-by-innovative-1950s-inventions/

W is for Whirlybirds, D is for Dragons!

The Tudor Rose Sikorsky S-51 (company designation VS-327), the civil version of the R-5/H-5, (also known as S-48), and by Westland-Sikorsky as the WS-51 'Dragonfly', although we're actually looking at the Tudor Rose Dragonflies, as they made two, a posh one with metal parts and a budget one for the beach!

The smaller one on the left (from the 1955 catalogue) is the all-placky one, the larger brother is to the right with its box, although judging by the company codes (5089 [large] and 5897 [small]), the earlier would have been the bigger model, maybe 1953 or before, commercial operations of the real aircraft had begun in 1946.

 

Side-by-side the silver one (polystyrene and other materials) is about a ⅓ larger than the all-polyethylene yellow one, and redolent of old Dan Dare strips where similar machines of all sizes tended to be flitting around in the backgroun whenever the action moved to the spaceport apron/tarmack; this was once the future, people!

The machines themselves are very good, and there's not much loss of detail/accuracy over the larger one, by the smaller. However, the landing gear is a different matter, being redesigned for floors and carpets, not the roofs of skyscrapers, or the fledgling Heathrow Airport! There are also differences between the two in the wheel department, driven by the need to balance/operate (read - play with) very different beasts!

The mechanism which drives the propellers is similar to the old Thomas/Acme/IM (et al.) model, seen here passim at Small Scale World, but a more sophisticated crown-gear in steel and tinplate, on the larger Inter-City, and a less sophisticated, and less reliable, simplified bevel-gear on the Sea Rescue model.

 

Box art on the smaller aircraft suggests a cruciform arrangement of blades, but there's no sign of the other two blades, and I suspect the limitations of the box dimensions, took-over after the art-department had got to work? But it could be damaged?

The pilots are similar: semi-flat, double-sided relief 'carved' figures, in similar poses, but of different sizes and fixings, the BEA pilot being fixed in place by a slot-in baseplate, the SAR pilot plugging onto a spigot before the two halves of the fuselage are joined together. Neither is to scale with his machine!

A couple more shots of the Inter City Helicopter Service model and box, many thanks to Adrian Little of Mercator Trading for letting me shoot these back in 2019. Can you believe it's nearly six-years since I tried to cut the end of my thumb off?!

And a couple of the smaller Sea Rescue Helicopter. Our friends in the village had the bigger one I think, I probably would have preferred this one, but the gears are weak, and tend to bend-over/round-off, so it might have got frustrating! In the upper shot, you can see the pilot's 'feet' hooked onto the spigot.

Some old eBay images I had on the dongles, if you want the whole story it's here;

Sikorsky -  https://sikorskyarchives.com/home/sikorsky-product-history/helicopter-innovation-era/sikorsky-s-51/

 

Westland - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_WS-51_Dragonfly

Military Slant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_H-5

C is for China Shite!

Currently doing the round of 'Flash Mob' listing on Amazon and evilBay, is this set of spacey bits from China, I always feel guilty getting this stuff, as it's sending hard cash to 'The Enemy', or one of them! But while it's always listed as 'China' as the location, it seems to be posted from Birmingham, so it's already here?

 

You get a very Chinese looking launch-rocket (Long March CZ-2F?), a set of main-tank and booster rockets from a Shuttle, a satellite, two dodgy fighters and a couple of NASA style astronauts, all in a sealed bag, which may be available elsewhere (gift shops etc.) as a branded or generic with header card, but as an online cheapie, it comes with no card.

 

The rocket. It's a two-part clip-together, with four small boosters that slot into the side-quarters, all held together with the red plastic engine-piece, and it's tampo-printed, quite accurately marked up as the real-life originals, unlike most rack-toy NASA stuff, which, back in the day, tended to get random black & white checked strips and large 'USA' or Stars & Stripes flag stickers!

Similar process with the shuttle main tank and boosters, while the fighter jets (chase planes?) and astronauts (40mm) are simple relief-sculpts with hollow-backs, the aeroplanes being (like most Chines stuff) copies of other peoples 'planes, and the astronauts, generic, but maybe more NASA than Chinese with the fuller helmets and chest equipment?

I think the satellite is a mash-up of several elements of real ones with a recognisable Soyuz spacecraft layout, elements of GPS and current military designs but rather fictional lateral solar-cell arrays?

The size of a satellite depends entirely on what planet you are from!

Via Wikipedia

A is for And This is Why Putin Can Go Fuck Himself . . .

. . . up his perverted little hole, preferably after shoving some Bwreakshiteers and Neocons up there first.

We're better than we think we are, we're better than we know we are, but we need to make more effort, every day, especially in England.

G is for Get Arff Moi Laaaand!

I saw this on the side of a house in the hamlet of Mapledurwell near Basingrad, earlier this evening, and there was still enough light for a decent picture, so I leapt out of the cab and took one!

He literally leaps out at you as you come round the corner of a tight little lane, but the way the building is angled, by the time you've registered him, he's gone, and you're driving up the road thinking "Did I just see that?"! Hackle and buttons say Grenadiers, and he's pretty-much life-size! And it must be the Devil's own task to keep the Virginia Creeper clear of him!

L is for Last One For Now!

 I know it's not everyone's cup-of-tea, but I find this stuff fascinating, and there's plenty still in the queue, both from Alderney and closer to home, but this is the final part of the recent visit to Hazeley Heath and the cable-testing station of the Royal Engineers and their antecedents.

This is the building or structure the winding mechanism/s was/were housed in, it was far more substantial, but all the reclaimable steel and reusable elements are long-gone now, leaving the two outer walls, some floor mounting stuff and a protective plate.

 

There's enough roadway in front of the structure for flat-towing tests, as well as the extreme tests allowed for by dragging things up the ramp we looked at last time! The top of the ramp is in the far distance in both shots, in-line with the structure and roadway.

 

This was apparently the mounting for the main winch/winding engine, presumably bolted to the two rails with a drip-tray between them to collect all the gunk which tends to find its way out of such machinery!

 

Beyond it is what looks like an inspection-pit, all filled in, but the blurb suggests another machine mounting, so I assume someone has dug it and found it to be not deep-enough for inspecting things?

In front of them is this, which probably mounted a pulley to carry the cable a bit higher over to the ramp, where a similar pulley, and its mounting have long-since been removed.  Also, there may be a secondary function of preventing whip-lashing broken-cables from damaging the machinery?

 

Heavy steel RSJ remnants hint at a heavy-duty, or over-engineered roof/shelter, designed again, or primarily, to protect the machinery and operators/observers from snapping cables, rather than enemy action, having been probably build long before the Second World War?

 

I gave them a quick tug, and they are set-fast in the landscape, whether they are old telephone cables or the old three-phase power-supply . . . Your guess is as good as mine!

 

I either read somewhere, or heard as hearsay from some MOD-procurement chaps or BAE Systems bod's, that how it works with these things, is that you decide you want a 50-ton main battle tank, for instance, you give the job to Vickers Engineering, and if you’re happy with the prototypes, order, say 250, with ten driver-training versions, plus a number of recovery variants . . . and cables (etcetera!).

Those cables then get rated at 55-tons, by the Royal Armoured Corps, who will have to use them, the MOD-wallah's up in Whitehall, agree to 55, and add another 5-ton rating to be safe, that gets sent to Vickers, who tender-out the contract, because they've now got 260 tanks to build and some recovery vehicles to design, and can't be arsed to start twisting wire hawsers! They add 5-tons capacity to the contract!

GKN take the wire twisting gig, and add an extra 5-tons 'just to be safe', before their hawser and cable division plait another few tones of capability into the finished cables! You end up with a steel-rope, which is specifically designed to be carried by 50-ton vehicles, but which can recover 70-ton vehicles from sticky mud! All that early work seems to have been done behind a little village in rural Hampshire, in the 1930's and 1940's!

F is for Frog . . . Man!

This weirdness joined the stash a few weeks ago, and on one level I wish it hadn't, it's a kilo or more of cold clammy stretch-rubber I just don't need, but on another level it's actually a quite interesting find, despite being a pretty hideous thing!

 

This is how I saw him, and thought, "Oh, a rubber jiggler man-frog thing, better have that?", even though it was a pit pricy at a fiver. However, when I picked the parcel up from the Old House, the box was so heavy I thought Peter or Chris had sent me something without telling me (they both have, sent lovely things, in the last ten days!), but took it home and unwrapped it.

It WAS a rubber jiggler, and it WAS that stretchy, silicon-rubber, clammy stuff which gets covered in pet hairs, dust and some sticky substrate/exudate, so this shot is 'after cleaning', but the bugger was huge, and I should have guessed-so from the knicker-elastic used in place of the thin black elastic thread, the giant spiders and King Kong's of my youth used to get!

See! Mahoosive lump of rubber! But, marked AAA and dated 1968, the year AAA are believed to have been set up. Previously known for their animals, a lot subcontracted to other brands, I think this is the first/earliest [part-] human figure I've seen by them, and from the colours of both polymer and paint, we can probably assume, with some safety, that they are responsible for a lot of the similar rubber-jigglers found in gum-ball capsule machines, including some of the Lik Be (LB) copies, such as those we saw here.

 

Indeed, that A-mark (link post) may be a Tripple-A variant, they are known to have used single A's as well as triples, but it doesn't explain the 'S' and other letter (?) on my LB robot/aliens? So, on one level it is what it is, a piece of ephemeral shite from the 1960's, but on another, a useful connector of other parts in the whole-story, either though the clues, or the more empirical bits!

The elastic is perished and will need replacing, which will entail stretching the new stuff to maximum, to match the non-elastic remain's measurements, then cutting, and glueing to the end of the old one, so it can be pulled through a hidden bar of rubber or tunnel set into the rubber jiggler.

B is for Brain Fog

As I said the other day, we used to play out on the heath, all day! Mum would fill our water-bottles with orange squash, I had Dad's old Palestine one, with the tan, strappy-cage holder, and my brother had the green US Vietnam one with the two poppers at the neck (the SAS used them in the jungle), and a couple of cold sausage sandwiches, and we'd go off and play 'Army men' all day, ranging for miles and sometimes meeting other kids, sometimes having a 1000-acres to ourselves, if we avoided the Gypsy camps!

One of my childhood memories was finding a tank-testing inclined ramp, in fact, I remember two, side by side, about 30º and 40º each, but what has now been opened-up and left on display, is A) nothing like my memory, and B) somewhere else!

And while it may be that the others are somewhere else, on the more private land a few-hundred yards to the east, hidden in the undergrowth, I suspect that my memory of this (below) has become conflated with various pictures of similar ramps in tank or AFV books?

What is there now is more of an architectural channel, with various features and a steepness of around 45º, rather than the two flat roadways I remember? It could be slightly shallower, but as we'll see in a second, I don't think so, if it is, it's no less than 40º.

 

There is a bog at the bottom, now, it's ironic, but you wouldn't build a military testing facility in a bog, near a bog, if you are testing towing (as they were, according to the historians who've done the blurb on the info-sign), maybe, but not 'in' a bog, so the fact that there is a bog there now, or that a nearby bog has extended back to the ramp, is almost certainly an unforeseen consequence of building a ramp there in the first place, and channelling a lot of water straight down the hill!

 

There are signs of a metal slider type thing running along the tops of the two raised 'rails', obviously someone back in the 1950/60's removed the bulk of the metalwork for scrap (probably the Gypseys?), but they cut either side of the sections anchored into the concrete. And you can see, if I'm standing vaguely level, and holding the camera naturally, it's about 45º

Here's one that has been pulled out, or weathered-out at some point, so you can get some idea of how deep the anchors went, it's filled with dirt now, mostly sandy, so weathered concreate running down the slope and filling any holes it finds!

This was lying in the channel where some kids probably pulled it out of the bog, or found it in the undergrowth, it's a solid chink of steel with a blunt-point at one end and might be another kind of anchor, for either the hawsers under test, or the test weights/vehicles?

Life will find a way, and eventually even the pyramids will be no more.

In the central grove are these equidistant holes, which I suspect formed a ladder of scaffold-sized bars, which might have made climbing up or down the ramp more easy, or may have been for fixing anchors or stops to prevent the test-item running back down the ramp uncontrollably if/when the hawser failed?