Head in the clouds.

Cheers Pete, much time has been spent in the garden, fence now done so moved onto lowered patio area. Along with getting out into the newly opened up world things have not stopped.

If you are still looking hendie this can be attached to one of their lathes so you end up with several machines in one. I believe Proxxon have a good reputation so may be worth a look.

Tooled up and nearly ready to go, just the battle dress left so looking forward to the end product Pete. Nice recycling work with the Bic razor sheaths, who said plastic modelling was bad for the environment , you now register as an ' Envronmentally Sustainable Modeller'.

Driving home from work past the Kings School in Grantham a DeLorean waiting to turn left, I had to double take but unfortunately no Marty on board. Followed me for a couple hundred yards, spent more time looking in my mirrors than out through the wind screen.

Superb modelling skills over a wide range of materials, proper modelling.... One of my favourite planes and you have done it justice, this is the first time I have seen it on this forum and there is reason for that. I am sure I saw one at Holbeach show a few weeks ago, was it you?

Wonderful job on a truely 'out there' design and nice to see an aeroplane from the stables of Miles Aircraft.

Memories abound here too, went on one as a youngster and it has stayed with me ever since. Nice job.

The poor old Anson has been left all forlorn on the bench while his bigger stable mate has hogged all the attention but from now on it will get a more equal share of bench time. The main reason as mentioned earlier is the unearthing of some great material that not only gives me an idea of the internals but also the airframe itself. Internal details of research airframes can be scant and a lot of digging needs to be done just to find snippets, this is not surprising really considering the nature of the work carried out and when considers what ends up online now with a camera phone it is totally understandable. The Flightpath PE, while being good in itself is based on the general internals of a navigation trainer so much of it is not relevant for this build but this pic gives me an idea of the internal layout of G-AIPC; The wireless operators position has been taken over by a 50 tube Manometer, similar but smaller as that fitted to PA474, the navigators table has been upsurped by a F.24 camera facing rearward towards to manometer. Also visible(just) are the strengtheners in the roof of the fuselage above the manometer, while the detail is basic I can at least represent them in a similar basic manner. I still do not have any idea of internal colours so until/if I find evidence to the contrary it will be Cockpit Green. Another obvious difference is the extension on the nose housing the Yawmeter, something I was not aware of until now, this photo also came to light showing this; While the probe is not very clear the position and shape of the boundary fence atop the fuselage is, this will be a great help when building this particular configuration. Also visible are some dark marks on the fuselage around the circumference of the boundary layer fence , no idea as yet as to what these are but maybe some cut down decals could be used to represent them. One golden nugget of info contained in this pic is the unusual layout of the registration on top of both wings, this is more common underneath and the size can be gauged too ticking another box. Just when I thought it could get no better I came across this; A nice close of the nose and yawmeter arrangment....Christmas really has come early This picture is also very interesting, it shows what I believe to be the last step in the evolution of a laminar flow wing on G-AIPC but as ever I am happy to be corrected on this. This looks like a more complicated set up, where I believed the struts were in line with the rear of the aerofoil looking at this picture it seems they were offset to starboard, the position where they fix to the main spar looks to be off centre and very close to the horizontal struts on the starboard side. I think after a period of reflection I am going to chicken out on this configuration and go for the one above Some corrective work is now needed as the Flightpath instructions had me remove the two lumps of plastic that represented the wing spars, these now need to be reinstated as the manometer and F.24 camera need to be fixed to. This was simply done with some scrap plastic; That is the only piece of plastic on show in this post. Thanks for looking.

It has been well over a month since I last posted on this thread but I have not been idle, apart from landscaping the garden within our new fence I have been working on some other builds and it paid off handsomely. I never stop looking for new material to advance my builds, sometimes it comes too late but this time it has been found in good time. Both the Lancaster and the Anson,(remember that?) will benefit. Although I have been doing some other builds I had not forgotten about PA474, most of the work involved giving it a undercoat and rectifying any blemishes which is a must as she carries a natural metal scheme so it needs to be as perfect as possible, no doubt you don't need to see a months worth of spray,sand, repeat. One of the little jobs I did do was to fit the bomb aimers bubble to the front of the fuselage, you get a choice of two, the shallower version or the newer deeper version, the latter being fitted here; This was fitted but showed up to be a little larger than in OD than fuselage it was to be mated to, there was not much I could do at this stage so it was fitted anyway. Also fitted was the small window that sits behind and under this bomb aimers perpex, again you have two choices, PA474 having the one on the right fitted, although by her time at Cranfield this seems to have been plated over with an aluminium skin. This will be sanded and painted over; Also fitted was the camera housing on the port wing after being sanded and formed, again I have no clear picture of this so it is a best guesstimate. After this a few squirts of primer on the seams and new turret fairings to check for any imperfections...of which there were many! Also some cockpit green was sprayed onto the cockpit. One other issue showed up on this spray/sand fest, when the PE flap components were fixed with extra thin CA it had the affect of melting the outer wing panel; More filling.....oh joy! One of the snippets of information I came across was an old fuzzy picture looking down the spine of PA474 from the rear of the cockpit towards the tail,(the only pic I have found thus far of the top of the fuselage) This picture seem to be of PA474 during the early trials with the wooden aerofoil fitted which is of no use to me what soever, but what is very useful is that it shows the escape hatch nearest the cockpit has been altered and now has a small square window. Was it for a camera or an observation window for a boffin? What I believe though is that it is no longer an escape hatch which means both are now gone, the farthest would be under the aerofoil and the one seen here converted to another use, would they spend money to change something that works perfectly well? Interestingly, in the background can be seen Anson 1, G-AIPC with the latter aerofoil fitted. So with this new found info the two current escape hatch's were removed and a new one made and fitted; After some touch up of the undercoat to check for marks this is about as far as I can go on the main airframe, I now need to think about the aerofoil that sits on top and makes this airframe so distinctive. To this end I have a picture of the dimensions of the aerofoil thanks to @T-21; The only measurment I do not have is for the Fence plate but I can make that by Mk1 eyeball, the main measurements are all there. All I need is a wing....oh look, what do I see before thee? The wing is a simple affair that needs any detail removing as the aerofoil on PA474 had no flying controls surfaces, it's official classification being 'RAE102 aerofoil', I think it is based on, but not being, a Folland Midge wing section. So with this in mind a little more filing; Next post will be mainly about 'Annie', see you then.

Great update Pete, those flexible hoses look superb and along with the rest of the thruster unit really make the build look great. A productive few hours.

Superb plunging skills Bill and that is due to your precision in continually refining the buck which needs to be perfect and it is. You're getting this process off to a fine art.

You have done a superb job there, your weathering skills are as good as I have seen, to be fair, if you had a back drop the model would look real.

Nice build here but I do have one reservation, won't it take up most of the display space on your club table at SMW....

Indeed @TheBaron, they are no shake and bake, more Ghostbusters, I am sure they got their ideas off our Pete. Nice work as ever Pate.

Less is more, very interesting build and I can even remember the advert.....oh dear!