Jo NZ

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 The first one was copied from the car when it was at Bonhams in 2012, and that bonnet was originally made for the two seat version in 1946.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.

A beautiful build. One minor comment - should it have German pattern Jerricans, which weren't issued until 1939?

No worries. It does look a little squat through a close up lens. Here's a real one for comparison It is quite short and fat.... PS can whoever moved this from 1/16 armour please put it back again? That's where it belongs.....

I'm waiting for someone to work out how to light up under the sail panels - each car had its ident colour illuminated at night.

1/43 is a strange scale because it was originally used for trains (O gauge) which in the UK is 1/43.5. Dinky made model cars to suit the railways, starting in the 1930s, and lots of other die cast manufacturers followed suit. Marklin determined the size for O gauge trains in the early 1900s, making it “smaller than 1 gauge”. Go figure! More useless info, HO is “half O” or 1/87.....

According to Heng Long it's 1/16; probably more like 1/14

Built some time ago, this shows it pre-weathering (primarily achieved by driving around the garden). I've also added squadron markings since then. Several mods to the interior and electronics. External mods include the front equipment rack and opening drivers hatch (for the control switches) It's in the uniquely coloured NZ MERDC camo.

Nice build. I converted a 1/16 Panzer into a Stug, which is how I know that this one must have been built in May 1943 - just before the smoke grenades were deleted and zimmerit started to be applied! Mines exactly the same build.