Totally different hobby altogether

[Dave Bailey]

One of my other hobbies is building model aircraft, and I stick almost exclusively to the sub-genre known as 'what if?' Models like this can be a simple as a different colour scheme, a different role from the intended one, or as wild as one's warped imagination wants to take it. A few years ago my daughter was taking a sailing course and found this while tootling around Lake Ontario:

 

 

It just happened that she found it a few days after I had been turning a Rapala over in my hand, thinking that it would make an interesting fuselage for a crazy 'what if'. I promised her that after I was finished with it I would disassemble it, strip the paint, and install new hooks, so it's the only one of my models that no longer exists. With some scrap balsa, parts grabbed from the spares bin, and rotors borrowed from a pending project, I came up with this bit of insanity:

 

 

I named it the Sudenkorento, the Finnish word for dragonfly. In the 'whiffing world' we also like to make up what we call a 'back story' to somehow justify the creation, and the full story, with more pictures, can be found here: The Sudenkorento

[Rod Caster]

That's awesome! I'd love to have something like that on a bookshelf. Good work Dave!

[tb4me]

Nice work! Love it. imagine seeing that beastly thing flying thru the air one day...Awesome job!

[Grimace]

Cool model and an even cooler story.

[mercman]

That is way cool !!! I can imagine that just skimming accross a lake. Touching the surface a few times, then taking off with a fishhanging off the reinstalled trebles!!!!A revolutionary new way to fish !

 

Great work.

 

 

[Sandbag]

Boy there are some very creative people around here.

 

Well done

 

Cheers

 

Craig

[Dozer]

Creative, can we see some more of your work?

[kickingfrog]

I'm confused? Do you cast it? Or troll it?

[Dave Bailey]

I'm confused? Do you cast it? Or troll it?

 

Self-propelled, you just cut her loose!

[Entropy]

lol, that was refreshing.

[Dave Bailey]

Creative, can we see some more of your work?

 

Go ahead, stroke my ego! A lot of them wouldn't mean much unless you're both a modeler and know the kit it was made from, but a few are easily understood by anyone. I'll give you the article links rather than posting interminably here.

 

Each year during the first week of January the largest aircraft modeling site on the net, the Aircraft Resource Center (ARC) holds what's called 'Silly Week', during which various crazy models are sent in as a break from the more serious stuff. During 2005 the site was hacked and suffered serious damage by someone who called himself Latin Pimp. A model I was working on at the time seemed just right to have a little fun at his expense, and that explains the ending to the story of the Rayador, a Boeing 727 which was modified into a type of aircraft usually known as an Ekranoplan. I won't even try explaining those here, just go to this Wikipedia link for an enlightening read. So, without further ado, The Rayador (link).

 

 

Years later I still had the PanAm decals from that laying around doing nothing, so I modified an old model that had been sitting in the pile for forty years and came up with this one. (link)

 

 

If anyone remembers the old Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch about the Frog and Peach, that was partly the inspiration for this bit of lunacy. (link)

 

 

Monty Python fans won't really need any explanation for this multi-media piece. (link)

 

 

Since Canada should have had a strategic reconnaissance aircraft during the Cold War, my universe devised this modification to the venerable CF-100 Canuck. (link)

 

 

Currently on the bench is another CF-100 being turned into a Star Wars X-wing style fighter, along with other assorted projects. It's that sort of madness which keeps me sane. :w00t:

Edited February 4, 2012 by Dave Bailey

[kickingfrog]

I'm confused? Do you cast it? Or troll it?

 

 

Self-propelled, you just cut her loose!

 

Great! I'll take three, does it come in muskie size?

[Dave Bailey]

Great! I'll take three, does it come in muskie size?

 

Wait until I get the 5hp Briggs & Strattons delivered.

[Grimace]

Some time ago I saw "My hovercraft is full of eels" on Facebook and almost fell over laughing as I am a big Python fan. As for the rest of them, I think it is a really neat idea to have to make up an original story for an original model.

[Dave Bailey]

Some time ago I saw "My hovercraft is full of eels" on Facebook and almost fell over laughing as I am a big Python fan. As for the rest of them, I think it is a really neat idea to have to make up an original story for an original model.

 

Out in Victoria B.C. is a guy named Alvis Petrie, and he is the Patron Saint of what iffers. A few years ago he bashed a B-17 Flying Fortress with an Avro Lancaster, with skills that many of us can only envy. He wrote up his back story and put it out on the net, and an aviation historical group actually fell for it! Took them a couple of weeks and a bit of a net search to find out they'd been hoodwinked. I'm proud to say that a couple of mine have also fooled people, they contacted me through e-mail and I let them down gently. Fortunately they got a chuckle as well, no hard feelings.

 

The genre is growing, there is a web site called whatifmodelers.com where many of us hang out, a weird mob but a lot of fun.