Head in the clouds.

Indeed, a rare brand name on this thread indeed but what a job you have done, superb work and perseverance.

My first look too of a finished High Planes Sea Vixen and I have to say it looks rather nice and as the saying goes, ' Good things come to those who wait' and you have and we have and it was worth it.

Great work Amos and I respect you taking your time with the decals, especially when using differing brands. Considering the popularity of the C130 I am surprised a dedicated stencil sheet has not been done, a large kit like this needs them.

Not much done since my last post but what I have done is very important; well, for me anyway because my recent slip ups on transparencies had me shaking in my boots, the cockpit glazing. Like all the other transparencies on this old girl of a kit it's not the best but it is all I have to work with so let's see what we have. Offering it up for a dry fit showed that it did not fit at all; There is interference at the top and under the front glazing; That lip on the roof of the cockpit needs to go but I am going in slowly on this, it would be all to easy to hack away and end up with a very loose fitting glazing. Once that lip is gone I can check again what needs removing. Another little job that needs doing is to remove a little from the rear of the glazing where I fitted that small fillet way back when which can be seen above. The glazing was offered offered up to see what needed tinkering with; That looks like a big chunk to remove but I am not falling for that trap, I will sand gently and check often and this proved to be the correct way as not all needed to be removed; It's in and fairly snug but the top doesn't look right, it is sitting a little too far forward but the bottom is flush. Also the rear of the glazing sits slightly inwards and no matter how I tried I could not get it to match up flush on all sides, removing material from the rear would make the front also move further back and therefore no longer flush. In the end I fitted some scrap bits of plastic to form a lip to stop the glazing sitting any further in at the rear and I will just have to live with the top. The glazing was then fitted working from one side to the next allowing the glue to dry before moving round to the next bit. As for the protruding top section, which by the way is not as bad as it looks, will be dealt with by using filler on the cockpit roof section and then sanding back, very carefully. While I was doing all this I noticed my port cockpit panel is too far forward, not sure how I missed that but I have. There is not a lot I can do about it now other than cut it level with the airframe, fill, sand and paint and hope that thick Airfix 70's glazing hides it. Not the most exciting of updates but we are getting ever closer to fitting the wings and then on to painting but not before the wheels, propellers and underwing tanks are done so happy days. Thanks for looking in.

Thanks for all the replies, even old tools can still be useful. That is a beauty Jonathan, your chine worked a treat. The colours of aircraft of that period were a photographers paradise, so much variation and colour and variety.

😮I can't escape that word but know your pain well, for me getting everything as aligned as much possible was key but even then the odd line went on a drunken wander, some were corrected but others I left due to the amount of work altering other lines around it. From what I can see your scribing looks good. Great work so far

Cheers Jonathan, that is priceless and confirms several question I had but no concrete images to answer those questions, in particular the prop tips, astro dome being fitted, some stencil locations and style of white cockpit roof area shape. I am so glad my build has helped you to some degree, my methods can sometimes be a bit unorthodox but as long I reach the destination I am aiming for then job done. Do you have any pics of your C130 A model, we don't get to see many of them. Gary.

Cheers Amos, I will use that last photo to 'Snoopy' to do a bit of weathering on what was generally a clean airframe. With regard to yellow prop tips I have been looking through my research material and came across this from Alan Kidtson's excellent little book; 'The C130's at Changi were rotated often and at the time that RAF Changi was closing in 1970 XV208 was sent back for conversion to the W2 configuration we are all familiar with'. As far as I know the red/white/red prop tips came about in the early 70's so XV208 would have been in conversion at this time and took it's first flight in March 1973, I am therefore confident that 208 had yellow prop tips. Thanks. Gary

Apparently Microlights have changed from a hang glider with engine behind pilot under aerofoil to this; No need to worry about air temps. Great flight over many disused airfields including Saltby, Bottesford, Syston, Cottesmore on which C130's no doubt visited ( still on topic) Wolfox Lodge ( Bloodhound MK1) and finally Twyford Wood. Touch and go on weather but picked up OK. A lovely little plane(Microloight) to fly, so much so I am considering (very carefully) learning to fly.

Indeed Pete, great film, great actors and great music. Ah! thanks, of coarse it is, 'horns' not a word that is in my everyday vocabulary 😁 Looking outside the wind is building and the clouds look angry so not filled with hope, luckily it is only at Saltby so not too far.

In the words of Robin Williams; I am in no way a heat lover, anything above late 20's and I am done, whatever happened to those lovely 25 degree summer holidays and swarms of Ladybirds? Luckily the cave is fairly cool as it is on the ground floor, we live on one of those upside down houses with kitchen and living on 1st floor and bedrooms on 2nd floor. In this weather that is not so good. Anyroads, enough hot air Keeping with the control surfaces on the empennage the pictures threw up another slight inaccuracy on the kit, not a criticism of the kit just an observation, but while working on them I may as well sort it. The elevator tip that is pointing up is too short on the kit by about 50% so I put elbow to action and removed the tip. Two halves of semi circular Evergreen were glued together then fitted to the elevator and then shaped to size. Accordingly the same amount was removed from the horizontal flying surface. You will have noticed that the elevators too have the hinge points visible when the aircraft is at rest so these were done as well. Also, by doing this simple correction I have tightened the gap up as seen in the pic above so it looks more to scale. The last thing done to call these done was to drill 4 holes, 1 in both the flying and control surface that are visible in the end of the said surface, if you have the Duke Hawkings book you will see what I mean as I can't find any pics online. Picking up another old job I decided to start spraying the propeller assembly. Now, on the box art it shows silver/grey propellers with a yellow tip, the colour given in the instructions states Silver . I don't know how long this scheme lasted but most pics of the'Crud and Custurd' scheme show a red;white;red bar on the propeller tips. Good pictures of XV208 are to my knowledge are non existent but a few grainy and small pics are in Alan Kidtson's superb little book on '208' and using my 60 year old Mk1 eyeball optics I think it had this early scheme of yellow on the tips. The red/white/red would be more distinguishable in the pics and it is not. So yellow it is as per box art. Initially I used Mr Hobby metallic silver but this was too much like a glitter ball so I resprayed them in Tamiya Titanium Silver (bottom one). Although it looks a bit more subdued I am still not sure, I may give it a mist coat of a light grey colour, can anyone confirm the colour please. That's it for now, off to stick to the sofa for a short while then hoping for my Microlight flight this afternoon but the wind is building so may not happen. That will conclude my 60th celebrations. Thanks for following folks.

My darling wife has released me from home improvement duties so the last 4 days I have manged some time in my not so secret cave. My time is taken up with several builds at the moment, an Airfix Hurricane to go with my Airfield Rescue set , a 1/144 Typhoon FGR4 for the club tribute build, repairing my Airfix 1/32 London bus after it went through a tumble dryer after taking a corner too quick in the car and the not insignificant 3 Herc build. And talking of which; my self induced period of excess work and colourful words has come to an end with the chin window now in place in the cut out fuselage which itself is now back where it belongs; A little polishing to finish it off and Bob's your uncle. It is far from perfect but it is a save and once more bling is on the kit you probable won't notice it. While I was working on getting back on track I also did some other work on the old girl and what I often do while waiting for glue to set or paint to dry is to sometimes go through my reference books. Looking through the Duke Hawkins book I came across some pics of the vertical and horizontal stabalizers and noticed 4 gaps on each of the control surfaces, these become visible when the C130 is at rest and I presume the hydraulic system that controls them depressurises. They rudder then sits of center left or right and the horizontal surfaces drop. This is where the tapered hinges sit and support the control surfaces and are very visible once you know they are there soooooo...out with a file. Jobs a good un as they say, more soon but cheers for now.

Cheers, it is only the dim's I need, what it it does is for the wizards. 👍

That is indeed the pod but finding anything else about it is proving hard.

Thanks @DaveH you are correct in what you say and that is about as much as I know. I have seen one of @Ascoteer old post which gives more info on this pod but no dim's. No, sorry, not I but it seems to be flavour of the month at the moment.