Olmec Head

Very impressive the Airfix Tempest does turn out well, when done by an obvious expert. But no dinosaur!

Excellent choice of markings and a Tyrannosaurus Rex, could this be the idea for new GB. Well done Little H.

Nice looking kit and excellent markings, straight to the finish line.

Start of Day 3 - Its like being the last person writing in an exam when everyone else has finished! Other GB modellers have finished or have got the makings on already, I feel I am still on question 2 of a 3 hour exam. So 9 ish am start (no time to write in 24 clock time) and a piggy smell from the nearby fields. After about 1 hour plus or so the markings are on: Well most of them as life as we know is too short for stencils. Airfix decals/ transfers are very good and bed down well with the Britmodeller Future and water mix. Next is to do the remaining bits and finish.

Thanks Jinxman, markings are next.

Looks excellent (no pun intended) and the first to finish.

An egg plane - is a cracking idea, I thank you.

Looks good, the splotchy paint scheme will be interesting to do.

Day Two Ends I think it time to draw stumps early having go the single coat of silver on, I used Tamiya flat aluminium with some thinned silver/ grey mix. So Day Two was about 4 hours in total. Day three should me markings, assembly and finish!

Day 2 - Time seems to compress! As it is /was a Sunday, I started slightly later and cheated last night by putting on the wings and filling so gaps. So the start time by my sort of Luftwaffe Navigator (German for navigator is?) B model Uhren watch is 10 am as the church bell also just chimed. I sanded back the seams, the top seam is not a brilliant fit and I am not sure how it will stand up when painted. I redid the fuel-tank detail and put in some fuel cap details. These may well not show up when painted! As the whole plane is silver finished, I have basically put it all together. The undercarriage is a bit wonky and bit 'Airfixy', i.e the undercart lugs did not fit into the holes without considerable sanding. The cannon fit might also be a bit wonky, but that is down to me in that instance. So at 12:15 hours, it looked like this. A bit of time to dry and then airbrushing under-coat and then Silver. Time is tightening.

Super speedy !

looks good, another silver airframe build for this GB.

Good choice, I found on my build ages ago that the exhausts were a difficult fit, I tried to fit them after painting the kit and it was a disaster! So it might be done best in assembly sheet sequence.

Looks good and you put the cockpit dials decal on, I forgot that on my 'parallel' Airfix Spitfire 22. Is the Tempest going to be HS Silver or NMF finish please?

Time and Relative Dimension in Space - Things are stuck together There was an amount of annoying flash on the kit and I also forgot that Airfix Spitfire cockpits don't go together as easily as the instructions would have you believe. That said, the new airfix 1/72 Spitfire Vc was an easier build. I did not go mad on the cockpit as it will be a closed canopy and you cannot see anything at all really. The fuselage is clamped together as the top joint is somewhat dodgy and will need filling, hence the plastic putty standing by. I have put some 'collars' on the gun joints as that is a very weak part of this kit, it remains to be seen if this will work, I hope so. So the 1963 Chinese Air Force Watch says 1155 hours, which is a build elapse time of around 2 1/2 hours. I'll now need to wait for the glue to harden and take it from there.

As @JOCKNEY is building a Fujimi Griffon Spitfire, I thought I would try my hand again at the Airfix Spitfire 22. Its been in a store box for some time and now Airfix are re-releasing it, I can crack open the kit. So it will be the Silver RAuxAF version of 603 Sqn, City of Edinburgh. I'll re-arrange those words to the correct SW format later! Start time on my Chinese Seagull 1963 watch is 09:25 start up. What could go wrong?

And we're Off! I think this kit was bought in the early 1990s and I found it in my parents' attic a few years ago. It's not the proper multi colour version, but the next iteration of boring grey: There are some spare bits from a previous Matchbox kit that I built some time ago and maybe even parts from an old Airfix version. After a couple of hours of cutting and gluing, I got the main bits together: The NF30/36 bullnose will be interesting to fit to the fuselage. I put some plasticard strips into the radiator intakes to fill some gaps. It will be wheels up, so the wheel well doors have been put in place and went in well. The tablecloth is courtesy of my wife and is of the same vintage as the kit.

I have not forgotten about the NF30 (well it will be an NF36), I am just thinking about how to do it wheels up and retracted. That will stop a lot of extra work.

PK-19 MiG 21 Built purely OOB and is a bit of a generic MiG 21, but I did put the the pitot on the top for the mid life version, not the bottom as Matchbox would have it. Finished in kit markings of 'Soviet Air Forces'. And now de-classified, the original spy shot of the actual aircraft that Matchbox used as source for the model (yes really): Thanks to the group hosts for the GB, my next one will be a NF30 Mosquito.

Completed and in the Gallery To my surprise the 50 year old markings went on without a hitch and best of all no silly stencils, just Red Stars and aircraft numbers. Having failed to make the aircraft in my school club when 9 or 10, I have now built the kit. Hoorah.

Just finishing off the MiG 21 and then a go at the Mosquito in an NF30/36 version.

A Final Push(kin) Despite building this simple 1970s kit OOB and with no added extras or improvements, it seems to have stalled a bit. Having re-sanded and re-filled it then had yet another black coat and then another silver coat. This model has had more black and silver paint than a Black Sabs concert backdrop. The green radar bits were done. Next is the decals, which are the originals and thus 50 years old; so I thought I would do a near completion photo - as it might go wrong on the decal application.

One Step back to black I sanded down and refilled some of the obvious gaps and then sprayed it black - again. In the meantime, I tried to repair some very poor Revell decals on a Lancaster, I forgot my firm pledge not to use Revell decals again. But it gave time for the paint to dry with encouragement from the hairdryer an indispensable tool when airbrushing in a cold garage. After that, I put on an initial Silver coat -Tamiya Aluminium. There is of course one worse colour than black for showing up errors and that is silver: It starkly highlighted some errors that will need filling and sanding. So more silver after that. But at least it now looks like a MiG. Reading up about the aircraft, I understand that they came factory fresh in NMF, but after a major service, they were resprayed in an all over Matt varnish finish with an Aluminium 'tint', so I won't be doing lots of different panel effects. I am not sure about the the jet pipe finish.

How about 'Top Gunski' with an all black MiG 21 in USAF markings representing an American F10 (!). Actually if the original Matchbox markings fall apart, that might just be option B.

And I thought that my Matchbox 1973 MiG 21 in the Matchbox GB was old school. Even your decals are more faded and curly.