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Hello All, As a slight diversion from my Privateer, I started a Lindberg/2nd Round re-pop of the old Inpact Bleriot Monoplane just before Christmas. For a change, I did my research first - this isn't quite the aeroplane that flew across the channel and looks like it may be something of a generic mash-up, so I've chosen to model it as a "representative example" - meant to be fun, right? [So it seems I have two modes of operation: do the research and then ignore the findings, or; build the kit, do the research and then change the kit. Ewww] The kit was first released in 1968 and still holds up today in my opinion. The moulds appear to have lasted well too. My Dad built quite a few of them in the 1960s. I have the whole Inpact 1/48 range in my stash and this is only the second one I have built, the first being the Bulldog in the late 60s. I didn't get a sprue shot because I just piled in, but here are the main parts laid out after a little bit of assembly and painting in Hu 110 acrylic wood and a home brew acrylic off-white: They are all masked off so I could add some colour variation. Masking was not the most time-consuming part of this kit! I stippled them with a mix of off-white and Humbrol acrylic 93: Underneath I went for a bright white stipple with a hint of spar shadow: It was an experiment and underneath, you know... I gave everything a wash of Hu 93 to blend it all together after unmasking. I added all the fuselage cross bracing from stretched sprue painted silver by dragging it under a permanent silver marker. The kit has an ingenious way of assembling the fuselage halves by presenting all the cross struts on a runner that you cut away after assembly. I decided to add them individually after bracing the bay (sides, top, bottom and end-on cross bracing) - this was the time sink! Threading the rudder and elevator control wires through the spiders nest of the fuselage was a particularly interesting challenge. I ended up using stretched sprue for all the rigging, including the wing bracing threaded through the wing and pulled tight. Time will tell if it lasts! The rest of the construction was uneventful until I got to the wheels. The kit wheels are in brown plastic with raised spokes on them. This is a downgrade from the original kit, which moulded the wheels in clear plastic with raised spokes on them. Clever stuff. However, I googled away and came across a terribly helpful video posted by Arni here in the Vehicle Modelling forum. This shows a simple method for making them. I managed to mark out 12 stations 30 degrees apart using schoolboy geometric constructions, and set up the jig: Very high tech as you can see! The idea is that you make the wire wheel in the rim and then stick it inside the tyre from the kit. For me, this would mean making a 0.5mm thick rim using my Olfa circle cutter at its smallest radius (5mm and 5.5mm), which I didn't think I could do. So I made a hoop the size of the rim and the tyre: Then I made two hoops the size of the tyre, rounded off the inside edges and painted them dark grey. I painted the rim-plus-tyre silver and then stuck the "tyre" sections to the outside of the rim-plus-tyre sections. This meant that I didn't have to worry about painting the rim/tyre demarcation. I then sanded the outside edge to a rounded cross-section and touched up the dark grey. Done! A picture is truly worth 1000 words here! The last thing was to paint up the pilot (looks like Louis Bleriot with his huge moustache) and it was finished. Great fun to build: I will get some more pictures when I have a mo (off to see relatives today) and do an RFI. Now, about that Privateer.... Thanks for looking, Adrian