stever219

Aviation Megastore is quoting around €16.14 for p&p so around £14.10 to give a total of £47.20. We’d be saving slightly more than the price of a Humbrol tinlet.

Hello Will, welcome to the forum (sorry, I’ve not come across any of your previous posts). You’re quite right that a 1/48th scale figure for a Spitfire should be about the same size as that for a Hurricane, Lancaster, Lightning, Canberra, Hunter or Scruggs XFGPB-5W. Unfortunately kit designers have a problem: they will never be able to produce a scale-thickness fuselage skin using injection-moulded plastic. The wall thickness of the kit parts can be as much as 60 thou which equates to around 4 inches full scale (1.5 mm if you’re dismalised) which is thicker than the skin of the jet you last flew in to go on holiday. They’ve then got to get all of the gubbins that we like to see in model cockpits in and that further encroaches on available space. The effects of this cramping will be more noticeable on a slender fuselage like the Spitfire’s than the more voluminous Hurricane or Lancaster. (Incidentally I was once able to roughly measure the depth of the fuselage frames of a York and that came to around 4 inches between the very thin outer skin and the back face of any cabin lining that there might be.)

Depending on which schemes are on it I could be interested in taking it off you; could you pm me please with the details?

That particular government knew little or nothing about the military, defence or aviation other than that they considered all of them wasteful. That they then laid waste to the British aviation and defence industries and the armed forces rather than doing the fest possible with and for them simply rubs saint into the wounds.

I can’t get to my 1980s Airfix Lancaster just now but, from memory, the rad shutters are moulded in the fully-closed position. The area aft of the shutters contains the hot air intake for the carburettors which Airfix have represented. If you do want the shutters open their outlines are moulded on the lower cowlings so you’ll have to remove them, then build up the rear faces of the radiators, the outlet ducts and new shutters.

Thanks Wez, that explains it! I haven’t looked at the instructions for my kits for a couple of weeks and I’d forgotten about Special Hobby’s bum steer😖. Remi I didn’t mean to jump down your throat on the colours but the RAF in the fifties and the Meteor in particular are my specialist subjects on Pop Master Mastermind so to speak an I do like to count rivetsI try to get it right.

An eye-catching pair of Jaguars, very nicely done. Which orange did you use for spotty cat please? I have the Model Alliance sheet for this scheme and I’d like to get it as right as possible.

Those NF. 12s that were repainted with Dark Sea Grey and Dark Green upper surfaces were treated thus later on in life, so did not have much time left before withdrawal. The aeroplane in the posted image is presently at Newark Air Museum; she has been outside for some considerable time and, even with the best will in the world, the staff and volunteers cannot keep their exhibits as pristine as they’d like. OK she’s nowhere near the state of the fire-dump refugees that some modellers depict but she doesn’t really represent the condition of an in-service aeroplane either.

If you’re going to brush paint go and get yourself some flat or chisel-edged brushes if you haven’t already; they tend to leave fewer ridges in the paint, especially if it’s been properly thinned.

I’ve read today of a B-24 that was lost on its first test flight as only four of 102 bolts holding the left outboard wing panel had actually been installed. The aircraft had been signed off as having had the work done. Two Consolidate employees who’d signed off the work were sacked and the value of the lost bomber (quoted as $155,000) was docked from the contract payments and Consolidated wound up paying almost as much again ($132,000) to the families of the crew. In terms of paint finish the Air Ministry wanted adequate protection against corrosion and conformity with specifications for effectiveness of camouflage. No one in the factories knew if the aeroplane they were painting would last for one combat sortie or 120, or whether it would spend its life flogging round the circuit and stooging around on cross-country navexes with a training unit; the aeroplanes all to be painted to a standard (quality) which would obviate the requirement for the operators to retouch the finish frequently and often. Some paint finishes, notably RDM2A Special Night, were not up to the mark. This paint required perfect surface preparation with no contaminants whatsoever. Even with perfect preparation it’s adhesion was poor and any contaminant (fuel, oil, exhaust stains for example) affected this. It scratched easily and could come off in sheets. Thankfully most paints in use at the time we’re better than this.

How about one in the colours of one of the French Mirage IV units?

I’m in the same position as Silver Fox with a pre-Sabrina Hunter (or two) planned so thank you for the details of the mods I’ll need to do too. Also thanks for that lovely underside shot of WN950b, there aren’t that many that I’ve seen of Sapphire-engined Hunters.

You have stolen my joy!😰😰. This is a kit that I missed in my mis-spent youth and I was looking forward to the Vintage Classics re-box. Now I know that if I buy one it’ll just wind up on the Shelf of Doom which has grown to be the Box-Room and Loft of Doom!😢😖😖. (You’ve saved me eight or nine quid and saved me months of indecisive faffing with it though, so you can’t be all bad).😉

Thanks @Graham Boak and @spitfire for expanding my knowledge on this subject👍👍.

They are stiffeners and were introduced during Mk. Vb production and as a mod for a very few surviving older airframes. The Shuttleworth collection’s Spitfire AR501 still flies with a set of these stiffeners and there are plenty of images of her showing them. Without checking my references I think that the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Mk. II, P7350, also has these stiffeners. Once the strength issues of the Mk. Vb were realised Supermarine very quickly beefed up the wing structure, obviating the need for the external stiffeners on later marks.

Lovely Hunter. Like you I’ve had “fun” getting the new leading edges lined up neatly. I didn’t like Airfix’s idea of building up the leading edges then attaching them to the built-up wings so went straight to attaching each new leading edge to its respective wing panel. I didn’t get too bad a joint but they all still needed some filling. Now all I need to do is get all the big bits together and slap some paint on.

XR221 also went to Shoeburyness, as did XR223. The airframe at Duxford is a bitter: the wings are from ‘222, rear fuselage from ‘227 and front fuselage from an engineering mock-up. How and why is anyone’s guess; ‘227’s fuselage was substantially complete, so why chop off the back end and attach it to a different front end is illogical at best. Ne of the front fuselage test specimens, T5 I think, now resides at Brooklands; this was the air conditioning and pressurisation trials specimen and was also used for canopy jettison tests in the wind tunnel. All of the completed airframes and major assemblies were cut up with acetylene torches (there are several images of the dismembered components that show this clearly and at least two that show this work in progress). In the weeks following cancellation BAC issued instructions on cutting up of TSR 2 structures which specified use of extreme care as certain trials components and fluids would give off toxic fumes when exposed to extreme heat. As as far as is known only the mock-ups at Warton were burned; even the great Roland Beaumont got it wrong that rear fuselages at Warton were dragged out and burned; there’s an image of XR225 waiting to be cut up there while a pair of fitters set to with torches on parts from other jets. Various ares of the mock ups were painted in different colours to denote their use, for example a brick red for fuel, and this can’t be seen on the cut-up bits of rear fuselage in the image of XR225 referred to above. The drawings were microfilmed before many of them wound up at Huron being used as paint masks on the BAC 1-11 line. Unfortunately a significant proportion of the microfilms have also now been lost or destroyed.

There were two Varsities at Duxford, WF425 and WJ945. The former had been a Meteorological Research Flight aeroplane and it was this airframe that was scrapped. WJ945, last serving with 6 FTS at Finningley, was still at Duxford until 2013 and was looking a bit sorry for herself, having been outdoors for a long time. She’s now at RAF St Mawgan, aka Newquay Airport and apparently receiving some overdue TLC.

The inertial navigation system on Blue Steel was more accurate than the Navigation and Bombing System (NBS) in the carrier aircraft so the training rounds had this kit installed to maximise the value of training sorties.

Thanks Mark, that’s very much appreciated. Out with the files, wet n dry and plasticard then!

I’ve recently acquired an example of the ESCI “Laser Harrier” GR. 3 kit. For its age it’s not too bad but the lower wing panels have a broad shallow blister where the outboard pylons are installed. I have a vague idea that these blisters were only installed when the outboard pylons weren’t. Am I correct in this please? The Airfix GR. 1 that’s also progressing slowly does not exhibit these blisters and nor does any other early Harrier kit that I’ve come across in 1/72th, 1/48th or 1/24th scales. Your thoughts please.

I hope your colleague likes this model Alan, you’ve done a good job on what’s regarded as a challenging kit. Several years ago a friend and I went to Duxford for the day and had taken my then-toddler daughter so that her mum could get some sleep (night shifts). We were stood under XJ824 busily examining one of the main wheel bays when my friend looked round and asked “Where’s Grace?”. We looked round but couldn’t see her. Then we looked back at ‘824 to discover that she had ducked under the guard rope round the undercarriage and was trying to get both arms round a wheel that’s bigger than she was at the time and looking very pleased with her little pink self.

Thanks for the images Pete, better than I could have found.

As others have said get well soon Heather. Having spent much of the last six months battling with sciatica and unable to lie, sit, stand, walk or even think comfortably I feel for your predicament; fortuitously this was the first six months of my retirement! All those “little jobs around the house” are still waiting for me....... I’ve enjoyed following you progress with this conversion: I need to relocate my stalled Spanish Civil War “F” and 2 “Z”s.

In terms of visible airframe differences between the F. Mk. 6 and FGA. Mk 9 the most noticeable are the brake parachute housing above the tailpipe, the ERU fairings on the upper wing surface above the outer stores pylons and the quadrant cut out of the flaps’ outboard trailing edges to clear the 230 gallon underwing tanks for which the Mk. 9 was cleared. When these tanks were carried a sway brace was installed outboard of the pylon between, IIRC, a point on the front spar and one on the upper outboard face of the tank. Bear in mind that many later Hunters were more long-lived than their predecessors and were subject to numerous modifications which would have affected things like antenna fit but many would not affect the overall appearance greatly. One mod that did change the appearance of Switzerland’s Mk. 58s was a rearward extension of the Sabrinas which introduced a squared-off centre section which enabled a two camera reconnaissance pack to be carried. Some other air forces have adopted a similar fit so check your references for your chosen subject.