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....well l don't know about you lot but mine would be (front and back) if 9 of these had just taken off in a rolling formation, gone vertical, on full afterburner to 20,000 feet at mach 1.2. The noise and vibration would have felt like the end of the earth, Birds would have fallen from the sky. Women would have fainted in there thousands. Hard men with daggers tattoed to there foreheads would have cowered on the floor crying for mummy. It would have been FANTASTIC !!! Big thanks to @Dr. Quack for sending me the RAF decals. @Courageous @Wolfman @Terry1954 @Lightningboy2000 suggested l built this after l presented a Phantom Red Arrows in RFI back in 2019, it's taken a while so l hope it does'nt dissapoint. Suprised how big the Lightning is along side the Phantom. and NO l am not going to build a Vulcan Whif next!!!!

Following on from my Canberra, this was my 4th Lightning in 48 scale (the previous 3 being an F.1 and T.4 built last year as a Firebirds duo, and an F.6 prior to these for a GB a while ago) but following the recent release of a half engine by CMK in resin, I was inspired to build this. I decided beforehand that I'd open a few panels up myself, wanting to stretch my skills beyond my norm, so with the timely publication of the Daco book "Lightning Uncovered" I purchased a donor kit and several resin items (I'll post a link to the WIP photos later) including the aforementioned engine, and cockpit, undercarriage bays, and (what CMK call) "electronic boxes" which in fact comprise of the rear spine gubbins ahead of the engine bay, plus two resin boxes that fit into the port side of the fuselage that don't really hold electronics, but hydraulic pumps and pipes... Also, the CMK instruction sheets are not very helpful, or accurate. Be warned if you use these sets. Aires provided the exhausts, as I always use them, Master the pitot, Eduard a few bits and pieces from a leftover set plus the RBF tags, Montex the paint masks, and Model Alliance the decals. The painting was my trusty Alclad shades, with Humbrol and Xtracolor providing other colours. The weathering was various Humbrol and AK sets of washes and powders. Please refer to the build pics for the scratch built stuff, I think most of it should be covered in those photos. All of the piping and wiring you can see I added from either copper wire, fuse wire or plastic rod. The shock cone wasn't really long enough to be displayed off, so to build up the "base" I glued a core of acrylic rod then wound very thin plastic strip around it til it sat flush with the end of the cone, before painting with aluminium. The Ferranti AI.23 I made from plastic strip and rod, and again more strip would around solid rod for the aft section. The dish is made from the end of a pipette. Some of the wiring and details is even too small for me to add so it's more a representation than 100% accurate. The individual small panels I made from very thin sheet, cut to size by tracing them through off the plans provided at the back of the Daco book. The corners were rounded off and fastener holes made with a metal point in a pin vice. In the last pic I have laid them out in the positions they would be on the airframe. Below is the build log, I hope you can see it Also I apologise for the amount of pics here, but I usually can't decide which base or background looks best so I present a selection of each. Many thanks for looking