stever219

The fit, or should I say lack of fit, of those doors I'd dreadful. Any chance you can back them with some pkasticard and then fill and sand to get a more acceptable profile? The Spitfire mouldings somehow don't seem so bad.

Some fantastic reference material there for those of us who have Revell's big Fat Lass lurking in our stashes waiting for some action.

Tony, the contact address is at the bottom of the e-mail contact page on the Airfix.com website; from the home page scroll right down to the bottom, click om "Contact us" and then to the bottom of the second page. The address is 3rd Floor, The Gateway, Innovation Way, Sandwich, Kent. HTH, Steve.

They look like derricks (??spelling) for stores handling, so possibly for ammunition loading for the forward magazines?

If you've not already done so go and get yourself some nice soft chisel-edged or "flat" paintbrushes that'll still easily fit in the top of your paint tins (a bit difficult if you use Xtracrylix and some other brands with narrow openings unless you decant the paint). You can still get all of the irregular curves of RAF camouflage on using different widths of brush but remember to make the final strokes in any area either fron to back on wings, fins and tail planes or top to bottom on fuselages.

That looks good. Well done for not going overboard with "weathering": the Operation Chastise Lancasters were factory-fresh; for example S/L Henry Maudslay's ED937, AJ-Z had less than 10 hours on her when she came down on the way home, having been delivered on the morning of the attack. It looks like you're as challenged for production floor area as I am, so I hope your Lancaster has a decently-sized display parking area: she's worth it.

Thanks for the photo of your elevator mods: I hope you don't mind if I use it as a reference when I do mine. I used the engine door intakes on my Airfix JP 5 as templates for the '3: they might be a tad oversized but at least they're now there. Did you bother with the tiny "D"-shaped intake below the starboard canopy rail? I'm still trying to figure out how this ham-fisted, fat-fingered kit murderer is going to deal with that. Some of us care: we want to see your photies! I've also had to use filler on the three that I've assembled so far, but not huge quantities. The worst joints I've had to deal with were the ventral centre-section joints and air intakes. Like Adrian I hope things improve for you when you get back to this.

I've built a couple of these over the years and they're not bad kits. Be careful of the lower fuselage seam between wing trailing edge and cargo door, it could do with a bit of internal reinforcement. If you're feeling keen you can open out the navigator's window on the port side between crew door and first main cabin window, but above the line of the main windows.

Not necessarily; Airfix have a number of Mosquitos (W4050, TA122, TA634, TJ138) within two hours' travel of their headquarters and HJ711 not much further away. Their LIDAR scanners will give a good plot of the external form of the aircraft. They should also have a comprehensive data library from producing the 1/24th scale FB. Mk. VI to work from; it will be a fair bit of work to decide what's worth scaling down but it should be do-able.

Agreed Wez, and my apologies: I hadn't intended to jump on you. The poor old Sunderland's in the same boat. You're right also about the economics of the tooling; if it's not going to be cost-effective the bean-counters will kill it. I know an earlier poster didn't like the idea of just doing the front fuselage as a separate part but the joint would be easier to manage on the Mosquito and careful design, following the line of the wing cutout on the real aeroplane as far as possible, with vertical cuts at the front spar position below the wing and at the dorsal spa wise reinforcing strap above it for example, would give a lot of contact area for cementing, unlike the Blenheim.

That looks OK from here; love the original Canadian flag on the fin (reminds me of doing the Airfix F-104 in Canadian markings back in 19-sixty-dot) and the "Indian Head" Squadron emblem. One small nit-pick though; you've transposed the 2 and 4 of the Squadron number in your original post (understandable given the serial number on your jet).

Oh yes they do!!!! The current re-box of the 1/72th Mosquito still has the same three markings options as it did in 1973 when it was first issued. This is a kit that desperately needs re-tooling. Don't get me wrong; I think it's a good kit for its day, but the mouldy are worn and the level of detail is, by today's standards, basic. A modern kit would almost certainly have weapons bay and undercarriage bay detail (full depth mainwheel wells would be nice for a start, without having to hack lumps out of nacelle tops and lower wing skins. If Airfix want to do fighters and bombers/PRs the logical choice would be to put the fuselage halves and specific related components on one sprue so, for example: cockpit floor, instrument panel, control column, entry hatch, radio equipment. cockpit fittings (electrical junction boxes, radar displays for NF variants) armament Engine nacelles and exhausts could also be designed onto a separate sprue, giving the options of single-or two-stage engines, shrouded and unshrouded exhausts without disrupting the bulk of the common parts: wings, tailplanes (most variants) undercarriage, weapons bay, cockpit fittings (seats, control linkages). I know that there are differences in the wings: later aircraft had a spanwise "strap" above and below the spars (visible in photos of, e.g. TJ138 at Hendon, and some rocket-projectile-fitted FB. Mk. VIs had additional under wing reinforcement but most manufacturers haven't picked up on these to date and one much-vaunted-by-Hyperscalers manufacturer has even delineated the spar cap strip with engraved panel lines! (sorry, I can't find an emoji for "bewildered" just now). I haven't covered the trainers in this, but there were so few of them and who wants to model trainers anyway? (Runs away bravely and dives bravelier for very deep cover.)

That's it. They did manage to cram the engine instruments in. I think that this could be one of the prototypes but that the layout didn't change (much) in production jets.

WD149 was the last Lincoln completed, by Armstrong Whitworth at Baginton. She initially wore the post-war so-called "Type D" national markings with gloss black undersides and Medium Sea Grey upper surfaces. Initial Lincoln airframes, including the prototypes, all wore National Marking i upper surface rounders ("Type B") with National Marking iii ("Type C1") on fuselage sides. The so-called Type A1 roundels (red, white, blue and yellow with diameters in the ratios 1:3:5:7 respectively) had been discontinued two years before PW925, the first prototype Lincoln made its first flight. Early airframes were generally finished in standard RAF night bomber colours but some of the early RF-serialled airframes, around RF385, were in Tiger Force colours with white upper surfaces (which soon attracted grot by the bucketload if contemporary photos are anything to go by) and gloss black under surfaces without a low demarcation. These also sported National Marking iA upper surface roundels (red, white and blue with the narrow white ring).

Apart from the inclusion of a control column, rudder pedals, throttle & wing-sweep box one of the major differences is that the left-hand display is displaced to the right, IIRC mimicking the HUD with a set of four analogue flight instruments taking its place on the left. Not sure at present if the engine instruments were duplicated in the back but as the "trainers" were/are fully combat capable replacing nav kit with engine gauges might not be a good plan, let alone a cunning one.

Thanks Alan. '824 had two (at least) owners after her RAF service, firstly France's Aeronavale and then the Sunderland Preservation Trust (?) so may have been subject to some repainting by either or both. I suspect that little or no remedial work was undertaken by the RAFM when she was dismantled (thankfully not as drastically as IWM's example at Duxford which was sectioned, not overly neatly, just below upper deck level) and moved from Pembroke Dock to Hendon so NZ4115 may well still be closest to original spec.

Sorry, there should have been a smiley there somewhere. I wonder which one you're thinking of: don't work properly or how many really care, for example?

What about ' SGK or 'SGM as possibilities?

Don't you believe it sunshine! Self-certification of even very short periods of sick leave had almost ceased to exist by the time I left a certain well-known government department. Sick absence of even one day was usually followed by a "return to work" interview in which the manager attempted to establish whether this was part of a recurring theme or pattern. Prolonged or serial periods of absence could result in deeper inquisition and, if sufficiently prevalent, placing the employee on a "watch list". Further periods of absence could then result in disciplinary action up to and including re-grading (downwards, of course) and eventual dismissal which, of course, takes time and evidence. Many of us, me included, attended work even when we should not have because of this: more than once my bugs and I were told to go forth and contaminate somewhere else rather than continue to pollute the office. In the winter cold season I'm surprised that the whole office didn't succumb: the poor little Dark Side pot plants wanted the heating full on (often from September 'til the following June or July) and all of the windows shut, a situation which management (predominantly DS) did nothing to address and, presumably, still do. I don't doubt that some government departments are less "pro active" or "robust" in managing sick leave; perhaps you'd like to drop a little explosive into your local MP's lap by submitting an FOI request for civil service sick leave stats to see what "they" believe is the real picture, but have your salt cellar handy. In my department we were, and those who remain still are (particularly in my old discipline) painfully aware of the slogan " The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

Hi Paul, After that last post on this thread I went trawling and found what I hope is the Coastal Command SIG site and signed up! I didn't go through the Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum, so I may now be in an inactive site. My main reference has been ML824 and certain parts of her have definitely been painted: I'm pretty sure that NZ4115 has been similarly treated. I know the risks inherent in using a restored airframe as a reference (the recent thread on this site concerning B-17 interior colours bears testament to that) but I have memories of my presently-inaccessible copy of "Sunderland at War" and a recent rummage of Seawings, that suggest an internal finish other than anodised aluminium.

"British Navy Coastal Patrol"?!?!?!?!? Once again the press fail to let accuracy get in the way of a piece of badly-researched, inaccurate tosh. I know that, if this does indeed relate to a late 1939- early 1940 torpedoing, we weren't going to give away free information to Gerry, but I'm also pretty sure that their intelligence service would know of the existence of Coastal Command, the FAA and the types of aircraft that both were operating.

17 hours in a Screamliner?!?!?!?!?!? No thanks, not if it could draw a fully-animated, 3D model of an A380 in that time.

"Our" lot called it "the Performance Wave"; funny how I always felt I was slowly drowning there.

Moving swiftly sideways from Head in the clouds' post above I used to work for a well-known government department and had a discussion with a senior manager ((a sensible, experienced, capable, pragmatic individual, unlike too many of his compatriots from "the Dark Side" in particular) about our annual appraisal system. "Someone" had decided that each manager would have 20% of their staff who would exceed what was expected of them in a given year, 70% who would meet those expectations and 10% who would "need improvement". The SM informed his manager, who had told him this, that he did not have anyone who fell into the latter category: he was then told that if none of his staff did he would! As far as senior management, above this particular SM, were concerned these percentages were inviolable and non-negotiable if managers wanted to progress further up the greasy pole. On another occasion a "pilot scheme" was proposed to trial a new means of working and an inception date for the new means of working regime-wide was notified. Not unreasonably the question was asked "What happens if the trial isn't a success!" The official response was "The trial will succeed." "But what if it doesn't" was the, not unnatural, response. "The trial will be a success." was the only response.

There is a sprue photo on the Airfix Workbench page. Apart from the radome and shorter weapons bay doors there are a new front bulkhead to align with the front of the doors, new mounting panel for the radome (to replace the front section of the original bomb doors and some antennae. There may be a second sprue with additional bits on but I haven't found an image of it yet. Interestingly there is no rear crew work area, we'll just have to make do with the parts from the MR. Mk. 2 kit, which appear more accurate for an AEW. Mk. 2 anyway.