Jessica

Those proper intakes make it look so much better than the kit intakes do. I always thought it looked like a cartoon.

I had the usual Amonster problems. It's a real putty monster; you're going to need to fill every seam and then some. The inboard engines don't fit well at all. They're made in forward and aft sections and there are huge gaps between them when you get them onto the wing. I had to laminate thick sheet plastic together, glue it in and carve it to shape to fill them. I didn't bother with the two part exhaust pipes, preferring to replace them with suitable sections of styrene tube instead. The canopy section is too wide for the plastic section of the nose so there's a 2mm overlap at the bottom edge that needs to be filled. At least it's not too marrow. The horizontal stabilisers need tweaking before they fit properly. The instructions show you where you need to cut them but be careful; mine ended up way out and I had to build up the roots again with sheet plastic. Here's a picture before the primer paint went on. That was only the first round of puttying... Here's Ken Duffey's build of the Il-38 version: http://www.flankers-site.co.uk/modl_il-38.html Thank you, but I have to decline the honour of being a 'sir'. I lack the physical attributes.

I finished this one last summer. The decals were prone to shattering rather than conform to the various lumps and bumps. I had to patch them with slightly different-coloured trim film. Oh well, I guess it looks touch-up paint. It's a big enough beast to totally overwhelm my usual photo stage, so I had to use a cardboard box, thus the industrial looking background

You can follow my build in the Aeroscale campaign thread: http://www.aeroscale.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=SquawkBox&file=index&req=viewtopic&topic_id=175211&ord=&page=1 Now there's something from the new format that I don't like. Apparently one can't embed hyperlinks into the text anymore I had some trouble fitting the outer wing panels to the resin centre section, and the fuselage seams cracked open while I was sanding too many times to count. Instead of using only a few tabs I recommend you back up the entire length of the join. All in all there really weren't too many problems compared to other vac kits I've done.

That's a fantastic colour scheme, which suits the DC-10 quite well. I was deeply disappointed when United got rid of this scheme. Do you have that sheet for sale?

Yes, that's the Whisky Jack sheet. I think that if they're too wide it's only at the nose. See this side view which shows the cheatline covering the passenger windows and overlapping them. It would be fairly simple to trim the nose portion down top and bottom. They're quite fragile, so deseve to be coated before use.

My Dad was a Radio/Nav and Searchmaster on these in Greenwood during the early '60s and later on in Winterpeg in the late '60s and Early '70s. I have a photo of one of 440 Sqn's Sar Techs being lowered from a dayglow-topped H-21 so I can confirm the colour. I can also confirm that the red was by far the more common scheme. The dayglow faded badly in the sun so it wasn't adopted. At that time they were very much in the twilight of their careers, having been replaced by the Labrador on both coasts and the Vouageur and Chinook in Army service. There was another variant of the flotation gear which was a set of inflatable "horseshoe" collars around each wheel. This photo comes from a series shot during an incident with 103 Rescue Unit in the Early 1960s. Aircraft 610 lost engine power and had to ditch in a lake in New Brunswick. 103's techs came out and stripped the airframe down so it could be sling-loaded back to Greenwood, Nova Scotia. In this shot, aircraft 591 has just lifted 610 clear of the water surface. The flotation collars on the wheels are cleary seen. Note also that 591 has the main landing gear fairings that characterised the Vertol 44 while 610 had the round-topped doors and unfaired gear legs of the early H-21A even though it's been otherwise modified to -B standard (Note the blocked-out window just aft of the cockpit). This paint scheme was the one previous to that provided on the Leading Edge sheet. Here's my very faded picture of 636 in the dayglow scheme. Pohtos © RCAF.

I didn't use anything special on it. It's got a brush coat of Hmbrol matt white, then a coat each of Testors spraybomb. Matt white, then gloss overtop of that to smooth it out.

1/72 Heller kit, Whisky Jack Decal. The decal is long out of production, but there's an equivalent available from CanMilAir. I built this one 20-odd years ago.

That's very nice! Which kit is it?

If you'd like to indulge in a nostalgia trip there's a Matchbox group build wrapping up this month over at Aeroscale.

Well, I said "recent" and the DC-8 isn't exactly recent. But since you want it... It's the old Revell beast. There are a few more pictures and the harrowing tale of its construction here.

Williams Bros. 1/72 Boeing 247 ICM 1/144 Tu-144 AZ Model 1/144 Tu-134 Airfix 1/144 Airbus A-300B4 Daco Skyline 1/144 737-500 Ardpol 1/48 Martin Kitten K3 AModel 1/72 Il-18D Welsh Models 1/72 Comet 1

Here is a build of the JAL boxing I did over on Aeroscale last year. It's broadly comparable to the Minicraft DC-6, but rougher. "Some modelling skills necessary" will see your build through to completion. I did the DC-6 in its original VC-118 issue as part of a group build. I didn't create a separate thread for it, but you can find my in-progress shots of it in this thread beginning at the top of page 5. It's a little more refined than the DC-7, but stil needs TLC to do it right.