Bell209

Been a while since my last update. Managed to get the Tornado home last week in its box in my backpack under the seat in front of me on two flights from work to home. I put the gear on with a bit of mucking about and found the nose full of lead wasn't needed at all! Oh, well; fitted it with the weight anyway as it's glued in there! The observant among you will notice I managed to add the antennae on the spine which I robbed from the Airfix kit. I wanted to get the thing finished before we left on holidays but I had to go to a concert with my daughter, which chewed up all of Saturday, so the canopy and pylons will need to wait until the next trip home in July. I did manage to get the TIALD pod on, though. The lighting is rubbish as I did it inside with the lovely energy-saving globes we have! I'm not happy with the contrast between the nose cone and the fuselage colouring which I think is the result of missing a matt recoat of Future. I'll redo the lot later. I also need to add some more antennae and the Master AoA probes on the forward fuselage and add some black outlines to the lower RADALT(?) antenna under the nose. I think I'll add brake lines to the main gear as well as they look to be noticeably missing as they are.

I concur! How did you do them?

Fabulous job!

Your builds just keep getting better, Shellie!

I assume oppos = operators = slack aircrew (oh, wait, that's a tautology!)

Looks like you're wrangling a difficult case into a great representation of the aeroplane!

No matter how philthy they get, they're still beautiful!

Lovely. I'll be doing this scheme in 1/48 eventually.

That looks great!

No excuse for not having enough references with one in your pocket, Steve!

Yes, you did!

I did very little weathering on my Dambuster Lancaster, too. The aeroplanes were almost new when used on the dams raid, so I reckon they'd have had very little staining.

Coming along very nicely!

Brilliant work!

Very phortunate indeed! A Phine effort.