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No doubt you've googled "melbourne" and "collingwood", and arrived here by mistake. First off, yes, I have the same name, and yes, I'm in the same city, but this website has absolutely nothing to do with the pies. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's continue.........

Right, You've landed in my world. I am Frank Collingwood, youngest son of John and Pat, brother of Chris, Gerard, Pete and Teri, father of Chris, Jason and Marc. Now a resident of Melbourne (Australia, not Florida), but previously of Auckland (NZ), Frankfurt a.M. (Germany), Stone Cross (UK), Stevenage (UK), London (UK, not Ontario), Johannesburg (SA), Durban (SA), Pietermaritzburg (SA) and Bulawayo (Rhodesia). My two favourite passtimes are scuba diving and flying, with flying taking the front seat at the moment.

I moved here permanently in Jan 2004, after seperating from my ex-wife. I wasn't new to Melbourne though, having been over since May of the previous year, flying back to NZ for weekends. Now to confuse some more.......I'm not a sheepshagger, and was only in NZ because the company I was working for in Germany went bust. I'm not German either, but was in Frankfurt because my skills were needed there, and the UK Telecoms industry was a bit wobbly. But.......I'm not British either (Well, I am, we'll get to that later), having arrived in the UK as a backpacker from Seth Efrika just over 10 years ago. I'm not South African either, having been born in a little country called Rhodesia.

"Where?", I hear you ask

Rhodesia. A country which doesn't exist anymore. So, seeing as the only passport I have is British, and the place which really played the major part in forming me as I am today was England, I consider myself to be English. Simple.

Update: I've been back in Auckland since Jan 2005, it was just all too hard being so far away from the boys. I'm enjoying the contact with them and look forward to the weekends I have them.

UPDATE 17/10/2006: Some spammer scumbag has been sending out spam with forged headers showing the sender as being from the collingwood.me.uk domain.

NO SPAM ORIGINATES FROM COLLINGWOOD.ME.UK
NO SPAM HAS EVER ORIGINATED FROM COLLINGWOOD.ME.UK
NO SPAM WILL EVER ORIGINATE FROM COLLINGWOOD.ME.UK

Now that I've got that off my chest, if you are receiving spam that seems to come from an address on my domain, please check very carefully the IP address where it actually originated from, that is where you will find the culprit, and where you need to complain. If you don't know how to read email headers, just google it, there's plenty of information out there on the web.

::: Wednesday August 22, 2007 :::

Further Work on the Barrel

The barrel now has the aluminium tape in the end and the two halves have been joined. The photo shows the tape in the barrel, if you look carefully, you can see that there is excess tape projecting over one side of each half. This is to seal the seam once the halves are together

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::: Monday August 20, 2007 :::

Revisiting the Tiger

Right, after a long break, I've revisisted the Tiger. I'm happy I didn't make much of a start on it, as I've formulated a few mods. We'll start on the turret

The Turret

The Barrel
I've decided that the barrel will have to recoil correctly, incorporate a flash unit and also elevate and depress, none of which the basic kit allows.

In order to enable the recoil, I have separated the barrel and mantlet, cutting the at the barrel/mantlet join with a razor saw. The excess ridge of plaastic in the mantelet opening was removed with a reamer, and the opening sanded with fine wet & dry. The two barrel halves have also been seperated carefully to allow the addition of metalised tape inside the barrel where the flash unit will go. This is because the flash tubes get rather hot, and I don't want to end up with a melted barrel. I will buy a disposable camera, and butcher the flash unit from that to use in the gun. I'm busy constructing the barrel extension and recoil guide out of thin-wall brass tube. There are a few designs for the recoil unit itself buzzing around in my head, nothing on paper yet.

The Turret Ring
The kit only allows for the turret ring to be glued to the turret. Considering that the tooling was orginally for a static model, this is not surprising, but it is annoying from the POV that more mode have to be made in order for the turret mechanicals to be accessable for servicing. In order to make the turret detachable, blocks were made up out of three layers of 2mm styrene, with an M3 nut held captive by the middle layer. Three holes big enough to fit M3 screw heads were drilled in the turret ring, and pieces of styrene glued over them on the top of the ring. holes were then drilled in the styrene for the M3 screw threads. The three blocks were screwed on, and the turret ring mated with the turret body. the three blocks were then welded to the turret body.

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