REST IN PEACE, QUEEN ELIZABETH II

 


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SPACE IN MINIATURE MODEL REFERENCE GUIDES

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Mat Irvine reports Mike Mackowski is a long-time space modeller and one of the main members of the online Yahoo ‘Space Modelers’ group. Over some years now, Mike has compiled seven hardcopy books especially for modellers on spacecraft topics, including titles for Gemini, Mercury and two volumes on Apollo, one for the Command Service Module and one for the Lunar Module. Now he has produced his first ‘Tech Report’, a series intended to be shorter and to be available only as a download, thus having the advantage that they can be in colour. Skylab details Tech Report #1.0 (TR1) is on Skylab, prompted by Mike’s particular interest in America’s first space station. Mike worked for a time at McDonnell Douglas in St Louis, where Skylab’s airlock module was built. Previously he had spent time as a student at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Skylab trainer was housed. He was also at Marshall when Skylab was actually launched in 1973. What’s in the TR1 pdf TR1 ...
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE DOUGLAS DC-3

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SMN report The Douglas DC-3 flew for the first time on December 17, 1935, 32 years after the Wright brothers made their epic first heavier-than-air flight in the biplane Flyer over Kill Devil Hill in North Carolina. Design evolution The all-metal DC-3 was a design step on from earlier Douglas Commercial designs, the DC-1 and DC-2, though it looked very similar. Two Pratt & Whitney radial engines allowed the DC-3 to carry 21 passengers up to 2382 km (1,480 miles) at some 313 km/h (195 mph). The range and speed allowed an eastbound flight across the US to be made in some 15 hours - by far the fastest time for a commercial flight. Thousands of DC-3s built The DC-3 was a runaway success and had a decades-long manufacturing life, with more than 10,000 being built as C-47 military transports during World War II. There are plenty of DC-3s still flying today, though we can't find a reliable source for an exact number. Kits by the dozen For the Douglas-Commercial fan, there’s choice ap...
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‘2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY’ IN DETAIL - GREAT DETAIL

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MAT IRVINE REPORTS Ask any film enthusiast, and probably many non-enthusiasts, to name the best science-fiction movie of all time, and you will probably get 9 out of 10 voting for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey . For all those fans - and for space modellers too - comes the new book,  2001: The Lost Science by Adam K. Johnson. About the book Adam Johnson - also the driving force behind specialist model outfit AJA Models - has compiled and written the most detailed reference book on the movie so far, full title 2001: The Lost Science - the Frederick I. Ordway III Collection . With much material supplied by Dr Fred Ordway ( more on him below ), a great deal of the content has never been published before. Its 112 pages are full of detailed original plans (of which there were originally 2,400!), many of them painstakingly digitally enhanced, as the original blueprints have long-since faded. Examples of the ‘before’ and ‘after’ process are shown in the introduction. Other 2001...
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