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Day 150 of 365 lucky number 13, I read somewhere on the internet that if you think lucky you will be lucky, so get thinking!
One of the many beautiful partially gilded wooden ushabti figures found in Tutankhamun's tomb, and bearing the king's own likeness.
The ushabti were a common element of ancient Egyptian tombs and were often found in great numbers. The small figures were supplied as helpers with the intention that they would be magically animated to assist the deceased in the afterlife.
The most celebrated part of the Cairo Museum's collection has for the best part of a century been the incomparable treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb housed in two long galleries on the upper floor. The greatest archaeological discovery of all time, the virtually intact tomb of the young pharaoh was discovered in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, undisturbed since antiquity owing to the King's relative obscurity.
Tutankhamun was born Tutankhaten, son and successor of the 'heretic' pharaoh Akhenaten who dispensed with Egypt's centuries old religion in favour of his new god, the sun disk he called Aten. At Akhenaten's death Tutankhaten was only nine years old and early in his reign was persuaded to restore Egypt's religion and traditions, abandoning the cult of Aten and restoring the prominence of Amun, god of Thebes, thus changing his name to Tutankhamun. His early death barely a decade later and association with his reviled father led to the young pharaoh sharing his fate in being struck from the records and lists of Kings (an act of damnatio memoriae), thus his tomb itself was quickly forgotten and hidden beneath later structures whilst those of more famous rulers were stripped bare, probably within decades.
Howard Carter's discovery of the still sealed tomb in 1922 caused a sensation, nothing so complete had ever been found before. The tomb itself was small by pharaonic standards, prepared in a hurry as the king died in his late teens with two main chambers and a further two side chambers crammed with artworks, treasures and furnishings, along with the king's body sealed within four gilded-wooden shrines, three superbly rich coffins and the incomparable golden mask upon his head. Better still, the pharaoh's reign in the 18th Dynasty coincided with a particularly high period for artistic achievement, meaning that so much was of the highest quality. One can only imagine the riches that must have disappeared from the much larger tombs of the more famous rulers, compared to this tiny treasure-trove!
Tutankhamun's collection has resided in Cairo's Egyptian Museum ever since its discovery, but by the end of 2018 will have moved again to the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza (currently being prepared for partial opening later this year). The treasures will be displayed in their entirety for the first time, and many pieces have already been transferred. This visit offered us a last opportunity to view most of the major pieces in their central Cairo home for one last time.
For more on the 'obscure' pharaoh who millennia later became Egypt's most celebrated, see the link below:-
Word is a series of designs for books of the Bible. This is Numbers.
For the story behind the design, visit my blog.
there's a power pole outside my house and it's got all these little tags of numbers and letters on it in one spot.
On the trade show at this years uk coach rally. There was no Moseley, no scania and no EVM, but we still the other Manufacturers and Dealers. Plaxton this year didn't have a demonstrator on their stand but customer vehicles including this Unregistered Volvo B8R / Plaxton Leopard C57F for the Roy Mcarthy fleet. Photo taken 06/04/19
This week: counting, measuring, labeling – numbers are all over. Actively noticing numbers can be an interesting exercise. I find them in obvious places and context, but they will also reveal where I would not expect them.
The album can be found here: 2022 | 52 projects.
(Wien/Salvatorgasse)
ODC Our Daily Challenge: Letters and Numbers
Queuing for the warm coats after the performance at München Residenztheater
Disregard email drafts, notes applications and daily agenda administrators: Taskade does all that and the sky is the limit from there
All that I have to keep my life running is put away on the web. Some place. I can't discover it.
I'm discussing all the record numbers, meeting notes, daily agendas, contact data and section drafts I have to see each day. Additionally the plans I need to cook, wines I have to attempt, and YouTube recordings I should watch. A portion of that stuff lives in my email inbox, and some in Google Docs. At that point there are my Pinterest sheets, incidental bookmarks and the Evernote account I can never compose lucidly.
In principle, the web makes it simpler than any time in recent memory to keep all that I need a couple of taps away. Actually, the web has a method of dividing our lives. It resembles I composed everything in a journal and afterward become inebriated, tore out each page and shrouded them in better places around my home.
Taskade makes an extraordinary device for easy plans for the day, and you can utilize photographs, emoticons and stock workmanship to tidy them up.
Photograph: David Pierce/The Wall Street Journal
In the course of recent weeks, an application called Taskade has helped me transform mayhem into request. Taskade joins huge numbers of the best highlights of Google Docs, Excel and Dropbox, alongside heaps of assignment the executives and hierarchical instruments. Taskade Labs Chief Executive Ivan Zhao depicts the item as "the up and coming age of Microsoft Office," which is a little hyperbolic and a ton aspiring. However, it is the best life-association device I've attempted.
Taskade consolidates the highlights of a note-taking application, an assignment the executives application and a spreadsheet device the way that Steve Jobs joined an iPod, a cellphone and an internet browser into the iPhone: All these devices cooperate to make something more than its parts.
I should make reference to that Taskade is genuinely costly: It has a restricted complementary plan, and expenses $8 every month for hefty use. All things considered, it may pay for itself in the applications it replaces, and I've discovered it effectively worth the expense.
I presently have a page with all my carrier and lodging faithfulness numbers in a bulleted list, over a photograph of my dental protection card and an installed map with bearings to my dental specialist's office. I made information bases with all the films, books, TV shows, and YouTube recordings I have to get to—every cell opens to a rich archive with my notes and considerations. Taskade has all the meetings, research material and frameworks for my segments. I'm getting hitched soon and am gazing intently at my marital daily agenda consistently.
One of Taskade's most up to date includes is an information base apparatus, which you can see as a table, a schedule and that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Photograph: David Pierce/The Wall Street Journal
I used to require five separate applications to keep so much stuff straight. Presently it's all in Taskade, a couple of snaps or a basic pursuit away.
Square by Block
It may be simpler to consider Taskade a super-straightforward web designer than a profitability application.
At the point when you open another page in the application, you're truly making a clear matrix onto which you can put and organize pretty much anything. The application's fundamental component is the square, which could be a passage of text, a bulleted list, a table, a picture, a code piece, a YouTube video, a PDF and that's only the tip of the iceberg. You embed blocks with a tap or console alternate way, and afterward reorder and sort out these however much you might want. You can without much of a stretch change the idea of a square, as well. For example, you can choose a lot of text and transform it into a daily agenda.
Taskade's essential component is the square, which takes numerous structures: text, joins, pictures, bookmarks and that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Photograph: David Pierce/The Wall Street Journal
Taskade resembles chess: simple to learn, hard to ace. The application itself looks genuinely natural, with a sidebar on the left and your open page on the right. It has a couple of stylish comforts, similar to the alternative to add a spread photograph to the head of any page.
At the point when you first open the application, however, it doesn't do what's necessary to assist you with understanding all that it can do. Even following quite a while of utilizing Taskade every day, I'm just currently making sense of the most proficient approaches to get things done while attempting to abstain from settling on awful design choices. Do I truly require a full-page photograph inside my daily agenda? My recommendation: Make weighty utilization of Taskade's layouts, since they help you spread out pages and show what the application's prepared to do.
There are local Taskade applications for Windows, Mac and iOS. Mr. Zhao says an Android application ought to be accessible inside weeks. The web application works wonderfully on work area and portable, as well, and it's precisely the same experience regardless of which stage you're utilizing.
Taskade is exceptionally reliant on web network. It works disconnected uniquely with pages you've opened as of late while associated—which implies everything you can do is cross your fingers each time you open Taskade on a plane. On the upside, you can implant tweets and YouTube recordings, even whole website pages, inside a Taskade report.
Photograph: David Pierce/The Wall Street Journal
In spite of the fact that I use Taskade to keep steady over my own work and life (and you ought to as well), Taskade is intended for business groups. It offers communitarian altering, inline remarks and valuable devices for overseeing consents and allocating undertakings. In the event that you utilize Slack, you can get cautions each time somebody remarks on or changes a Taskade archive. Is anything but a substitute for Slack or Salesforce, however it can supplant a significant number of the apparatuses endless organizations use to store and offer data.
All in one resource
Matt Galligan, organizer of the Picks and Shovels Co., a digital money administrations startup, offered a valuable representation for Taskade. He says utilizing the application is much the same as shopping on Amazon. Previously, "stores specific," he stated, "and they worked admirably." Then Amazon went along and accumulated everything. It perhaps wasn't the best store for any single thing, yet the one-stop comfort made it brilliant.
That is simply it: Taskade isn't as ground-breaking a spreadsheet device as Excel, and it doesn't have a portion of the errand the board highlights I need—when an undertaking is expected, I might want an alarm, for example. (Taskade says that is coming.) Yet the application has helped me shave the spots I hold stuff down to only two. I can't prevent email from coming in; I can put everything else in Taskade.
Photograph: David Pierce/The Wall Street Journal
There's parcels left for the Taskade group to do, obviously. Notwithstanding task updates, it's additionally taking a shot at schedule sync, PowerPoint-style introduction includes, a web trimmer, better disconnected help and that Android application. It's additionally wanting to help administrations, for example, Zapier and If This Then That (IFTTT), which help move information between applications. In any case, it as of now accomplishes more than any of its rivals.
For quite a long time, I've bobbed around different note-taking applications and efficiency devices, never entirely upbeat. Evernote makes it simple to catch data, yet I never preferred the interface. Google Docs and Keep don't offer enough highlights. Trello, Asana and other task the board programming don't work for note taking.
Taskade wires the best of each—and others—into an uncommon renaissance application, capable in endless techniques for creation and association. I can't put a cost on the true serenity that originates from an unfragmented life. Pause, yes I can: It's eight bucks every month.
Crude Paste Data
Disregard email drafts, notes applications and daily agenda supervisors: Taskade does all that and that's only the tip of the iceberg
All that I have to keep my life running is put away on the web. Some place. I can't discover it.
I'm discussing all the record numbers, meeting notes, plans for the day, contact data and segment drafts I have to see each day. Besides the plans I need to cook, wines I have to attempt, and YouTube recordings I should watch. A portion of that stuff lives in my email inbox, and some in Google Docs. At that point there are my Pinterest sheets, random bookmarks and the Evernote account I can never arrange soundly.
In principle, the web makes it simpler than any time in recent memory to keep all that I need a couple of taps away. In actuality, the web has a method of dividing our lives. It resembles I composed everything in a scratch pad and afterward become inebriated, tore out each page and shrouded them in better places around my home.
Taskade makes an incredible device for easy plans for the day, and you can utilize photographs, emoticons and stock workmanship to tidy them up.
Photograph: David Pierce/The Wall Street Journal
In the course of recent weeks, an application called Taskade has helped me transform mayhem into request. Taskade consolidates a significant number of the best highlights of Google Docs, Excel and Dropbox, alongside loads of undertaking the executives and authoritative instruments. Taskade Labs Chief Executive Ivan Zhao depicts the item as "the up and coming age of Microsoft Office," which is a little hyperbolic and a ton aggressive. Be that as it may, it is the best life-association apparatus I've attempted.
Taskade joins the highlights of a note-taking application, an assignment the executives application and a spreadsheet instrument the way that Steve Jobs consolidated an iPod, a cellphone and an internet browser into the iPhone: All these apparatuses cooperate to make something more than its parts.
I should make reference to that Taskade is genuinely costly: It has a restricted complementary plan, and expenses $8 every month for substantial use. In any case, it may pay for itself in the applications it replaces, and I've discovered it effectively worth the expense.
I presently have a page with all my carrier and inn faithfulness numbers in a bulleted list, over a photograph of my dental protection card and an implanted guide with bearings to my dental specialist's office. I made information bases with all the films, books, TV shows, and YouTube recordings I have to get to—every cell opens to a rich archive with my notes and considerations. Taskade has all the meetings, research material and diagrams for my segments. I'm getting hitched soon and am gazing intently at my marital plan for the day consistently.
One of Taskade's freshest highlights is an information base apparatus, which you can see as a table, a schedule and that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Photograph: David Pierce/The Wall Street Journal
I used to require five separate applications to keep so much stuff straight. Presently it's all in Taskad
1. No. 32, 2. A veces, sin querer, te encuentras con algo interesante..., 3. Felicitats Júlia, 4. 97, 5. Little Pipol - Semana 52, 6. 7, 7. Numbers, 8. Número, 9. The heart will break, but broken live on., 10. Cones & Seventeen
20240409_6210_R62-200 Numbers at Ara
A small part of the Anton Parson's Passing Time (2010) artwork.
#15690
Eastlink sculpture by Jos Van Hulsen.
The artist transforms discarded distance counters from the Victorian Railways into towers that are memorials to statistics of both distance and casualties. In a culture bombarded with numbers every day, Reverent Numbers seeks to provide a connection with these human tragedies by embedding the towers with mirrors. On closer inspection, the viewer can catch a glimpse of himself or herself, a friend or stranger, who are all a possible statistic.
A fortune cookie is a crisp cookie usually made from flour, sugar, vanilla, and sesame seed oil with a piece of paper, a "fortune", on which is an aphorism, or a vague prophecy. The message inside may also include a Chinese phrase with translation or a list of lucky numbers used by some as lottery numbers, some of which have become actual winning numbers.
The Lidl Run Kildare Events 2013 were held at the Curragh Racecourse, Newbridge, Co. Kildare, Ireland on Sunday 12th May 2013. There were three events: a 10KM, a half marathon, and a full marathon. This is a selection of photographs which includes all events. The photographs are taken from the start and finish of the marathon, the finish of the 10KM, and the finish of the half marathon. Due to the large numbers participating we did not manage to photograph everyone - which was not helped by the weather. Congratulations to Jo Cawley and her RunKildare crew for another great event. The weather didn't dampen the spirits of the many happy participants.
Electronic timing was provided by Red Tag Timing [www.redtagtiming.com/]
Overall Race Summary
Participants: There were approximately 3,000 participants over the 3 race events - there were runners, joggers, and walkers participating.
Weather: A cold breezy morning with heavy rain at the start. The weather dried up for the 10KM and the Half Marathon races
Course: This is an undulating course with some good flat stretches on the Curragh.
Viewing this on a smartphone device?
If you are viewing this Flickr set on a smartphone and you want to see the larger version(s) of this photograph then: scroll down to the bottom of this description under the photograph and click the "View info about this photo..." link. You will be brought to a new page and you should click the link "View All Sizes".
Some Useful Links
GPS Garmin Trace of the Kildare Marathon Route: connect.garmin.com/activity/175709313
Homepage of the Lidl Run Kildare Event: www.kildaremarathon.ie/index.html
Facebook Group page of the Lidl Run Kildare Event: www.facebook.com/RunKildare
Boards.ie Athletics Discussion Board pages about the race series: www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056815306
Our photographs from Run Kildare 2012: www.flickr.com/photos/peterm7/sets/72157629707887620/
Our photographs from Run Kildare 2011: www.flickr.com/photos/peterm7/sets/72157626725200956/
A small selection of photographs from Run Kildare 2010: www.flickr.com/photos/peterm7/sets/72157623899845567/ (first event)
Can I use the photograph with the watermark?
Yes! Absolutely - you can post this photograph to your social networks, blogs, micro-blogging, etc.
How can I get a full resolution, no watermark, copy of these photographs?
All of the photographs here on this Flickr set have a visible watermark embedded in them. All of the photographs posted here on this Flickr set are available, free, at no cost, at full resolution WITHOUT watermark. We take these photographs as a hobby and as a contribution to the running community in Ireland. We do not know of any other photographers who operate such a policy. Our only "cost" is our request that if you are using these images: (1) on social media sites such as Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter,LinkedIn, Google+, etc or (2) other websites, web multimedia, commercial/promotional material that you provide a link back to our Flickr page to attribute us. This also extends the use of these images for Facebook profile pictures. In these cases please make a separate wall or blog post with a link to our Flickr page. If you do not know how this should be done for Facebook or other social media please email us and we will be happy to help suggest how to link to us.
Please email petermooney78 AT gmail DOT com with the links to the photographs you would like to obtain a full resolution copy of. We also ask race organisers, media, etc to ask for permission before use of our images for flyers, posters, etc. We reserve the right to refuse a request.
In summary please remember - all we ask is for you to link back to our Flickr set or Flickr pages. Taking the photographs and preparing them for online posting does take a significant effort. We are not posting photographs to Flickr for commercial reasons. If you really like what we do please spread the link around, send us an email, leave a comment beside the photographs, send us a Flickr email, etc.
If you would like to contribute something for your photograph(s)?
Some people offer payment for our photographs. We do not charge for these photographs. We take these photographs as our contribution to the running community in Ireland. If you feel that the photograph(s) you request are good enough that you would pay for their purchase from other photographic providers we would suggest that you can provide a donation to any of the great charities in Ireland who do work for Cancer Care or Cancer Research in Ireland.
I ran in the race - but my photograph doesn't appear here in your Flickr set! What gives?
As mentioned above we take these photographs as a hobby and as a voluntary contribution to the running community in Ireland. Very often we have actually ran in the same race and then switched to photographer mode after we finished the race. Consequently, we feel that we have no obligations to capture a photograph of every participant in the race. However, we do try our very best to capture as many participants as possible. But this is sometimes not possible for a variety of reasons:
►You were hidden behind another participant as you passed our camera
►Weather or lighting conditions meant that we had some photographs with blurry content which we did not upload to our Flickr set
►There were too many people - some races attract thousands of participants and as amateur photographs we cannot hope to capture photographs of everyone
►We simply missed you - sorry about that - we did our best!
You can email us petermooney78 AT gmail DOT com to enquire if we have a photograph of you which didn't make the final Flickr selection for the race. But we cannot promise that there will be photograph there. As alternatives we advise you to contact the race organisers to enquire if there were (1) other photographs taking photographs at the race event or if (2) there were professional commercial sports photographers taking photographs which might have some photographs of you available for purchase. You might find some links for further information above.
Don't like your photograph here?
That's OK! We understand!
If, for any reason, you are not happy or comfortable with your picture appearing here in this photoset on Flickr then please email us at petermooney78 AT gmail DOT com and we will remove it as soon as possible. We give careful consideration to each photograph before uploading.
I want to tell people about these great photographs!
Great! Thank you! The best link to spread the word around is probably www.flickr.com/peterm7/sets
The Real Hong Kong Car Culture
Hong Kong Car | Automotive Photography since 2011
For a detailed introduction | guide on Hong Kong Car Licence Plates | Car Vanity Plates click on the link below to learn more :
✚ www.j3consultantshongkong.com/hk-car-vanity-plates
One of the largest collections of quality Hong Kong Car Images and specialising in Car Licence Plates | Car Vanity Plates or as the Hong Kong Government likes to call them - Vehicle Registration Marks
I photograph all car brands and please do bear in mind I am an enthusiastic amateur and NOT a professional photographer but I do have a fairly distinctive style and it has got better over the years.
☛.... and if you want to read about my views on Hong Kong, then go to my blog, link is shown below, I have lived in Hong Kong for over 50 years!
✚ www.j3consultantshongkong.com/j3c-blog
☛ Photography is simply a hobby for me, I do NOT sell my images and all of my images can be FREELY downloaded from this site in the original upload image size or 5 other sizes, please note that you DO NOT have to ask for permission to download and use any of my images!
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft that was used by the Royal Air Force and many other Allied countries during and after the Second World War. The Spitfire was built in many variants, using several wing configurations, and was produced in greater numbers than any other British aircraft.
The Spitfire was designed as a short-range, high-performance interceptor aircraft by R. J. Mitchell, chief designer at Supermarine Aviation Works (which operated as a subsidiary of Vickers-Armstrong from 1928). In accordance with its role as an interceptor, Mitchell designed the Spitfire's distinctive elliptical wing to have the thinnest possible cross-section; this thin wing enabled the Spitfire to have a higher top speed than several contemporary fighters, including the Hawker Hurricane.
It was the only British fighter to be in continuous production throughout World War II, and remained in service with several air forces around the world for several years. One of its post-war operators was the Lebanese Air Force, or Al Quwwat al-Jawwiya al-Lubnaniyya (لقوات الجوية اللبنانية‎).
The Lebanese Air Force was established in 1949 under the command of then-Lieutenant Colonel Emile Boustany who later became commander of the army. Soon after its establishment, a number of planes were donated by the British, French, and Italian governments, with additional planes donated by Britain and Italy later that same year.
Britain donated 4 Percival Prentices, 2 World War II-era Percival Proctors and seven trpocailized Supermarine Spitfires (six Mk. XVIe and one TR.8 two-seater), while Italy donated 4 Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bombers which were mainly used for transportation.
The Mk XVI Spitfire was a WWII design, and the last variant powered by a Merlin engine and based on the original, sleek fuselage. It was basically the same as the Mk IX, except for the engine, a Merlin 266. The Merlin 266 was the Merlin 66 and was built under licence in the USA by the Packard Motor Company. The "2" was added as a prefix in order to avoid confusion with the engines, as they required different tooling.
All Mk XVI aircraft produced (a total of 1,054 Mk XVIs left Castle Bromwich) were of the Low-Altitude Fighter (LF) variety. This was not determined by the length of the wings (clipped wings were fitted to most LF Spitfires), but by the engine, which had been optimised for low-altitude operation. All production Mk XVIs had clipped wings for low altitude work and were fitted with the rear fuselage fuel tanks with a combined capacity of 75 gal. Many XVIs featured cut-down rear fuselages with bubble canopies. On these aircraft the rear fuselage tank capacity was limited to 66 gal.
Because of a slightly taller intercooler and rearranged accessories on the Packard Merlins a new, bulged upper cowling was introduced, a detail that also appeared on late production IXs. For the service in the Middel East region the Lebanese machines received dust filters which considerably changed the aircraft's silhouette.
Armament consisted of two 20 mm Hispano II cannons - each with 120 rpg - and two 0.50 calibre Browning machine guns - each with 250 rpg. 1 × 500 lb (227 kg) bomb could be carried underneath the centre rack, and 1 × 250 lb (114 kg) bomb could be slung under each wing. As a special feature, the wing hardpoints of the Lebanese Spitfires were "wet" so that slipper tanks with 24 gal. each could be carried, compensating for the reduces rear fuselage tank due to the bubble canopy's lowered dorsal spine.
The Lebanese Spitfires only saw a short service, since in 1953, jet fighters were introduced when 16 de Havilland Vampire jets were received, and the first Hawker Hunters arrived in 1959, which replaced the obsolete Spitfires. This initial Hunter batch was followed by more Hunters through 1977.
In 1968, 12 Mirage IIIELs were delivered from France but were grounded in the late 1970s due to lack of funds. In 2000, the grounded Mirages were sold to Pakistan, and four Hunters were even revived in 2008 and served until 2014.
General characteristics:
Crew: one pilot
Length: 29 ft 11 in (9.12 m)
Wingspan: 36 ft 10 in (11.23 m)
Height: 11 ft 5 in (3.86 m)
Wing area: 242.1 ft2 (22.48 m2)
Airfoil: NACA 2209.4(tip)
Empty weight: 5,065 lb (2,297 kg)
Loaded weight: 6,622 lb (3,000 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 6,700 lb (3,039 kg)
Powerplant:
1× Rolls-Royce Merlin 60 supercharged V12 engine,
rated at 1.470 hp (1.096 kW) at 9.250 ft (2.820 m)
Performance:
Maximum speed: 370 mph, (322 kn, 595 km/h)
Combat radius: 410 nmi (470 mi, 760 km)
Ferry range: 991 nmi (1,135 mi, 1,827 km)
Service ceiling: 36,500 ft (11,125 m)
Rate of climb: 2,600 ft/min (13.2 m/s)
Wing loading: 27.35 lb/ft2 (133.5 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.22 hp/lb (0.36 kW/kg)
Armament:
2x 20mm Hispano Mk II cannon (120 RPG)
2x .5 in Browning machine guns (250 RPG)
Three hardpoints (1 ventral, 1 under each outer wing) for up to 1.000 lb (454 kg).
The kit and its assembly:
This whif is based on a simple idea: how did Lebanon's Air Force start? Small countries make a good whif playground, and I guess that nobody has the Lebanon on his/her list...?
Another factor was that I had some Austrian roundels left in store that could, with a green dot, easily be turned into Lebanese markings. So the theme was quickly settled, but the details take some preparation time, so the idea lingered for some time.
After some legwork I deemed a simple Spitfire with a dust filter worthy as an initial aircraft, and the respective Hobby Boss kit of a Spitfire Mk. VB in the stash came handy.
But somehow this was a bit dull, and at the inception of the Lebanon Air Force there were better option available than an early Mk. V. I still wanted a sleek, Merlin-powered Spitfire variant, though, and eventually settled for the Mk. XVI - with its clipped wings and the bubble canopy it has a very distinctive look.
When a "1 Week group Build" at whatifmodelers.com in the Easter Week 2015 was announced, I took this occassion to build the Lebanese Spitfire.
By that time I already had a basis kit at hand (Heller's Spitfire XVI) as well as some donation parts and decals.
Work was strightforward, the Heller kit was built almost OOB. It's a rather old model kit, with raised panel lines, but good detail. The material is thin, so the built item lacks some structural stability! On the other side, this makes some minor mods really easy: I lowered the flaps and moved the tail rudders slightly off of neutral position. I also opened the cockpit "door" on the left side for later static display, even though the cockpit itself was left OOB. It's a bit "flat", but for the kit's age it's pretty good, and the injected canopy is crystal clear and fits perfectly.
I had some major woes concerning the fit for the forward fuselage, and even more when I tried to mate wings and fuselage: there was a 1mm gap(!) on both sides that had to be bridged with putty, and the thin and flexible material did help much...
Other mods concern the propeller (added a styrene tube and a metal axis for free spin), the radiators (these are molded into the lower wings - sounds horrible, but is made very well and thin, I just added some foamed styrene inside as protective mesh because OOB there's just a blank "box" inside) and the kit received a dust filter - a resin piece taken from a Pavla conversion set for Hawker Hurricanes.
Painting and markings:
While a donated RAF Spitfire would certainly have carried a desert paint scheme in Dark Earth/Mid Stone/Azure Blue or a late WWII Dark Green/Ocean Grey/Light Sea Grey livery I settled for something more individual and effective for the rugged Levantine terrain.
In this case I went for the rarely used RAF 'Tropical Scheme' in Mid Stone/Dark Green from above and with Mediterrenean Blue undersides.
The pattern itself is standard RAF, the upper cammo taken down onto the dust filter's flanks was taken over from RAAF Spitfires during WWII (RAF aircraft would carry a higher waterline, with the filter painted completely in the lower surface's tone). Basic paints are RAF Dark Green from Modelmaster and Humbrol 84 (RAF Mid Stone) - rather authentic. But I used Humbrol 87 (Steel Grey) for the undersides - it's rather intense and has a greenish hue, and by far not as dark as the typical RAF Azure Blue or PRU Blue.
Interior surfaces were painted in RAF Cockpit Green (Modelmaster Authentic), while the landing gear and its wells were kept in Aluminum Dope (Humbrol 56).
Decals/markings were puzzled together and improvised. The Lebanese roundels are actually Austrian national markings into which a dark green dot has ben added manually... the fin flash and the roman/arabic codes come from an Xtradecal aftermarket sheet.
Beyond these basic markings I did not add anything flashy - in 1951 things were rather simple,
The kit received a light shading and some dry painting with light grey, plus a light black ink wash. Soot/exhaust stains were created with grinded graphite and around the engine some leaked oil was added with Tamiya's "Smoke", and everything was sealed under a coat of matt acrylic varnish.
I'll admit it's not a spectacular whif, and overall rather simple concerning build and painting. But a proud addition to whatifmodelers.com's "! Week Group Build", even though this was already finished in just three days from sprues to beauty pics...