I’ve long said the only thing I wanted to be in life was as good a father as you were – You set such a high standard by just being you – Kind, caring, loving, supportive.
I ask my daughter if I’m a good dad and she says I’m the best, so I must be doing something right. And I just do those same little things, too – Be supportive, loving, help out.
There has been a lot of that over the years:
Taking her Kiwi Cricket team throughout primary school – Not because I wanted her to play cricket – She wanted to play it because I do.
Always going to her sports/gymnastics/dancing/aerials practices and performances.
Going on school outings and camps.
I’ve (humorously) convinced her that there is a “Parenting Rule Book” (‘Rule One, Line one, Page one: “You MUST embarrass your child at every opportunity”!’), but we all know there is no such thing. It’s always been almost purely seat-of-your-pants stuff, hasn’t it?
Growing up sometimes a safe, happy, loving home is all you need. I was very fortunate that mine was.
I still wish you were here to lend a hand, give advice from when I was her age, or just tell me I’m doing OK.
Because as you get older it seems like you’re constantly told you’re wrong (even when you aren’t), but so seldomly told you’re doing well.
Feeling guilty that you have a secure job that is slowly driving you mad when others are losing their income source is rather brain-busting.
But it has had advantages – My work doesn’t care about developing me, so I’ve taken every bit of leave I can to help my daughter develop and experience new things.
The absolute best parts of last year were being one of the parents that accompanied her year group’s camp to Wellington for a week, and helping out when her class went sailing on Ahuriri Estuary.
Such brilliant kids!
I just hope we can provide them with the future they deserve, not the imminent apocalypse our current crop of global leaders appear hell-bent on driving us towards just to benefit their own financial enrichment.
I hope she’s happy wherever you are if that is the case.
This year will be my 20th wedding anniversary.
You two made it to 37, but we had a 13-year head start by comparison.
Like parenting I wonder how we do it sometimes. A few of our fellow school year’s parents have parted ways since primary school started.
Similarly, we don’t make anywhere as much as other families, yet still somehow manage to live comfortably on a single income like our family did growing up when others I know are earning far more individually and are on two incomes yet still seem to struggle.
I sometimes wonder if we are doing something right or wrong.
Admittedly, unlike us, most of them have more than one child, and I guess the extra costs and things like childcare must be taking a lot out of that income.
You never really know what others are going through, eh?
Do you hear me when I talk to you? I do it almost every day.
Asking your opinion, guessing what you’d say in similar situations, apologizing when I stuff something up.
I spent about 80% of my time quietly muttering “Sorry, Dad” while clearing out the garage and your shed of all the will-be-handy-some-day stuff you had collected over the decades when I was getting our old home ready for sale.
In the end there was a couple hundred dollars’ (and kilos) worth of metal, brass, nuts and bolts, old nails, copper pipe, wire and electrical bits and bobs across the various sheds and back yard that I took to the metal recyclers.
There was a lot of heavy physical lifting, and a lot of emotional weight – So many memories in those sheds.
I kept a lot of your hand tools, and those little plastic drawer sets full of new, unused nails, screws, rivets, etc.
I figure they will be handy someday…
I even repurposed some of the recycled native wood you had lying around into frames for some of the other gems I discovered.
It felt like a very “Dad” thing to do.
Speaking of making things you’ll be pleased to know your skilled woodworking genes that lay dormant for most of my life have finally kicked into gear!
The sheds are all gone now. And so are the back yard’s old features – The rotary washing line, the ancient lemon tree, the camelia you successfully moved from one side of the yard to the other. The tree outside your shed you would work in the shade of (I’ve kept bits of that for various modeling projects, so its memory lives on).
My clearest memory of the original trilogy was seeing a “behind the scenes” documentary on TV one weekend showing how they did the special effects for Return of the Jedi and in particular the Endor speeder-bike chase.
Here I was – young and impressionable, watching how the most awesome movies ever made were created using what they called “models”, but to all intents and purposes for a six-year-old were TOYS!!!
I have a plan – I’m going to recreate my favorite movie memory!
With the modelling skills I’ve acquired over the years fizzing at the bung I set off on recreating a suitable diorama!
I order two Speeder Bikes and Scout Troopers. In an utter fluke I come across Endor Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia on sale at Farmers in Hastings. I can’t afford to get them there and then, but when I go back a few weeks later they are still there, so I buy them.
I got a clear acrylic case from The Warehouse to keep everything contained, tidy and dust-free. I print out an Endor-esque forest background onto an A4 sticker sheet and adhered it to the inside of the back wall of the display case.
I sprayed the base with a can of my modeling Tamiya Olive Drab spray paint that I used for the 1/72 Memphis Belle this year to make it look forest-ish at the very least
I had used off-cuts of this tree for previous model scenes over the years, so it also keeps my old back yard alive not just in my memory.
After test-placing the speeder bikes I glued them (and the figures in places too) to make sure they stood still and didn’t fall over when the case was closed..
I added the “trees” and some logs. These would help hide the clear plastic stands that the Speeder Bikes “fly” on. I noted there appeared to be a path of some kind on the background pic, so incorporated that into the corner of the base.
Now it was just a matter of adding the groundcover and lichen bushes to cover the base and any errant gaps in the scenery that popped up.
With the glue dried, ground cover, figures and Speeder Bikes secured I put the clear acrylic case on, literally encapsulating the scene.
Job done!
While I’m not expecting job offers from Lucasfilm, or Disney for my creative effort any time soon, I was still really pleased with the result – It recreated what I saw 40+ years ago and doing so allowed me to “play” with the coolest toys from the coolest movies ever again!
I’ve had an Airfix 1/72 scale B-17G in my unbuilt model stash for some time, having bought it from the Napier model shop Platform One just before it closed down. But when I came across a cheap kitset of the B-17F Memphis Belle I had to get it.
(As a result, there were likely Memphis Belle bits in the B-17G and vice-versa…)._
I started with the Memphis Belle:
Giving the interior and exterior a liberal first / final coat to make later construction stages easier I went with “Olive Drab” top and one of my many “Sea Gray” Tamiya can sprays underneath.
Despite several fiddly, tiny interior parts, I was able to complete the cockpit and navigator/bombardier nose sections without issue or any lost bits.
I even “kitbashed” some cockpit oxygen tanks by cutting sprue pieces into short lengths and painting them yellow (above, left, just behind the pilots’ seats.)
Most remarkably, when I fitted and glued the two halves of the fuselage together (with all the bits and pieces, turning turrets, and interior details, there were few to no issues!
All glued together, painted and decaled the ‘Belle looked stunning!
You could even see the oxy’ tanks in the interior!
Up next was the B-17G.
The difference between the older Memphis Belle’s B-17F, and the B-17G was the newer G had a “chin turret” – A pair of co-axial 50 caliber machine guns remotely controlled by the plane’s Bombardier mounted under their big, conical aiming window at the front of the aircraft, under its “chin”.
I didn’t want to make these two big planes looking the same and, like the P51 Mustang the B17 really was blank canvas for paint schemes, variances and “nose art”.
Different groups, squadrons and units had different color combinations to help identify their own aircraft in the gigantic formations of bombers that flew over occupied Europe during the war.
The combination I picked actually came from a screenshot of the flight simulator “DCS”, with Gloss Aluminum fuselage, Matt Yellow tail and wingtips, Matt Red engine cowlings, and Olive Drab anti-glare nose top and in-board engine (so as to not blind the pilots from looking at bright, shiny aluminum.)
Once all the bits were put together, painted and decaled the B-17G looked absolutely stunning in its glossy metal finish
With the recent experience of building the Belle, (and already having painted/constructed most of the parts) this build went together even faster and easier.
These kits were a childhood dream, and a pleasure to build.
The only problem was finding somewhere big enough to display them…
(The smell from the dozens of full-gloss printed pages was guaranteed to keep your sinuses clear for months, or get you addicted to the smell of model glue and/or paint…)
One of the earliest, coolest dioramas I can remember was a WW2 German Volkswagen Schwimmwagen amphibious jeep fording a river.
I never had the skill to recreate the scene myself as a young one. But the more modeling I did and the different methods I had started trying recently gave me the confidence to try it out.
I bought a 1:35 Tamiya Schwimmwagen and Italeri Willy’s Jeep from my regular Napier model store, Cool Toys, and got to work
This was going to be a bit of a higgledy-piggledy process, because there were going to be a few changes that I wanted to make, so I painted and glued together what I could initially without causing too much hassle down the line.
To make the Schwimmwagen look like it was…erm.. “schwimming” I either needed a lot of resin (which I didn’t have) to make a deep river or cheat a little by making the wheels a bit shallower.
Fortunately the Jeep kit also came with a trailer I had no intent on building, but the spare two wheels (olive green, on top of the original sandy-colored Tamiya wheels, above) would certainly come in useful.
Rivet-counting model prototype purists may cringe, but I was working on the theory that very little of the wheels would be visible above “water-level”, so it didn’t matter so much.
To make the Schwimmwagen sit flush with the base I was doing to pour the river into I had to do a bit of “kit-bashing”. This involved a hacksaw.
With the kitset put together, painted and decaled it looked pretty great!
I painted most of the parts on their sprues and started with the chassis and suspension. With very few issues, aside from a couple of fit issues the kit came together quickly and easily.
As part of the diorama, I intended the Jeep to have its hood up, possibly with a figure working on the engine, so I made a point of painting the engine, and detailing the engine bay a bit too.
With the kits completed I moved onto the base.
For my diorama I intended a purloined German Schwimmwagen to be cruising past a Jeep on a wharf with engine issues.
I sealed and painted the “water” area, and prepared the “piled” wharf base.
I got to use the remaining half of the resin I bought to make the sea for my “Spit in the Sea” diorama two years ago which had, very thankfully not gone off or hardened in the meantime, mixing the resin together and pouring it into the “lake” section.
The amount of resin I had filled the “lake” perfectly, right up to the level I wanted (this had required a bit of mathematics to figure out).
I left it for a couple days to harden properly.
To give the Schwimmwagen a “wake” to give the impression it is motoring along I used gel medium (also from the “Spit in the Sea” diorama) to make some waves.
To make the wharf I cut dowel down into sections to make the front of the wharf and added some lichen “weeds” (neither of which are particularly visible, like the Schwimmwagen’s trailer wheels, but I know they are there…)
I layered popsicle sticks as bearers, then cut and placed more popsicle sticks at right angles to make the wharf’s planks.
It was fortunately far less fiddly than I feared.
I did a (VERY) basic paint job on the figures (the next skill I need to work), on and added a few bits of greenery just to break up the otherwise rather sparse wharf.
It was really cool to recreate a dream diorama from my childhood, and the more models I make and more experienced and confident I get, the cooler the models become!
The year started out all innocent and full of hope like so many others (not looking at you, 2020…), but there were early portents of unusual and unstable times ahead.
The fact that so much ruined infrastructure like many of the bridges that were taken out in the flooding Gabrielle caused have been repaired and trains and vehicles are using them again within 10 months of their destruction is remarkable.
Groups of people got together in the aftermath of the disaster and helped clear out properties, remove cubic kilometers of silt and help get others back on their feet as soon as possible speaks volumes of the care and compassion Hawke’s Bay people have for their neighbors and communities.
While things were getting back on their feet, I wrote a rather extensive piece covering the days of darkness that Napier endured and, at the suggestion of Twitter friend Jolisa Gracewood, I sent it to The Spinoff. Editor Mad Chapman graciously published it as their “Sunday Essay” the following weekend and it was very well received. In my last email to Chapman, I optimistically (deludedly?) wrote “see you at the 2024 Voyager Awards!” (We’ll come to that bit later.)
I think having gone through the Covid lockdowns so recently was a major factor in this – Everyone knew they were in the same boat, so help where you can and don’t be a dick.
Sadly, not everyone learned from that experience.
During the blackout perhaps one of the biggest ulcerations and indications of bad things to come that year was the breadth and scale of rumor and conspiracy bullshit that spread around the region and seeped into social media and news feeds.
All utter horseshit. The same “cooker” mis- and disinformation crap perpetuated since Covid that would slowly suck empathy and intelligence from so many in the lead up to the election later in the year..
As our region recovered, I faced more conflicting communication.
Once things were running (comparatively) smoothly I had an interview for a job I had applied for before the cyclone.
I felt the interview went well and, after doing literally the exact same tasks every day, week and month for the past almost 20 years, I’m more than ready for a change.
But I didn’t get this new job because they felt “I was too negative about my current job”?! If I was perfectly happy doing what I do I wouldn’t be applying for other positions, would I? They said there was no question I had the skills and talent, and if anything else came up they would call me.
Similar positions have come up there and they haven’t called me.
When asked why I was applying for their job I had expressed frustration at a lack of development and progression in my current role, while others with less experienced had shot up the ladder. No vitriol, not knocking my employers just facts. The interviewers even said that was not how things were done there and I took that as a good sign.
But not good enough.
How would you feel being trapped in an occupational Groundhog Day for 20 years? Like so many people I’m not doing what I WANT to do, but it supports my family, so I do it for them.
I’m clearly not failing at my job, otherwise I wouldn’t have lasted this long, but there’s no incentive to excel, because doing that has gotten me nowhere either.
Yet, when an opportunity arose for me to be able to leave that situation, those with the power to help me escape and utilize my recognized skills and talents choose to keep me trapped in my current situation?!
Desecrating the sacred place that was my Dad’s shed resulted in me manually loading one and a quarter tonnes of scrap metal that I took to the recyclers.
It did wonders for my bulking up my arm muscles, if only I’d had feeling in them afterwards…
Between selling the scrap metal, tools and other trinkets we made over $2100, which would have been a great little financial bonus, but taking off the cost of the general and green waste disposal and our wonderful tenants having found a new place and moving out only a couple of weeks into their 90 days’ notice, we were losing around $1000 a month for around half of 2023 before final settlement happened in October.
That just added onto general pressures and worries.
While I do enjoy writing and especially getting paid to write, this year has been a hard one for wordcraft.
I had little free time to write. The commissioned pieces I completed were slotted into busy schedules that all somehow worked out in time for their deadlines. But the pressure to complete amidst the congestion of everything else took the fun out of it for me – I didn’t learn as much as I usually do researching the topics, which is something I really enjoy.
When I had the free time to write for myself, I seldom had the drive or confidence to set words down in type. With everything else going on – Disaster recovery, AI technology taking over print, lies and conspiracy running rampant and the media that I aspired to be a part of continuing to circle the drain the drive just wasn’t there.
My optimistic / deluded dream to be nominated for a 2024 Voyager Media Award for my “Napier in the Dark” essay also came crashing down in December when I learned the News Publishers Association, who run the Voyager Awards, have absolutely eviscerated the number of categories for the 2024 Awards. 2024’s awards will have 10 “Print/Text” and 16 “All Media” categories, whereas 2023 had 19 “Print/Text” and 28 “All Media” categories.
“Best First Person Essay or Feature”, the one I had my hopes set on, was one of far too many being scrapped.
In a time when media, news, reporting and even just the truth is under incredible pressure to prove its credibility, worth and quality slashing the ways the best of the industry can be displayed and celebrated is completely counterintuitive!
In 2023 I was giving up on a dream I had only started to get a foothold in over the last decade. As my creative output ascended, the goal I wanted to reach was sliding off towards a nadir on the other side of the peak I had yet to reach.
When we saw a general election like the one we had this year with one party that had essentially no policies, other than tax cuts for their already rich mates, for the majority of the campaign still come to power, supported by minor parties whose sole tricks are racial division and bug-eyed conspiracy peddling things do not look hopeful for our country!
I took me a bit to believe in myself and trust my own skills, but I like to think enough of my father’s innate craft and woodworking expertise eventually osmosed down to me like some sort of neural slow-release fertilizer and I was really proud of the job I did, especially when it came to cutting the plywood for the case.
We managed to travel in late October and early November as, over Hawke’s Bay Anniversary / Labour Weekend we took our daughter on her first flight(s) to Wellington and went to the zoo.
Even that wasn’t without some drama, as our original flight was canceled with engineering issues a couple of hours before it was due to depart. Fortunately, we were able to re-book almost instantaneously and went to Wellington via Auckland – Two first flights (on a prop plane to Auckland, and then a jet to Wellington) for the price of one!
The view of the cyclone damaged Esk Valley as we climbed heading north out of Napier was very sobering, though.
We stayed in Newtown and walked to and from the zoo. The weather and food was lovely and I happened to meet a few online friends in real life by chance on the trip.
A little over a week later I got to go away on camp with my daughter and her class in early November, which was terrific.
The camp was for three days at Tutira, between Napier and Wairoa, and evidence of the damage caused by Gabrielle was still very visible, with loads of roadworks repairing the numerous dropouts, landslides and road undermining despite months of monumental work to get the vital arterial link open again.
The camp was great, the weather was lovely, and the kids were cool, and we all had a great time away from sub/urban life.
My daughter says she “only cried five times because she missed her Mum” (she counted?!) despite her loving, caring Dad being RIGHT THERE…
Our daughter was the star of my year. While hopes for myself dwindled, my hopes for her continue to soar.
She was awarded a “School Values Medal” for Excellence during the year and got an end of year award, too, which was a fantastic surprise to finish on.
She had been in a mixed class of her and about six other Year 5 students with around 25 older Year 6 students and ended up making friends with so many of the Year Sixes that she was really sad to see them go off to Intermediate at the end of the year.
Her and another Year 5 classmate took out two of the three end of year awards for their class, with her best Year 6 friend taking out the remaining one.
She is such a loving, compassionate girl.
It’s this hope for her future that also worries me so much about her future in a world already beset by blatant political corruption and interference in democratic process, the imminent threat of irreparable climate change disaster, the invasion of sovereign nations, and genocide/ethnic cleansing in an age where everyone on Earth is supposed to be happily working together to reach for the stars and travel the galaxies like on Star Trek!
“Concentrate on what is within your power to do. Disregard the hysteria and wrongness around you. Preoccupy yourself with doing what is in your power to be done.”
For me external depressants were hard to suppress in 2023 when for almost every good thing there were just as many, if not more, bad things – A cloud for every silver lining, death of positivity from a thousand newspaper cuts (and don’t even get me started on how Elon Must utterly fucked up Twitter…)
Above the arches that lead from Napier’s Marine Parade to the Soundshell and Veronica Sunbay is an inscription that reads:
“Courage is the Thing. All Goes if Courage Goes.” [The Rectoral Address Delivered by James M. Barrie at St. Andrew’s University May 3, 1922
I would tweak that slightly to read “HOPE is the Thing. All Goes if HOPE Goes”. [Andrew Frame, just now]
This year I hoped I could possibly be nominated for a Voyager Award, I hoped to meet Kane Williamson and Kyle Jamieson, I hoped I was worthy of a new job…
But none of those hopes were, or will, be realized.
But I can’t give up on Hope.
Hope was my Grandfather’s first and Dad’s middle name. I was born the same year as Star Wars: A New Hope.
Hope is what drives me forward and the most powerful force (other than love) that I can offer and support my daughter with.
Hope just needs to be realized, otherwise there is nothing to look forward to in 2024.
After much planning, sketching, measuring and staring into the void I settled on a design I was happy with and headed to Mitre 10 to get the plywood that would make up the majority of the case.
I took it over to my father-in-law’s workshop and cut it to length, put grooves in the sides for the Perspex top I intended to slide in and, not having a router, I used the saw bench to make the ends plug in, while seamlessly continuing the lid groove.
I was pretty damn chuffed with the result:
We glued three out of four sides to the base and left it to dry.
The next weekend I cut and drilled out some spare pieces of ply that would hold the bat in place.
A few months passed and I was finally able to get out to Spotlight in Hastings to buy some adhesive-backed green felt to go into the case to resemble the green grass of a cricket pitch and protect the bat from knocks and scrapes.
It was like Durasealing the inside of the exercise book from hell, but I managed to get it done, with the worst of only a few ripples hidden by the bat when it was set in place.
Last was the Perspex lid. This would keep the case sealed and the bat dust free.
Once again I went to Classique Plastics in Napier who had the clear tube for my Top Gun diorama, and they cut a piece of thin, clear plastic to fit perfectly!
The result looks pretty professional if I do say so myself!
Now I just need an office, or regal study / leather armchair furnished library to mount it in…
I DIDN’T travel outside of Hawke’s Bay, win Lotto, or change jobs to something higher paying and more in line with my skills and dreams, and I only ticked off 6/10 of my goals for the year.
I DID catch Covid, albeit thankfully all but asymptomatically, made more money here and there, and did some things I wanted to do and bought some things I wanted to get.
It wasn’t a fantastic year, but it wasn’t terrible either.
So here are some of my highlights, events and thoughts from 2022:
Loveliest moment of 2022: Planting Harakeke with my daughter.
As part of my job I’ve gotten to volunteer to go out once a year with a primary school for Conservation Week. We go on a bushwalk at Hawke’s Bay’s White Pine Bush, then do a tour of the Guthrie Smith Arboretum at Tutira and plant some native flora there.
I’ve done this with my old school, Tamatea Primary and, this year, when I saw my daughter’s school on the list I offered to go with them. A week later (without telling her what I was doing at work) my daughter said we had to give permission for her to go on a field trip. “Oh, where?” we asked. “To White Pine Bush and Tutira” she replied.
She seemed happy that I was coming along, but I was expressly “forbidden from embarrassing her on the trip”! (she still has a lot to learn about parenting) and on the day I sat on a different part of the bus to her and her friends, but I was allowed to help chaperone her group on the bushwalks.
The penultimate event before heading home is the plantings, and she wanted me to help her plant her harakeke – NZ Flax, which I did, then we planted another spare flax and I took a selfie of us to commemorate the occasion. I loved it!
A Year of Constructive Confidence…
I got to make lots of stuff this year, stuff I had wanted to make for a while, stuff I’d only dreamed of making, and other stuff I just did to prove to myself that I could.
Finally, a-semi spur-of-the-moment idea resulted in a fantastic looking “Beached Spitfire” diorama and involved my first experience using clear casting resin and making gel waves.
I was fortunate that (almost) all the models I built this year went together so well – It was a boost to my confidence in using known and new skills in creating cool stuff!
Bay Buzz has been able to employ a number of journalists in the last few years under the Public Interest Journalism fund, which is great for keeping multiple sets of investigative eyes regularly focusing on and writing about Hawke’s Bay regional issues which NZ’s commercial media networks have failed to do over recent decades. But I have still missed being involved and getting commissioned to write more.
I still appear to be persona non grata with Radio NZ and still don’t know why and, as for local commercial network media, it can’t be long before our regional paper becomes a couple Hawke’s Bay pages in the NZ Herald and local airwaves regurgitate Jono and Ben 24/7 across the country. Spare us!
I have kept writing, too. If for no other reason than my own entertainment, or to keep myself sane and not feel like I’m just completely, continually screaming into the void.
And I do still seem to be pretty good and capable at it:
I think I only saw three movies at the cinema this year – Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Top Gun: Maverick and Thor: Love and Thunder.
Doctor Strange and Thor both had their good points – I got to see Love and Thunder in a cinema all to myself, after taking an afternoon off work to see it, and the Guns n’ Roses soundtrack throughout was gloriously nostalgic – But were reasonably cookie-cutter Marvel fare overall.
Sitting in the darkening cinema as the opening credits started rolling for Top Gun I wondered for a second if the whole movie was just going to be the 1986 original remastered and played in full as the Top Gun Anthem again crescendoed into Kenny Loggins’ epic and timeless “Danger Zone”.. Until F/A-18 Hornets and F-35 Lightning IIs rolled through the carrier deck steam.
The movie was great, and packed with yet more nostalgia, but also more emotionally mature themes – Pete “Maverick” Mitchell had grown, as had his original audience, but still held some old scars and memories, as did his audience.
A scene I loved was where Pete and his old flame and love interest in the movie, Jennifer Connelly’s ‘Penny Benjamin’ are getting intimate when Penny’s teenaged daughter (from a previous, non-Maverick, relationship) comes home unexpectedly.
Pete and Penny are nervous and embarrassed, not wanting her daughter to learn about the rekindling of their relationship, Penny makes Maverick sneak out her first-floor window like a teenager, comically slipping and falling off the roof. He stands up, dusts himself off and come’s face to face with Penny’s daughter – The audience laughs – Busted!
The daughter, stone faced, tells Mitchell “don’t break her heart again” and the laughing stops dead because the audience has been there, too, since 1986.
But, yes, awesome flying scenes, CGI, explosions and a fair chunk of heart also helped make Top Gun: Maverick my movie of the 2022.
Mood of the Year: S.A.D.
Hawke’s Bay saw one of its wettest winters on record in 2022.
Not that it was completely a bad thing – I remember “proper” wet winters growing up in the 80s and, by comparison we’ve had insanely dry years over the past decade where it rained in April and that was it until October, turning Central Hawke’s Bay hills peroxide blonde by November, and outright dead and dirt brown by February, so rain wasn’t altogether unwelcome.
But rain for days and weeks on end made many people sad, or even S.A.D.
Not to be confused with “Unhappy”, though the two can go hand-in-hand, Seasonal Affective Disorder is a form of depression that is often triggered by a change of the seasons, usually in, or towards the winter months.
And in 2022 the winter months just seemed to go on, and on, and on.
Days and weeks of persistent (rather than heavy) rain disrupted events, canceled sports and ruined thousands of plans.
It was the last thing we needed after thinking we had recovered sufficiently from Covid for normal life and events to largely recommence.
All the while the skies remained a morose overcast grey and rain continued to drizzle and drip, dragging the “winter blues” into spring and summer as well.
Score of the year: A Kane Williamson SignedCricket Bat!
I bought myself a Funko Pop! figure of Indian cricketer Virat Kohli for my birthday this year.
Well, I actually bought TWO.
They were on special at EB Games in Napier for only $15 each, and one’s box was a bit smushed so, in the spirit of my “Year of Creativity” I bought a second one intending to put it into a cricketing diorama of some sort, like I’d done with a Marty McFly Pop! recreating a scene from Back to the Future a couple years ago:
But before I even did the diorama, I made another creative change.
Looking at the figure I realised it wouldn’t take too much to change India’s cricket captain into New Zealand’s captain, Kane Williamson!
They both have similar hairstyles and beards and are both renowned batsmen, so it wouldn’t take much to change one to the other with some paint and finer details.
So that’s exactly what I did!
Other than repainting the head, hair and body the other changes I made were adding Gray-Nicolls stickers to Kane’s bat to make it look like his current NOVA blade and using 1/72 scale model aircraft decals for his shirt number (22) and “New Zealand” branding.
I was happy with the prototype and hoped to show it to and get it signed by the man himself when Napier got its sole men’s international game for the season but, sadly, captain Kane had other plans.
Never mind. I ended up being busy with work and other projects, and the Pop! went on display in my house.
Coincidently I entered a competition to win a signed Kane Williamson bat through Auckland’s Players’ Sports on Instagram a few weeks later..
AND WON IT!
It was a great, fortuitous way to finish off the year!
Now I just have to figure out what sort of display case I’m going to design and make for this full-sized cricket bat in 2023!
Here’s hoping your 2023 is creative, fortuitous and supportive, and thanks for reading Napier in Frame in 2022!
Ever since the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun catapulted Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw and their Grumman F14 Tomcat off the deck of an aircraft carrier and into action film folklore with Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone blaring through the speakers I have loved the movie and, especially, the F-14 Tomcat.
With twin engines, twin seats, and variable-sweep wings (they move – “Swing” in and out: Out-stretched for slower and more stable take-offs and landings; Swept back, like an arrow for getting places faster than the speed of sound), in my opinion, the Tomcat remains one of the sexiest pieces of aeronautical jet engineering ever.
Undeniably the coolest scene in Top Gun is in the opening minutes when Tom Cruise’s Maverick flips his F14 Tomcat upside down and flies very close to scare off the newly discovered “MiG 28” enemy fighter jet that is locked onto, and has spooked, his wing-man Cougar.
I took my time building it slowly and carefully, not wanting to make any errors. It came together really easily and well! There were no problems from construction to painting.
I even masked and painted canopy lines for the first time ever, with the results far better than I had expected!
The decals went on without issue and, again for the first time, I sprayed clear coat over the plane to seal them and stop the decal insignia from eventually flaking off like has happened on a few of my older kits.
I even painted the figures with colored helmets to resemble Mav’ and Goose, tilting their heads back with pliers to look like they are looking (up/) down on the MiG’s pilot.
The continuity in Top Gun’s opening dog fight scene flips and flops a bit – The plane that Maverick sneaks up on is rather clearly a single-seat E variant from the distant shots:
But then, seconds later, as the inverted Tomcat and the “MiG” are almost canopy-to-canopy, the MiG has miraculously morphed into a twin-seat F-5F!
(We’ll forgive them – It was the 80s and lots of movies that tried to replicate Top Gun’s aesthetic made far worse errors – At least Tony Scott had the same model of plane…)
Try as I might, I was unable to find an Italeri F-5F – the ideal twin-seat kit for what I wanted, but I was able to get a single-seat “MiG 28” from Twitter friend Justin Ryan who had ordered some kits from Japan and kindly added a Hobby Boss F-5E kit to his order for me.
Once again, an easy uncomplicated build, paint and marking job had two elements of my dream diorama all set.
Now for the diorama itself!
I had seen a couple model recreations of the “inverted” scene online that used clear plastic rods as the supports for the planes, with the rods drilled into a wooden base and heated and curved up and around before slotting into the planes’ jet exhausts to give them a near-horizontal (the rods inevitably drooped under the weight of the planes along the long length of the acrylic rods), mid-air appearance.
But these displays were all open and uncovered – A disaster waiting to happen when it came to dusting, which they would inevitably need in short order.
So I started thinking of covered alternatives.
Boxes were too cumbersome and framing could block some angles of view or wreck the illusion of flight that in was trying to replicate.
So I considered a clear plastic tube, or perhaps the whole thing in clear plastic!
In Napier we have a plastic fabricating company called Classique Plastics who I previously used for the clear sheet on the front of my recycled Rimu Pint Sized Hero display case.
When I went to scope my.plans out they happened to have a cut-off of the exact diameter and length of clear tube I was after already in their stocks!
I asked for them to make an all-acrylic display I had planned amd sketched out, but they ended up being very busy with commercial jobs and after a few weeks I decided I wanted to try something different, as i was uncertain the plastic rods would hold the weight of the planes as I had imagined.
So I designed something more multi-media.
I bought a slightly longer than originally planned length of clear plastic tube from Classique (this alone was over $100, so I dread to think how much the whole thing in clear acrylic would have cost!) and went in search of some round Rimu and stainless steel rods.
I got recycled Rimu floorboard “plug” ends made to fit on a CNC machine by local woodworkers Stim Craftmanship.
I had one edge of the round Rimu trimmed flat so the display could stand by itself without rolling everywhere.
Then I took one of the plug ends to my father-in-law’s workshop and very carefully measured and drilled holes for the stainless steel support rods to fit into, making sure they would be close enough together to replicate the inverted scene from the movie, but not so close that the planes touched.
The results were pretty neat perfect:
I’ve been fortunate this year to have a very successful streak of crafty creations.
Aside from a few speed bumps along the way with this project everything went exceptionally well and i am really happy with the result!
As usual, I went to my local hobby shop, Cool Toys, who have a fantastic range of radio-controlled kits and ready-to-run vehicles.
After watching far too many YouTube videos I decided to get a Tamiya TT-02 kit, as it is very adaptable to different forms of bodies and on-road and off-road formats.
I must say I was still quite intimidated when I opened the box and was confronted with numerous bags of screws, multiple sprues of parts and an instruction manual the size of a novella.
The first part of the kit I made were the shock absorbers.
I had been tempted to get oil-filled performance shocks but decided to start off easily (and cheaply – Oil-filled shocks are over $100 for a set of four). They were also an easy part of the kit to build and give a sense of the kit’s construction being well under way.
(This wouldn’t ACTUALLY be the case until I started on the drivetrain.)
Gears, grease, screws and repeat, gears, grease, screws and repeat!
This is one of the parts of the build I feared stuffing up the most, as it appeared so fiddly.
As we know, however, appearances can be deceiving, and everything seemed to fit together without too much hassle, stress, blood or hair loss.
Next the motor went in (and out a couple times later on testing out the wheels), and the gear housings covered up all the greased-up bits.
The shocks I made up first off were no longer held in suspension (see what I did there?) as they were finally attached to the wheel assemblies on either end.
Universal joints and drive shafts will also provide power to all four corners of my RC beastie!
Giving the car some direction was next.
Steering set up was another rather intimidatingly technical bit, not least because I had heard and read several times about over-tightening screws de-threading softer plastic parts, so there was some added caution in this part of construction.
I think I got it all Goldilocks – I.e. not too loose, not too tight, JUST RIGHT!
On went the wheels (the smell of Tamiya rubber tyres has always been intoxicating!) and we were pretty much done! (after disassembling and reassembling half the bloody drive assembly because I unknowingly had the driveshaft and wheel bearings around the wrong way until trying, unsuccessfully, to fit the rims on..)
With the steering servo connected up It was time to give the chassis some cover and curves.
The kit I chose came with a 1998 Ford Escort shell.
After buying the special curved polycarbonate scissors from Cool Toys I carefully cut around the exterior of the body shell to get it the right shape.
This body came with the wheel arches pre-cut, which made life easier, and the kit look smoother than my later work on the other body I bought.
After masking up the windows (also one of the more stressful parts of the build – you don’t want to get this far then ruin its appearance!) I sprayed the body (you spray the INSIDE of these models – the plastic body helps shield the finished paintwork) in four coats of Tamiya PS16 Metallic Blue giving it a similar color to the Subaru Impreza WRC rally car of the same era.
I managed to avoid any paint bleed under the masking and once that and the outer coating were peeled off and decals were added to the outside of the body the results were STUNNING!
I sprayed the windows in Tamiya PS31 Smoke to help hide the electronics inside the car.
One of the underlying reasons I chose the Escort and painted it in metallic blue is that my first long-term car (my very first car was a Ford Anglia that Dad and I partially restored in my last year of high school until it died of rear crossmember rust about a year later) was a metallic blue 1983 Ford Laser – kind of the Escort’s Mum/Dad.
It was an awesome, incredibly reliable car that served me really well, so I built this kit as a homage to that Laser.
I even used a label maker to recreate its number plate!
Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? Not it’s V8 Supercar!
While scoping out my RC car purchase, I noted that Glen at Cool Toys had a Tamiya TT-02 Ford Mustang body shell and an after-market sticker sheet with the livery for Dick Johnson Racing modern Kiwi legend Scott McLaughlin‘s Australian V8 Supercar:
Despite being a fan of DJR arch-rivals Holden Racing Team from back in the Peter Brock and Mark Skaife days I couldn’t resist – I had to have a go at replicating the awesome looking DJR Mustang!
So, once I had completed the Escort, I moved onto the more complex task of cutting out, masking and painting (, and masking and painting, and masking and painting) Tamiya PS1 White, PS2 Red, PS6 Yellow and PS31 Smoke onto the Mustang to give it DJR’s iconic three-tone paint scheme.
With several coats, different colors, respraying, decalling and a few whoopsies I was finally able to make a realistic recreation that looked pretty bloody awesome if I do say so myself (just don’t look at the back of it..)!
Final Thoughts
Over-all this was a really easy, enjoyable experience with almost everything going right!
If anything the one big downside of the build is that I’m really annoyed at and disappointed in myself that my fear of inability kept me from building one of these kits a lot earlier in life!
(This is probably moot, though, as it wasn’t until recently that I had anywhere near the disposable income to afford making one.)
My Twitter friend Justin Ryan very kindly donated a hand controller and receiver he had spare to help get me going, so now I just have to get a nickel metal hydride battery, and I can start burning RC rubber!
It reminds me of fun times with my Dad, and is one creative pursuit I’m not rubbish at!
I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, but more seriously in the last 15 or so years, getting more detailed and technical, but still never to the level of a “rivet-counter“, or “anorak“.
I thought it was making a post out of this build, though, because it’s one of the most technical builds I’ve ever done.
The picture above is of a Mk.Vc Supermarine Spitfire that had been forced to crash-land / “ditch” on the beach of Salerno, southern Italy in 1943 after being hit in the engine during the allied landings as part of their invasion of the country in World War 2.
I’d been wanting to built an American Spitfire for some time and this picture caught my eye.
It was an American squadron – The big white star surrounded by a blue circle was one of the US Air Force’s insignia during WWII – and the subject matter looked cool: it was partly submerged / beached.
Being beached I could do something new I had never done before – use clear resin to cast water as a base!
Get Your Kit On
I found the ideal kit – An Airfix 1/72 Mk.Vc Spitfire which happened to have the exact “MX P” markings at my local model shop, Cool Toys, in Napier and got it on sale with another Airfix kit of a German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 over the Christmas / New Year holiday last year.
During my summer break I built them with another model I had in my stash – an American P-51D Mustang.
I tend to make models in batches of two or three, so you can do parts of one while waiting for glue or paint to dry on the others.
I also have a thing where for every Spitfire I build, I have to do a Mustang, too – I currently have eight of each in 1/72 scale. I have to keep my display balanced!
It helps that these two planes are some of the most prevralent model subjects out there and, particularly the Mustang, are a fantastic chrome canvas for so many different squadron paint schemes and types of nose art.
I did a bit of “kit-bashing” by cutting out the drop-down pilot’s door, which was just cast as part of the fuselage.
The kit came together really easily and was a pleasure to build.
It looked pretty cool once painted and decaled, too!
(Don’t) Drop the Base.
By father-in-law had some scrap 10mm plywood lying around his workshop that happened to be just the right dimensions for the diorama’s base.
I squared it up, then used his bench saw to rout out 3/4 of the ply to form the part where the sea would be, with the higher section being the beach.
I knew I wanted to use clear epoxy resin for the sea, but wasn’t sure if I wanted it all to be a freestanding block, or contained somehow.
As this was my first attempt at casting resin I decided that using a base with a frame would be easier, so I cut four additional 1cm thick strips to surround the base, nailed and glued them in place and gave it a quick squirt of varnish.
Next, for the beach I used model railway ballast – a course sand that is spread over model train tracks and scenery to simulate gravel.
The two 1/72 figures were given to me by my Twitter friend and fellow modeler, Phil Tanner.
Unlike the original scene where it appears the men are a soldier and a Military Policeman (hence the arm band), I used a pilot figure and another airman. It gave more of a “Well, you stuffed that up!” vibe.
I slathered the base in PVA glue, before liberally shaking a capful of the ballast over top and shaking off the excess sand.
After some online research and emailing the retailer with some questions I ordered Easy Cast clear casting epoxy from Resincraft in Auckland. I also got some blue dye to give the resin a more aquatic tinge, but when finished I don’t think I put enough in, as it still looks pretty clear.
The mixing and pouring only takes a few minutes, but I took my time getting the measurements right so I didn’t have too little, and the plane would look like it was sitting in a mere puddle, or too much and I waste resin, or it overflowed everywhere.
Once mixed and poured I spent some time getting rid of the tiny bubbles that float to the surface through the mixing process, but they dissipated quickly and 24 hours later “the sea” looked glossy, clear and solid!
The resin set perfectly, but very smoothly. Some ocean motion was required.
While the resin looks fantastic, it also looks like flat glass, not the ideal facsimile of an Italian seaside).
There are a bunch of YouTube videos on how to make waves with gel medium, though they’re normally part of bigger videos of casting resin as water / sea. They give good demonstrations of the best application techniques for getting general oceanic surface disturbance.
Even with the gel medium still wet (it dries clear) it looks.like a blustery day on Hawke Bay!
I got another Twitter friend, Steve Blade of Davy Engravers Hamilton, to make a little name plate for the scene.
As the soldiers in the original photo were looking quite bemusedly at the beached plane, and I had heard the term several times in jest recently I thought what better title than “You Can’t Park There, Mate!”.
I’m super happy with the finished product!
Some builds fight you every step of the way – this was not one of them.
Everything just went right, making this a really fun, enjoyable build and an educational extension of my modeling skills.
