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Auckland Meccano Guild meeting 13th February 2010
The meeting was held at Peter Hancock's residence in Howick .
Apologies Richard Sealey and Les Megget.
Peter had put together a great deal of meccano for a sale which was enthusiastically set upon by the club members. Many came away with a bargain load of Meccano to add to their building or collecting needs.
From Left Graham Wrighton, John Denton and Keegan Wrighton examine some of Peter Hancock,s sale items.
Henry Porter brought along an array of models consisting of a reel type mower with a petrol engine (simulated ) which worked exceedingly well, having used one of these as a lad I can attest to the authenticity of his design. He had also brought along a boring device made up in the "crazy inventors "style which consisted on an old fashioned horse buggy as the top propelled by two caterpillar tracks with a rotating screw at the front, two lights hung from long flexible rods. He had also designed a small motorcycle using a rotary aircraft engine , a truck and the control room and engine room of captain Nemo's Nautilus submarine.
Gary Higgins Brought along his version of the master connection set abyss explorer with an extra engine at the rear and manipulator arms in front . An optical illusion demonstration model designed by Andreas Konkolly after and original concept by well known Meccanoman Bert Halliday. As the wheel is turned the rings rotate in alternate directions and a disc and fan at the top appear to be floating in mid air. William Irwin has also built this model and found an electric motor moved the rings faster making the illusion more effective.
Gary had also brought along his version of the Meccano Crazy Inventors Nautilus described in the last magazine issue, along with his giant squid
Gary had designed a "Krazy Rocket" along Crazy inventors lines which spun on a central axis and threw out two side arms with centrifugal force, the top was mounted with the meccano rubber screw.
Gerald Hart had a very nice model of an overtype steam engine in mainly red and green.
Rick Vine had an array of models including the three new robot kits, a jog dog model which when activated hopped its way along the floor, a miniature forklift, an F1 racer in blue silver and yellow, three of the press out and fit lazer cut wooden models of a Tank , the sphinx and a rhinoceros.
He also had a 10 wheeler truck, Foden? Carrying a couple of Masker models on the back and finally he had built an orange and black racing car from the current Infrared sets to a design available in the USA.
Neil and Matthew Carey had brought along a motorized tricycle.
David Wall had constructed two cars from the non motorized tuning sets and had attached strings to the fronts as a pull along toy.
George Ovenden had a Ferris wheel complete with small figures and a truck made to a Lloyd Spackman design.
Mike Stuart had designed a very nice jeep featuring all the details of the original. It was most impressive how he had managed to squeeze all those gear trains into such a small space.
In the lower picture Mike shows Graham Mills the layout of the model.
Other members to attend were Peter Hancock, John Denton, Graham and Keegan Wrightson and Graham Mills.
William and Gary brought along some large 5.75 inch circular pieces which had been removed from old obsolete floppy disks. They were useful as flanges to convert hub discs into railway wheels leaving the wheel centers open. Needless to say they disappeared very smartly.
Gary spoke about his wish to mount a meccano display at the Toi Ora live arts group for mentally handicapped people. And a presentation to them of a Meccano set which they could use to encourage people to build models.
Quite a lot of Meccano has been donated by people to this worthwhile cause and I'm sure we will see some interesting models arise from it.
Model X is still on track and we hope to have a similar display to last year which was very successful.
Peter said that a draft of a constitution for the federation was nearing completion.
The next magazines from NZFMM will be in the same 28 page 4 colour format as this has proved suitable for our purposes.