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Confessions of an Itinerant Commentator . . .

21/1/2015

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......or should that be irritating?


2. Of Lap Charts - and Dancing

A number of people need to keep a lap chart of some description during the course of an air race.  In the most obvious category are members of the turn point teams.  As missing a turning point earns an automatic disqualification, an official at each one needs to be sure that every aircraft competing passes by on the requisite number of occasions.  It happens.  Some years ago a crew that will remain anonymous, in a Schneider held in unusually grim weather conditions, inadvertently missed out a couple of turns.  Despite cutting some 16 miles from the race distance, they still didn't come anywhere near catching the leaders.

Then there was the spooky, almost Marie Celeste-like case of a debutante overseas competitor, who arrived, was checked out and completed race practice.  The flag-drop at her appointed handicap time was not however a prelude to an illustrious racing career for the story goes that her aircraft then went un-noted on any turning point judges' sheet.  She had, to all purposes, disappeared.  Investigation eventually revealed that following her first-ever race departure, she quickly set course for Germany and home, never to be seen at a race meeting again.

Of course with the advent of super-accurate GPS, the Mk I eyeball looking up the pole and pen-held-in-human-fingers ticking the passing traffic on a copy of the start list are readily double-checked post-race by an on-screen or printed read-out which reveals the slightest transgression, let alone the blatantly obvious departure from the prescribed track.  But for one group, the commentary team, the lap chart continues to retain its traditional importance.  When there is a commentary, the whole point of it is to make sense of the procession of aircraft visible to the spectators at the airfield.  Competitors in view can be on as many as four different laps and unravelling this tangle and spotting any position changes and trends (who's hot and who's not) – and conveying this information clearly and with luck entertainingly is no mean feat.

In the golden days of commentary Messrs Ellis and Swain, I seem to recall, managed to scale this peak without keeping a formal lap sheet, at which achievement I can only genuflect in respect.  A field exceeding about ten entrants starts to become hard to keep track of, even if you or a press-ganged helper are attempting to fill in a chart – and close to impossible if that's not happening.  It's made worse if there are aircraft of the same types or having similar configurations and escalates to double-digit trickiness if the sky conditions make it hard to see colours or impossible to read racing numbers.  The raising of race minimum height in recent years has only made matters more challenging under adverse "spotting" conditions.  

Ken and John were always high in entertainment value whatever the race weather, and however little newsworthy activity there might be to draw to the spectators' attention. Their description of a rare Formula One race, run at Bembridge, was a comedy masterpiece with much repetition of lines similar to "Oh and there goes the yellow one again." Occasionally we would all work together and I would attempt to keep the lap chart and punctuate their flow of banter and description with an occasional discovery or prediction.  This could work very well, or alternatively incredibly badly, as witnessed at the 75th Anniversary Schneider Race, which thanks to brilliant work by Pete Earp and others had attracted a field approaching that same magic 75 number.  Due to the density of the competitors turning overhead, my sheet had deteriorated to a meaningless jumble even before all the entrants were airborne.  I quickly realised that I had nothing constructive I could possibly contribute to the commentary, which Ken and John were now busking admirably.

Noting that no one was using the rather splendid video camera which Steve Ollier had brought along to record the weekend, I silently 'signed off' leaving my colleagues to continue – and played newsreel cameraman for the remainder of the race - which reminds me, I have never seen the edited film of that memorable, and very damp, race meeting.  

That Schneider was one of the last times, if not the very last, to feature what was usually a big feature of the 3Rs season - dancing to a live band.  Even the discos, dodgy or otherwise, seem to be more or less extinct these days, but at one time a group or even a dance orchestra was a fairly regular feature.  I am an appalling dancer and rarely enjoy the practice, so I'm not entirely sure why I find myself remembering the live music era with a degree of nostalgia.  It's probably fond recollection of the whole experience of those evenings, and part of that will be tied in with memories of a roll-call of faces which we now see rarely or not at all.

Mention of faces that we don’t see reminds me of another long running feature of 3R's past life, namely the Shobdon Fancy Dress Dinner.  Again, I am not particularly enthusiastic about dressing up in uncomfortable costumes, but, as with the dancing, I quite enjoy seeing other people doing it well.  And sometimes it was done very well indeed; in fact I can remember once walking into the bar at the Talbot and encountering a sea of faces all belonging to people I knew perfectly well, but not being able to identify a single one of them.


So, I've just written that I can't sort out pilots and navigators at a distance of six or eight feet.  We established earlier that I find identifying competing aircraft difficult in any but ideal conditions.  And last time I admitted that speaking to an audience doesn't come at all easily.  I know I headed these jottings "Confessions" but this is turning out way more revealing than I expected.

Those of you who expected this episode to include lap dancing, take a 15-second penalty!

Next time:  When it works, it works.


Paddy Carpenter recently celebrated 50 years as a writer and filmmaker.  He heard about Air Racing from Ken Wilson while he was in the earliest stages of his flight training at Staverton in 1980.  He claims to be far too sensible to have ever raced or navigated although he is married to someone who isn't, so he can't be totally sane.  As Ken also introduced him to Safaya, many years before they got together, that man Wilson has a lot to answer for!  Paddy's recent novel, UNSAFE - The Script of One-Zero-Three, which reinvestigates Lockerbie and contains much flying, is now available - details on www.paddycarpenter.com and links or check it out on Amazon worldwide.

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Skillful Sculpting of Small Scale Shiny Schneiders

15/1/2015

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I have been working now for almost a year on finding an alternative source of Miniature Schneider Trophies. I approached three manufacturing jewellers two of who were not interested and the third wanted £1000 each for them.

At this point I thought to myself that “it can’t be that difficult”. Just shows how wrong one can be, so me being me I decided to explore the internet to find out how to exactly to make a silver replica using the “Lost Wax” or “Investment Casting” method.

So, the basic process, if you are interested is that one produces a wax replica of the desired article by first producing a silicone resin mould which I did by setting my own replica into a Perspex box and pouring liquid silicone around it. When the silicone had set I was able to carefully cut the mould open using a scalpel to remove the replica from within.

I now had a mould into which I would have to pour molten wax and when it had cooled and hardened I could, after several attempts, carefully remove the wax model from it without breaking the wings off! A couple of hours work was required with various shaped tools and more scalpels and I had a wax model complete with risers (wax rods attached to the model in strategic places) to allow the air trapped within the mould cavity to escape when the molten silver is poured in.


The next part of the process is to cast a plaster of Paris mould by placing the wax model upside down into a suitably sized steel receptacle and pouring plaster of Paris up to the top of the risers. Once set the process could continue.


The mould is placed upside down again in an oven of some sort and heated so that the wax model melts away and leaves a cavity in the plaster into which molten metal can be poured.

I didn't have an oven at work so I took the plaster mould home and sat it in the oven in our kitchen. I gave it gas mark 5 or 190 degrees C for a couple of hours. I retired to the settee to watch some TV and was surprised just how quickly the wax would melt and come to its own personal boiling point whereupon it smokes furiously and filled the house with the smell you get when you have just blown out the candles on your birthday cake. Needless to say I was banned from the house with my “hair brained” Schemes and I had to find a “proper” Kiln.

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The next step in the process following melting out the wax is to pour molten metal into the mould. I had been lucky enough to borrow a small electric crucible which my partner had used to melt scrap precious metals into ingots. Silver was procured by purchasing scrap silver candlesticks, spoons and the like on eBay. I was careful to limit my bids to the cost per gram at the going bullion rate for scrap less any postage based upon the weight of the item. I knew that my own replica weighed approximately 400g so I purchased about half a kilo.
Now the moment of truth, I switched on the crucible to melt the scrap silver and sat the mould squarely on my bench and. Nothing happened! I investigated and found that the temperature controller was faulty on the crucible and needed replacement, a few days later and the crucible was working. 

Silver melts at around 690 degrees C which is quite a bright yellow when molten and I must say a little daunting to handle. Protective gloves and a face mask are the order of the day. 

The moment of truth came and I took the special tongues and carefully lifted the carbon melting pot from the crucible and began to pour the molten silver into the mould. 

After a few seconds of pouring something akin to the first moments of Krakatoa seemed to be happening. First smoke and then bubbling, gentle at first then increasingly more violent. I stood back and watched what can only be described as a slightly smaller version of what happened at Pompeii and I don’t mean Portsmouth! I survived and gathered up the pieces of silver which had erupted from the mould due to the burning of the residue of the wax which was left in there.

 Needless to say more research was needed to find out what I had done wrong. As it turned out I should have “burned out the wax” for four hours at 600 degrees C to remove any residue of wax from the mould, what I needed was a bigger Kiln!  I trawled the internet and was disappointed to find that what I needed a pottery Kiln was typically priced around £400.  At this point I was about to give up when I came across a Kiln on a farm in Stevenage which was described as for “spares or repair” I made a bid of £20 and bought it for £17! Now I had to collect it from Stevenage. I persuaded our van driver that he would like a drive down the A1 and off he went.

He struggled to find the place and between him and the farmer they got it into the van and he made his way back up the A1 to Worksop. 
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When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised to find it mostly complete but not working. I enlisted the help of an electrician who works for us from time to time and after a couple of days we threw the switch, warmth! Then Heat! It was working, now I could really move on. 
Back to the process of making the wax and casting and encasing it in plaster. Slowly my productions improved but I could not persuade the mould to fill fully and holes were always evident in the castings. I followed many blind alleys and eventually came to the conclusion that I should perhaps try another metal. So, back to the internet. 

I discovered that there is a metal very similar to pewter but with no lead called Britannia Metal. I could buy Britannia metal at around a fifth of the cost of silver. The melting point was 375 degrees and best of all I could buy a high temperature silicone resin which I could pour the Britannia metal directly into. Result!
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Well perhaps not yet, the main factor in using this metal was that I could make castings and if they were unsatisfactory re-melt the faulty casting and cast another one again within 20 minutes.

I had an exciting moment during this process as because I could melt it at a lower temperature than silver I could employ a large metal ladle and a gas and air torch. I placed the ladle on the hearth in my workshop and proceeded to heat about 1 and a half Kgs of metal. It quickly became molten and I prepared for a pour. 

I had been working during the day on a project we have to build a magnetic conveyor for carrying tin lids from one machine to another and unbeknown to me I had a fairly powerful magnet in my coat pocket. I turned off the blow-torch and bent down to place it back on the hook by the hearth and the magnet being a magnet sought out the nearest piece of steel and made a bee-line for it! The metal it found was the handle of the ladle. It promptly pulled the ladle now containing a smoking pool of molten metal off the hearth and I watched in what appeared to be slow motion the whole one and a half kilos pour on to the floor in front of me. My natural reaction was to leap in the air with the style Dick Fosbury would have been proud of, my feet left the ground just in time for me to see the column of hot metal hit the ground and spread out beneath me thankfully missing me completely! Kelsall’s Luck exhibiting itself again. I waited for the metal splashes to cool and swept them up to be re-melted. Close escape number two.


I went through fifty or sixty pourings and after much more research made a satisfactory casting. The mould was by now becoming a little tired and I chose to pour another resin mould. Now after cutting many air escape slots and dusting the mould with talc prior to casting I could produce quite a nice replica.
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When you spend your life working in steel wood working becomes quite straight forward and after going back to that shop for all seasons (and things) EBay, I bought a suitable lump of timber for the plinths.

The manufacture of the plinths was quite straight forward after I made a bespoke cutter to achieve the shape on the shoulders of the block and following much sanding, staining and varnishing I had good Plinths.

A fair degree of finishing is needed to the castings but I am sure you will be as pleased as I am with the result.

So there you have it I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed chasing this particular fairy I have learnt quite a lot along the way. I have produced three successful trophies and I hope they will be satisfactory. I would suggest that I have made a goodly saving on them which when I consider the cost of the materials I have used along the way, not of course including the silver which I still have and the potters kiln which I may use if more are required in the future.

John Kelsall
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