Jo NZ

In terms of age - the smoke pots were deleted around May 43, and zimmerit was introduced soon after that. Also by that date the bolted front armour was welded on so it’s a bit earlier. Unfortunately my reference material is 12000 miles away, otherwise I could be a little more accurate

If you’re going for the Scaldwell car..... we should compare notes on the JAP, as my next project is leaning towards John Bolsters Bloody Mary, with only half the number of engines, but still a complex challenge.

I use Word and print onto photo paper. Great for white/yellow and black plates. There are number plate fonts available - try googling.

I’d love to compare it to the standard build. I don’t think we’d see any similarity. Nice.

Love that excessive rear wing. These days they’re struggling for front grip, and the front wing is probably bigger than that rear.... awesome build, by the way!

It did have the kudos of being the first jet airliner....

Absolutely. My chemistry teacher was a northerner we called Mr Wrench (aka Dave). At the time he was a prop forward and captain of Harlequins. His comment- “don’t play league, it’s a blooody poofs game”. It’s stayed with me ever since.

A bit of progress... I've made a complete new bonnet. The first one was copied from the car when it was at Bonhams in 2012, and that bonnet was originally made for the two seat version in 1946. So it's wrong for 1932! There are more vents in the older bonnet, and the bulges over the magnetos are different. For some reason making it was much more difficult than the first one... The sanding dust is from making the base for the flyscreen How do I make Basswood look like Oak? I've also mucked around with the oil cooler, the pipe routing is different. In it's 1970 rebuild it seemed to acquire some brass plumbing fittings - I've reverted to hoses...

And if you’re a local how do you pronounce Cirencester? Sissister?

Four, I think. DB1 was the flight test aircraft, DB2 and DB3 electronics test, and I think the first production aircraft had flown too. GEC got 50m for the cancellation, about 45m more than they would have got if it had carried on.

I was surprised too. Laying out the equipment racks for the AEW Nimrod we actually measured inside the aircraft, there appeared to be a lot more room than Hawker Siddleley had allocated. That’s when they produced the GA drawing showing the tolerances. This was particularly difficult for running waveguide the length of the aircraft ,a pieces had to be made on site to fit and then returned to the manufacturer to be finished and tested. Another feature of the build was fitting metric equipment into an imperial aircraft. Ever seen a 3/8 BSF bolt with a 10mm hex head?

The difference in width of the many 8 x 4 foot sheets of aluminium used to clad the fuselage. 121 feet ( from long ago memory) at a 4 ft width is is about 35 sheets (it’s late, so about...) say 36 for easy division . Plus or minus 6 inches over 36 sheets allows for 1/6 of an inch per sheet. (.160” or 4mm) if they were all short, you get - 6 inches, if they were all long, + 6 inches. Does that make sense?

Nice to see kapton sellotape being used on this build, we used it in the ‘90s on space shuttle equipment. It was a bit more expensive then!

Good grief, I didn’t realise they were is service for so long!

Don't fret too much about the length. Due to sheet tolerances, and according to works drawings, it can vary by +/- 6 inches.