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DEAR MEMBER OF MY CONTROL LINE E-MAIL DIRECTORY

I wish you a

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR ! 

Göran Olsson, SWE-1362

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Go to my web site to see these:

Control Line Greetings from Claus Maikis

Another Christmas Card

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My small Christmas Present to you, offering some tinkering in the holiday season:

SCALE STICKERS FOR YOUR NEEDLE VALVE

Sorry combat fliers, only for models with a fuselage!

To be placed on your fuselage/engine lid where your needle valve protudes. Allows you to remember a number instead of your old-fashioned pre-digital method for remembering the setting. :-)

In F2C, I find this little aid quite useful!

Here is a sample of how it could look like:

http://www.plasma.kth.se/~olsson/needlescale.gif

The actual outside diameter is 19 mm.

The ready-to-use PDF file I have is tailored for a Mazniak (F2C) needle valve, with 26 clickstops per turn, but I also offer customized versions, see below.

Here it is for downloading:

http://www.plasma.kth.se/~olsson/needlescale.pdf

The printout fills a sheet of paper with scale symbols, so many that they will last well into your next life. They are printed as mirror images, as they should be used on a transparency with the print side down.

Put a thin mylar transparency with adhesive and paper backing in the printer! After printing, remove the paper backing and wipe off the adhesive with alcohol. Take care not to wet the print side. Cut out a scale and set to model with epoxy, with imprint side down. On most models, the sticker will sit partly on the fuselage and partly on some kind of lid. Have the lid in place when you set the sticker, and later cut along the joint. Align it so that stop 1 with a longer mark points down.

When printed with a laser printer, the black is reasonably resistant to the epoxy, but be careful to set it in place promptly. Cyano can't be used, as it dissolves the black. With prints from an inkjet printer you need to be very careful not to smear the print. You can use a spray coating to protect it. Practice on something else before you put it on the model.

It is also possible to modify the graphics for other numbers of clickstops, as well as the size, colour and other features. Then you have to work with the original file in PostScript format, but if you don't want to do that, I offer to do it for the TEN first customization requests I get.

So count the NUMBER of clickstops on your needle valve, decide what SIZE you prefer, and e-mail me your request!

Also tell me which manufacturer and type of needle valve it is. The files I prepare will be made available to all, so it's possible one will fit your valve even if you aren't among the ten.

You can also do it yourself if you have the inclination and the appropriate software (or hardware). Then you should download this PostScript file:

http://www.plasma.kth.se/~olsson/needlescale.ps

What you also need is:

The full Adobe Acrobat package, with the Adobe Distiller program included. (In contrast to the Acrobat Reader, this is not freeware.)
OR
Ghostscript freeware. OR
A printer that understands the PostScript file format.

I will not go deeper into instructions here, just that you need to edit the needlescale.ps file. Start a plain text editor, such as Notepad, and use it to open the file. There are comments in the code to guide you how to make the modifications. (Everything to the right of a "%" in a line is a comment.)

Good luck!

Goran

PS: There is also an ulterior motive for this sendout: I use it to weed out the invalid addresses in my list.