Scott_

More progress now. Landing gear struts plus engines assembled and mounted. Added some copper wire for simple brake lines just to add a little interest. Engines didn't fit terribly well, but at least fixing it was fairly easy, just had to drill out mounting holes to widen them a little, plus sand away a few corners on the back of the exhaust stacks - fortunately not in a visible area. Wings are on as well - roots will be filled sometime soon. Onwards and upwards I hope!

Soooo, it's been a while since my original post. A business trip overseas got in the way of this build unfortunately, but I've managed to keep things going. What also didn't help was the, ahem, interesting build quality of the kit. Tamiya this isn't..... Cockpit assembly went well enough, and then the instructions have you glue the fuselage halves together, and place them onto the centre wing section that sits below. Pretty standard stuff. Except, the wing section is a good 2mm wider than the fuselage. And trying to sand a wing root to fit would make a complete mess of it. I ended up pulling the fuselage halves apart again, and gluing each one to match the respective wing root. This solved the first problem, but left a big gap in the middle. I then started squeezing the halves together section by section, and filled the gap that remained with a strip of plastic card ...which could then be filled and sanded over And will require further undercoat and sanding, but at least resembles a somewhat reasonable fit.

Love the subject, and good luck with the build. I’ve often found the older Italeri kits to have better fit then some of their later offerings <cough> Me-210 <cough>, so expecting great things!

Thanks for the....<ahem>.....tip I've made a note on the instructions.

Hope I can jump in a bit late. After many years of mostly lurking, I decided that I couldn't pass up a group build of one of my favourite classes of aircraft! So for this build, I'm going in with an ICM Ju-88 in 48th scale that I picked up on eBay some months back. In this case, some of the Hungarian decals I initially thought of using were taken by the seller, who instead supplied a set of superscale decals with the kit for a Luftwaffe subject. Which suited me just fine. So I hope to not procrastinate and instead get this thing done. First - the kit... and the decals I'll be using...

Agreed - a surprising hole in the market. Academy and Hasegawa releases (and the Eduard rebox) are hard to find. If they follow the Wellington route and release several versions plus coastal command they're on a winner.

A 32nd Spitfire by ex Wingnut Wings employees - Oh My! Take my money, etc.

Another suggestion for fiddly windows which might take some of the stress out of them is to forget about KK all together and simply fit the windows to the fuselage half before any painting or even before you glue the two halves together using regular glue. Gently scrape off any obvious glue on the clear part, then once they are dry and firm, sand the surface of the window with progressively finer grades of sandpaper. On the outside of the fuselage, this will also ensure that you get a smooth surface and join. Once that is done, paint the windows with Tamiya gloss clear and let dry - done! On the outside, do this after masking and painting the rest of the plane. Same technique works for navigation lights and other similar clear parts.

So looking forward to this - I love the look of the Lancer. I suspect there will be quite a few Aussies lining up for the RAAF version too - myself included.

This isn't the first time Airfix has had the "Out of stock" problem. It is pretty much a given that any Airfix new release will go instantly out-of-stock when launched as well. That's the real issue - this isn't a new problem, Airfix should have been able to do better by now.

I can't find a part count for the Academy F-18E, but their F-18F has 94 parts. Assuming Airfix didn't just decide to slap a "new tool" tag on their ancient "A" model (which would also be the wrong version for the film), I'd bet Academy's E and F have the same part count and Airfix have reboxed the 2017 Academy release.

That's been the case for almost every single Airfix new release for the past few years - Sea Fury, Phantom, Mustang, Walrus and now the Spit. You'd think someone in the Hornby supply chain would have figured it out by now, but no....

Good find - we can only hope!

If I were to put together a realistic wish list, I'd have New Tools 1/72 Mosquito 1/72 B-24 Liberator 1/48 Avro Anson 1/48 Blenheim Mk.IV New version (current tooling/minor options) 1/72 Mig-17 Middle East versions 1/72 Wellington GR.Mk.XIV 1/72 P-51 Mustang "Foreign Air Forces" 1/72 B-25 "Foreign Air Forces" (RAAF, Dutch East Indies, USSR) 1/48 Spitfire Mk.XIV - SEAC / Belgium

Been saying this for ages - a 1/48 Anson would fill a hole in the market, in much the same way their Walrus did.