Bedders

Pictures please Tony!! And your 345 Sqn machine looks lovely? I've got one of these AZ kits half built and this is excellent inspiration to finish the job. Justin

HOW many years away? This is looking rather tasty.... Jusrtin

Thought the second photo was the original! V nice. Justin

Hi Andrew, Which kit are you using? I'm doing an H too at the moment, using the RS Models kit, which i must say I'm quite impressed with. The exhausts look spot on to me, and they look good on the CMR kit too, if you're using that one. The H exhausts are very different to those on the D model, whether shrouded or unshrouded on the latter, so I wouldn't try to change them for D model ones. Justin

Yup - that Hunter is looking really nice Mr P. Sabre looks quite tasty too! Justin

It was certainly on the programme Tony - for Saturday (17th) - though I couldn't make both days. It's always nice when the dates fall exactly right though. http://airborne-herdenkingen.nl/programma/2016/SAH_ACF-program-2016.pdf Justin

Tony, I was at Arnhem today for the 72nd anniversary. I was glad to have finally made it to one of the events - the service at Oosterbeek cemetery, held under warm late-summer sunshine, with a gentle breeze rustling through the drying leaves. It was a packed occasion with many travelling from the UK, a host of international Airborne exponents past and present, and maroon wherever you looked. Walking among the headstones it was striking to see the names of those, aged in their late teens, 20s, 30s and even 40s, who had paid he ultimate price today and this week all those years ago. I managed to keep it all together until, as I left the cemetery, I was engulfed by the throng of Dutch schoolchildren advancing up the road to place flowers on each grave. It was as if the whole town - and beyond - had turned out, and I realised at that point how that part of the Netherlands still recognises the scale of the sacrifice made back in 1944. It's the basis of a deep friendship that is passing from generation to generation. Justin

Yup, very nice indeed. J

Thought I'd share with you some pictures of the H-model I'm working on at the moment. It's the relatively new RS Model kit which I'm enjoying very much and, together with the Airfix D and the KP B/C, has got me back into Mustangs. I've always been attracted to the H, with the tall tail, shrink-wrapped Merlin and lack of kinks, and it's interesting to compare the shape of it to a more ubiquitous D. The spindly little main undercarriage and tail-wheel positioned much farther aft than on the eariler models makes the H look quite ungainly on the ground though. Here's a comparison with the Airfix D fuselage. Despite the distortion caused by the H being slightly closer to the camera, one can still see that the H was two feet longer than the D and a bit taller, though less rounded, in the fuselage too. I've also been able to learn more about Mustang kinks - with a bit of help from the BM massiv, and the three wings below seem to be reasonably accurate representations of the three styles: The KP B kit I bought has the Malcolm hood which can't really be posed open so I might have to invest in a vacformed one if I can find one. And it will also help to narrow down the options for decoration. My preference for a 4th FG aircraft means I might end up with Howard Hively's "The Deacon", but I'll cross that bridge in due course... Justin

Simon, I've now had the chance to check the diagram in Morgan & Schacklady p239 which suggests that serials are 4in high, 2.5in wide and with a stroke of .5in. M&S could be wrong, but that was what sparked my earlier post. Justin

I may be wrong, but I thought PR Spitfires had 4in serials, not 6in? J

V nice Cookie. Really like the metal finish. And am admiring your XIV builds too... Justin

It's come out beautifully Bill, as I somehow knew it would. Really like the paint scheme and how you dealt with the painted-over european roundels to allow application of the SEAC ones. I learnt something new about that extra plate of armour behind the pilot's head too. First class job and I am looking forward to taking delivery of a Sword kit just in case I want to blatantly copy your work... Justin

My timing is so awful. I failed embarrassingly on the Spitfire GB due to an unforeseen house/country move, and I have just started a P-51 which I am enjoying - somewhat to my surprise. But given the fun I'm having, I might do a couple of other variants for this GB. So please sign me up, although another house/country move is scheduled for end-November. Promise I'll do me best... Justin

Just spending a few minutes catching up on these lovely builds. Reading your introductory post highlights once again (if that were needed) how pretty the Hawk is. I wish the RAF could have made use of the single-seat Hawk 200 as for me that's the best looking of the range. Maybe the subject of a What-if build, if I ever get round to it. But i won't try to replicate the beautiful detail that you're putting to these.... Justin

I read somewhere that some Spitfire and Seafire squadrons actually removed the outer 303s from each c wing to incrase the roll rate, reduce overall weight and minimise the asymmetric vibrations caused by the 20mm and 303 guns. So I'd be surprised if there was a programme to substitute the two nicely placed 50s on these XIVs for however many 303s loacated further outboard. The only reason I can think of for doing so might be the relative abundance of 303 guns and spares from the older aircraft and also ammunition. But they would still have had to bore through the leading edges of the e wings and add all the electrical/pneumatic plumbing, ejector chutes etc for the 303s. So I reckon the patches are there for show. Justin

Really nice. Somewhere in the loft I've got the 1978 RAF Yearbook which recounts Red Flag 77. Beautiful desert paint scheme, with the interesting unrepainted bit around the jetpipes. And I just love the bomb bay. Justin

Lovely job Bill, really enjoying watching this. I would go for the wing patches, though the more I look at the pictures, the more I believe they are for tactical purposes rather than actually covering open gun ports. They even seem a bit exaggerated in the photos, perhaps for effect. Justin

Course i s'pose it might have been a bluffing exercise by sqn ground crew to make eagle-eyed enemy pilots think they were dealing with an old VIII when in fact there was a Griffon under the bonnet... Justin

I've been away from BM for a bit but the photo of the XIV taken from above is interesting as, despite the fact it's an e wing aircraft, it has the c wing 303 ports taped over at the leading edge. Wonder what that's all about - as far as I'm aware, all RN- serialled aircraft were built with e wings, so the idea of a field conversion from c to e seems unlikely. Another possibility might be that the XIV fuselage was given a pair of spare VIII wings, which were then changed to e configuration. But then there would have been all the radiator gubbins to change too. So I remain confused... Lovely build Bill. My Griffon Spit projects are all locked up at the moment, but yours is looking exquisite. Justin Justin

Three little beauties Cookie, and the "Airfix XIX nose & tail onto the IX fuselage" method would be my preferred option if I were to start again, as it gets round the short XIX cockpit area. Lovely choice of colour schemes too. Great work. Justin

It was all going so well: all the decals were on and the 21 was almost done. Just a coat of gloss to protect the decals, a panel line wash, then some final bits & bobs. It would be finished this weekend. That was the plan. But I ballsed it up. Not having used the airbrush for ages I went way overboard with the gloss coat (Humbrol Clear), and it all went downhill from there. Next morning the finish was all horrible and lumpy, so I thought I'd put another coat on, diluted a touch, in an attempt to smooth it out. So I did that, but I think I sprayed it whilst the air temperature was still too low, and the whole thing started to turn frosty white. Oh dear: my nice 21 was basically ruined: it was now a matter of tryng to save the model, at the expense of the decals and possibly the paint job too (Xtracolour enamels). So I took the plunge: Warm water with a dollop of washing up liquid. Slowly, inexorably, the decals have come off and the whole paint job is lifting too, right down to the primer. I'll use a cocktail stick to shift the tricky bits. I might be able to save the thing: the conversion was a lot of work and it wasn't half bad. If I can save it, I might be in the market for ideas for a different colour scheme. Not sure I'll want to replicate what was there before! Justin

The cockpit is in the XIV (I used the kit bits, plus masking tape seatbelts), and the wings and tailplanes are on. Hooray! Here she is with the Mark II. And the Seafire XV which I'm building separately on BM. I don't quite remember where that Sword IX at the back on the left sprang from - I remember picking it up and looking at it, and then all of a sudden it was half built.... In truth though I want to get this IX built before the Eduard one arrives, so I'll crack on with it. While I'm on, I was walking around minding my own business the other night when I happened upon this: It's "TB675" (though in actual fact RW393), a XVIe normally resident at Hendon, but out for the day to mark the 98th anniversary of the RAF on 1 April. Put a smile on my face! Justin

Mike - I think it's one of a series of shots of Jeffrey Quill flying RB140, the first production F XIV. In his book Quill says the photos were taken from the side door of an Anson, with Supermarine test pilot colleague Frank Furlong driving. He said "the main problem was to avoid a collision". Fun times I'll bet... Justin

Col, I'm kind of with you on the Mk IX - but also the V leaves me a bit cold too. Perhaps because there were so many of these two versions. Give me a rarer/more specialised version (e.g. VII, any of the PRs, a Seafire, anything with a Griffon, or anything with a retractable tailwheel) and I'm all over it. Still, I'm looking forward to the Eduard IX - so I can make a VII/VIII/X/XI out of it... Justin