Dave Swindell

I presume this is the photo you're referring to? AIRCRAFT OF THE ROYAL AIR FORCE 1939-1945: HAWKER HURRICANE.. © IWM (CM 3653) IWM Non Commercial License I can't help with colour, but whilst it does follow the typical pattern of exhaust staining (if you zoom in you can see the staining over the stripe) it is too hard edged to be any form of weathering. If it had been an attempt to remove staining with petrol I would have expected there to be some form of vertical streaking on the lower edge of the stripe where liquids had run down the fuselage, and as you point out the squadron codes appear to be painted over it (or possibly this stripe has been carefully painted roundt the codes) @Troy Smith?

Missed toolmaking error I think. The nosewheel centres 18, 19 & 20 are slightly off as well. Disappointing, but the rest of the kit is pretty good.

Agreed, you'll not see much of it once the gear and oil tank is in and it would be a fair bit of work to correct it, especially as Eduard miss the cutout for the top of the gear legs. On 1/72 ones I've done I just used plastic card for the bulkhead and formed the cutouts with milliput shaped with the rounded end of a paintbrush handle. The only one where the bulkhead shape is obvious had an Aires engine upgrade fitted, this had the correct shaped resin firewall bulkhead included. I did it in 1/72, but Aires do the set for the Tamiya kit in 1:48 as well. https://www.scalemates.com/kits/aires-4200-mosquito-fb-mkvi-nf-mkii-engine-set--150476 A quick heads up on the cockpit of 143 Sqn FBVI's - they were fitted with Gee (the whip aerial is just visible on the rear of the canopy) so the kit supplied T1154/R1153 radio fit behind the pilot and nav wouldn't be fitted, instead there would have been the Gee PPI behind the pilot and the Gee contrl unit on the rear shelf as in the NF XIII/XVII kit, snme more info on this fit in this thread.

Hi John, don't know whether you might want to correct this, but you've got the firewall too far forward, it should follow the line of the rear edge of the engine side panels, the bottom edge of the firewall should come down to the rear edge of the carburettor inlet fairing, with a hollow concave curved cover either side of the inlet over the top of the undercarriage legs.

The two boxes stacked on top of each other are accumulator (battery) boxes. To the right of this is the Gee R.1355 Receiver, then the Gee control panel, not sure on the one on the right, but most likely part of the H2S system.

Yes, both on this coming weekend 27/28 April 🙂

Good job you couldn't, try again next weekend 🙂

For those wondering what this is all about, I think the upper fuselage is the one under discussion. Definitely looks like it wouldn't sit on standard undercarriage.

Difficult to tell from the tiny image provided, but it looks like the whole engine thrust line is angled further down on one than on the other. As others have said I'd avoid jumping to conclusions based solely on lidar scans of just two airframes without fully understanding the engineering reasons behind the difference. As an example of this Newark's Shackleton exhibited a similar issue with one of it's engines having a distinctly different lower thrust line than the other 3. Enquiries resulted in an explanation from one of the volunteers looking after the airframe, there was a problem with damage to the engine bearers which resulted in the engine having excessive downthrust. It was noticable due to the proximity of the other correctly mounted engines, but viewed externally in isolation there was no obvious external indication all was not well inside the cowling. A small change in the engine mount geometry at the firewall, whether by design or accident could lead to a significant change in the distance of the spinner tip from the fuselage datum.

A well scrubbed teak deck can vary between a very light bleached bone when dry through to a very dark brown, almost black when soaking wet.

Wingnut didn't go bankrupt, Peter Jackson just closed them down and kept the tooling. If Ebbro have indeed gone bankrupt all the company assets including the tooling will be sold off by the liquidators for whatever they can get to cover whatever debts are are outstanding. Someone will buy them and hopefully reissue them.

I don't know about that, but the Liberator II - V were noted as being tail heavy, introduction of the nose turret went some way towards rectifying this.

That's brilliant Geoffrey, exactly what I was looking for, just need to reasearch the markings for these I'll keep my eye out for that so I can mark my own homework 😉

Dummy Deck Landing - training flight onto aircraft carrier deck marked out on runway directed by a landing signals officer, sounds like it stalled on base leg of approach?

I've been called a lot of things in my time, but I don't think that's one of them, it's not a term I've heard before. Well done (but that whistle doesn't look particularly clean 😂)

I can assure you they do, and the effects on diesel engines isn't good if it gets that far, boilers on the other hand are a little more tolerant. One of my most stressful nights as Chief Engineer was water in the fuel in the middle of the Arabian Sea at the hieght of the piracy problems. Got a call from the bridge at around 2am to tell me that the lights were flickering, the engine "didn't sound right" and the speed was dropping off. Legged it down to the control room by which time the main engine sounded like an asthmatic bag of nails, and the lights were decidedly dim. I managed to spot the fuel pressure was all over the place before the main engine gave a cough, gasp and wheeze and stopped, and then the black lights came on as the generators stopped as well. Next I had the old man on the phone from the bridge advising me the 2nd mate had just given out a "not under command" warning over the VHF ch16 advising everyone we had no power (pirates included, come and get us boys as we can't run away!) and it would be prudent and greatly appreciated if we could restore some sort of propulsion PDQ. The generators would start, but wouldn't carry any load, and I'd worked out that the fuel pressure fluctuations was water boiling in the fuel, gassing up the pumps. Fortunately we had one generator on Diesel oil (all the others and the main engine were running on heavy fuel at around 140C, hence the boiling water) which we managed to get going to provide power to the pumps, we could then change over to the other service tanks and flush the system through with good fuel before we could get the other generators going and start the main engine after about an hour. Source of the water was eventually traced to one of the purifiers in the fuel treatment plant which was supposed to take water out of the fuel but was in fact adding water and mixing it quite thoroughly with the fuel. After a few hours sorting this out it was time for a few well earned beers for breakfast! Oh and when we got to Salalah a day or two later, the Maersk Alabama was alongside (no sign of Tom Hanks though).

They would likely go the opposite way to what you're thinking, fuel would be drawn off the top of the tank and replaced with seawater from below, so displacement would increase, not decrease, and have list more to port. Not sure if this system was used on Flowers, but it wasn't uncommon on RN vessels where stability might be adversly affected by fuel consumption.

No walls on a ship, they're bulkheads 🙂 The colour in the photograph is quite dark, so not your light greenish colour (though you're free to paint them that way if you want). A couple of guesses would be black/very dark grey to match the hull colour, or possibly dark brown Faux wooden pannelling

Hi Graham, l don't have either Air Britain or Consolidated Mess, hence the question. I've just got the latest wingleader on the CC Liberators, from what I can see all bar 1 of the Liberators with nose turrets that served with RAF CC were J's, or a few L's,the exception being BZ970 which was a B-24H-1-CF. RAF mark no. doesn't appear to correlate with Consolidated mark/block numbers either. The purpose of the question was to try and establish which, if any, RAF Liberators match or can easily modified from the new Airfix kit. I have a stash of Hasegawa/Eduard kits which are planned for CC schemes, and a couple each of DK Decals and Kits at War Decals which feature RAF Liberators It might be easier to ID any of these as being B-24H's? - TS530, TT343, KH393, KH160, KL574, KL629, BZ938, KK320, KN746, BZ721, EW166 The kit purports to represent a B-24H-10-FO or B-24H-15-FO - so built by Ford at Willow Run Just a thought, would a Ford Willow Run B-24J look more like the Airfix B-24H than a Consolidated Fort Worth B-24J (Hasegawa/Eduard Kit) ?

I fancy building one of these in British markings. I don't think these were used by Coastal Command, but I suspect there might have been some in CBI? Anybody know if any of this type of B-24H were used by the RAF? if so which serials? @Geoffrey Sinclair production block / bu nos / serial tie-ups? TIA 🙂

Not necessarily, they could be pan head.....

Well that's interesting, most references quote the same or near as dammit length for all the FAW's, the only one that I have that doesn't is Tony Buttler's Warpaint on the Javelin, which gives a difference of 18.6" between the FAW9 and FAW8, and 13.6" difference between the FAW1, 4, 5, & 7 and the FAW2, 6 & 8. I would say photo comparison isn't straightforward due to the differing size of radomes and position of the radome joint.

The pressurised Mosquito's as depicted in the Airfix kit BXVI/PRXVI and B35 had reinforced canopies with heavier framework than the earlier unpressurised BIV/BIX bomber canopies as depicted in the Tamiya kit. The Airfix kit moulding isn't quite as refined as the Tamiya kit which might result in the Airfix canopy framing looking a bit on the heavy side if you're not careful when painting it. Masking the glazing and painting the whole of the raised frames will emphasise the heaviness of the frames. Sanding the raised frames off, polishing the canopy and replacing the frame with strips of painted decal film (or masking and painting) should improve the look. There's a spare canopy for the version you're not building to have a practice on first. If you don't fancy sanding and polishing the canopy, using painted decal film strips on the top of the frames might help reduce any overheavy look, again you could test this out on the spare canopy, maybe try this first before sanding off the frames to see which method gives a look you like and suits you and your skillset best?

I'm not aware of any change in canopy between the B35 and BXVI, but there's a subtle change in the framing and glazing between these pressurised canopies and the earlier non pressurised BIV / BIX canopies which may have resulted in a slight increase in external dimensions on the pressurised canopies, but as you say, any size increase would be negligable in a scale model.

Could you clarify the short and long nose terminoligy please? My understanding of the Javelin is the only version with a lengthened nose was the T3, and all the fighter versions irrespective of which radar was fitted had the same length and overall shape nose. The AI17 equipped Mks 1, 4, 5, 7, & 9 had a shorter radome attached to a frame further forward in the nose than the AI22 equipped Mks 2, 6 & 8 which had a larger radome attached to a frame further aft in the nose.