stever219

Fatally flawed and lethally unbuildable! The back seater should be noticeably smaller than the driver, airframe and he hasn't got a sick bag!🤣🤣🤣

Metal had been cut for at least the first prototype by cancellation day, I've seen images (in the Crowood Harrier book?) of centre fuselage upper frame sections in their jig. A wonderful what could have been.

I haven't got my kit to hand at present but I think it's to cater for the semi-retractable turret. To allow the guns to reach maximum elevation the turret cupola retracts into the fuselage, the guns are pivoted inside the turret ring and as the breeches descend further below the top line of the fuselage the muzzles are driven higher. For the model if you've got the guns fully depressed you'll use the taller turret transparency.

Is the Delta jet in the series 200 kit running on trade plates? I can see Swiss and Canadian registrations but no N- number. Just curious, or may have missed the blindingly obvious.

I was lucky enough to win an on-line auction (not evilbay I hasten to add) with a surprisingly low bid considering the extras in the box.

A tiny moment in history: XR769 was the last Lightning to be lost in service only a few weeks before the type's withdrawal from service. The root cause was never fully established as she ended up making a Lightning-sized hole in The Wash but was almost certainly due to an uncontained fire somewhere near the number 2 reheat fuel pump. There are some photos of the incident in Ian Black's "The Last 9f the Lightnings" clearly showing the fire burning below the port wing. Thankfully the pilot, Flt Lt Dick Coleman, an RNZAF exchange pilot, got out safely and was quickly recovered by a SAR helhelicopter.

You need a boxing that has the 100% LERX at the very least. The Eduard re-box has both early and late (67% and 100% LERX) and can be had for less silly money than the Hasegawa kits; it also includes etched brass and resin upgrade parts.

On my B(I)8 I've filled in most of the panel lines as the Canberras I've been able to get close to, WE113 (now gone), WE139, WE168 (now gone) and WF922 all had very smooth skins. You can see slight dishing around the rivet heads but everything seems to have been filled and sanded flush. One other mod I made to mine was to replicate the rear fuselage doubler plates using 5 thou plasticard. Only having the late Mike Keep's Warpaint drawings from Aviation News I had to scale them up to 1/48th by hand so mine may be a bit "approximate" (one day I'll learn how to post images from my phone and iPad on here!). I think the doubles were introduced from the Mk. 6 onwards and those on the PR. 9 are a different shape. They're on both centre and rear fuselage sections and extend as far forward as the main spar above and below the wing.

If you don’t already have a copy Xtradecal sheet X48144 has markings for Bader’s well-known V7467 LE:D from 242 Squadron. There are some other interesting options on there too, just in case you change your mind😉.

You know you want to. The new-ish Airfix Hurricane I comes highly recommended.

If you're not happy with it just send it to me, I'll build it.🤣 In all honesty the cooling fins on radial engines are so fine and so close together that rendering them in 1/72th scale is, for practical purposes, impossible.

Thanks for the warning about the tight fit of the wing spars Dave, the Lancaster is the same, and there appears to be a small mould seam inside the slots on the Lanc fuselage so I suspect that if the Beaufort's the same a swift wiping with a small flat file will sort that out.

Looking at the images I'd say the panel lines are finer than some recent kits; I certainly won't be slathering wash or anything into those on my kits to emphasise them when they arrive.

A little bit of overkill never hurt anybody. You've just given me an idea for a Yellowjacks Hunter.

You were right not to weather the living daylights out of it, it looks fine. All it really needs to sent it off is a set of checks and an erk leaning into the cockpit fiddling with the flap lever so that DB won't have to buy a round that evening😂😂.

You don't hang around, do you? Looking good so far but, 1, the lower surface of the dog tooth extensions fair smoothly into the wing skins and, 2, I'd paint in the order yellow, grey, green, silver. Yellow generally has poor covering power, the grey is lighter than the green, and silver of any persuasion can be a real pain to mask and unmask.

Upper or under surfaces (or both) and when? Pre World War II they’d have been aluminium overall with some panels/areas Cerrux Grey (an approximation to aluminium) ant corrosion finish but once hostilities commenced undersides would have been Sky Grey with uppers n Extra Dark Sea Grey and Dark Slate Grey. Variations were not uncommon, especially through the Phoney War period.

Do they deserve any?🤪🤪🤣🤣

You can add Tamiya, Hasegawa, Revell, Monogram, Starfix, Heller, Fujimi and How Nile Tom Cobley’s Kit Company to that list; n one’s nfallilible.

@Team Aer Lingus I hope your family issue is quick and simple of resolution. As to wheel wells it’s your model but, were it mine, I would. Get some very thin plasticard in there round the sides, the spars on the Meteor form the front and rear walls of the main wells with two of the wing ribs forming the sides. Full scale there is a lip of skin along each side but in 1/72th the fact that there isn’t will be less obvious, especially once the doors are on. For the nose bay there is a box at the back for the wheel itself that extends up to the cockpit floor, with a dished area in the roof that is visible between the rudder pedals n the cockpit; I’ve never managed to replicate it and f no-one picks up your model to look underneath it’s not obvious. The fore end of the bay is simply the inside of the nose with the top of the leg pivoted on two triangular frames attached to the cockpit front bulkhead, another job I tend to skip. Don’t witty about priming big bits before assembly; sometimes it’s just easier to do it that way, e,g. Airfix’s socking great Merlin HC. 3, and it gives the primer a bit longer to harden before applying top coats. @Eric Mc love the look of your Meteor IV, those “Type C1” roundels on the upper wing aren’t often seen on models.

I've heard that that Pucara was like a bag of badly carved lumps of soap so, with your recommendation, I'll give that a very wide berth.

O“A really bad kit that requires a lot of work to turn it into something worth of having a place that n your display case.” If you think the Sword kit is bad you’d better not go anywhere near a Merlin TSR 2, assuming that you can find one. No two mating surfaces are in the same plane, the main parts have got more warp than the Starship Enterprise at full chat, surface detail, where it exists, was scribed by an inebriated, arthritic, seven-legged spider on a bad day, accuracy is a non-optional extra (permanently out of stock) and any resemblance to the real aeroplane is entirely accidental. It isn’t even good enough for a scrapping diorama, let alone to represent a fully serviceable high performance flying machine. By comparison the Sword Lightning is Tamigawajimi quality (I’ve got four of them) but as a limited-run kit does require more fitting work than a mainstream kit. As an aside all of the Lightnings built by English Electric and BAC were practically hand built, to the extent that it was almost impossible to swap panels between any of the early XG-, XM- and XL- serialled aircraft. Even at the end Lightnings were apparently leaving the factory in slightly different sizes; apparently the two Lightnings at Bruntingthorpe, XR728 and XS904, are different from each other in both length and span by an inch or three. Look on the bright side; this kit has stretched you a bit, you’ve had to problem-solve and improvise, fettle and fill and that all helps to keep your mind active which is perhaps more important than simply having your kit fall together as you watch from a social distance. You’ve had some pain but you have gained because the result is worthy of a place in your display case. If you still think it’s not send it to me and it can go in mine instead!🤣🤣

There's plenty of room under the cockpit floor in the Airfix FR. 9 for ballast without needing to pack any into the camera bay: I've got some off-cuts of lead sheet that do the job quite adequately but some small lozenge-shaped fishing weights also fit the bill.

Looking good so far Eamonn, but I hope you've not assembled the wings just yet; the intake ducts are also High Speed Silver back as far as the front spar. I can't remember if FROG gave us "blanking plates" that include the wing leading edge where it crosses the duct and my example's in the loft. If you've got a compass cutter and some thick plasticard you can make them up reasonably easily if they're not in the kit.