Work In Progress

I'm confused, Seahawk. Do you mean you *bought* it as soon as it came out and haven't built it?

Much bigger than any Wildcat prop. A C-47 prop, incidentally, is 11'6", some say 11'6 and a bit. The C-47's engines are pretty narrowly spaced and the prop tips close to the fuselage which limits prop size (and thereby some aspects of performance) but does make it easier to wrangle in the single-engined case. B-17 props are about 11'7" so they're a bit undernourished for a Wellington too. A-20 / Boston props are also too small at 11'3" A-26 props are 12"7' so the right size, though you would need to make the tips a little pointier as well as the hub (not hard though, glue on a lit

I have a Skybirds '86 Scimitar and every time I look at that, or indeed some of my injection-moulded Aeroclub kits, I am struck not just by virtues of the kits but also by the admirably small boxes they fit into.

Yes, this HPM kit is not at all the same as the Japanese 3D printed ABS one

Yes. I don't have any of my Airfix, Falcon and Hobbycraft-with-full-Cooper Details set Sea Furies to hand and it's at least 25 years since I last built one, but if you have good look at this tailwheel - huge pic so not linking directly - you will see there is a unicorn-like forward pointing horn on the retracting version. Offhand I would guess this is what pushes on something to raise the doors behind the retracting leg. I am pretty sure I recall that horn being on the Cooper Details leg, you tell me if it's on the Airfix and AMG ones. http://www.grubbyfingersshop.com/walkaround_galleri

Interesting effect!

I think for all practical purposes in a relatively small scale like 1/48 you will get away with using a standard single seater canopy at the back, especially if posing it open; and just crash-mould the tunnel, which is a simple single-curved thing, really just a bent piece of flat clear sheet.

Did AMG get the tailplane right? (i.e. bigger than a single-seater). The PM kit ignored that.

Which others are you thinking of? I would not be surprised if the significantly lower-drag rear canopy arrangement as seen on Nuthin' Special and Dreadnought were the only good-quality replacements available as the moulds are probably knocking around somewhere in the States. If I had to guess where they are I'd start by asking Sanders Aeronautics, I bet they still have them. Dreadnought was of course the ultimate two-seat Fury, with its R-4360

It's not an illusion at all. I first encountered this airframe as Doug Arnold's G-BCOW at Blackbushe in the late '70s, when it had already been cleaned-up and de-cluttered a bit, then Doug did some more work on it, removing the remains of the target tug clobber. Originally in his ownership it looked like this, re-registered but still in its German colours then like this ...and then for the second time in the Reno desert in the mid '80s, possibly 1987, as NX8467W, "Nuthin' Special". Then it looked like this: It gained the retractable tailwh

The Sabre Fury was a 1944 aeroplane, so not really

Remember to make sure he doesn't look underfed

Skybirds 86 was a one-man cottage industry brand of highly accurate limited run kits. I would not try to build it until you've done some more modelling. It;s also quite valuable. I'd prefer it over the AZ kit but the AZ kit is much more what people are used to these days. He did some other lovely things too including the first accurate 1/72 Hunter, a nice dH Hornet and a Scimitar

No, the problem with a Cessna 150 with full flap at max gross is not so much distance required to gain speed but that its rate of climb is utterly pitiful and in some cases (hot day, carb heat still applied) actually non-existent. It will come off the ground and float along in ground effect but not climb out. One of the reasons why they restricted flap travel on later developments, and the second act after applying cold air / full throttle on a go-around is to select flaps 30. Mind you, it didn't help that the 150 and 152 were routinely operated over max gross weight by so many ope

But also, in many cases, a long way down the runway, especially if the reason for going around is excessive speed and height, or a late change in wind direction meaning that your into-wind approach now has a quartering tailwind. Whatever, the fact is that you can take off and climb away perfectly easily in a Spitfire or Hurricane with the flaps down. The main hazard you run in a Spitfire is overheating the engine due to the flap partially restricting airflow through the radiator. It's pretty much an academic question except in a touch-and-go anyway in a Spitfire as you