Seahawk

Making a return visit to Northern Ireland after 3 years. Am hoping for better luck this time on a planned visit to My Old Toy Box in Winetavern St, Belfast. But is it still trading please? Have there been any interesting modelling-related developments anywhere else?

With all that heavy-duty sanding i forecast a white Christmas in the @Ray S household. Good luck!

Thanks. BTW the Foreart Scimitar 2 does have increased spacing either side of the centre roadwheel.

@KingsmanSo there are 4 hull lengths for the CVRT family: Original Scorpion and Scimitar light tanks All the "first generation" Scorpion derivatives (Sultan/Striker/Samaritan/Spartan/Samson) plus the Scimitar 2: slightly lengthened chassis Stormer: lengthened chassis with additional road wheel Shielder VLSMS: stretched Stormer Have I understood you correctly? I'm getting nervous about my Foremark Scimitar 2 kit now! One thing's for sure: the British taxpayer has certainly got value for money out of that original CVR(T) design, first fielded in 1973.

Think Almark always stayed true to the 1/76 faith. Almark were ahead of their time and we still have a lot to thank them for - They were the first to produce useful good quality transfers like German turret numbers and British arm of service and divisional markings so that we could ring the changes on the often inaccurate transfers that came with kits. Their Six Day War sheets (topical at the time!) are still useful, - Peter Hodges’ book Military Markings (published by Almark) cracked open the whole subject of British WW2 military markings and is still a useful quick reference guide even if knowledge has advanced a lot since then. Wish I hadn’t missed out on the updated version fleetingly available in the 80s/90s. - As @Lothian man says, the short-lived Almark magazine, although horribly expensive for schoolboy budgets, was full of good stuff. The kits featured are now obsolete, the conversions sometimes crude but a lot of the reference material is still good (much more serious stuff than in, say, Airfix Magazine) and enabled authors like Bruce Culver, Steven Zaloga and Terry Wise to cut their teeth. Don’t get me going on the abomination that is the newish Airfix 1/72 Tiger I. At least Airfix were trying with the earlier kit. The new one is in several important respects less accurate and certainly less well detailed than its much older ancestor. I bought one cheap from Lidl and instantly regretted it. I did build it but improved it using many parts from the older kit (hull hatches, turret escape hatch, vision slots).

I imagine they would be for the Airfix Tiger which, IIRC, was in those days the only 1/76 show in town I remember seeing them for sale and don’t recall any relief at all: I think that would have been beyond the technology Almark had at their disposal. I have a lot of the Almark sheets but didn’t bother with this one (though the gun barrel kill markings looked good). Out of curiosity I would be interested to see them actually used on a model.

Wingleader Digital Magazine 7 (or the hard copy Printed Compendium 3) has 8 photos of the E28/39, including 3 in colour, plus 3 of the wreckage of W4046/G. [Edit] Plus another 5, plus 2 more of the wreckage of W4041/G, in Digital Magazine 8 (Printed Compendium 3). Includes a rare photo of W4046/G before she crashed.

So: is there anyone out there who HAS cobbled together 2 2c wings to make a 2e one? How did you get on? Any tips on what to do/not to do?

Much more crisply moulded -AND with movable flaps: what’s not to like? 😂 It’s such a pity that Airfix mucked up their new one: it has the best outline shape of any of the options IMHO. Pity it’s best viewed from 3m.

The Barracuda undercarriage set does look very nice and addresses one of the kit's most visible shortcomings. But not cheap.

1/72. The tragic part is that this IS one of their newest releases - well, 2017. Thank you for the good wishes.

Tell me about it! I think this kit must be a contender for the worst-fitting release by a mainstream kit manufacturer this century. Each gondola had taken about an hour of hacking and filing (even using a full-size file at one point). Even after my re-engineering (“trimming to fit” is way too genteel a term) the 2nd nacelle is currently clamped in place with two of the beefiest clamps I could find (never ever found a use for them before): we’ll see how it has turned out. And don’t get me going on the woefully soft detail on the smaller parts. The pilot figure is no more than a blob. To think I have another one in the stash. I may need therapy.

So Airfix got it right. Thank you.

I'm currently building the Airfix Me 262 kit as aircraft 500200 Black X of 2./KG51 at the end of the war. The kit instructions indicate that the code letter is forward of the cross on both sides of the fuselage. However, according to Hugh Morgan's Stormbird Rising (p.165), during preservation work the Australian War Museum established that its full code was 9K+XK. I would therefore expect the aircraft's individual code to be in the 3rd position, ie immediately to the right of the cross, on both sides of the aircraft, whether or not the rest of the code was painted up. I have found various photos of the aircraft during its time in Australia but none shows either side of the fuselage with sufficient clarity to identify where the code is placed. Does anyone please have any clear photos showing the fuselage code positions on this aircraft, either during its service with the Luftwaffe or as currently preserved in its original colours in Australia? It would be nice to know whether I am correct - or just overthinking things as usual!

Agreed. Been there, done that. I’ve an Esci hull for each of the 3 PSC turrets. The latter are a bit crude and caricaturised but serviceable.