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DamienB

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Everything posted by DamienB

  1. Well it was hot so I'm permitted a crap thread title. Dodge on the walkaround while Peter polishes the canopy... "That bit's the engine" Engine start... ...and up we go... Fingers crossed, flight testing shall resume next week. Thanks for the invite Peter.
  2. DamienB

    F-111K

    Entirely plausible and quite common for books to recycle wrong information originally found in just a single publication (not saying the F-111K wing is long or short - no idea personally).
  3. Popped up to Newark to visit Cockpit Fest - an event I normally miss as it clashes with Kemble's big show but as I'm hobbling about with a bad back and can only carry one camera plus short lens, I could make it this year as Kemble wasn't a practical option! It's a good event - no extra charge on normal museum admission, loads of cockpits to admire, and many of the owners are happy to let you sit in them which is a big hit with young - and old! Great for getting photos of the interiors too, very handy as modelling reference... It's not just cockpits - here's a Hurricane - work in progress! This is the front cockpit of the Hawk nose in the background of the shot above, XX320, the one that crashed on landing at Cranwell a couple of years ago. Remarkably unscathed by the ejection seat rockets but full of brick dust from the building it demolished! Good to see another Jaguar cockpit in preservation. BBMF Dakota flying past overhead too. As well as the cockpits on display there were various instrument panel projects in one of the hangars: ...and a live engine run (Alvis Leonides): Got one more pic but it won't let me post it until somebody else replies... doh...
  4. Started over a year ago for the naval GB... can't accuse me of knocking them out too quickly eh. Shows up a bit green in these pics but looks alright in the flesh, honest...! Build thread here Lovely kit for the most part, similar standard to their Hunters and I think the only real problem I had was the forward fuselage ending up a bit wider than the cowling and nose gear doors - I suspect that was my fault and a bit more fettling when fitting the bomb bay / gear bay assembly would have sorted that.
  5. Yeah, it's not a Jag seat. More like F-4 or Lightning. You want a Mk.9 - http://www.martin-baker.co.uk/products/Eje...k--9/Mk--9.aspx
  6. Good build but where did you get that ejector seat from...?
  7. Very nice but I bet he hasn't painted the starboard sides...
  8. I've got one of my 1/72 kits out of the stash. Part of me is going "Do it, you don't exactly lack for reference material!" and the rest of me is going "You've got two Jags part-built, get them done first you fool". 40 parts in the nose gear? I'm swaying towards the Jags!!
  9. Finally got the beast finished. 28 - radio aerial rigging from smoke coloured .004 inch nylon 'wonder invisible thread'. Fiddly to put in place but works a treat - basically wrap it around the point where you want it glued, add a dab of PVA glue, then hold the thread under tension e.g. by sticking another end down somewhere handy with masking tape. Once the glue has set you can snip off the excess and move on to the next attachment point. Also the twin pole aerials on the upper decking from stretched sprue. 29 - props on, I ended up gluing them solidly in place as the rear prop didn't move as freely as the front and there was an unsightly gap between the two prop bosses. 30 - towel rail aerial added from brass rod with plastic card supports. 31 - various wing aerials from plastic card The really attentive will notice I've repainted the nose wheel hubs so they are green/red on the correct sides now... Think I'll wait for daylight for some more piccies of the finished thing!
  10. The Mk.8VA was specific to the TSR2 - the current Mk.8 is unrelated and just uses a 'vacant' Mk number - it's actually a lightweight Mk.10. The Mk.8VA was a good seat - very advanced for the time and many of the concepts went into the Mk.9 (Jaguar & Harrier), which has seen little noticeable tinkering since its intro to service, so I wouldn't bother tinkering with the Mk.8VA for a whiffer, other than perhaps painting it black instead of the unpainted alloy finish of the early seats on the TSR2 development batch aircraft.
  11. I hope you have flagellated yourself with a wet lettuce leaf!
  12. You need to open up the end of those ducts more, Martin: ...you're only half way there on the aperture as you can see from the above. XR220 is unlikely to have ever carried internal stores I'm afraid - it was comprehensively instrumented for measuring airframe loads and vibration, flutter and so on, and as part of that was to carry external stores only. XR227 was to have been the internal (and external) stores test bird. Highly likely to have been fitted with the intake cameras too though...
  13. From me, special price - £100! I'll be selling copies myself on the web but not until nearer the publication date and I'm not likely to be competing with any discount that Amazon may apply at any point. Not finalised my plans on this yet. People buying from Amazon have bumped it up their sales charts nicely today - currently #14 in aviation books and #8,100 overall; and the higher it goes the more chance people will see it on there so it's all good!
  14. My book is mine - it has nothing to do with Chox. There may be two new books, but there's only one worth buying. I think the respective page counts tell you all you need to know. No idea about Joe's title. It's not out til later in the year but when it is I'm sure they'll be stocking it.
  15. Hope the mods don't mind a bit of self-promotion here... Some details here at Amazon Sorry it's a bit pricey, but it's a big fat book with bags and bags of illustrations and photos, mostly in colour. For modellers, there are a good number of detail photos scattered throughout along with details and drawings of the contenders for the requirement and unbuilt versions of the TSR2 itself.
  16. Thanks peeps! OzH - the T-bird is an ex-RAF one hence no Swiss bits. I'm guessing from the green camo nearby that the grey u/c bay is from the t-bird?
  17. I had a good look at ZZ190 and 191 at Yeovilton last year (and didn't take any close-up shots - doh!) and my memory was that it was a plain grey - certainly the interior of the doors looked metallic while the exteriors did not. None of my photos from the arrivals day show the slightest metallic tint to the underside grey - except possibly on the Sabrinas (which I didn't boher with on the model). I used LAG anyway. They differ in a lot of details - strakes are different as are the circular access panels, panel lines where sections join, etc. See http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/AWA2...-Tresin/00.shtm for some shots of the two together. The Revell kit's big RAF tank looks good to me as a basis anyway. Argh - I see what you mean now, the big RAF tanks are too long. I think I'll live with it for this one.
  18. Seen these? http://sites.google.com/site/rjcaviationart/decalarchive
  19. A good pair there - wish they would do that as a formation at Old Warden some time!
  20. Having had no time for modelling for the last year and finding myself once again in desperate need of a bit of relaxation, I pulled one of these beautiful little kits out of the stash with the intention of just throwing it together OOB. However I didn't fancy doing either of the RAF schemes in the box... and went off the Swiss schemes too... and then a brainwave struck while looking through my photos from Yeovilton last year. So here we go, Hawker Hunter Aviation's ZZ190 - an ex-Swiss F.58 in British military markings... with ROYAL NAVY titles to boot! And for comparison, the real thing... The kit was built out of the box with just a few exceptions - the larger drop tanks supplied in the kit aren't proper Swiss ones as they lack the tail fins and the ventral bumpers/strakes so these were added from plastic card and strip respectively. A missing aerial between the Sabrinas is also from plastic card. I also drilled holes in the blast suppressor blocks to represent the cannon apertures. Other than that the kit is exactly as Revell intended it. Sprayed with Xtracrylix and finished off with Xtracylix flat varnish also sprayed. I have to say this tooling really is a cracker, and obviously designed by somebody who cared about the subject. The detail present in the undercarriage bays and cockpit rivals the best 3rd party resin add-ons and lots of nuances of shape have been faithfully represented. The fit is superb almost without exception (the wings are a bit narrow for the recess in the fuselage, but a minor bit of bending the halves outwards at the root makes them a snap-fit). On the negative side there are some panels on the starboard side of nose that are mirror images of those on the port side, when they are only present on the port side of the real thing (destructor panel and rescue panel - and I only noticed after I'd sprayed the camo so have left them as-is), there are no intake walls (I sprayed the interiors black - you can't tell now without sticking a torch down there), plus the wing leading edge and wing tip inserts are a little bit too thick so needed a fair bit of sanding to fair them in. I'm also a bit suspicious of the size of the wheels - they may be a bit undersized but I purposefully didn't check this as I wanted to just finish something quickly. As with the Revell Gannet there are a few instances of part number confusion in the instructions - where the numbers refer to the parts for the opposite side for some things e.g. main gear doors. Decals are mostly from the kit - some of the stencils needed cut and shut treatment to get them to match those on ZZ190 and the yellow text below the cockpit still isn't right but hey, near enough. The RN titles, the URL on the spine and the rescue other side panel on the starboard nose were printed on white decal paper. My laser printer couldn't match the green at all, it was way too light, but the grey wasn't too bad, and some careful overpainting of the edges once applied has left an acceptable result I think - as long as you don't look too closely. Now I look at the pics I see I still need to paint the wingtip lights - argh!
  21. Good build (airbrake aside) but I also think Xtradecal messed up on the roundels - shouldn't the lion face forward on both sides? See: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/attac...mp;d=1194036383 (from http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showt...Air-Force/page3 )
  22. Right, after just over a year of the poor thing sitting on a filing cabinet gathering dust, I have restarted work on the Gannet COD. First job, after getting all the dust off it, was chopping the main gear legs just above the scissor links, removing the excess height and drilling holes in the leg sections to accept some thin brass rod before gluing them back together. The sit of the aircraft is much more tail-down now, like the real thing, and I've decide the nose gear leg doesn't need similar surgery. Then I packed the nose gear bay with lead weights and glued the big doors on in the closed position. Add the props and exhausts and the beast sits quite happily on its three wheels - hooray! Further trawling through photos found only two shots showing CODs with no main gear doors, so I have added these too. Unfortunately that means there's no room for the cargo pods to go on the pylons - I think I must have put them a little too far inboard. Far too late to fix that without lots more work so I'm just leaving the pylons bare. With those bits done all that is left is to add various small aerials and add the wires between the upper fuselage masts and the little stabiliser fins. Not entirely sure how to do this but I have plenty of thin thread etc. available to play with. No pics yet, too busy throwing a Revell Hunter together more or less out-of-the-box!
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