rafalbert

Well, I have made a small start and painted the pilots, cockpit and assembled the fuselage (the same stage as the F-5s). Again, serious attention will be given to the seam. Bizarrely, Matchbox saw fit to put two different styles of pilot in the kit, the most obvious difference being the helmet. I guess they did not have more than one standard tooling of each available at the time.

I have made a small start and painted the pilots, cockpits and assembled the fuselages. Some serious attention is required on the seams then I can start attaching the wings etc. They are open for about 3/4 inch, I will put up a pic when I start assembling them.

Here are a few of mine from various group builds over the last few years. I now need to crack on with the ones from this GB! Dave

Hi guys, I got these on a well known auction site a few years ago, a pair of F-5s without boxes or decals. I am planning to build both at the same time, one of which will be finished as a Norwegian machine and the other to be finished in the future (when I figure out what I am going to do with it). This was one of the first Matchbox kits I built so it should bring back some good memories. Dave

Hi guys, I will be building this old girl and keeping it simple i.e. out of the box. Many thanks to rossm for kindly donating the decals! Cheers, Dave

As this will be one of my few GBs this year I will dig out an F-5A to be finished as a Norwegian machine, and if I can source some decals I will do a Saudi Lightning T55 as well (discovered long after I bought it that the decals were missing ). Dave

The first Matchbox kit I built was the Percival Provost back in 1980, with my father's assistance in applying the silver paint (he basically painted it all). As it happens, I have one of these in the stash..... Dave

Yup, I'm in

That looks excellent!

Sorry guys, I am done building for a while. Since my Nimrod incident, I have managed to screw up every model I have built so I am walking away from them for a few weeks and not participating in any more GBs until I can get past this. Good luck with your builds guys and thank you for letting me play up until now

Sorry guys, I am done building for a while. Since my Nimrod incident, I have managed to screw up every model I have built so I am walking away from them for a few weeks and not participating in any more GBs until I can get past this. Good luck with your builds guys and thank you for letting me play up until now

It takes up a lot of space

The serial for this one is JV141, any help you can give would be gratefully accepted! This has gone together generally well but the cowling was a terrible fit. I know they are not a flush fit but this had a large step between the top of the fuselage and the top of the cowling which required a bit of surgery to make it look at least reasonable. It was a shame as the rest went together ok, just needing a bit of filler in places. The other issue is that I managed to get a gluey thumbprint on the rear starboard window, a schoolboy error!

I was surprised how much filler this kit needs, so feel your pain with this one. With PPP you can use water to smooth it down, I have no idea re the Mig stuff. Bring back Squadron Green Stuff!!

I have been working away on this for a while without any updates but she is finally taking shape. The fit has not been the best and a lot of filler has been applied and rubbed down, but it is to be expected for such an old mould kit. The windscreen was quite badly distorted so I had to use superglue to fix it and typically it is not seated correctly. Such is life, I will have to live with it. I have given her a coat of primer to highlight a couple of areas to address before I can start to apply the paint.