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Giddey to all! Here is my first build of the Lancia 037 Rally - my favorite rally car! This is the first version, the other is the evoluzione type (the later version) All comments welcome as usual, especially if you can suggest something I can do better! Hope you like it! Cheers Andreas

Giddey to all! Here is my first build of the Lancia 037 Rally - my favorite rally car! This is the first version, the other is the evoluzione type (the later version) All comments welcome as usual, especially if you can suggest something I can do better! Hope you like it! Chhers Andreas

This is my first work in progress post so please be gentle on me. This was going to be my winter project, then when I had to go into lockdown for 12 weeks it became my virus project. Unfortunately I have to go into hospital on Tuesday so this may be as far as I get. The kit is great so far, I am not sure if the kit is a lot better than the Typhoon or if I have got better, but so far there are no issues putting it together. I went for a cockpit upgrade kit and I don’t think it was worth it. The seat belts from HGW are excellent and well worth the investment. I have freestyled the inside of the back of the aircraft as I want to leave the bottom hatch showing. I have taken some inspiration from Nigels Modeling Bench but not followed him exactly. I have the Anyz engine upgrade set and brass undercarriage which I have to make a start on but I am leaving that until after my hospital visit. Eventually it will be finished in the FAA scheme as I am ex RN myself so it seemed the obvious choice. These close up photos show up errors and such that I just cant seen with the naked eye 😢

After the Peugeot 206 WRC I looked through the stash and decided it was about time I started the Group B monster the Delta S4 that I've been putting off I've never built a Beemax kit before, but I'm impressed with the fit of the parts up to yet. The engine is together and ready for a weathering wash and some of the pipework painted and ready for assembly, just need to do the banding Ian

Here's my attempt at the 1/24 Hellcat by Airfix. Apologies for the photos but as you'd expect this is a big beast so it's very difficult to get the whole thing in shot. It's built out of the box except for a set of HGW seatbelts and some in-wing resin fuel tanks (to avoid seeing empty space inside the wings when looking up through the undercarriage) and a resin engine core, both from Nigel's Modelling Bench. I've built it so that the upper and bottom engine panels are removable so as to see all that lovely detail that Airfix have included. If you're wondering how the unattached panels in front of the cockpit are able to stay in place you can see the complex technical solution I devised in the last photo. I really enjoyed building this kit and the detail that airfix have incorporated is amazing. I didn't use any filler other than to fix a few sink marks in a small number of parts and to smooth the joints on the propeller blades. I did a brief work-in-progress report of the latter stages of the build here: Thanks for looking....stay safe, keep calm....and build models! Next on the bench for me is Trumpeter's 1/32 A-7E Corsair

Finally got around to finishing this off from before Christmas, it's a great little kit that goes together really well, as do most Tamiya kits. The decals were challenging to say the least, I found that along with micro sol/set that you needed a bottle of red wine as well They all seemed to fit fairly well apart from the RH rear quarter which wrinkled a bit due to all the compound curves and edges, but it's not the end of the world My camera skills aren't up to much, but here you go. Any comments, tips welcomed Thanks Ian

It's done boys, the beast is finally slain!!! This kit....where do I begin? A subject I wanted to build a kit of the moment I saw (and heard) it for the first time. An incredible car, that looks amazing and sounds amazing. I did the kit in the markings of the #67 car, driven by Brits Andy Priaulx, Harry Tinknell and Brazilian Pipo Deraini. On it's debut at the 2017 24 Hours of Le Mans the car finished 2nd in the GT Pro class and won the 6 Hours of Silverstone that season (see below). The Revell kit.......is a mixed bag. It's not a bad kit, but for a modern kit that was only released 18 months ago, it's disappointing. It has good cockpit detail, and good engine detail....but you can't see any of it. The kit decals are excellent with great colour density and printing, but then the fit of many of the parts is somewhere between vague and poor. The rear end doesn't want to go together. I had to cut the windscreen wiper off to fit the windscreen.... As for my build of it, it was a battle. I made many mistakes, and my car building skills weren't up to the job in places especially masking and painting a complex scheme on a complex model. But having said that, this is one of the best 4 foot models I have ever made. I turn around and look at it in the cabinet and it looks amazing. When I handle it up close I see a dozen or more little mistakes that can't be covered up with weathering! 🙈 I had my sons help with this, he did some of the interior painting and construction and a lot of the decalling. Here we are together at the 2017 Six Hours of Silverstone. And here he is now. How did he get so big in under 3 years???? Glad to have finished it, now 5 finished kits this year! I would also like to try the Tamiya Ford GT to see how they have gone about the kit (ie, how to do it better/properly) and paint it in a much simpler "civvie" scheme.

So here we go, this is my interpretation of Aoshima's excellent Lamborghini Countach LP400. I've always preferred the original Countach before it sprouted wings, wheel arches, massive tyres etc., so this one appealed straight away. It was a bit daunting when I opened the box, but in truth this is a very well engineered kit with very few issues. It's probably the best kit I've built so far, and I have to admit that the end result, being completely out of the box, is 90% down to Aoshima with only a small input from me. I'll start by apologising in advance if you feel there are too many photos (and I will admit that this post is very photo heavy), but the Countach is a very striking and photogenic car. The build thread is here if anyone wants to see how it came together. First up, the engine bay, which to my eyes looks very good even though it's one of those where you only really build the bits you can see, Still pretty effective though: Then it's onto the interior. the doors can be placed in the closed or open positions by means of removing them and positioning the hinge arm into one of two positions in the A-pillar - simple but effective. This also has the advantage that for photography you can remove the door completely giving an unusually clear view of the interior of the car: It's never the easiest thing to show the underside, particularly of a low slung sports car, but hopefully the mirror shots will give an rough idea. The parts underneath are all separate, with the coil springs (all six of them), being particularly effective at sucking time. And you can't even see them in these shots... And now it's time for the walkaround the car which I usually put in these RFIs. The trouble is that as opening the doors makes such a difference to the look of the car, I'm afraid there are in effect two walkarounds, hence lots of photos. First up, with everything closed. I mention at the end of the build thread about the doors not quite fitting perfectly. the truth is that they sit quite loosely and adding the door cards and chassis seems to have ever so slightly flattened the shape - they still fit in the door gap but now sit a little proud at the top. After that little lot, here's some (not as many) of it with the doors open. Those metal pins look good, but the boot one is a bit of a pain as it has a penchant for diving into the engine bay when you're trying to prop up the engine cover. Even so, it's still a good idea and looks much better than my usual method of supporting a bonnet (i.e. putting a cocktail stick in there). If you made it this far, thanks for looking in. All comments and constructive criticism welcome, I'm improving but still a fair way from getting a 10/10 model.

Hi All, I don't seem to to have created a thread for this one, so I decided to do it now: This is the exquisite Tamiya Ford GT model: So far, I have assembled the main parts of the body, and this is where I have got so far: I have to share my work-space with various stored items not immediately needed... The fit of the body was superb, with join lines matching the panel lines on the real thing as far as I can tell. I have done more than this, but I have no photos yet. Thanks for looking. Cheers, Alan.

Since coming back to modelling, I've only built aircraft (and some buildings for my modelrailroad). Back in the day I really enjoyed building cars as well, including some of the old MPC and more left field Japanese kits that were around then - well anything was better than Airfix whose only interesting "modern" car kits were the Mini and Lotus Cortina, their vintage ones were surpassed by Matchbox too. This is the Aoshima Mazdaspeed Roadster, which I received as a Christmas present. It's the NB Mk.2 Mazda Roadster / MX-5 / Miata (depending on market) fitted with Mazdaspeed bodykit, buckets and roll bar. I'm not entirely convinced about the headlight finishers or these wheels. It is not a model of the full-size Mazdaspeed limited edition, which was blue with gold wheels and the only factory turbo to date. The standard Mk.2 kit seems to be available from UK importers again as Aoshima have repopped it. The kit was very easy to build. The kit fits together easily having been well-designed and moulded, almost if not quite Tamiya quality. As always with cars itself about the paint job. This one has grey primer, 2x white primer, 2x matt red and 4-5x gloss red. Primers were Halfords cans and airbrushed reds by Tamiya. I rubbed down between each coat. For some reason I can't get on with airbrushing gloss varnish so the shine is 4-5 coats of brushed Klear. I enjoyed building the kit, and I'll be doing some more cars as there are a few in the stash. Cheers Will

I'm now quite well into my build of the 1/24 Hellcat by Airfix, but I thought I'd share some pictures of where I've got to plus some brief thoughts on the build to date. The only after market additions I've used are (1) a pair of resin wing tanks produced by Nigel's Modelling Bench (in order to avoid seeing an empty space inside the wings) and (2) a set of fabric seat belts by HGW. I'll also be using the Eduard canopy mask set (I'm useless at masking canopies!) I've used Mr Color number 365 gloss sea blue for the outside and as you can see I've also started weathering by very gentle use of some ultra fine Flory polishing sanders. In summary, I highly recommend this kit. The fit of the parts so far has been excellent - I've only used tiny amounts of filler in a few small places along the top and bottom seams. There are a few areas of burring here and there (unlike the 1/24 Typhoon, which requires a serious amount of clean-up) but so far this has been very easily sorted with a sanding stick or blade. Two areas that could be improved - the kit seat belts are too thick for the scale - they can be used but the HGW belts are sublime. Secondly the machine gun barrels have very soft detail. I see that Master have subsequently released a set of brass barrels and I would certainly have purchased a set had I not sealed up the wings by now. Otherwise I can't really fault the kit. The engine and cockpit are mini-kits in themselves and the detail is superb. I added ignition leads by using copper wire to my engine. This was extremely fiddly and time consuming but definitely worth it in my opinion. The kit instructions are a great help in showing where the wires should go. On the subject of the instructions, they are generally excellent but I have noticed just a couple of incorrect part number call-outs and some missing colour instructions on a handful of parts. So far I haven't used many decals other than those supplied for the instruments and placards, but they have been fine so far. I'll post up a few more photos as the kit nears completion. If you've been wondering whether to buy this kit then I would say definitely don't hesitate - its too good to miss!

So alongside the predictable Draken build I'm doing, I'm also going to be building this in the GB... The 1991 Rally Sweden winner, as well as being the winning car, it had a Swedish crew - Kenneth Eriksson and Staffan Parmander. It's a fairly simple kit, with a limited part count, no engine, etc. It does come with some material to make seatbelts from, some rubbery plastic sheet to make the mudflaps, a metal rod for the antenna and a small PE fret. I've also bought some aftermarket PE set that also comes with some seat belt material too. The decals look pretty good, though that's to be hoped for as other than the decals the exterior of the car is mostly white, other than the blue rear corners/boot which has to be painted onto the body - hopefully the line of the decal covers it, I hope the blue/white crossover doesn't show through the decals! The instructions look clear (well there aren't many parts), the English information panel is full of translation mistakes and misprints (though I kind of enjoy that). The only niggles are the clear parts aren't great, the tyres have a seam and the bonnet has a 2 nasty imprints that will need sanding out - I imagine that's because they based the shell on the road car version/other versions which have 2 large air-intakes louvers there - hopefully that'll sand out nicely.

Hi Guys Here is a bumper set of new releases all in one go, available for ordering and shipping right now (well over the next few days) Basically a few stand alone decal sheets, to be used in conjunction with the kit decals, early F6F-5 fuselage windows, and a few F6F-5N conversion sets with decals. Before you all ask, yes I am working on the F6F-3 conversion, this will also be done with a few decal sheet options. Release date for the -3 ???????? next few months. Best to visit here to get all the information. https://aerocraftmodels.bigcartel.com/category/1-24th A few pictures for colour (or color for US friends)

There was no WIP for this as I was building it for my brothers christmas present. I have however chronicled the majority of the build photos in the Google album here. The kit was a simple kit, with the only engine detail being moulded as part of the Chassis. The interior is fairly simple but it is also simple on the 1:1. Both myself and my brother owned various MR2's through our younger years and continue a shared interest inJapanesecars. I asked him how he would have his ideal MR2 earlier in the year (Much earlier) and have built this OOB but to his specifications: i.e Flocked dash and colour choices. The registration is the registration on his last owned MR2 and the TB Developments logo is taken from the club we used to be members of. Its also a company logo ( i do not own the copyright but do know the owner and am attending his wedding next year....so don't see he will have an issue in its use) I am pleased with the ease of this build and the end result ispleasing for a kit that only cost me £20. Here are the photos before it was closed up and the end result. Feel free to comment and criticise, I feel the front ride height is a touch high but not worh dying in a ditch over. Thanks for looking and there are more photos in the shared album linked in the first line of this post. Coops

Having completed the Stratos is pretty quick time (for me at least), it's time to move on to the next project. This time, it's the turn of the Lamborghini Countach, which I picked up a couple of years ago. I had a read around before buying this kit, and Aoshima's Countaches generally seemed to get the best reviews. Having bought the kit, I can see why - even sitting loose in the box it looks great. First reaction on opening the box though was that not only did it look good, but also a little bit daunting as there are a lot of sprues which suggests lots of parts. I think it's only a similar quantity to the Trabant, so maybe not that scary. Work on this actually started way back in June with spraying all the chassis and bits which need to have the same finish as it, alongside the body and all the body coloured items. No pics of the chassis work in progress (just Halfords grey primer then satin black), so I'll go straight onto the body. Not only is the body crisply moulded, but there are also minimal mould lines and I only found a couple of sink marks on the rear deck above and to the side of the tail lights. Needless to say, they have been filled prior to priming. And with the filler sanded down. Aoshima do seem to have been very conscious of those thin A- and B-pillars, so plenty of bracing to be cut out prior to construction, but much better that than snapped or bent pillars. Even better, a solid part is provided for where the windscreen belongs to help protect that delicate A-pillar prior to the glass going in. You remove the windscreen brace first, fit the solid windscreen to provide strength, then remove the rest of the bracing. This is where it ended up after the primer had gone on. After that, it was a case of adding the colour coat. The Countach isn't a car which needs a bright colour to stand out, but I remember a bright orange Matchbox Countach I had when I was about four, so that was the obvious colour. I fully appreciate that in that photo it looks like I've peeled an orange and glued it to the body, but after it got a clear coat it does look much better. Currently it's part polished, so is a bit of a work in progress. I taped the sills on from behind for spraying, they're sitting in a box now and will get properly fitted in due course. This weekend is really where I'm starting the build proper. Tomorrow I should be able to provide a small update

Hi all, well considering how basic this kit was when I first looked it over, I think it has turned out looking pretty spiffy. The kit really was going to have to be super detailed to make it look convincing; I used a basecoat colour that I had mixed for a motorcycle tank I was respraying for a client. It was Suzuki Maui blue; it seemed to match the full size car's colour perfectly. Not one of Hasegawa's finest, there was some nasty fit issues, around the front fender, the lower valance did not want to fit, as well as the rear wheel covers. I had to replace the front windscreen and quarter side windows with some clear acrylic sheet as the kit one was starting to split and was too poor quality to really use anyway. Overall I am pleased I took the decision to convert the car into a convertible and save the kit from returning to the stash and probably never being built.

I know what you've all been thinking. All this sci-fi stuff is all well and good, but when are we going to see some Scandi Noir? Well I'll oblige! I recently binge-watched the Danish/Swedish noir drama Bron/Broen, aka The Bridge. The Swedish protagonist Saga Noren drives a rather lovely 1970s Porsche 911S in an unusual olive green-mustardy colour. I can't find a photo that I can be sure I can post, but here's a youtube video showing the star of the show auctioning the car a year or two ago: I love this car - whilst cars aren't my usual thing (I probably last made a model car about 35 years ago) I had to build this one. Somehow I didn't feel the same pull to the battered people carrier driven by her Danish counterpart Martin Rohde! The car in question is a 911S from the late 70s. Fujimi does a 1/24 1969 911S which is the right body shape but some of the details aren't right for this particular car - mainly the bumpers, but a few other things like the wing mirrors are differently. However they also do a 1/24 1980s Carrera which is the wrong body shape (the flared wheel arches stand out as the main difference) but has all the other details needed. So a bit of kit bashing is in order. Here's the box shot of the 911S kit: And here are the bodies of the two kits side by side - the 911S is on the left: In the top photo you can see that the front wheel arch extends a bit further down on the 911S than the Carrera - this is due to the bulkier bumper on the Carrera - and I need to trim it back to match the profile of the Carrera so the bumper will fit. Similarly the bonnet needs to have the Carrera's profile and the simplest thing to do here seems to be to cut out the two bonnets and stick the Carrera's bonnet on the 911S. Then the bulkier sills on the sides of the Carrera need to be transplanted onto the 911S. So here's where I'm up to - I've transplanted the bonnet, removed the excess plastic from the wheel arch, and removed the sills ready to graft on the parts from the Carrera: cheers Julian

Hi guys, here is another car project and I really do have my work cut out with this one, it’s been in my stash for about 5 years, dug it out last week and took a peek at it, good points are that it has a very nice accurate looking body and all the fenders and details on the outside of the car look good, however inside was very poor, no engine bay, and worst of all very inaccurate seats and dash. Not surprising really as the 66 T-Bird had very elaborate seat and dash detailing, so what to do? Well, looking at YouTube videos I found that the convertible versions looked much better, so I decided to bite the bullet and cut the roof off! Now this committed me to scratch building and modifying the kit interior details, the main objective was to give a fairly good representation of a top down 66 T-Bird that was ready to cruise or had just been fully restored to show winning condition. Here are some photos of a restored 66 T-Bird that I am trying to copy in model form. I decided the body would be painted in blue metallic with white leather and blue interior, with lashings of chrome details. So I hope to update you with progress soon, now where’s that hacksaw?

Hi all, here are the final pictures of the Mistress of the dark's cool ride. For such an old kit I was surprised how well it went together, once I had got the Leopard skin effect sorted out, I relaxed and really enjoyed getting this kit built. The purple flecks in the paintwork are not easy to photograph as it's very subtle, but really adds to the macabre theme I think. It's not a paint but a salt crystal sized powder that is added to the lacquer and sprayed over a black base, never seen the product for sale as I have to admit I have had the tub on my shelf for 30 years! As for the Leopard skin effect, well it was bought off eBay in small sheets; it’s decals for ladies finger nail art. I bought enough sheets to cut the shapes out and they bedded down nicely with some Tamiya X20A thinner, as they are a little thicker than normal decals, the random pattern helped conceal the joins, once all dry I gave the decals a flat coat of clear and a wash with some AK enamel engine grease to pick out some details in the seats. I hope you all enjoy the pictures.

Hi all, Here's the kit I'm going to build to represent the year of my birth... The Stratos was first introduced in 1974 but 1975 was the first full year it competed in. The car I'm building is the "Red Chardonnet" one on the box art, that won the Tour de Corse Rallye (Corsia Rally) in 1975. Chardonnet was the name of the privateer team and the car was driven by Bernard Darniche with co-driver Alain Mahé. I believe Chardonnet also had a second, blue car that year as well. Hopefully it won't be a difficult build in terms of large decals / complicated colour schemes.

Hi all, this is going to be my Halloween season build for this year, should be a lot of fun. I don't intend on using the leopard skin decals they are way too naff for my liking, and I won't be painting them on, not sure what I will come up with yet, but I have an idea! As for the paint job, well I intended on painting the car in a metal flake black, with purple flecks in the lacquer. This is a 60's kit (re boxed in the 80's) and it sure does show its age, makes you appreciate how good modern kits are, but I guess it's all modelling at the end of the day; this kit was bought out as a replica of the actual convertible that Elvira drove in the movie. Among the creepy extras the front grille has a ghoulish spider web. Stay tuned for the next update.

After all the time spent on the Skyline, I feel it's time for a shorter project. To that end, I figured it was time to restore another model from my youth. In truth, I don't feel I did too bad first time around on this given I was about 12 or 13, didn't paint it, and had nothing to do the decals with other than fingers, water and a duster. However, 30 years have taken their toll on it with the decals having suffered a little over not to mention that it has got covered in dust and shows the effect of 10 years on a shelf next to a field - it got a fresh coat of dust every harvest time! This is what it looked like a couple of months ago. So it's time to bring it back to life, courtesy of some Shunko decals and three sets of instructions - one in Japanese downloaded from 1999.co in Japan, one average quality scan from one I found on sale on eBay and a scan of a set of instructions for the Airfix model of this car courtesy of @theplasticsurgeon from this very site. Between those three, I'm reasonably confident I can get the painting about right too. First job was to take it to pieces and get those decals off. Oddly, it was much easier to get the car to pieces (probably because it was stuck together using UHU rather than solvent cement) than it was to get all the decals off. But I got there in the end, and while I always suspected that the plastic had yellowed, removing the decals confirmed it. What did surprise me though was that the coloured decals appear to have stopped the plastic yellowing while the white areas hadn't. Over the past few weeks, I've been getting the paint on this. First up was the primer, which at least returned it to plain white and covered the yellowing. Next up was the paint. Not all that smooth, but as it's a racing car I'm not going for a perfect finish on this one. Starting on it properly today, the first job was to add a wash to the panel lines and the bonnet grille. Generally not too much of a problem apart from that the wash started creeping both ways along the join between the door and the side skirt. I ended up scribing the bottom of the doors and trying to stop the wash going backwards with a blue-tack dam - not 100% successful and the wash is a bit heavy at the bottom of the doors but it was shaping up to be far worse so I'll settle for it. The chassis is also in the shot - very simple as this is one of Tamiya's earliest 1/24 models (serial number suggests the third one they did) and it's also motorised which eliminates space for an engine. There'll be a bit of painting around the windows, but I'm aiming to get that decalling done early so as to get it clearcoated before temperatures drop for winter.

Hi, everyone. I have a question about the form and style of the ventral tanks used on the F6F Hellcat. On Sprue Q of the big 1/24 Scale Hellcat there are 2 ventral tanks. Only one is mentioned in the instructions, this uses parts Q14 and Q15 and has the joint seam top and bottom and an aerofoil section between tank and fuselage, as detailed in Step 292. The other is parts Q12, Q13: it has no such mounting section, just 6 legs and a fuel pipe: there is no mention of the second one in the instructions! Why are these parts included? could Airfix be planning a later, possibly night fighter version? Anyone have any ideas?

Has anyone had a go at this model and is it recommended for a good interesting build?

... or Happiness is Vectored Thrust! Firstly, I am a fan of the Harrier but mostly the early variants before the airframe was “afflicted” by the lumps and bumps associated with the development of an aircraft. As you may have guessed by my screen name, I’m particularly fond of the prototype aircraft, the P.1127 and P.1127/2, otherwise known as (the/a) Kestrel. To my eye, these are the definitive forms of this aircraft concept/configuration, with their aluminium finish and long pitot tubes sticking out the front, ready for the jousting tournament. I’ve recently returned to the hobby after 20 years or so: the aircraft I always fancied building all those years ago was an Airfix 1/24 scale Harrier but it was never to be. I’ve now decided that I’m going to give converting the Harrier into a P.1127 a go and I thought I’d try posting a WiP to try and keep myself out of metaphorical doldrums. The question was which P.1127 configuration to model? As you may or may not know (or care) there were many configuration states of P.1127 although predominantly they can be split into two groups. The first six aircraft had registration numbers starting with XP (831, 836, 972, 976 980 & 984). The second group with the designation P.1127/2, also given the name Kestrel by the Hawker marketing department had registration numbers starting with XS (688 - 696). This is based on my limited research into the subject, anyway. The reason for being so picky with the registration numbers is because there was evidently quite a bit of variation between each aircraft, especially in the first group of six but also extending into the second group. Relevant differences include (but are not limited to): the wing ¼ chord sweep (the trailing edge was unswept for the first five aircraft but was swept back on the sixth) wing leading edge extensions (saw-tooth extensions were added during development to refine handing) fairing of wing tip into landing gear fairing fuselage length (the Kestrel was extended by 9 inches compared to the P.1127) tailplane area, span & dihedral sweep angle of air intakes (reduced from 35 degrees on the first aircraft to a more moderate 20 degrees on later aircraft… less so on the Harrier upon EIS) various intake lip profiles etc. Of course all the aircraft above are significantly different to the Harrier (GR1) that is the subject of Airfix’s 1/24 scale kit. The aircraft that I’ve decided to model (try to model) is XP984, a special aircraft for me. XP 984 was the last of the original P.1127 aircraft but was designated as the prototype for the forthcoming Kestrels (P.1127/2). This means that the aircraft originally had the Kestrel wing with the swept trailing edge, the 20 degree sweep on the air intakes and an intermediate tailplane configuration. To my eyes the aircraft in its original configuration looks “the most right” out of all the P.1127 configurations: a nice swept trailing edge with no leading edge extensions to spoil things, a nice sweep on the intakes with no bulbous “elephant ears” ruining the lines but maintaining the aforementioned pitot tube at the nose. (The aircraft, now at Brooklands, has been retro-fitted with a Harrier wing and tailplane so looks less good, IMHO. I’m grateful it’s now inside however). The reason XP984 is special to me is because I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Ralph Hooper (conceptual design and Chief Engineer of the P.1127 programme) at Brooklands and discussing the aircraft with him for an hour or so. I’d like to build this aircraft to help remember such a wonderful experience. As for model itself (an eBay “bargain”), progress has been made but is intermittent due to family and work commitments. The progress so far includes: Fin: removing air intake from root. I’m unsure whether a reduction in height is required… research is ongoing Tailplane: modified to the correct profile but I only have one of them L a shortcoming of the eBay “bargain”. Airfix themselves couldn’t help… any other ideas? Making one will be simple enough but I’d rather modify! Wing: leading edge extensions removed and tips re-profiled. The model will be displayed in the hover so the flaps need cutting out and lowering but this I’m saving for another day Fuselage: the biggest job was re-profiling the air intakes the kit’s Harrier intakes are wrong for the P.1127 so they were cut out and new ones built up from plastic-card and car body filler (I love that stuff) at the required 20 degree sweep for XP984. This also required making the fairings for the cold nozzles: these have intakes in their leading edges but I haven’t got there yet. I’ve also boxed out the landing gear bays to attempt some detailing in there… we shall see how successful that is. My biggest unknown with the fuselage is the length. The Kestrel fuselage is 9 inches longer that the P.1127 but is the same as the Harrier, I think. I’m modelling the Kestrel prototype so I don’t know if XP984 had a P.1127 or Kestrel/Harrier length fuselage. Any ideas? There’s clearly a lot of work left to do, especially on the fuselage (and especially if it wants shortening by 9 scale inches!). The other big thing is the fairing over the wing but I need to wait for the fuselage to be joined first, I think. As I said, progress will be intermittent but I’m hoping the pressure of the forum will eventually get me over the line. The finished model will not be worthy of any special mention like so many of the fantastic efforts displayed on this forum: I shall be ecstatic if it is recognisable as a Kestrel (prototype). I’ve tried to add some pictures below… fingers crossed. Anyway, thanks for looking, P. (Sorry for the quality of the photos, clearly they were taken on my phone!) The bits so far... Fuselage showing modified intakes and cold nozzle fairings The air intake structure aft of the cockpit is a key omission of the kit, perhaps not surprising given its age. Plasticard has been used to rough-in some of the structure but more work is required to tidy it up and fair it in. I shall invest in some Milliput, which I have never used but am led to understand that it might be useful here than my beloved Isopon. Yours truly and the Chief Engineer himself, in front of the aircraft in question.