Lazy8

The idea that a captured Ensign was re-engined with DBs seems to have come from a small piece in The Aeroplane in 1943, reporting that a Ensign captured in France had been sighted operating in Finland. There appears to have been no truth in any element of that - although I don't have the reference for it, I understand it was thought at the time to have been inspired by one of Lord Haw-Haw's broadcasts. The aircraft they were referring to would have been G-ADSX Ettrick, captured at Le Bourget after being damaged in a Geman air raid. The only other more-or-less airworthy Ensign that was captu

If you do put a strip of plastic inside the join to reinforce it, be aware that the plastic of the two kit fuselage halves is not necessarily precisely the same thickness. If you don't allow for that, you can actually make things worse using that technique. That said, it's my preferred way of doing it. You just need to be careful.

The colour of the lettering on Imperial Airways aircraft is a vexed subject. There are documents in the BA archive which suggest that the lettering on all mainline passenger carrying aircraft was intended to be "Imperial Blue" or "Company Blue", whereas the lettering on other company aircraft (e.g. mail-carriers, those only used for charter) was intended to be black. I very much doubt that this was strictly adhered to. The two Avro 652s G-ACRM and G-ACRM, which were very definitely in that second-line category, were almost certainly finished with blue lettering, and left that way when Imper

Caledonian Airways, as in BA's charter subsidiary, post-merger? Yes, that's Landor colours, but with the detail painting in yellow (which from memory is not B.Cal gold. but a cheaper, easier to apply finish). Not the same blue as B.Cal used.

I've got one of the Lincoln kits. This is a lot smaller, and it's one piece.

I'd say it is too small to have found much use in a travel agent setting. More likely sold as a memento, or handed out to office managers and so forth in places that were likely to book lots of travel, to keep BOAC at the front of their minds.

Short answer seems to be that there is no short answer. Photos in the BA Archive show BEA aircraft with nothing at all behind the pilot (providing flood relief in Holland or building a dam in Wales), with a webbing contraption floor-to-ceiling just behind the pilot to stop cargo flying about too much, and with one or two simple seats (upholstered apparently in either company maroon leather with cream piping, or a mid-grey). The two would be side-by-side across the rear of the cabin, obviously. Nothing shows the interior clearly, and I could easily be convinced that no two photos show the

The Wayfarer didn't have nose doors. The same shape, but no breaks, no hinges, etc. You might think that made it a bit of an oddity in a world awash with second-hand Dakotas, and that probably explains why they hardly sold any.

This illustration appears in the B.170 brochure. It doesn't quite match how AIMC was painted, but I reckon it gives you the "House Colours".

The eighth window makes it effectively a Pionair. BEA's conversion (either Pionair passenger config or Pionair Leopard for cargo) involved the removal of the original radio compartment as "modern" civil radio fit could be smaller. That allowed for an additional row of seats at the front of the cabin, and thus an extra, evenly spaced, window at the front end. AMPO didn't fly for BEA, but seems to have undergone much the same conversion.

I photographed AMPO at Stanstead in May 1983 when the Space Shuttle came to visit. Not the best picture I've ever taken, but to my mind it shows white engine nacelles with light grey outer wings, bare metal inner wings, and silver-doped control surfaces. I flew in AMSV in 1986. The wings and tailplane were white, with silver doped control surfaces. As you can see, AMRA at that time had yet another variation...

It is certainly possible, and I also have an Academy C-97 which is earmarked for the conversion. One day... In addition to the points mentioned above, note that the doors onto the lower deck are on the opposite side on a 377 to the C-97. Same places, just a mirror image. The props were a vexed issue throughout the Stratocruiser's early career (and the C-97), and there will have been a variety of configurations, maybe on the same aircraft at different times. Careful checking of photographs is called for. In a nutshell, the problem was the size of the propellors. The

It does depend on what you're looking to depict. The standards were: BOAC (VC.10) ICI 431/2042 - ACT 273 - 5137 BEA (Trident (Speedjack)) Polyurethane F407-515 or F407-715 but these would apply only after the aircraft had been repainted by their owners. Out of the factory, both BEA and BOAC allowed the manufacturers to use their own choice of light grey. This may have been the same, but I'm not aware of any correspondence which would have let the airlines know what had been used. I would not be at all surprised to learn that for the VC.10 the grey ex-factory was RAF

OY-DAM flew in to Shoreham on 8 April 1940. Overnight, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway, so when the crew returned to the airfield on the morning of 9th, they were not permitted access to the aircraft. It did not fly again in DDL markings, but it was 12th before the bright orange was given a quick hand-painted overcoat of camouflage - my speculation, but this may well have been top and sides only, so the orange undersurface would have remained. The aircraft did not have a British registration at that point, and again did not fly. The British registration was allocated on 15 May, and

Looking through Rob Mulder & Gunter Ott's book on the Fw.200 with Danish Air Lines, it seems likely that all the internal surfaces around engines and undercarriage were silver. I assume that's an aluminium lacquer rather than just bare metal. In the whole book there is just one photo of a Condor with the flaps down, on approach to land, and the internal colour is not apparent. I would suggest they were never parked with the flaps down.