PeterB

I believe the instructions actually say it was moulded by MPM. I built the Xtrakit Spitfire F22, Meteor F8, Scimitar, Swift and Vampire a while back and one was Sword, the others MPM as I recall - all needed a bit of work but came out looking quite good. Pete

Hi Stuart, I built some white metal loco kits years ago and considered soldering but decided I would need a new low temperature iron and solder or I probably would melt the metal. In the end I used 2 part epoxy glue and that worked well, but of course they were nowhere near as flimsy as a biplane. I also was given a Merlin R-R armoured car by Pat a while back and built that using gel type superglue without any real problems but the same caveat applies - the struts will be the main problem on your kit I suspect. I asked Heather @Heather Kay about soldering brass a few months ago as she builds a lot of metal models, but again I suspect they are mainly brass. Given how bendy white metal struts are you may perhaps be better substituting plastic ones if you are going to use glue. Good luck anyway. Pete

Still listed Chris but out of stock on the Freightdog site. Not shown on the Hannants site AFAIK though I suppose other stockists may have it. Pete

Well, I suppose I was expecting this after seeing Tim's build of the identical kit - the fit of the wings was iffy and that of the CFT was terrible. After a bit of cursing and clamping I got there in the end but it will take a bit more filling and sanding before I am reasonably happy with it (if ever). Pete

I seem to remember seeing it hanging from the roof at Hendon many years back but may be mistaken. Good to see you supporting local industry! Pete

If I still have it, which I doubt. I suspect it was damaged and thrown out when I bought the first replacement, as it seems were my Arado 234's (Frog B and Lindberg B converted to a prototype C using the left over bits from the Frog kit). I suppose I could build my replacement "Revell" ex Frog one as a C for this GB but probably won't. Later. I have just found the Frog Arado 234B so I might be able to refurbish it - if so then the "new" kit might turn up in this GB after all, and I have also remembered my replacement Frog Gloster/Whittle prototype and the Vimy kit which started life as the Alcock and Brown one - wonder how many more "forgotten kits" I have in my stash! Before Enzo says it - spreadsheet. Pete

I have been doing a bit of research on the Do-335, and it seems that it was probably unique at the time – there had of course been many examples of pusher aircraft together with examples of engines mounted fore and aft in the same nacelle as in the V1500 and the Do18, and even one or two aircraft with tandem front and rear mounted engines, but the latter apparently, had only a short fuselage with the tail mounted on booms well behind the rear prop. The 335 is the only one I am aware of that actually had the rear prop behind the tailplane of a normal full length fuselage, but somebody else may know better! There seem to be certain advantages to this configuration compared with twin wing mounted engines, such as lower drag, better handling with an engine out, and presumably better manoeuvrability without the “inertia” caused by the weight of engines mounted out on the wing. One possible disadvantage apparently found on the tandem engine planes seen earlier was that the pusher prop was not as efficient when the air was disturbed by the tractor one in front of it, but they were fairly close together whilst the props on the 335 were over 40ft apart so maybe that was not too much of a problem. Green says that Prof-Dr. Dornier had been interested in the concept for some time but it was not until the mid 1930's that he began to seriously think about a design. He apparently commissioned Ulrich Hütter to build his Gö 9 test bed which had a shaft driven pusher engine behind the tail, and when this flew in 1940 it proved to be very efficient, achieving 137mph from am 80 hp engine. Having already patented the tandem prop design in 1937, Dornier was in a position to offer what was to become the Do-335 when the RLM tendered for a fast single seat bomber in 1942, the V1 prototype flying on October 26th 1943. Gö 9 The Frog kit is that of the V10 – prototype for the proposed A-6 night fighter but research shows that they have actually based the model on the A-6 as it should have looked in service. The V10 was test flown with a slightly modified A-1 fuselage – the second cockpit had a flush glazed canopy as you can see in the pic below showing it after the war when it crashed in French hands. The fully modified “humped” fuselage first appeared on the V11, prototype for the A-10 which was an unarmed trainer with no radar aerials so it looks like I will end up building that instead! Pete

Still in the box Col. Pete

As I mentioned in my other entry, I bought the old Frog 335 kit in about 1974 and later decided to convert it to a single seat version. Having bought a replacement Frog (Matchbox boxing) kit a while back I never got round to starting the conversion, and instead bought the HobbyBoss version released in 2013. According to Scalemates this is an early A-1 production machine but it is in fact the second A-0 pre-production version currently preserved in the US. I read previously that there was a problem with the props and that is correct - I think the rear blades are the wrong way round, whilst two of the front ones are ok but the third blade which is the other way round - HB seem to have been also somewhat confused by the fact that the rear engine and prop were of course a pusher! I will have to sort that out but more on that as and when. There is also a problem with the colours it was painted in - HB seem to suggest two greens on the uppers and a "Sky" clone on the unders - perhaps the "mythical" RLM 84 or more likely one of the late war variants of RLM 76. In his Hikoki book on Luftwaffe camo Ullmann has an "official Dornier Works" paint diagram for the A-1 which shows "Dunkelgrun 81" and "Dunkelgrun" 83 uppers and 65 unders, and Merrick expands on this in his book. By the time the 335 was built the "official" instructions were to switch to RLM76 unders once existing supplies of 65 were used up, and as I discussed with Graham several years ago the names paint manufacturers and we modellers use for RLM paints are not always correct as the various manufacturers tended to use their own terminology - particularly I think Dornier. However, when the sole surviving 335 which this kit's decals represent, namely the second pre-production A-0, work number 240102, tail number 102, radio reporting code VG+PH was being restored, the original paint seems to have in fact been a splinter of light and dark green, possibly RLM82 and either a greener version of RLM81 or perhaps RLM 83 over RLM 76 unders. It has been repainted in the perhaps more common interpretations of 81 "Braunviolett" and 82 Hellgrun as we modellers know them, though he does not say if 65 or 76 was used on the undersurfaces. Technically it was I believe a "fighter/bomber" so maybe 65 would be correct though I have my doubts, but being in effect a prototype who knows? Anyway, in this GB I hope to build both the "normal" single seat version and the 2 seat night fighter version of this rather impressive if unorthodox twin engines machine, which perhaps fortunately for the Allies never entered service in any numbers before the war ended, only 11 production A-1 models being manufactured. It was significantly faster and presumably more manoeuvrable than the previous Me 110/410 and in one of his books Pierre Clostermann describes one out-running his Tempest V! Pete

Back in 1974 I came across a new Frog kit in my then "LMS" in Chester. As ever it was somewhat "exotic" - a 2 seat Dornier 335. It was a nice enough kit but I later decided that I would have preferred a single seat A-1 version, and having seen a conversion, probably in Airfix magazine, I picked another up in 1991 but never got round to building it. By this time the moulds were with Revell and they released it in their own name initially, but this 1991 boxing is under the Matchbox label for some reason - I believe they later started releasing a Dragon kit of the 335 under their own label. Anyway, here it is! I have glued the spinners to the props a few years ago but done nothing since. The box art is pure fantasy as I doubt that the V10, as the first prototype of the A-6 two seat night fighter, ever saw action. The colour scheme is problematic as they suggest "Matchbox" paint references and I have no idea what they refer to but they seem to be green uppers and a blue/grey on the unders . I believe that the original Frog kit had a "3 greys" scheme of 74/75/76 which I painted in the old Humbrol Authentic colour range but I suspect had they been built the production versions would have been all over 76 with a mottle of 75 on the upper surface as was standard on night fighters at that stage in the war. Having said that I have read that by that stage some night fighters were getting day fighter camo uppers, presumably to make them less visible on the ground given the risk of strafing. Of course prototypes were not always painted in the current paint scheme anyway but I will go into that in my other entry! Pete

Hi @Col. Don't know if this has been asked before. I did not think I had anything for this GB but have just found a pair of Do-335. The old Frog one seems to be the first prototype of the A-6 night fighter version so I guess that is eligible whereas the HobbyBoss say theirs is an A-1 but other sources suggest it seems to be the second pre-production A-0 so I am not sure if that is eligible or not? Still digging through my sources to try and clarify the latter! Pete

The last couple of months have been a bit strange. As I mentioned in January most of this year's GB that I was interested in were in the first 6 or 7 months so since I finished my sole entry in the Revell/Monogram Classic I have been been in a sort of "Limbo" I guess. After building virtually continuously for around 3 years I decided to take a bit of a break, but have found it hard to get back into this kit. I usually have at least 2 kits on the go and sometimes as many as 5, which means that I can switch between them when waiting for paint/glue or decals to dry, but just building one seems to have hit my motivation. However I have come up with a cunning plan and started working through my large stash of military vehicle kits at the same time - this particular problem should go away by the end of October when I get back into multiple builds with the Ju 88 family GB and the Armoured Car one when I hope to build a minimum of 7 more or less simultaneously! Anyway. I have fitted out the upper and lower rear fuselage halves. And glued them together before adding the nose section, the top "bulge" and the airbrake. The top and bottom went together rather better than I expected, but the same cannot be said for the other sections which are going to need a bit of filler. The airbrake was not only warped but also far too thick so needed filing down a lot. Even then it still sits a bit proud but may not be too bad after a little more work. The layout of kits of modern jets can be problematic it seems in terms of joints and I don't know which is worse - the "old fashioned" style of centreline joint or the upper/lower ones like this - I have never tried a Tamiya kit of something like this other than the much smaller Skyray so I wonder how they go about it? This one is not perfect but far from being the worst I have ever built! So - onwards and upwards I hope. Now, where did I put that T-26, IS-2M and KV-85? Pete

Looks like it has been covered pretty well to me. I would guess bulled up Khaki Green 3 with the various canvas panels being at least partly responsible for the apparent 2 tone effect. Whilst SCC2 is a definite possibility on some, the pictures in 1945 appear to show a green/brown colour and I would not have thought home based training vehicles would be repainted in SCC15 unless subject to major bodywork repairs. They would also be very unlikely to have a disruptive camo pattern such as black SCC14 or "very dark brown" SCC1A applied. As it was a training unit I would have thought it would be an old "second hand" vehicle rather than new but I am no expert on the K2/Y. The ancient Airfix 1/72 "Emergency Set" says "Dark Earth" so I guess they meant SCC2 which was described as looking like "a cup of coffee with milk". Incidentally, my understanding is that the RAF did not own many if any of these during WWII but "borrowed them" from the Army in theatre, eg in Italy. . Pete

Thanks BK, Of course, whilst both the Airfix and Gekko have the option of that particular vehicle they do not agree on the colour and I have not been able to find a copy of the Airfix instructions to check the markings but some are partly visible on the pics on their website! Certainly the SCC15 OD finish on the Airfix kit looks more like the photo than the brown SCC2 suggested by Gekko (unlike the green box top pic), whilst the Gekko "driver learning vehicle" markings are totally different to those on the Airfix kit - ruddy typical! However, a pic just shown on the BBC tribute to the Queen seems to show that Gekko are correct about the markings but probably wrong about the colour. Pete

Hi BK Looks a lot better than the tiny one I was bought for the Coronation - silver coloured metal as I recall. By all accounts it is not a very comfortable ride and is ruddy heavy - no doubt about HRH riding it though! I was not thinking of entering this but under the circumstances I may think of something that qualifies - don't suppose anybody knows the serial/census number of the Austin K2 she is stood by in Enzo's photo? Failing that it may be a Firefly/Sea Fury from 1952. Pete