Wooden Model Builder

Whats on my workbench

2014-12-23T06:55:00.002+02:00

Book Added to Downloadable Books Page

2014-10-26T07:38:00.002+02:00

Nicolas Witsen

and Shipbuilding in the Dutch Golden Age

DOWNLOAD HERE

Volvo FH 6X4 Wheels

2014-02-02T02:16:00.000+02:00

Volvo FH 6X4 Update New chassis and suspension

2013-11-09T20:40:00.002+02:00

Last week was a bit slow, but have some progress this week. The new set of drawing are progressing well, I have decided to show as much detail as possible. I have found that Beech is very nice wood to work with. Other than the dowels and bamboo skewers the wood is all Beech.

Volvo FH 6X4 Rear Suspension

2013-10-27T18:45:00.001+02:00

Here is the start of the new rear suspension for the Volvo 6X4, I was not happy with the previous version and have opted for far more detail. So far the chassis profile the leaf springs and stabilisers.

Volvo FH 6X4 Build

2013-10-20T07:34:00.000+02:00

Some photo's of the Volvo FH truck that I am building, there is a lot of detail in these trucks, which with some thought can be reproduced quite nicely.

The drawings printed, cut out and taped together

Fifth wheel is in the wrong place

the drawings

Trebuchet

2013-10-06T10:00:00.000+02:00

A working model of a Trebuchet, it shoots a marble 4 to 5 meters with ease, I bet a bit of tweaking and the range could be improved. I have a video link for a trebuchet build project that took place in Scotland, very interesting it shows the power of theses relatively simple machines.

You Tube Link Here

Download Here

A New project

2013-09-25T18:19:00.000+02:00

I have been wanting to build an excavator model for my Grandson for quite some time, here is the start an idea becoming drawings.

Links to Downloadable PDF'S in Plans and Drawings

2013-03-09T11:49:00.000+02:00

The following Plans now have downloadable PDF Links

More Books Added

2013-03-02T14:51:00.001+02:00

18th Century Shipbuilding

Handbook of 19th Century Naval Warfare

Advanced Ship Modelling

Historic Ship Models

Planking Model Ships

More Books added to"Downloadable Books"

2013-02-23T09:06:00.000+02:00

Detail and Scale USS Enterprise

Anatomy Of The Ship The Battleship Fuso

Anatomy Of The Ship The Battleship Yamato

Anatomy Of The Ship The Aircraft Carrier Victorious

Rigging Period Fore and aft Craft

William Rex Model of a 17th Century Warship

Bonhomme Richard Vs Serapis Flamborough Head 1779

Tides of History Ocean Science and Her Majesty's Navy

A Good Source of Hull Planking from Plywood

2013-01-11T09:00:00.001+02:00

Below is a good way to make up your own hull planking material from plywood usually available from most hardware stores. Plywood is a good source of thin timber depending on the type of ply one chooses to use, some plywood is made up of very thin layers of veneer others are thicker.
The inner veneer layers are usualy thicker and good for first layer planking, this veneer is also a bit rough.

The first step is to choose the type of veneer you need, this is also dependant on the type of plywood available. Hardwood timber plywood is usually only available from more specialised timber merchants. Another source of good plywood is from older furniture ie wardroabs etc (I have removed the backing plywood from a number of old cabinets and replaced with masonite for my supply of plywood)

Step two is to soak the ply in water to delaminate the layers, depending on the glue used in the manufacturing process this can take a while. Avoid letting the plywood dry out before delaminating this must be done when the ply is still wet. Once delaminated lay the veneer out on old newspaper and alow to dry.

Step three is to cut the delaminated veneer into the required sizes to be cut into strips (the lenth of the strips required) and to coat the back of the veneer with white wood glue. The glue coating on the back makes the strip cutting process much easier and allows for straight cuts. Allow the glue to dry overnight.

Step four is to cut the veneer into strips of the correct width.

Step five is to apply the cut strips to the hull of the ship as required.

I see plywood as a ship and not just a board, if you have old furniture in your garage have a look at the backing and in some cases the chipboard veneer, this is usually very thin but can be used. You may have what you need right under your nose.

New Years Eve And more strange Orange Lights in the sky

2013-01-01T11:32:00.000+02:00

Last night the 31st Dec 2012 between 2030 and 2200, we spotted no less that nine of the orange lights (Orbs) in the sky. They appeared one at a time travelling mainly North to South or South to North, on two occasions one passed over the house no noise and below the cloud base as it was again overcast. Below are pics of what we saw.
Click on images to see full size image, in the first pick you can see the neighbors house and an outline of a tree.
All the pics were taken with the camera on a tripod, the movement is not camera shake but rather the object moving. We are also not the only people seeing these lights in South Africa, have a look at the site below. I wish someone could explain this phenomenon.

UFO SA Web site

Below is an entry posted on ufosa.co.za by Edwarrd in Pretoria of a sighting last night.

Who saw the 3 orange lights just after 12 pm last night while watching the fireworks for 2013 in Pretoria. they moved very fast from north to south. The 1st one pass and then immediatedly thereafter the 2nd and then followed by the 3rd. not the same colour as last sigting but same size as previous moving opposite direction as last time… everyone that were in Pretoria last night watching the fireworks must have seen it!!!

EdwarrdJanuary 1, 2013

Strange Lights (U.F.O) seen in the sky 24th December and 26th December 2012

2012-12-27T20:29:00.000+02:00

I never imagined that I would be writing about this subject as I am regarded as a sceptic, but this I have seen with my wife and grandson. I am not prepared to call these alien craft sightings, but only some sort of unidentified flying object or objects. Many people want to explain these sightings as aircraft, helicopters, flares, fireworks or chinese lanterns. I do not think so, I am no expert but the speed at which they moved and the height they were travelling below the cloud base there should have been sound. There are other people who believe that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it still might be something else. Who knows, it may have a simple explanation, or it may not.

At about 2045 on the evening of the 24th Dec 2012 my wife and I saw an orange light in the sky above some trees in our neighbors garden. The light was similar in colour to the orange street lights you see in most suburbs, the light also appeared to be burning or flame like.
The light moved at speed from east to west and was under the clouds, there had been a thunderstorm and rain earlier in the evening, the object appeared to be close as it passed overhead but there was no sound at all. The light soon moved out of sight, within a few minutes another appeared much further away also moving east to west the light then appeared to stand still for a few seconds and faded away.
At about 2125 we spotted another orange light moving low on the horizon north to south this one was moving very fast, it disappeared shortly after. We then saw another orange light which seemed to be traveling east to west on the same path as the second one, this too appeared to fade away as the other did.

At about 2100 on the evening of the 26th Dec 2012 I saw another orange light in the sky, this one moved east to west was far away and was not visible for very long, it too faded from view. The weather conditions were similar to the evening of the 24th. I do not think that these lights could have been Chinese lanterns, as they moved way too fast and there was no wind at all.

What did we see??? we are not the only people that have witnessed these lights, there were sightings in Natal on the 20th and 21st Dec 2012 and in Cape Town from Jan to Dec 2012 what do you think??

The pics above I took on the 24th Dec 2012 look at the photo of the CT sighting in Jan 2012

Pics taken with cell phone quality not too good

Have a look at the links below

Sighting in Natal 20 and 21 Dec 2012   ufoinfo.com
Cape Town Sighting Jan to Dec 2012   ahbotha.blogspot.com
US UFO Site  theufochronicles.com

Bluenose Plans PDF

2012-10-28T12:36:00.000+02:00

Download Plans here: Letitbit
Turbobit

H.M.S Bounty PDF Drawings

2012-10-18T17:15:00.003+02:00

Link to a set of PDF drawings of Bounty

Download Here Letitbit
Turbobit

H.M.S Enterprize PDF Drawings

2012-10-18T16:57:00.002+02:00

Downloadable set of PDF plans for H.M.S Enterprize

Download Here Letitbit
Turbobit

Skymonk free download manager

2012-10-17T21:18:00.001+02:00

This is a free program for downloading files from Letitbit.net, Shareflare.net, Vip-file.com and sms4file.net. It will help you to quickly and easily upload files to your computer, manage already downloaded files, download the data to the server, and more. Has a built-in download manager.
Get Skymonk here for free

Free File hosting service LET IT BIT

2012-10-17T11:30:00.002+02:00

Great way to share files, photo's or anything. All info and pictures on this blog are stored at Letitbit

Free File Hosting

H.M.S Revenge 1577

2012-10-17T11:25:00.000+02:00

Below is a link to an updated drawing file of H.M.S Revenge less than 3mb.

H.M.S_Revenge.rar

A little bit more info on the Bob Lazar Video

2012-04-22T09:32:00.000+02:00

Below is a portion of the book:

AREA 51
An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret
Military Base
ANNIE JACOBSEN

In 1955, when the Central Intelligence Agency arrived at Area 51,
its men brought with them the U.S. Air Force as a partner in the
nation’s first peacetime aerial espionage program. Several other key
organizations had a vested interest in the spy plane project and were
therefore briefed on Area 51’s existence and knew that the CIA and
Air Force were working in partnership there. Agencies included NACA
—the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NASA’s
forerunner)—and the Navy, both of which provided cover stories to
explain airplanes flying in and out of a military base that didn’t officially
exist. The National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), the
agency that would interpret the photographs the U-2 collected on spy
missions abroad, was also informed about the area. From 1955 until
the late 1980s, these federal agencies as well as several other
clandestine government organizations born in the interim—including
the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Security
Agency (NSA), and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)—all worked
together behind a barrier of secrecy on Area 51 programs. But very
few individuals outside of an elite group of federal employees and
black-world contractors with top secret clearances had confirmation
that the secret base really was there until November of 1989. That is
when a soft-spoken, bespectacled, thirty-year-old native Floridian
named Robert Scott Lazar appeared on Eyewitness News in Las
Vegas with an investigative reporter named George Knapp and
revealed Area 51 to the world. Out of the tens of thousands of people
who had worked at Area 51 over the years, Lazar was the only
individual who broke the oath of silence in such a public way. Whether
one worked as a scientist or a security guard, an engineer or an
engine cleaner, serving at Area 51 was both an honor and a privilege.
The secrecy oath was sacred, and the veiled threats of incarceration
no doubt helped people keep it. With Bob Lazar, more than four
decades of Area 51’s secrecy came to a dramatic end.

That Bob Lazar wound up at Area 51 owing to a job referral by the
Hungarian-born nuclear physicist Dr. Edward Teller is perfectly ironic.
Teller coinvented the world’s most powerful weapon of mass
destruction, the thermonuclear bomb, and tested many incarnations of
his diabolical creation just a few miles over the hill from Area 51, in the
numbered sectors that make up the Nevada Test Site. The test site is
America’s only domestic atomic-bomb range and is Area 51’s
working partner. Area 12, Area 19, and Area 20, inside the test site’s
legal boundaries, are just some of the parcels of land that bear Dr.
Teller’s handprint: charred earth, atomic craters, underground tunnels
contaminated with plutonium.* Area 51 sits just outside.
Bob Lazar first met Edward Teller in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in
June of 1982, when Lazar only twenty-three years old. Lazar was
working at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in radioactive-particle
detection as a contractor for the Kirk-Mayer Corporation when he
arrived early for a lecture Teller was giving in the lab’s auditorium.
Before the lecture, Lazar spotted Teller reading the Los Alamos
Monitor, where, as coincidence would have it, there was a page-1
story featuring Bob Lazar and his new invention, the jet car. Lazar
seized the opportunity. “That’s me you’re reading about,” he famously
told Teller as a means of engaging him in conversation. Here was an
ambitious young scientist reaching out to the jaded, glutted grandfather
of mass destruction. In hindsight it makes perfect sense that the
ultimate consequences of this moment were not beneficent for Lazar.
Six years later, Lazar’s life had reached an unexpected low. He’d
been fired from his job at Los Alamos. Terrible financial problems set
in. He and his wife, Carol Strong, who was thirteen years his senior,
moved to Las Vegas and opened up a photo-processing shop. The
marriage fell apart. Lazar remarried a woman named Tracy Murk,
who’d worked as a clerk for the Lazars. Two days after Bob Lazar’s
wedding to Tracy, his first wife, Carol, committed suicide by inhaling
carbon monoxide in a shuttered garage. Lazar declared bankruptcy
and sought advanced engineering work. He reached out to everyone
he could think of, including Dr. Edward Teller, who was now
spearheading President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star
Wars. In 1988, Teller found Lazar a job.

This job was far from any old advanced engineering job. Edward
Teller had recommended Bob Lazar to the most powerful defenseindustry
contractor at Area 51, a company called EG&G. Among the
thousands of top secret and Q-cleared contractors who have worked
on classified and black projects at the Nevada Test Site and Area 51,
none has had as much power and access, or as little oversight, as
EG&G. On Teller’s instruction, Lazar called a telephone number. A
person at the other end of the line told him to go to McCarran Airport,
in downtown Las Vegas, on a specific date in December—to the
EG&G building there. Lazar was told he would be flown by private
aircraft to Groom Lake. He was excited and followed orders. Inside the
EG&G building, he was introduced to a man called Dennis Mariani
who would soon become his supervisor. The two men went to the
south end of the airport and into a secure hangar ringed by security
fences and guarded by men with guns. There, EG&G ran a fleet of 737
airplanes that flew back and forth to Groom Lake—and still do.
Because they flew with the call sign Janet, this private Area 51
commuter fleet had become known as Janet Airlines. Lazar and his
supervisor passed through security and boarded a white aircraft with
no markings or logo, just a long red stripe running the length of the
airplane.

Fly to Area 51 on a northerly course from Las Vegas and you’ll see
a Nevada landscape that is classic American Southwest: snowcapped
mountains, rolling hills, and desert valley floors. Bob Lazar would not
have seen any of this on his approach to Groom Lake because the
window curtains on his Janet Airlines flight would have been drawn—
they always are when newcomers arrive. The airspace directly over
Area 51 has been restricted since the mid-1950s, which means no
one peers down onto Area 51 without authorization except satellites
circling the globe in outer space. By the time Lazar arrived, the 575-
square-mile airspace had long been nicknamed the Box, and Air
Force pilots at nearby Nellis Air Force Base know never to enter it.
Distinctly visible at the very center of Area 51’s Box sits a near-perfect
six-mile-diameter endorheic basin, also known as a dry lake. It was the
lake bed itself that originally appealed to the CIA; for decades it had
doubled as a natural runway for Area 51’s secret spy planes.
Almost everything visible on approach to Area 51 from the air is
restricted government land. There are no public highways, no shopping
malls, no twentieth-century urban sprawl. Where the land is hilly,
Joshua trees and yucca plants grow, their long spiky leaves extended
skyward like swords. Where the land is flat, it is barren and bald.
Except for creosote bushes and tumbleweed, very little grows out here
on the desert floor. The physical base—its hangars, runways,
dormitories, and towers—begins at the southernmost tip of Groom’s
dry lake. The structures spread out in rows, heading south down the
Emigrant Valley floor. The hangars’ metal rooftops catch the sunlight
and reflect up as the Janet airplane enters the Box. A huge antenna
tower rises up from the desert floor. The power plant’s cooling tower
comes into view, as do the antennas on the radio-shop roof, located at
the end of one of the two, perpendicular taxiways. Radar antennas
spin. One dish is sixty feet in diameter and always faces the sky; its
beams are so powerful they would instantly cook the internal organs of
any living thing. The Quick Kill system, designed by Raytheon to detect
incoming missile signals, sits at the edge of the dry lake bed not far
from the famous pylon featured in Lockheed publicity photos but never
officially identified as located at Area 51. Insiders call the pylon “the
pole”—it’s where the radar cross section on prototype stealth aircraft
is measured. State-of-the-art, million-dollar black aircraft are turned
upside down and hoisted aloft on this pole, making each one look tiny
and insignificant in the massive Groom Lake expanse, like a bug on a
pin in a viewing case.

As a passenger on the Janet 737 gets closer, it becomes easier
for the eye to judge distance. Groom Mountain reveals itself as a
massive summit that reaches 9,348 feet. It towers over the base at its
northernmost end and is rife with Area 51 history and lore. Countless
Area 51 commanding officers have spent weekends on the mountain
hunting deer. Hidden inside its craggy lower peaks are two old lead
and silver mines named Black Metal and Sheehan Mine. In the 1950s,
one ancient miner hung on to his federal mining rights with such
ferocity that the government ended up giving him a security clearance
and briefing him on Area 51 activities rather than continuing to fight to
remove him. The miner kept the secrecy oath and took Area 51’s early
secrets with him to the grave.
At the southernmost end of the base sits a gravel pit and concretemixing
facilities that are used to construct temporary buildings that
need to go up quick. Against the sloping hills to the west sit the old
fuel-storage tanks that once housed JP-7 jet fuel, specially designed
for CIA spy planes that needed to withstand temperature fluctuations
from −90 degrees to 285 degrees Fahrenheit. To the south, on a
plateau of its own, is the weapons assembly and storage facility. This
is recognizable from the air by a tall ring of mounded dirt meant to
deflect blasts in the event of an accident. Behind the weapons depot, a
single-lane dirt road runs up over the top of the hill and dumps back
down into the Nevada Test Site next door, at Gate 800 (sometimes
called Gate 700). Old-timers from the U-2 spy plane days called this
access point Gate 385, originally the only way in to Area 51 if you were
not arriving by air. On the Area 51 side of the gate, the shipping and
receiving building can be found. In the height of the nuclear testing
days, the 1950s and 1960s, trucks from the Atomic Energy
Commission motor pool spent hours in the parking lot here while their
appropriately cleared drivers enjoyed Area 51’s legendary gourmet
chow.

In December of 1988, had Lazar been looking out the Janet 737
aircraft window just before landing, off to the northwest he would have
seen EG&G radar sites dotting the valley floor in a diagonal line. Part
of the Air Force’s foreign technology division, which began in 1968,
these radar sites include coveted Soviet radar systems acquired from
Eastern-bloc countries and captured during Middle East wars. Also to
the north lies Slater Lake, named after Commander Slater and dug by
contractors during the Vietnam War. Around the lake’s sloped banks
are trees unusual for the area: tall and leafy, looking as if they belong in
Europe or on the East Coast. This is the only nonindigenous plant life
in all of Area 51. Move ahead to December of 1998, and five miles
beyond Slater Lake, across the flat, dry valley floor, an airplane
passenger would have seen a crew of men dressed in HAZMAT suits
busily removing the top six inches of soil from a 269-acre parcel
contaminated with plutonium. Set inside Area 51’s airspace but in a
quadrant of its own, this sector was designated Area 13. What the
men did was known to only a select few. Like all things at Area 51, if a
person didn’t have a need-to-know, he knew not to ask.
The airplane carrying Lazar would likely have landed on the
easternmost runway and then taxied up to the Janet terminal, near the
security building. Lazar and his supervisor, Dennis Mariani, would
have gone through security there. According to Lazar, he was taken to
a cafeteria on the base. When a bus pulled up, he and Mariani climbed
aboard. Lazar said he could not see exactly where he was taken
because the curtains on the bus windows were drawn. If Lazar had
been able to look outside he would have seen the green grass of the
Area 51 baseball field, where, beginning in the mid-1960s, during the
bonanza of underground nuclear testing, Area 51 workers battled
Nevada Test Site workers at weekly softball games. Lazar’s bus would
have also driven past the outdoor tennis courts, where Dr. Albert
Wheelon, the former Mayor of Area 51, loved to play tennis matches at
midnight. Lazar would have passed the swimming pool where CIA
project pilots trained for ocean bailouts by jumping into the pool
wearing their high-altitude flight suits. Lazar would have passed the
Area 51 bar, called Sam’s Place, built by and named after the great
Area 51 navigator Sam Pizzo and in which a photograph of a nearly
naked Sophia Loren used to drive men wild.
In December of 1988, Lazar had no idea that he was stepping into
a deep, textured, and totally secret history. He couldn’t have known it
because the men described above wouldn’t tell their stories for
another twenty years, not until their CIA project was declassified and
they spoke on the record for this book. But Lazar’s arrival at Area 51
made its own kind of history, albeit in a radical and controversial way.
In making Area 51 public, as he subsequently did, Lazar transformed
the place from a clandestine research, development, and test-flight
facility into a national enigma. From the moment Lazar appeared on
Eyewitness News in Las Vegas making utterly shocking allegations,
the public’s fascination with Area 51, already percolating for decades,
took on a life of its own. Movies, television shows, record albums, and
video games would spring forth, all paying homage to a secret base
that no outsider could ever visit.

According to Lazar, that first day he was at Area 51 he was driven
on a bumpy dirt road for approximately twenty or thirty minutes before
arriving at a mysterious complex of hangars built into the side of a
mountain somewhere on the outskirts of Groom Lake. There, at an
outpost facility Lazar says was called S-4, he was processed through
a security system far more intense than the one he’d been subjected to
just a little earlier, at Area 51’s primary base. He signed one document
allowing his home telephone to be monitored and another that waived
his constitutional rights. Then he was shown a flying saucer and told it
would be his job to reverse engineer its antigravity propulsion system.
All told, there were nine saucers at S-4, Lazar says. He says he was
given a manual that explained that the flying saucers had come from
another planet. Lazar also said he was shown drawings of beings that
looked like aliens—the pilots, he inferred, of these outer-space crafts.
According to Lazar, over the following winter, he worked at S-4,
mostly during the night, for a total of approximately ten days. The work
was intense but sporadic, which frustrated him. Sometimes he worked
only one night a week. He longed for more. He never told anyone about
what he was doing at S-4, not even his wife, Tracy, or his best friend,
Gene Huff. One night in early March of 1989, Lazar was being
escorted down a hallway inside S-4 by two armed guards when he
was ordered to keep his eyes forward. Instead, curiosity seized Bob
Lazar. He glanced sideways, through a small, nine-by-nine-inch
window, and for a brief moment, he says, he saw inside an unmarked
room. He thought he saw a small, gray alien with a large head standing
between two men dressed in white coats. When he tried to get a better
look, he was pushed by a guard who told him to keep his eyes forward
and down.

For Lazar, it was a turning point. Something shifted in him and he
felt he could no longer bear the secret of the flying saucers or what was
maybe an alien but “could have been a million things.” Like the tragic
literary figure Faust, Lazar had yearned for secret knowledge,
information that other men did not possess. He got that at S-4. But
unlike Faust, Bob Lazar did not hold up his end of the bargain. Instead,
Lazar felt compelled to share what he had learned with his wife and his
friend, meaning he broke his Area 51 secrecy oath. Lazar knew the
schedule for the flying saucer test flights being conducted out at Groom
Lake and he suggested to his wife, Tracy, his friend Gene Huff, and
another friend named John Lear—a committed ufologist and the son of
the man who invented the Learjet—that they come along with him and
see for themselves.
The group made a trip down Highway 375 into the mountains
behind Groom Lake. With them they brought high-powered binoculars
and a video camera. They waited. Sure enough, they said, the activity
began. Lazar’s wife and friends saw what appeared to be a brightly lit
saucer rise up from above the mountains that hid the Area 51 base
from view. They watched it hover and land. The following Wednesday
they returned to the site. Then they made a third visit, on April 5, 1989
—this time down a long road leading into the base called Groom Lake
Road—which ended in fiasco. The trespassers were discovered by
Area 51 security guards, detained, and required to show ID. They
answered questions for the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department and
were let go.

The following day, Lazar reported to work at the EG&G building at
McCarran Airport. He was met by Dennis Mariani, who informed Lazar
that he would not be going out to Groom Lake as planned. Instead,
Lazar was driven to Indian Springs Air Force Base. The guard who
had caught him the night before was helicoptered in from the Area 51
perimeter to confirm that Bob Lazar was one of the four people found
snooping in the woods the night before. Lazar was told that he was no
longer an employee of EG&G and if he ever went anywhere near
Groom Lake again, alone or with friends, he would be arrested for
espionage.
During his questioning at Indian Springs, he was allegedly given
transcripts of his wife’s telephone conversations, which made clear to
Lazar that his wife was having an affair. Lazar became convinced he
was being followed by government agents. Someone shot out his tire
when he was driving to the airport, he said. Fearing for his life, he
decided to go public with his story and contacted Eyewitness News
anchor George Knapp. Lazar’s TV appearance in November of 1989
broke the station’s record for viewers, but the original audience was
limited to locals. It took some months for Lazar’s story to go global.
The man responsible for that happening was a Japanese American
mortician living in Los Angeles named Norio Hayakawa.
Decades later, Norio Hayakawa still recalls the moment he first
heard Lazar on the radio. “It was late at night,” Hayakawa explains. “I
was working in the mortuary and listening to talk radio. KVEG out of
Las Vegas, ‘The Happening Show,’ with host Billy Goodman.
Remember, this was in early 1990, long before Art Bell and George
Noory were doing ‘Coast to Coast,’” Hayakawa recalls. “I heard Bob
Lazar telling his story about S-Four and I became intrigued.” As
Hayakawa toiled away at the Fukui Mortuary in Little Tokyo, he listened
to Bob Lazar talk about flying saucers. Having no television
experience, Hayakawa contacted a Japanese magazine called Mu,
renowned for its popular stories about UFOs. “Mu got in touch with me
right away and said they were interested. And that Nippon TV was
interested too.” In a matter of weeks, Japan’s leading TV station had
dispatched an eight-man crew from Tokyo to Los Angeles. Hayakawa
took them out to Las Vegas, where he’d arranged for an interview with
Bob Lazar. That was in February of 1990.
“We went on a Wednesday because that was the day we’d heard
on the radio they did flying saucer tests,” Hayakawa recalls. “We
interviewed Lazar for three or four hours. He was a strange person. He
had bodyguards with him in his house who followed him around
everywhere he went. But we were satisfied with the interview. We
decided to try and film some of the saucer activity at Area 51.”
Hayakawa asked Lazar if he would take them to the lookout point on
Tikaboo Mountain off Highway 375. Lazar declined but told them
exactly where to go and at what time. “We went to the place and set up
our equipment. Lo and behold, just after sundown, a bright orangeish
light came rising up off the land near Groom Lake. We were filming. It
came up and made a fast directional change. This happened three
times. We couldn’t believe it,” Hayakawa says. At the time, he was
convinced that what he saw was a flying saucer—just like Lazar had
said. Hayakawa showed the footage to the magazine’s bosses in
Japan, who were thrilled. The TV station had paid Lazar a little over
five thousand dollars for a two-hour segment about his experience at
Area 51. Part of the deal was that Lazar was going to fly to Tokyo with
Norio Hayakawa to do a fifteen-minute interview there. Instead, just a
few days before the show, Lazar called the director of Nippon TV and
said federal agents were preventing him from leaving the country.
Lazar agreed to appear on the show via telephone and answered
questions from telephone callers instead. “The program aired in
Japan’s golden hour,” Hayakawa says, “prime time.” Thirty million
Japanese viewers tuned in. “The program introduced Japan to Area
51.”

As Lazar’s Area 51 story became known around the world, Bob
Lazar the person was scrutinized by a voracious press. Every detail of
his flawed background was aired as dirty laundry for the public to
dissect. It appeared he’d lied about where he went to school. Lazar
said he had a degree from MIT, but the university says it had no record
of him. In Las Vegas, Lazar was arrested on a pandering charge. It
didn’t take long for him to disappear from the public eye. But Bob
Lazar never changed his story about what he saw at Area 51’s S-4.
Had Lazar witnessed evidence of aliens and alien technology? Was
his discrediting part of a government plot to silence him? Or was he a
fabricator, a loose cannon who perceived what he saw as an
opportunity for money and fame? He sold the film rights to his story, to
New Line Cinema, in 1993. Lazar took two lie detector tests, and both
gave inconclusive results. The person administrating the test said it
appeared that Lazar believed what he was saying was true.
“The odd part,” says Norio Hayakawa, “is how in the years after
Lazar, the story of Area 51 merged with the story of Roswell. If you stop
anyone on the street and you ask them what they know about Area 51
they say aliens.”
Or they say Roswell.

Bob Lazar Area 51 UFO Video

2012-04-13T16:30:00.001+02:00

I do not am not a UFO nut or anything, but watch this video and make up your own mind. I am of the beleif that we cannot be the only civilisation in the universe. there have to be other inhabited planets out there, but do they visit us or not, is open for debate.

Stern Gallery La Renommee 5th Rate of 1790

2012-04-05T20:31:00.000+02:00

Ship classification

2012-02-05T12:53:00.007+02:00

Types of Ships

What is a 'ship'?Although many people often refer to anything larger than a rowboat as a 'ship', in fact for real sailors and pirates the term 'ship' applies only to vessels that meet certain criteria.

The classification of ships is usually based mostly on the configuration of their rigging.
To be called a ship the vessel must be square-rigged, and must have three full masts with at least three stages of sails - course, topsail and t'gallant. Any other vessel not meeting these criteria is a boat and is known by its class name - ie sloop, brig, xebec, etc.
Creating one list that defines the different types of ships is difficult as, over the four or five centuries of the age of sail (and the Golden Age of Piracy itself covers some two centuries) the definitions of different classes of ships changed, some classes went out of use, and new classes came into use. The rating system for large warships described below, for example, only came into being relatively late, being used by the British Royal Navy from the late 1700s through the 1800s.

1st Rate: A ship of the line, the largest ship on the water at the time. Carries 100 great guns or more. Used by the established navies of the day. HMS Victory is a 1st rate. A great prize, but probably never used by a pirate since they required large crews (approx 800) and were expensive to operate:

2nd Rate: 90-98 gun ship of the line, next largest

3rd Rate: 64-80 gun ship of the line

4th Rate: 40-60 gun ship of the line.

5th Rate: 36 gun ship, as long as a first rate, but fewer cannons

6th Rate: 28-30 gun ship, also long and low. The HMS Surprise of "Master and Commander" fame was rated a 6th rate light frigate.

Frigate: Frigate encompasses a wide range of sizes from 4th to 6th rate. U.S.S Constitution is considered to be a frigate. This is probably the largest ship a pirate would have.

Schooner: Small class of ship, lightly armed carrying only 6 guns, well used for 300 years. Schooners come in both two-masted and three-masted varieties. But whether two or three-masted, schooners are fore-and-aft rigged. More common in the United States than elsewhere. Probably not a favoured ship

Sloop: ship type commonly used by pirates, had few guns, but a shallow draft, and was incredibly fast, great for negotiating shallow waterways, essential when running from pursuit. Jean Lafitte is known to have used these extensively. carried 20 guns on one gun deck

Corvette: Light and fast, corvettes were lightly armed (10 guns, though some did carry more), but more than made up for their lack of armament with their speed. Not known whether pirates used them, commonly given to privateers because of their speed. Also sometimes referred to as a "sloop-of-war".

Brig (and Brigantine): Small, fast two-masted ships. They took their name from the fact they were a favoured type of vessel for pirates or brigands. In earlier years brigantine referred to any small two-masted vessel that could be both sailed and rowed. Later the definition was more rigidly applied to certain rigging configurations. A brigantine is square-rigged on her foremast and upper mainmast, but her main sheet is actually rigged fore-and-aft on a gaff boom (as in the picture below). A brig is square-rigged on both masts. Carried around 10 guns

Barque (or Bark): The term 'barque' is one that has been in use in nautical terminology for a very long time, and has changed in definition over the years. Through the 1400s, 1500s and 1600s barque was usually applied to smaller coastal merchant vessels. In the 1700s the Royal Navy used the term generally to apply to vessels that did not fit into its other classifications. In the 1800s came to refer to a three masted vessel with a particular rigging configuration - square-rigged on the fore and main masts and fore-and-aft rigged on the mizzen.

Galleon: A class of ship developed and primarily used by the Spanish. Over several centuries galleons saw service both as merchant ships and warships. Galleons are large, heavy ships, broad in the beam, and usually characterized by high, multi-deck fore and aft castles. Those high structures, particularly the bulky fo'c'sles, tended to make galleons far less responsive in maneuverability. In later years the Spanish would cut down considerably on the size of the fo'c'sle in their galleon designs to improve performance handling, but they retained the high aft castles.
Below is an artistic rendering of a Spanish Galleon circa 1588 featuring the typical high fore and aft castles and low waist.

Image source: Konstam, A. "Spanish Galleon 1530-1690". Opsrey Publishing. Illustration by Tony Bryan

Galley: The ship of choice for pirates of the mediterranean. Galleys rely on banks of long oars, sometimes as many as two or three decks of rowers, as their primary means of propulsion. Although most galleys would have shipped at least one mast with sails as a backup. In smooth water conditions galleys actually tend to be faster and more maneuverable than sailing ships which makes them far superior in areas like the Mediterranean Sea. However they do not fare well in the rougher waters of the Atlantic or English Channel. Caribbean waters are somewhat more suited to galleys, but only somewhat. Sailing ships were still the vessel of choice there.

Fluyt: Fluyts were common in European waters and, given the presence of Dutch colonies in the new world and the trading activities of the Dutch East India Company, would have been no strangers in the waters patrolled by Caribbean pirates.

Merchantman: Another common type of vessel used by pirates. Encompasses a wide range of descriptions. These ships were built for carrying large amounts of heavy cargo, and were well built. Some merchantmen carried cannons, other did not, those that did carried large guns, and plenty of them. May be similar in size to a frigate, but certainly easier to take.

Gig: big rowboat.

Whaleboat: really big rowboat.

Dinghy: very small rowboat

Fireship: floating molotov cocktail, might be made from any class of vessel.

Free DWG Reader (able to read calibrate and print DXF Drawings)

2012-02-05T11:35:00.000+02:00

Below is a link to the Brava DWG viewer, as it is free it has its limitations, but I find once you get the hang of it, it works fine.

http://www.tucows.com/preview/520130

It has simple view tools and measurement tools with accurate snap-to-geometry functionality. Save views to JPEG. It runs as a desktop application, and an ActiveX control in IE.