-Ian-

There is one more option which meets all criteria, the Tornado. Mr Sulc's reference to stars may have been a little misdirection in that it may not necessarily refer to national insignia, ie:

This is one of favourites, and one I've actually seen IRL, on the M42 about 10 years ago:

The big difference between the shows was there was never any undercurrent of nastiness from Jerry Springer himself, the same definitely couldn't be said of Jeremy Kyle.

There's two of those sprues in the kit.

Just looked at the instructions, the HARM sprues also include four R-73 AAMs which is a nice bonus, the original Ghost of Kyiv boxing only had two R-73s plus two R-60s.

I doubt that's the intention for most people. It's hard to predict what kits will significantly appreciate in value over time, taken as whole the combined resale value of most stashes will almost certainly be less than the initial purchase price after you take into account inflation, selling fees (in the case of eBay), postage fees etc.

A 4 year old laptop isn't that old, for most home users who aren't gamers it should be perfectly fine for a good few years. re Windows, it's always been the case that each successive version of Windows is more resource intensive that it's predecessor so if you do have a relatively low powered computer, sticking to an older version of Windows may be worthwhile. Microsoft have announced they will continue supporting Windows 10 until October 2025 anyway, it's only at that point I'd start to get twitchy about still using it.

The one thing I really don't like about Windows 11 is it enforces grouping of taskbar icons, e.g. if you have 3 Chrome windows and 3 Excel files open there will just be 1 Chrome and 1 Excel icon visible in the taskbar making switching between them more fiddly. Previous versions of Windows gave the option of either grouping them or keeping them separate. Other than that one irritation it's fine. Pete - If you have a techy friend who could help out, the nuclear option is to reformat the drive and re-install Windows from scratch after backing up all your files. With recent versions of Windows (ie anything since 7) it's actually pretty straightforward but still a little daunting if you've never done it before.

1/72 Hawker Hunter Blue Diamond decals - AFAIK the only source for a set is a 1980s Matchbox Hunter where by all accounts the decals weren't brilliant even before 35 years of deterioration.

Indeed, seems an odd decision unless that was literally the only weekend over the entire summer that Church Fenton was available which seems somewhat unlikely. I've already bought my RIAT ticket and Flying Legends was the one other airshow I would likely have attended as well - if it was any weekend other than that one.

I said it when this boxing first appeared in Rumourmonger but worth saying again, that box art is brilliant, If Special Hobby every saw fit to release it as a print I'd definitely buy it.

Looks good aside from one annoyance, the tail number decal on the RAF example. It looks like it's on a PRU blue background rather than clear meaning you have to mess around matching your preferred paint to the decal colour. A decal on a transparent background would be far better, masking the small rectangle of blue in the white invasion stripe is as simple a masking job as you can get.

Great build, I started the same kit last week ago and have picked up a few good tips here. Can I ask what paint you used for the upper surfaces, I'm currently leaning towards Mr Color 311 (FS36622)?

Beautiful looking Phantom. I have the same kit in my stash, there have been a few times when I've seriously considered as my next build but the sheer volume of stencils always put me off.

Looks like a Klingon Bird of Prey.

It's 38 seconds in to this you tube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCC2QfGlghM I'm going for 1/32 Spitfire but with a wing from another completely different kit (maybe a 1/72 4 engine bomber of some description) glued to the starboard wing of the Spit.

Seems their 1/48 MiG-21SMT wasn't a one off then. When I built it last year there were a few stencils where Eduard had included an insufficient number.

The minimum standard of accuracy I want from a kit is it looks like a good representation of the real thing when viewed from a few feet away on a display shelf. Beyond that point buildability is of far greater importance to me than fine detail. Basically if a manufacturer gets the overall shape of the aircraft right and ensure the parts fit well together with minimal sanding/filling I'm a happy customer.

Decent cutters like the aformentioned Xuron. Dspiae are even better but not cheap. A scalpel, for safety reasons I prefer ones with retractable blades. A set of tweezers of various types, flat, angled and needle nosed are the ones I tend to use most, in that order. A set of sanding sticks of various grits. A large cutting mat, at least A2 if your desk is big enough A good quality daylight lamp..

Same here, any searches bring up a tiny amount of results with the banner message: "The search index is currently processing. Current results may not be complete." This is a new problem, the search function was working fine the last time I used it a few days ago.

What's the smallest size you can reliably go down to with these, for example could you cut masks for 1/72 aircraft serial numbers?

Yes. 1 There's the model village (1/9th scale I think) 2 Within that that's a fairly sizeable model of the model 3 Next the model of the model of the model 4 Then a small model of the model of the model of the model 5 Finally a tiny representation of a model of the model of the model of the model of the model The pic below is the 3rd model, the 4th model is on the right hand edge towards the middle, within that model at the top you can just barely see a hint of blue which is a representation of the river on the 5th model.

It was the other way around, HO (1/87) scale came first with OO being the UK derivative of it but using the same 16.5mm track gauge. The giveaway is that 16.5mm is the correct width for 1/87 scale standard gauge track, in 1/76 it's undersized.

If we're allowing non-modelling regrated regrets. Binning 70 or 80 cassette albums around 10 years ago. By that point I'd long since bought all the ones I was interested in on CD and didn't even own anything to play them on, I was 100% sure I'd never play them again. I quite literally couldn't give them away, no charity shops were interested and if I'd have sold them as a job lot on ebay I'd have barely covered postage and paypal fees so in the end I just binned them. Fast forward to 2022 and cassettes are now the latest hipster fad, looking at sold listings on eBay I probably could have made around £500 if I'd held on to them and sold them now.