Paperback writer

Tamiya 1:48 Military Miniature series - love them. I have all of them 1 to 105 and always have one on my desk alongside an aircraft build. Number 105 is the British 2 Ton Ambulance that was done within a couple of weeks of it arriving. A great kit and surprisingly big next to the Tamiya Abram that was my previous build. The Tamiya 1:48 Jeep would almost fit inside the back of the Ambulance. 1:48 is a great scale for comparing armour to aircraft size-wise. The Tamiya 1:48 F-35s are huge next to the modern tank. I have built 15 of these kits and as a sign of possible insanity, I buy a kit to build AND one to keep the sequence complete. Looking forward to Tamiya announcing the next one - fingers crossed for the overdue addition of a Leopard to this series. Slightly mad Alan

Just picked up (nearly put my back out) Paul Crickmore's new Lockheed Blackbird book from Osprey. 520+ pages, bigger than A4 and full of amazing information, much of it new and stories from past aircrew, ground crew, etc. If you are a Blackbird fan, put one on your Christmas list. A bargain at £60 and I'm not kidding. - Alan F

I'm told that the Tamiya F-35B is due in the UK towards the end of next week, around the 7th December.

I would have put good money (well, no more than a fiver) on Tamiya releasing a 1:48 F-4J by now. When the F-4B was released, Tamiya produced a 'Detail-Up' decal sheet to go with it. It was headed F-4B/F-4J and had areas of stencilling identified as belonging to one or the other. Tamiya are a tease!

Did someone airbrush away the controversial RAM panels on the F-35A in the opening picture? The F-35As that can be seen trundling around the Lakenheath taxiways don't seem to have visible panels either. Kit designers have made a meal of these, even Tamiya seems to have been a bit heavy-handed. Very odd.

I echo Pete F's comments above on the shop in Malton. I passed the shop a couple of weeks ago on my way to see the new Bond film and did a double take, couldn't believe my eyes!! After seeing the film called into the World Wide Shopping Mall and was amazed at the range and quantity of kits on sale. A room dedicated to Revell kits and the other space full of Tamiya, Trumpeter, Airfix, etc. etc. I've asked my friends at IPMS Cleveland and IPMS North Riding and no one has heard of this amazing shop. I can't understand their lack of marketing and advertising. They have a great model shop, why not shout about it? Puzzled of Cleveland

There was something on the news only a couple of days ago about the container ship that closed the Suez Canal for a couple of weeks. Although it had been moved out of the way, the Canal authorities impounded the vessel until a payment, I guess a hefty fine, had been paid before it was allowed to leave the area. It has only just been allowed to go on its way.

Hello Steve I bought some from Hiroboy at Staverton, between Gloucester and Cheltenham. I've just looked at their web site and they are showing xero stock. It is one of those products that someone is trying to protect us from. Hiroboy stock an amazing range of paints and modelling stuff, have a look. They maybe produce their own equivalent if the Tamiya original cannot be imported any longer. Good luck, Alan

Maybe DX would think about hosting a model show on one of those slow Saturdays in February/March to liven things up a bit. The show at Cosford is one of the best of the year with traders and clubs scattered amongst the exhibits. Duxford is no more remote than Cosford with lots of modellers down the M11. Shuttleworth's little model show in early spring is a good day out and generates extra revenue for the museum. The Fleet Air Arm Museum's Saturday shows in mid-February and October all produced good attendances with then times the number through the gate compared to a usual day, bringing in good revenue at door, in the shop and the cafe. Their show stopped when someone realised that they were paid just the same on a quiet Saturday in February as they were for enduring all the extra work that the model show generated - shame!

Tamiya started holding back new kits from Japanese retailers 3 or 4 years ago to give sellers around the world a fair chance of selling their kits. At the time Japanese sellers such as HLJ, selling at much lower prices, were killing off demand elsewhere. Distributors were obviously not happy with that situation. I believe the plan is that kits such as the new F-4B will be on sale everywhere at about the same time. I remember buying Tamiya kits from Rainbow 10 located about a mile from Tamiya in Japan and paying about two-thirds the price even taking into account postage, etc and having the kit a month before they were available in UK shops.

Also try Blackbird Models - Glen has some Hunter sheets in his range - blackbirdmodels.co.uk

I use Humbrol's Maskol. Quick, easy and easily removed afterwards.

Not surprised and disappointed in equal measure by that news. Whatever the situation in this country, we have to remember the large number of participants and visitors from over the sea where their restrictions could very well force them to stay away. Surely, we will be back in 2022???

Unless things have changed recently due to the Corona Chaos, in this country Surface Mail is a generic term for low priority post and does not go near a ship, Items for a destination will be left to accumulate until a container is full enough to depart by air. I used to get complaints from the subscriber to a specialist scientific journal who would receive half a dozen issues at the same time. He lived in a remote village up the jungle in New Guinea and the local post office only delivered when a worthwhile amount of post had accumulated.

Those interested in the whys and wherefores of the above comments might like to look at the entries for Sam Publications Ltd and the new owners of the magazines, MA Publications Ltd on the Companies House web site. Very interesting and many of your questions will be answered. I have worked in Royal Mail Mail Centres and in normal times the late and night shifts are swarming with people, all working in close proximity to each other. I suspect that keeping people distanced from each other is a big issue in such work spaces. Adding more staff will not work. I have posted a few letters recently and 1st class appears to be working as usual.

I built one of these several years ago, when it was first issued. It still gives me nightmares - well not quite. I have been modelling for a long, long time and I can safely say that this is the worst kit that I have finished. One or two others were never finished and landed in the bin. The large fuselage halves in my example were all over the place. I used some substantial plastic card and several 'pit props' placed inside the fuselage to get the fuselage halves aligned and then glued together securely. The build came straight out of the box with that same Aeromaster decal sheet used for the main markings. In the end it looked OK but when there is a market for an internal wooden skeleton to help form the fuselage, well that says it all. Good luck with your builds guys, Alan.

I understand that the new Tamiya Lacquer paint range is the same stuff that we have buying in the spray cans but now in a handy bottle - hurrah!!. I asked one trader if he would be stocking these colours but the thought of having to cart yet another rack of paints to shows was not high on his list of things to do this year. Hopefully these will become widely available unlike the Tamiya enamels. Tamiya's web site lists the colours available. Let us hope this catches on, the paint that comes out of the cans is excellent but awkward to use.

I have two of these on the go and find quite a contrast between the fit of some parts, one kit suffering from some warping. A good example of my point is the two intake tunnel halves. Out of one box they just clicked together and out of the other there was something of a tug-o-war to get them together. Dry fitting the fuselage halves together also shows differences. One is near perfect and the other is going to need half a roll of masking tape to hold the halves together while they dry. I am no expert but could one set of sprues have been removed from the moulds a bit too soon? The 'good' box of bits contains one of the best Airfix kits I have built. This is a quantum leap ahead of the old Academy effort. All the best, Alan

I built the bus when it was first released. The thing to watch before you get very far is matching the seat decals to the seats. There is one extra seat but no spare decals. As the seats are handed (left and right) it is all too easy to finish up with seat you need and no decal. I noticed in the nick-of-time. The outer panels were painted before attaching to the body. I used plastic card to fit inside the advertising panels on the sides of the bus and then add the decals to the flat surface. This is how it was done on the real thing, the posters were attached to hardboard panels. You also need to be spot on with aligning the outer panels to avoid hard to cure gaps at the end of the job. Good Luck - Alan

Superb shots, John. A free seaside show is the way to go, ask anyone who pre-paid thirty quid for a ticket to Duxford on Saturday to see next to nothing all day. Have they dried out yet?

To answer the last post, there was not a sole to be seen on the south side of the field on Sunday, not even a fire truck. I know several of the traders at Duxford and they were most unhappy on Sunday morning at the lack of visitors (around 8,000) on Saturday to go with the increased charges for their pitches. It was most disturbing to hear that some people had been turned away on Saturday who had not been aware that it was an advance ticket only show. Even worse (if true) that an odd few arrived without a car park ticket (a fiver on top of the entrance price!!!) and were turned away too. The need for a car park ticket could easily be missed when buying a ticket on line. Given the vast amount of white space on the A4 ticket sheet when printed, did someone not think to add a bold note - Have you bought a car park ticket? Why on earth, given the low take-up of tickets for Saturday, did the organisers not put in place the facility to take money from those turning up without a ticket? I guess that casual overseas visitors to Duxford, unaware of the air show could not get in either??? There are many reasons why advance ticket only is a good idea but not so for a show that is never full. Although a good afternoon's flying, there was nothing of note to attract a good crowd. It makes sense for the busy Flying Legends show or for when a Vulcan or a couple of Lancasters are due to pitch-up. Knowing the fickle British weather and the price of the ticket that could be wasted if the forecast is bad, many must think twice before buying. Imagine if the shocking weather in that area had been a day earlier!! Maybe the organisers need to put on a commercial hat and have a plan B should ticket sales be underwhelming as they were on Saturday. If people without a ticket were turned away on Saturday, every four extra sales would have been more than £100 into the museum's kitty for very little extra effort. Anyone running a business would not turn that down and maybe the Duxford team need to be a bit more creative in their thinking. in future.

Hello David I've been eagerly following your Ducati build as mine is at the same stage as yours. Having watched the video clip on the Airfix web site, showing the fitting of the upper fairing, I wasted all of Monday afternoon trying to do the same. When viewed closely, there are edits in the clip and at one point the builder appears to the turning the screw in the wrong direction. To cut to the chase, I never was able to fit the mirrors on my own and needed to 'Phone a Friend' to hold the mirrors in place while I fitted the screws from below. I too removed the already fitted handlebars so that I could get at the screws. We had the mirrors in place in a few minutes and the handlebars went back without any problems. Just one word of warning before fitting the bars. I found that the clutch lever fluid reservoir was striking the inside of the fairing. The black lid needs to be pushed hard in place, in fact I used a small hammer(!!), it is a snug fit. The earlier warning about superglue vapours fogging the windscreen is a sound one. My black trim inside the upper fairing was superglued in place before the windscreen was fitted and some slight white fogging on the red paintwork, polished off with ease. The lower fairing panels on my model will get a non-standard finish and hopefully they will fit in place with no further pain when the time comes. I will post a photo when it is finished. Best wishes Alan

Pour some Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner into a dish big enough to take the parts. In about 10 minutes all of the chrome will have gone to leave your chromed parts as clean as a whistle. I don't know about oven cleaning but the used cleaner is no good for a repeat performance. I have tried to use some the day after and nothing happened.

Amongst the new arrivals from Airfix this year are crew figures for the Jackal and Coyote with a sets of etch for them and the Land Rover kits. The etched sets include grills and seat harness. Also, we can look forward to 1/48 Quad Bikes with trailers and crew. I am not sure whether the Quad Bike riders will be with the kit or yet another figures set. I am sitting on my kits until the accessories appear.

A thing of beauty.