David Womby

This is Italeri's C-47. KP208 was delivered to the RAF sometime in 1944. I can't find records of her war service. She had a long service career after WW2 as a transport, sometimes for VIPs, including service in the 50s with Coastal Command in the UK then, in the 60s, Norway followed by a period in India. She was retired in 1970 and now sits on display (but painted in wartime colours representing a different Dakota) outside the Parachute Regiment HQ in Colchester. This is is how she looked at Carlisle airport in 1963. David

I know I am resurrecting a 'zombie' thread here but just want to thank you for your post way back then. It pointed me to a font I can use for my current build (a 1950s RAF C-47) and future Valiant builds. I solved the excess width issue by printing to a jpg, then using phot software to compress the serial horizontally to look nearer the one I need. It's not perfect but it's close. Here's a sample. David

What? Nobody mentioning this gem? David PS. Which I have actually built but had to use Frog MkIV wings.

Great summary on 1/72 Meteors, Giorgio, but Frog's first Meteor was an F8. No wheel wells or cockpit, dodgy intake shape and coarse details but overall accurate in shape. I have one in the stash! David

That's amazing. It looks way bigger than 8.6". Most impressive. David

Thanks, Miguel. I tend to build only old clunkers because that's what I have in the stash from the 90s and 00s when I was busy acquiring them and, also, because I enjoy their simplicity as long as they are fairly accurate shapes. David

Thanks, gents. Not wanting to be accused of 'ageism' here but I don't remember the kit's first issue.. It predates me (only just!) but Hawk clearly didn't want anybody to forget it as they moulded it into one of the flaps! Here: David

Can't help you on the exhausts. I hadn't spotted that when I did my S1 conversion a few weeks back to the old Airfix S2B with ModelArt intakes. Good luck with your conversion. the S1 looks so different! David

This is the old Hawk Swift boxed as an F Mk 4 and actually pretty accurate for one incarnation of the Swift F4 which did have two wing fences per wing. However, I wanted to build an F1 as it flew in all over silver whereas the later Swifts were all camouflaged. Things that I did to 'adjust it' to make a an F1: fill in two cannon troughs (F1 only had two cannons), thin down intake lips and put card to close off intakes and prevent 'see through', cut off the four wing fences and fit two in the correct location, remove the leading edge extension that was only fitted to F2s and later, replace the whole tailcone aft of the tailplanes as the exhaust was way too wide, reduce the tailplane dihedral and add a pitot tube to the starboard wing. Hawk moulded a solid cockpit with just the head of the pilot to be glued in there. I did nothing to the cockpit except add a block of plastic to represent the ejection seat headrest. The decals are from FreightDog/Fantasy printshop and were great except the wingtip chequerboards which refused to conform until glued down with Future and resulting gaps along the wingtip edges had to be touched up! Comments and criticisms welcomed. Thanks for looking. David

Does anybody have an answer? I'd like to know too. David

Really impressive replica. David

Nice to see a different scheme! David

Fantastic job on the wear and weathering. David

Lovely build and well done on the paint job. David

That is really impressive work. David