Pottersville Update

The future is bright in Pottersville today. I've made a lot of progress since the last post.

The construction yard and scrap yard both now have bases so the gravel yards are surrounded by sidewalks.

I also used that idea to fill the empty fourth corner with an empty lot! 

The next three buildings, being bigger, more complex and me having other things occupying my time, took longer to finish. But they are done now.

I got some cheap boxes at a dollar store and used the hinges to make the big doors on the warehouse capable of opening.

Here's the test layout with minimal street clutter. Still need to add signs advertisements and posters etc.

I also need to figure out how to make the plastic buildings at either end of the warehouse look less plastic and anchored in the terrain instead of just floating on asphalt.

The space is big enough I could add more Sarissa buildings instead but I'd like to run this at KEGSCON in September. 

Now I just need period cars.

In Which Capt Rabbitman Relinquishes His Burdens

Three years ago  when I first took at look at what was to be my new command I found 20 cadets, a very serious, brand new OCdt and a small staff with an average age of 59 or so, and a Support Committee of 4. My objective for my tour of command was to rebuild and effect some cultural changes to revitalize the unit.

This past Saturday I handed over command of the Squadron to the same young lady, now a Lieutenant. After three years of anxiety, self-doubt and constantly thinking that I've messed up, I realized that I had achieved all of my strategic goals, and many tactical objectives too. The Squadron has now 39 cadets on strength, more, younger staff and an engaged enthusiastic Support Committee of 11 for fundraising.

As usual, the Squadron was well turned out and made me look good. 

Signing the official documents 

Handing the Squadron banner to the Area OC is the symbolic moment 

My successor takes the responsibility 

The Area Commander gave me this nice tangible recognition of a job well done.

From the cadets a nice picture of a Spitfire for me and a bouquet of Air Cadet blue and yellow flowers for the patiently supportive Mrs. Rabbitman .

I'm staying with the Squadron for at least a year. I'm just switching desks and hats to DCO and help train our young staff. Hopefully more time working directly with the cadets and less time in meetings will revitalize me too.

In Which Capt. Rabbitman Takes His Cadets to See the Big Zoomy Thing

A Warrent Officer working at HQ in London leveraged his connections in the Sr. NCM Mafia to bring a C17 Globemaster transport jet from 428 Squadron to London last Saturday for familiarization flights with the Air Cadets. It was a long weekend and only a month's notice, plus seats were limited, so I had a few stressful weeks getting names confirmed, and then removing names from the list up to the last day as cadets dropped out.

But we arrived in London to be told the aircraft was 7 hours late (mechanical issues, aircraft had to be rerouted) and a very harried Sergeant was working frantically to reconfigure the chalks.

However the giant aircraft arrived shortly after we did and our bus driver was OK with staying late. So we hung around and waited....

But at last we were organized into our chalk, put in our ear plugs and got loaded!

For a good part of our half hour flight the aircraft flew with the ramp down, which provided quite the view.

My friend Maj Steve Wilson (he's behind me in the above pic with white hair) has a very nice camera and took most of these pictures. My cell phone mostly got glare trying to shoot the open hatch. 

It was quite the view as the large, but nimble, jet swooped along the shore of L. Erie.

A much later day than planned, but enjoyed by all.

Painting Pottersville

I've been busy gluing MDF like a mad thing, resulting in an impressive street of buildings.

The Sarissa buildings all go together quickly. One quibble is the upper floors are open concept. But I used some heavy card stock to make simple partition walls.

I also used some heavy art board to make some lengths of paving to create alleys between the buildings. Dirty deeds need dark alleys, and I have lots of trash cans that need a place to go.

After spray painting with a light tan, painting has gone quickly. Both buildings took maybe 3 hours each.

I've also had a plastic toy pony stable from Ertl that Pete found. I added a back door with my Dremel Tool and some card and stuck it on a base.  Looking at most commercial properties you see a lot of clutter and junk (especially prior to 5S and Kaizen ), so I added piles of construction materials around it to give some cover and character. After painting I added some tufts and weeds. Taller weeds fill spaces that I couldn't reach with sand.

Plastic coffee stirrers become copper pipes. Plastic tubes become concrete pipes. Wooden fence posts from cheap Christmas village fences become stacks of fence pickets. Bamboo skewers get turned into a stack of lumber. I've had stacks of construction materials made as scatter terrain for years. Those will be out front or beside the building.

Trying a test layout to see where I'm at for things like fences and sidewalks. It will be nice to deploy the street lights and newsstand, complete with paperboy, at last. The cloth is 4x4.

I can push the buildings right to the edge and leave wider streets too. But I had an idea to make walled yards complete with laundry behind the tenements. The reverse of the cloth is dark grey. Might be smarter to use that side and then make gravel yards for the construction company and the scrap yard. As you can see above I still have an empty corner to fill.

A 4x4 area should give room for up to 8 gangs to deploy I hope.