John B (Sc)

Help please. Does anyone know of a currently available Pitts Special kit? I know Platz recently 'reissued' their old kit, though it only seems to have been in Japan. Any others - or any UK suppliers known of? In fact are there Pittses around in any other scale at all - except at R/C sizes. Thanks John B

I'd suggest you use some very thin stretched sprue. Glue along the line of the fuselage. Once dry 'wipe' in a little filler around it - if the sprue is fine enough you could use Tippex. Then once it is all well & truly dry, use some fine wet and dry to smooth the curves. The stringers should be just visible. The snag is getting a good match up if the detail has been rubbed off only part way along. I used this to simulate fabric wings on a Hurricane - not quite the same but it worked OK in this scale. Hope that is some help. John B

Remember that the finish on a service Lancaster wasn't that good anyway. The matt black wore and discoloured quickly - horrible stuff. It was also very draggy, so later variants were smoother. Service life was typically so short it hardly mattered. Even though the Chastise Lancs were new build, by the time they were ready for the operation they'd had some good low level weathering wear. So it wouldn't have looked at all pristine.

Another RNZAF 14 Sqn option shown in the Warpaint book is an FB1 with red & white checkered rudders. I built that because my 'Pennington Special' from CA came with the FB1 tails not the FB4. DHP may well have seen that machine also at Tengah ? - It was the closest I could find without rebuilding the tails ! John B

I like it - "Alighting gear". How terribly British, doncha know ! John B

Oh yes, sorry, I didn't mean to imply there were no standards. Just that in the heat of the time, those were more honoured in the breach. Broadly, green and black over pale blue, with white paint overcoating in winter. A Russian friend I used to work with was also a modeller. His father had worked as an engineer in one of the aircraft factories rapidly moved to the East when the Germans looked like taking Moscow. He thought it hilarious when we asked about paint schemes and paint shades. At the most desperate point, some machines were sent out with no internal coatings at all and very skimpy top coats without primer. He said the life of a Sturmovik was measured in days from delivery at one time. They took the view that those machines without proper finish would have to be replaced soon if not lost in action, but that didn't matter. The aircraft were expendable items. The pilots slightly less so, though the USSR's loss rate was horrific to our thinking. Once things calmed down, of course aircraft were properly painted, though often to much lower standards than we think of as normal now. Ground crews who 'adopted' an aircrft would often improve the finish apparently.

This is super. Loverly work too. I tried to modify the old Airfix Anson to a version like this many years ago. Once I'd done the mainn conversion I'd lost the refernce - so I did a 'Whif'. Now I can haul the old girl out and do a real scheme. Cheers ! JohnB

The Russians weren't terribly bothered about colour schemes or shades of paint then Bazza. They used all sorts of paints and all sorts of shades in emergencies. Some planes got minimal painting. Tank and tractor dark green paints were used at times. When you are churning out 36,000 copies of what was essentially a very fine flying tank cum artillery piece to save the Rodina, I guess standard colours don't matter much. Different factories had quite different shades at various times apparently. No doubt fading, for the few machines that lasted any time, was an issue too, in summer. So, your choice ! John B

And another.....

Interesting. I wonder if there were height or leg - typically thigh - dimension limits applied to Canberra crew ? It sounds as though there weren't from Phreak's comment about the tall PR9 nav. A lot of aircrew were fairly small stature - of course it helps a little with G as well with onboard comfort. I know quite a few of my mates had trouble when going through flying training. The Gnat T1 had a size limit for ejection from the front seat. So if you were long in the thigh bone, no fast jets for you. An ejection would be a double amputation job. A lot of early Hercules crews were reject fast jet boys because of that. Some a tad bitter about it. Bringing the Hunter T7s onto 4FTS helped ease that problem as well as take the load off a rapidly diminishing number of Gnats.

Because 'Their Airships' of the light blue will do everything they can to destroy the Fleet Air Arm. The FAA has throughout its history embarrassed the RAF by doing more with less. Effectiveness of defence for the country comes second to an absurd & nasty rivalry. At an operational level the light & dark blue get on well & have a good regard for each other. But at the top it's long been a different story. The Sea Harrier was operated well and was one of the finest close-in air defence fighters around. Well flown, it successfully took on F-15s on occasion. That appears to have been anathema to the 'Airships'. (Was it Roy Braybrook or Bill Gunston who coined that phrase?) Remember the predecessors to these folk were the ones who winged until they got the F-111 instead of TSR-2, who said the Buccaneer was useless for their purposes, who on almost every possible occasion appeared to prefer to back American aircraft not British !

To the best of my knowledge and belief it is still. No2 Squadron. They have been a Fighter Recce squadron for a long time, certainly going ba ck to Swift & Hunter days at least. They were originally a Recce Squadron in WW1. Became Army Co-operation after that. Their title is No. II (AC) Squadron because of that. Currently equpped with Tornado GR4A, I expect they will be the main specialist recce outfit, possibly along with no.13 SQn. Other squadron's aircraft may be able to carry the reccekit, but they will be role practiced.

I like all of them, but especially the CA Venom since I am struggling with one right now. Yours looks a deal better than I think mine will be. I enjoy Jules' subject selection, but aaargh ! I like the softbox idea. John B

Ok, I'm in for something, whether a precise Alan Halls style conversion or an 'in the spirit of'. Actually I think I still may have a (rather poor by modern standards) Hunter T7 and a Lightning F3 done at the time of the original Alan Hall inspirations in the Sixties. Somewhere in the darker recesses of the loft. I had a Lightning T4, which I think I destroyed, which was 'in his style'. And I recall doing a Defiant TT, badly, at about the same time as an Anson. All done properly with balsa, talc and dope. Also stuff called Banana something. Was it Banana Oil? I recall using it on balsa flying models, can't recall what it's purpose was. Maybe a sealer? Does anyone else remember?

Do you know what causes that Edgar? None of my Echelon kits has shown that, yet. I'd like to avoid it obviously ! John B

Aha ! An overlap from a neighbour. Cheers Colin, must comb the stash more carefully. I know I have John's Lightning two seater conversion , could have sworn I had a Hunter as well. John B

Edgar is right. The Panther effort was 'orrible, sadly. I was sent a 'pre-review' copy. A huge lump of resin, well shaped but poorly surface finished, and a howler of a canopy moulding. Even the decals showed poor research. Shame, with a bit more work - if only. Now a Fisher conversion would be fine to see. Probably even more expensive than finding an Echelon two seater, but I'll bet it will be good. (Did no-one do a 1/48th conversion for the rather dubious Academy kit? I though I had one, but a hunt though the stash suggests wishful thinking. Aeroclub?)

Yep

Thanks sniper. Astonishing. That's not just sloppy, it's appalling. I'm used to old aeroplanes varying a bit in dimensions, always necessary to field fit items, especially with old wooden airframes, but never eight inches in that size machine. Ye gods. What did they use, shipyard technology ? That would have to affect handling, trim and CG considerations for each airframe. Difficult to believe any engineer would acept that level of variation. (I wouldn't!) Nimrod I thought was more to do with the variation on fuselage wing pick-up points, due as you say to effectively handbuilding them - the curse of the UK aviationbusienss, plus years of airframe stressing, just enough to make life difficult. Only needs a few thou. Of course deciding to keep the cheap bit, the fuselage tube, showed someone's brain wasn't engaged !

whereas the 3mm error in Ligtning length, assuming accurate measurement, equates to 3 3/4 " on the real thing. More that would be seen due to aircraft temperature change, and more than I 'd expect as variation in length between builds, but not a show stopper. THis will be an interesting build - I need something to get me started again on my 1/48th Airfix and the oft postponed Echelon machines. (What a shame Frandk Brown stopped. Superb kits, nice chap) Have fun ! John B

Eight inches ! Strewth - How, why? That'a heck of a variation in what I thought was a standard production aircraft. John B (Puzzled)

Ah super - thanks. John B

Hic. oops.

I thought the early marks - Mk1 and Mk 1a aircraft cockpits were largely black, then they went to gray by the time the Mk3 came along? The cockpits I remember looking into in the early Sixties seemed fairly dark places ! Hard to see much of the walls around that big black ejection seat anyway.

Yep, hence the cedar tree in the Air Force emblem. Lovely place. How nice to see Hunters back, even briefly. John B