PeterB

This brings back memories - when I was still living in Bradford I used to see the BKS 748's quite often as they flew services from Leeds/Bradford Airport. Fortunately navigation equipment seemed to have improved by then - during the early 1950's I remember that when the weather closed in the old DC-3's often seemed to fly low enough to navigate using street maps. When my parents got their first TV they had to have an enormous "H" aerial mounted on the chimney to pick up a signal from far away Sutton Coldfield transmitter near Birmingham and more than once I thought a low flying "Dak" was going to hit it - the 748's never flew quite that low over the house! Nice build. Pete

Some progress but still a lot to do. Pete

Hi Enzo, Did you manage to restore the calendar - the current link still seems to be down - error 404, or am I looking in the wrong place? Pete

Yes, it does tend to creep up on you as it were - I think maybe I am having the same problem with Pat. Pete

This is my Airfix Vickers Valiant built as a machine from 49 Squadron based at RAF Marham in 1963. The build was pretty straightforward though as mentioned in the thread there are reputedly a number of errors in the moulding. The main problem was in fact covering such a large area with white paint, particularly as I was using enamel and not inclined to use my airbrush, but I got there in the end, though it could no doubt be better.😄 From the angle of the last pic above the leading edge of the wing actually almost looks like that of the H.P. Victor! Although always considered to be less technically advanced and something of an "insurance" against problems with the Victor and Vulcan, the performance was actually pretty good, but as is well known fatigue problems with the wing spars doomed it to a short service career - Vickers always blamed it on the Air Ministry specification insisting that they use a particular alloy (DTD683) which turned out to be prone to cracking. As with the D.H. Comet, fatigue was a bit of an unknown factor back in those days. Pete

Well, that's done and ready for the gallery! I have included the unpainted Blue Danube nuclear weapon provided with the kit - as you can see the early nukes were very big but a lot of that was the aerodynamic fairing, Although it only seems to have weighed about 10000lb is was 24ft 2inches long and 5ft 2 inches in diameter. This compares unfavourable with the 12000lb Tallboy which was 21ft long and 3ft 2inches in diameter, and even the 22000lb Grand Slam which was 26ft 6inches by 3ft 6inches. Gradually the size of the "nuclear" part was reduced to more manageable proportions, resulting in smaller and somewhat lighter bombs. I have enjoyed building this kit - the fit was pretty good although the wing to fuselage and bomb doors to fuselage joints could have been better. In his build Gen Melchett highlighted a number of errors made by Airfix. I have already mentioned the nose wheel bay/door problem, but also the top of the vertical tail is the wrong shape apparently, the intake splitter on the engines is also wrong and the panel line just in front of the cockpit is too far back resulting in the grey are under the nose being too long. I filed the top of the tail down a bit and trimmed the nose doors, but otherwise I have not bothered. So according to Airfix this is a plane from 49 Squadron based at RAF Marham in 1963, just before the change to low level and camouflage paint. Airfix suggest that it could have had either pale roundels above the wings or the more standard coloured D Type but I have stuck with the pale ones. Now all I have to do is put up yet another shelf to store it on! Pete

Hi Adrian, As you say it is a better match than the Shackleton engine. I did send a PM to tell you I had found it but got no reply - is your Mailbox full by any chance? I found out the hard way that there is a limit of around 100 PM after which you can send but not receive, so I ended up deleting a lot of old messages! I should get it in the post on Monday when I go near a decent Post Office. Pete

Hi Adrian, Looking closer at the spare Merlin 58, there may be one small problem. The small intake is under the prop as you can see whereas on the Shackleton's Griffon goes lower down. I have not been able to find any "head-on" views of the one on the Fury so I don't know how that was laid out but given how good you are at modifying things you may be able to sort it out if needed and anyway it would make a good master for some DIY mouldings. If you do want it then drop me a PM with your address. Pete

Although I could tone it down I rather think the colour is intentional - like the artwork on many US planes, even when otherwise painted in various low-vis schemes. Pete

All the decs are now on and I have added the aerials on the cockpit. The greyhound badge of 49 Squadron is a bit "loud" compared with the toned down markings - I guess it would be painted out in time of war assuming they had enough warning. So, a bit of touching up to do, the pitot tubes to add and paint, and it will be ready for its final coat of varnish. In the above view most of the stencil is invisible! Pete

Hi James, Yes, it was but it does look rather like a slightly smaller version of the actual cockpit when looked at from below.😄 Pete

Yes, that thought had crossed my mind too. Pete

I finished off the underside and stuck the tanks on. Perhaps inevitably, whilst adding the decs I noticed a few areas where a little touching up will be required - I will deal with that later! I know I said I would leave the fin flash until the end, but I decided to get it over and done with. For those interested in building this kit, I can now report that it may just be possible to persuade the decal to settle down over the vortex generator vanes by using decal setting solution alone, though you might need something stronger than Micro Sol - I used 3 applications and the dec I was trying it on was on the verge of dissolving, and although it had settled down pretty well, it had not "stretched" enough to cope with the contours so the front end was a bit "distorted". I therefore resorted to using a razor blade to make a couple of cuts, and that settled it down better but left gaps. I therefore gently cleaned up the messy bits and then mixed up some pale pink to touch it up. Much better. For the record I used Hu 34 White with a tiny amount of Hu 60 Scarlet and after a couple of goes it seems about right. from a distance though perhaps a little pale under the unforgiving eye of the Macro Lens! I had considered using a very light grey instead of white but in the end white seemed fine. So - onwards and upwards as the saying goes! Pete

I have a spare Merlin 58 from a Flightpath Lincoln conversion that looks very much like a Shackleton Griffon cowling - Don't know if that would be of any use? I also have white metal exhausts for it. Pete

Hi Colin, Looking good. Your paint mix sounds like a DIY version of Xtracolour/Xtracrylic "Night Black" which definitely has some blue in it and works far better that plain black on RAF night bomber undersurfaces. Pete

I have made a start on the underside decs. From any distance the blue stencils are virtually invisible so here is a close up. On the camo version the blue stencils changed to black on the bottom and yellow on the top. So that is about half of the stencils under the wings done - more later. Pete

Bit late picking this up, but FYI I did have one set of Eduard masks that did not seem to have been cut all the way through. It was a total mess as trying to get the individual masks to come of the backing sheet caused them to stretch and distort so they did not fit properly, so I complained to them direct and they sent me a replacement set. Seems to be pretty rare but apparently it does happen. Pete

U/c doors on. There were a couple of problems. Firstly the instructions for the inner main doors may not be quite correct - either that or I have got an alignment problem with the main legs which seems unlikely. Here are the instructions- As you can see you have to glue the small parts 2 and 3 onto the top of the main door and the instructions clearly show them at right angles. Fortunately I test fitted them before the glue dried and found that small parts hit the engine "bulges" and prevented the pins on the main doors lining up with the holes in the legs so I had to reduce the angle to about 60 degrees to get them on, and then push them back down - they still were not quite at 90 degrees - possibly about 80 or so, The other problem is one the General mentioned in his build on BM and concerns the nose doors. Although Airfix now seem to use laser scanning to draw up their plans when they can get at a preserved aircraft, that presumably was not the case when this kit was being designed and there was mention of a number of errors. One was that the nose wheel bay was far too wide, which in turn meant that the doors hung too far down, so like the General I have cut them down a little. In his thread there is mention of Airfix staff crawling about under the preserved Valiant taking photos, but it is suggested that some of the errors arise from copying plans from the same source used by Richard Caruana in his drawings! These days kits seem to come with a lot of stencil which is good to a point though some are so small as to be virtually invisible and are a b*gger to handle. One of the problems with this kit is that unlike some other manufacturers (Japanese I suspect) whose kits I have built recently, Airfix do not provide an enlarged image of the stencil so it is at times difficult to work out their alignment - this is an example from the Valiant - the Phantom and Buccaneer kits had the same problem, and it looks like the latest Vulcan kit is the same.. The above pic is a couple of Centimetres smaller than the actual sheet but you will get the idea. For example there are quite a few "hook" type lifting stencils and it is hard to work out the correct way round. It also does not help that some of them in the anti-flash scheme are pale blue as is the backing sheet, so once you put them in water they become invisible! Oh well, I will get there in the end. Fortunately, when I magnify the copy I have on the computer most of them become just about legible! Pete

I built what I initially thought was the Airfix 1/72 Sea Fury last year - turned out it was a re-boxing of the PM kit. As Troy says it was a bit crude and some of the mouldings were iffy, but it ended up looking reasonable. The only real problem was that the drop tanks were either of too great a diameter or in the wrong place as they pressed against the wheel doors. They were a lot fatter than the Frog ones which I should perhaps have substituted but I could not find them at the time. Pete

Painting just about finished. Structurally, all that is left the wheel doors, tanks, 2 pitot tubes and 2 aerials on the main canopy. Time to start adding decs beginning with those that go on the wheels, doors and tanks. Pete

I have now put on the "solid" camo with paint straight from the tin, having first put a thin wash of RLM 02 on the fuselage sides. Next I will start work with thinned paint and see what sort of mess I can make of the mottle - I have never been very good at it! The Xtracolour take on RLM 81 is interesting. Whereas the Colourcoats version is a sort of fairly light purple/ brown, this is a little darker and with a green tinge but as with many colours it changes with the lighting from mostly green to more brown - given the comments I made earlier on paint variations both could well be correct but this looks closer to the Smithsonian version which is claimed to be accurate. Pete

9007 was the first Deltic I ever saw! I had been visiting relatives in Scotland during the summer school holidays in 1961 and as we were going home on the train from Edinburgh Waverley I saw it standing in the yard outside Haymarket station. As it only entered service in June of that year it must have been brand new. It was shedded at Finsbury Park so must have been on a northbound service and was awaiting the return journey I guess. I thought I had a B&W photo but can't find it so I don't know exactly what the livery was at that time. I have found one taken the following year in York station but it is not worth posting as the only part that is clear is the nose - can't even make out the number. Pete

I seem to remember that due to the thinners, sprayed enamel dries a lot faster than hand brushed usually. Pete

I had thought of that too but as I propose to do the pale versions I am not sure I could match the colour well enough for anything more than minor touching up. Does anybody know if that early light blue and pale pink are the same colours as that used on current/recent low vis roundels such as on grey Tornados? Pete

The colour in this photo is not quite right but as close as I can get to what my old Precision Paint "Garter Blue" looked like after I reworked my old Hornby "Seagull" as "Sir Nigel Gresley" back in the 1980's, giving me the option of running it pre-nationalisation or later as a preserved locomotive. I changed the chimney back to a single for the conversion. For comparison this is my "Silver Fox" which I upgraded about 5 years ago using the 3 Grey scheme from the current Precision range. The enamel paint went on pretty well. I also have "Mallard" in BR Green without the valances. I did seriously consider at one time converting one of my A4 models into the rebuilt W1 number 10000, probably in its BR form as 60700, based on a conversion I saw many years ago in Railway Modeller. With the 4-6-4 wheel layout it was a sort of enlarged A4 and I thought it would look good alongside my streamlined P2 2-8-2. I believe that Hornby may have now released the W1 in both early and late forms to go with their P2, and were I still running a layout I wold probably have bought one. Pete