Colin W

I'm planning a British Navy Phantom soon for a large project so count me in.

Following a couple of challenging builds in the Baby Boomers I'm going a bit more mainstream here with the new Airfix Seaking. I'll be aiming for a Mk1 all folded up on HMS Ark Royal. Anyone else running out of cabinette space? Rather than kit decals I'll be using the Model Alliance set. No shortage of info as I made a trip to Historic Helicopters in Chard a few weeks ago and had a good crawl around their AS5. I'm still wondering why Airfix released the Merlin 10 years ago when this would have been a better proposition? I'll be using @Ex-FAAWAFU build from last year for any additional info. Colin

Indeed, what else can you say! I made a start on this over the weekend. Interior painted mahogany, blades cut off and reversed from rear propeller and floats assembled. I found a suitable seat in the spares bin and knocked up an instrument panel with brass fittings just to say it's there as no one will ever see it!

Happy day spent applyng decals. They look a bit too bright so I might give them a coat of smoke or thinned black to tone them down.

I haven't used Xtracolour for a long while so maybe yes. I often use Mr Color #40 German Grey as a scale black but #125 Cowling color is also a blue black. Looking at the pictures I took of the real thing at Dayton USAF Museum, the overall black is actually a patchwork of shades. The cockpit canopy especially is a shade of grey so I mixed some EDSG into the black/blue mix and high lighted a few panels where appropriate. This is a bit overdone since the final post decal varnish will even it out I also silvered the leading edges with some "Rub & Buff" art paste. I hope these decals are better than the Vautour otherwise it'll be getting a coat of Ablative white!

I've applied all the stock decals either rescued from the kit, home printed or collected from other sources. Just waiting for the French Roundals now. I added the undercarriage doors and wing tanks to tidy my bench and prevent me from loosing them!

Normally these airliners go together quickly and have a long painting period but this seems to be the other way round. Great end result!

An interesting idea from many angles. I was following a chap called Eric building the HPH 1/48 Concorde. It was an excellent build with pilots added to the cockpit and full LED electricals to the nav lights and engines. He planned to build it landing with the nose down and ailerons up but got into problems with the flaps and decided to shelve it and come back to it later. That was in 2017. I wrote back a few times but no response. I'd love to know if it ever got finished..

I've been progressing this in the background while waiting for paint/glue/decals to dry on the Vautour. There's not much to it once the cockpit and trolley are omitted so with the 10 main parts assembled I gave it a few coats of grey primer with a bit of fill and sand in between. Then as the Rolling Stones recommended, I painted it black. This is actually a mix of 3 parts black #2 and 1 part Blue #328 but just like the real thing, it looks black. Some subtle weathering and then decals.

OK up to date now with this. I added the dolly wheels under the engine pods. Actually this was one of the best parts of the build. Once I had figured out the obscure instructions I was able to assemble the legs. I replaced the very suspect looking oval resin doughnuts supposed to be used as wheels by replacing them with the wheels from the landing trolly from my X-15 thart I was not using. They were the exact size and close to hand. Excellent. I fitted the PE hubs from the Vautour over the resin hubs and fitted them to the legs. I realised the engines had a tiny pin hole very close to the point where I wanted to fit the leg so I drilled it out and a projection on the leg popped in for a perfect fit. The other engine casting had a hole in the same place so I repeated for both sides and lo-and behold she sat on the bench with all 6 wheels in contact and the wings level! These pin holes were the first accurate locating pins in the whole model so what are the chances they would work? I forgot to take a picture as I was hurrying to get it on the table for Tuesdays' model club. It was 'NATO 75 anniversay' night and I wanted to take my nuclear strike force including the Vautour. At this point I realised the decals were cracking up, probably due to age and heat in Thailand so I gave them a coat of Future and tried that. Unfortunately it didn't work very well and they merely crumbled more slowly. I put the main insignia on temporarily for the show which was ok. Here's my NATO attack collection. Yesterday I ordered some new French cockades from the big H and made up the rest of the markings for printing. I scraped and peeled off the kit markings and tried the new ones hence the first picture above. I took the opportunity to change the markings from the kits '#'639' to '#640' since there are a lot of pictures of 640 on the net but none of 639. More decals on once the postman's been.

Main undercarriage now set and wings level with all 4 wheels on the ground! Dolly wheels next.

Since it's taken @Corsairfoxfouruncle a few years to get this underway I think I should do more than a single quick build. So following on from my Curtiss RX-3-2 I have obtained the kit for my favourite of the Schneider racers, the Macchi 72. This unique machine used 2 engines in tandem to increase the power with each driving a separate propeller in a contrarotating set up. This matches the Fairey Gannet and the Cessna 0-2 as twin engine aircraft retaining the non asymetric single eingine layout. While a couple examples for the others I think this was unique to the Macchi. I was privaleged to have the opportunity to visit the excellent Italian Airforce museum in Rome a few years ago where all the Scheneider racers are togather in a single gallery. Great stuff! Here she is. The kit from SMER is quite old but the only real issue is that the twin propellers are handed to spin in the same rotation! This will require a bit of attention. Here's the contents of the box. The parts have quite a bit of flash and ejector pin marks, especially inside the floats and fuselage so needed a good sanding down on the mating surfaces..... This wont be a blitz build like the Curtiss, I'll take my time with this one. To be continued....

Many thanks @Marlin. I hadnt interpreted it that way but it makes sense. Armed with Marlins expertise I have now fitted the main bicycle landing gear using my trusty jig. As I was working on this I dropped it upside down and it landed on the canopy. Fortunately I had taped a coverover the canopy to protect it from such an event. When I peled off the tape the copy was OK but the painting had all flaked off and came away with the tape. This is easily replaced but demonstrates how thin the plastic is! Decals and dolly wheels next

Hi, did you manage to work out how the front undercarriage works? The assembly drawing is meaningless as the depicted hydraulic ram is shown connected to both front and rear. If you figured it out then I'd appreciate if you could share a picture of your build or the image you used. Thanks.

These old Airfix kits take a bit of work but I'm sure you'll have a good model at the end.