Last Summer (5th/6th July, as I remember the Summer was a bit short) I sold most of my flyable models, apart from one or two ARTFs everything was scratch built. Now I have a pristine 3D printer which produces complicated parts that would take me ages to make. Unfortunately tinkering with a program on a computer and feeding the result into the printer is not a bit satisfying. Now I'm facing the daunting prospect of being locked up for several months for something I didn't do, so I've been trying to find something interesting to fill the days. 3D printing is just a matter of number juggling, the lonely flying field of the Phoenix flight sim soon becomes quite boring, reading a book means sitting still for hours at a time, computer games don't appeal at all. I can't play "Hunt the Toilet-Roll", firstly I'm not supposed to go outside, secondly there aren't any left to hunt. I thought of buying a kit and renewing my enthusiasm for traditional building. Unfortunately I couldn't find a single design that fired my interest, except one advertised by the Sussex Model Centre. That model, just like the elusive toilet roll, is out of stock. I could buy it from the American manufacturer, but by the time I'd paid the shipping and import duty, let alone the cost of disinfecting the parcel and its contents, the cost would be too much.
This afternoon I remembered the useful website called Outer Zone, an absolute mine of info on a great many designs. I found the plan for the model I'd thought of building, and downloaded it, as well as a very useful build manual that will probably be totally ignored until I run into a snag,
Unfortunately I found a different snag straight away, I wanted to "tile print" the plans, something I used to do when using Windows 7 as the operating system, the new and much "improved" Windows 10, although showing the same printer window details, has inhibited the tile print facility.
The last couple of hours have been spent in dusting off and firing up my old Win.7 computer. It seems to work alright, even tells the correct date and time, not bad for a four year layoff. If I can get it to play nicely with the printer, with luck I'll be having a jolly evening with cutting board, steel straight edge and balsa knife. With even more luck, tomorrow I should be able to tape together all the tiles to make the three sheet plan.
