These are my lockdown projects.
All are rebuilt/restored models I built decades ago.
The Ryan STA (Sig kit) and the Deweyville Special (Orline Kit) are from about 1983.
The Cessna 172 is a Leima kit built in 1974.
The Kinner Sportster was built in 1981 from a Flyline kit.
All are electric powered now.
From an "I work for the Fire Brigade in Operational Support and couldn't get a single day off even if I was bleeding out of my eyes" point of view, not too bad at the moment!
The initial chaos, befuddlement over rules, gnawing fear, grinding tedium of cleaning everything, and annoyance at the whole thing has passed, and it's now settled down to a routine of working, cleaning down everything you've touched, tea break, clean again, followed by some more cleaning, lunch break, a bit of work, and a final wipe down before repeating the next day.
In the bait room it's 4 people maximum, well distanced, and you clean down before you sit, and clean down after you get up.
Couple that with a healthy dose of suspicion, and a general mistrust of anyone with even the mildest of coughs.
I think it's going to take a very long time to get back to 'normal' after this. Even something like handling loose change, which I haven't done for weeks and weeks now, will feel odd.
A lot of the office staff are self isolating, and will now be very much into the swing of working from home. I don't think they will be back to the big open plan offices in a hurry. Who would want to when after months it's proved you can operate quite satisfactorily from home!
I'm Foreman of the equipment workshop, and it's tidy and clinically clean at the best of times (has to be when you're working with 700 bar hydraulics), so nice and straightforward to keep the 'busy bits' as free from any viruses as possible.
I know it won't protect me more than a certain amount, but I'm just trying to reduce risk. If it happens, it happens.
My game plan personally from the start was to avoid it as long as possible until the NHS got a grip on things and the figures decreased significantly. By the time I present with it, if I ever do, they'll be past masters at dealing with it I hope...
As for modeling, I'm still plugging away, slowly. I'm still not satisfied with my efforts, but it passes time better than anything else I've come across.
Well I'm in my 70's with co morbidities so am under 'house arrest' for a min of 12 weeks. I'm now hearing from several sources that this will likely be extended to 18 months! No point in building if I'm going to be locked up for that time at least with the threat of fines and jail if I get caught out side. I might just as well get the road tax back on my car and stop the insurance. I remember smog's in London and other epidemics in the UK. I know this is not an infectious problems; The great smog of December 1952 killed 12,000 in the December and that was just London(a much smaller city than now). Did the government stop steam trains, coal fired power stations, domestic coal fires,? No. It took decades to change.
So, I Googled around the various infection/epidemic linked terms. The UK has experienced many epidemics in the past(Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, etc) that infected more and killed more but we did not trash the economy and imprison the population in their own homes. I have an uneasy feeling about all this, there is a sort of 'disconnect' between what we are told, the consequences and the official actions taken. So, I asked around to find out who, if any, had been made ill or if they knew of any one. Nobody where I live. The local policeman didn't know of any. Nothing reported in the club FB page. Nothing in the other FB pages/groups I frequent. Nothing on forums. The widow of my late best friend in Chelmsford didn't know of any cases local to her or anyone she knew. My wife and her friends didn't know of any cases. The children living in Lancashire didn't know of anybody. The youngest son living at his girlfriends parents house in Milton Keynes had nothing to report. Surely they should have heard of someone, first or second hand, affected by this virus. To me the draconian restrictions and rules along with panic/scare stories do not match the real life evidence.
So, is there something more sinister about this virus that 'they' are not telling us or is this being used as an opportunity to implement something else?
Anyone on here know of any cases first or second hand? What are your thoughts.
End of week four and not much has changed.... "Click and collect" is working brilliantly at the Sainsbury's in town. Our "exercise" each afternoon tends to be a cycle ride which takes in a short visit to my 94y/o mum who lives on her own...... I take a flask of tea and some biscuits, she sits in the doorway with her cup of tea and we sit in the garden and drink ours at a distance of >2metres! I haven't been flying out of the field at back of my place mainly because there has been too much wind for the last week or so. I've done a bit in the garden, which I find intensely boring but it has to done and Granddaughter has kept me occupied with a couple of her projects.
Frustratingly, I have run out of polyester resin so although I have got a useable fuselage out of my old mould, I can't do much more to it until I have sourced some more resin for fairings and one or two other bits. I need to do a "stock take" to see if I have enough balsa to build the wings and tailplane. The thread on Simprop radios has prompted me to have another go at converting my old Simprop SAM and Phil has sent me another of his 7 channel encoders so I'm looking forward to getting into that in the coming week.
Regarding the "do you know anyone personally that's had it?" question, the numbers mean that it's unlikely for most people, so far.
With a reported death count of about 20,000 in the UK out of a population of 70 million, that's only about one person dead out of every 3,500. And the number of people who're sure they've had the disease (tested positive) is about 120,000 - so that's still only one person out of every 600. And remember, the hot spots for the breakout are London and other big cities, so if you live away from those, the fractions in your area are even lower.
So unless you number your personal friends, relatives, and colleagues in the hundreds or thousands, you're unlikely to know a victim personally, yet.
jackdaw wrote: 19 Apr 2020, 14:57
Anyone on here know of any cases first or second hand? What are your thoughts.
Yes...... There are at least two cases in our village. One is the father of one of the kids at my granddaughter's school, I don't know the other. I'm told that at the beginning of last week there were five cases in the Care Home in the next village. One is a lady we knew slightly before she went into the home. Apparently she is expected to recover. I also know a couple living near Brighton who both had it at the beginning when Brighton was a "hot spot". Both recovered but said it was just a really nasty bout of flu.
So I can assure you this thing is real........
Paul
UPDATE: I have just been informed that a former work colleague (not someone I have kept in touch with) has died of Covid 19.
Last edited by PaulJ on 21 Apr 2020, 14:52, edited 1 time in total.
I happen to work for a large logistics company so to say we are busy would be an understatement. Jobs are still looking at risk but for now flat out. My team looks after the city of Sydney & the Eastern & Southern suburbs so right in the heart of the bulk of Covid cases for Australia, just to make it more exciting.....
In answer to the "do you know anyone with Covid", I know 3 people who have been infected. Thankfully one was completely without symptoms, one had mild symptoms & the 3rd was hospitalised but on the mend now.
I did manage 4 days off recently & made the most of it by fixing an 80s sailplane (Tbird) that had a nasty landing when the lift died while flying atop a 700m high mountain. A 2m span glider is mighty hard to see more than 1km away down in the valley & the landing was less than perfect resulting in a lot of damage.
Also repaired a newly acquired 3.5m sailplane from the same manufacturer. These were the ducks guts in Australia in the 80s.
I'm still deciding whether to build another Tomboy after the fly away or whether to build something else. I'm not sure what my next Balsa build will be.
Al
Attachments
All fixed
Under repair
Launching on the fateful flight. Landing way down below.
