Pellsons Perceivings

[Pellson]

Thanks for the kind words, gentlemen, and an even bigger thanks to those of you that has offered even more personal support. It's noted and much appreciated.

As the kids are having this week off from school, and the girls are off downhill skiing, the lad and I went for a traditional air museum trip, visiting the Swedish Air reconnaissance museum again. You've seen pictures before, and much hasn't changed, but as I had learned that they had gotten some new info on the Swedish LOROP photo pod, flown under the SH37 Viggen and later also under the JAS39 Gripen, I had wanted to go as there are certain modelling plans, as you can imagine. And lo and behold - not only did they have a very nice air to air shot of a reconnaissance Viggen with the pod, they also had cutaway drawings and some technical information about the system.

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The system consists of a rebuilt fuel tank, featuring a longitudinally inserted massive camera, facing forward, consisting of a camera housing, a 1676(!) mm lens and a mirror to make it shoot perpendicular to the flight path. The mirror can rotate, altering the angle in the horizontal plane.

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Front and rear, there are vibration dampers insulating the camera from aircraft and pod vibrations, and to further ensure good image quality, the mirror is dynamically stabilised via a gyroscope. 

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The Viggen aircraft can be programmed to lay out a flight path in a curve, meaning that at a given distance, the focal point of the imaging system will stay at the intended target, ensuring several minutes of shooting at the same target.

[zenrat]

All the best mate.

[Pellson]

While at the museum, young mr P took the opportunity to again fly a mission in a simulator, this time, quite appropriately, the SH37 maritime reconnaissance Viggen. As usual, it's a real aircraft nose section, complete with instrumentation and placed in a half-dome onto which the environment is projected, moving with flight path and attitude.

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On the outside, two screens show a map with position, heading, speed and altitude, and an outside view of the aircraft that can be altered to different perspectives, thus making it a really nice experience also for spectators.

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This shot actually shows him climbing through 500 m at an airspeed of 600 km/h, banking away from shooting some pics at our home, visible just at the edge of the forest in the lower right corner of the screen.

Having flown for 45 minutes, he managed to navigate back to base and perform a classic Viggen short landing, high alpha, "carrier style" touch down and engine reverse braking, making the simulator instructor a very pleased chap indeed.

[NARSES2]

Having flown for 45 minutes, he managed to navigate back to base and perform a classic Viggen short landing, high alpha, "carrier style" touch down and engine reverse braking, making the simulator instructor a very pleased chap indeed.

Probably also a talent spotter 

Glad you had a great time 

[Rheged]

We are delighted that you had such a good time.................and hope your young ladies enjoy their skiing too.

[Rick Lowe]

We are delighted that you had such a good time.................and hope your young ladies enjoy their skiing too.

Yes indeed. 

And hope your treatment goes even better than anticipated/forecast.  

As to the Bloodhound, and it's a bit late now, but for another time what about basing the missile body on a large-diameter knitting needle?
They can be had up to a diameter of 10+mm in aluminum tube, so are well sturdy and can take superglue and styrene very well.

[Pellson]

Having been unusually productive lately, all five Drakens are nearing completion, as is the up-engined Swedish Hunter fighter. Admittedly, there is some load-out work left, and not only for all these fighters, but also for the three SAAB 32 Lansens who all have been ready for load-out for quite some time. And things are actually moving in that field also, but as usual, I'm trying to follow my mojo, and hence, I've begun looking at the Tarangus Lansen kit, aiming at something like the projected supersonic J32U. Or more likely, a somewhat further improved J32U.

But the Tarangus kit is fighting me. It is very much a short run kit, and given what I now know, perhaps I shouldn't have bothered with it, rather having gone with yet another Heller Lansen. But then I would have needed a Maestro J32B gun pack, and also, theoretically, the Tarangus kit feature the slightly larger intakes from the interceptor Lansens. Those are yet not that visible, to be honest, but we'll see once we get there.
The plastic is soft enough, though, something quite useful when cutting things up.

Main changes will be higher wing sweep, a somewhat longer fuselage (to match the broader wing root chord resulting from the increased sweep) and a new, pointy radome. And then, we'll take it from there.

[Pellson]

As to the Bloodhound, and it's a bit late now, but for another time what about basing the missile body on a large-diameter knitting needle?
They can be had up to a diameter of 10+mm in aluminum tube, so are well sturdy and can take superglue and styrene very well.

That's not a bad idea, but as this is what my missile currently looks like, I think I'm good for now.

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I was tempted to add small Swedish roundels to the fuselage just ahead of the main wings, but from what I have been able to find out from a few very good websites, dealing with the Swedish Rb68 Bloodhound system, it seems the missiles never wore any. Also, they spent the majority of part of their active life in a bright white scheme, but I've preferred the later, camouflaged colours, basically consisting of a black radome, and everything else in the for the Cold War Swedish defence so common 325M brownish green olive hue, here represented by Humbrol 155. Everything, and I really mean EVERYTHING military was painted like this up to the entry of the famous splinter scheme in the mid 1970's. Tanks, cars, bombs and rockets, lorrys, howitzers, fighter aircraft, ammo boxes, canteens.. you name it! Everything was dull and dirty green. But it worked reasonably well, and it was certainly easy to patch up things. One hue for everything.

I should probably have a look at the launcher, though. It does lack some detail, it's not painted at all and it's not very much like the original Bloodhound mk 2 launcher. But all in good time.

[Rick Lowe]

Coming along nicely. 

[Pellson]

Some cutting of wings has commenced.

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There will be more cutting, and then some trimming on top of that before starting to reassemble the pieces into something that hopefully not only will look as planned, but also be straight.
But right now, there's lots of pieces, and added to that, I need to manufacture a few more parts to go into the wing. And then getting it straight. Easier said than done. But not impossible. I hope..

[Rick Lowe]

 

[Pellson]

Somewhat uncharacteristically, I am experiencing rather severe difficulties to focus properly on the task at hand, and this is regardless of whether it is work or the multitude of cut up plastic that (hopefully) is destined to become a supersonic Lansen interceptor. While I admittedly also normally allow myself to drift a bit in and out of different tasks, the current level of distraction is quite annoying.
There is a possible culprit, however. Come Monday, I am to report at the hospital in Uppsala, some three hours away, to ensure a three-day targeted radiotherapy session aimed at suppressing my cancer. An interesting therapy where they inject a radioactive isotope married to a particular glucose molecule. As cancer cells in general are "hungrier" than normal cells, and that glucose is matched to just my cancer, the idea is that the glucose will carry the vast majority of the isotope molecules to the cancer cells where they will be dumped in said cells as the glucose is consumed. The result is very local radiation indeed, and that will kill the cancer cells. Rather nifty, eh?

The downside is obviously that you get quite radioactive as a whole, and for three days, you're deemed too radioactive to mix with the public, and accordingly, you're actually being locked up in a leaded chamber at the hospital. Some people find that a bit claustrophobic, but my fear is more one of immense boredom. I'll bring a stash of books, of course, but other than that, I don't think there's too much I can do. Also, it'll be annoying to be separated from the family. We're a tight knit bunch, I'm glad to say, so that distance will surely be felt as well.
But generally, I suppose, it's a mild angst in anticipation of the unknown that keeps me distracted, I suppose. Annoying.

Well - the Lansen interceptor project does move forward after all, and when laying out the parts on my desk, adjacent to the A32D strike variant, it looks good. And it also looks remarkably similar to my sketch, which is a tad unexpected. Usually, I tend to diverge from plans as I go along, following old von Clausewitz's device: "even the most well laid plans will succumb to the first contact with the enemy". But not this time. And that's a bit encouraging.

[kitbasher]

🤞🤞🤞 all goes well with the treatment Mr P.

Hope you don't glow in the dark for too long.  Google Ready Brek for your excuse 😉

[NARSES2]

Fascinating treatment Mr P, hope all goes well and you don't get too bored. 

[zenrat]

Hope it all goes well.
Could you not take a model in with you to work on?