OneDay

Thanks Jure. Some useful stuff in both sources. It will take even more than I thought to get it right!

Can somebody point me to a review of the Mach 2 kit of the Comet? Something that examines the size, shape, angles and proportion? I have one so I know about the passenger windows being out of line, the undercarriage doors engraved on the upper wing surfaces, the highly simplified undercarriage - but does it need re-shaping?

I tried to make something of the Contrail Beverley a long while ago. Most of my work was on the fuselage. The nose is short and bulbous or rounded, the cockpit "blister" needed reshaping, the rear fuselage needed building up and re-shaping around the doors. The fuselage ended up quite solid because of all the Milliput. The tail boom was very thinly drawn around the "chines". I think I lined it with Milliput. I replaced the tailplanes with outer wings from an Airfix B-17, filed down a lot to get the shape right. The find and differs were OK! the wings were OK in shape and planform but horribly flimsy. Very flexible even after I built them around a wooden spar. I intended to try to use the kit engines, some Aeroclub wheels and (I hope) propellors. The model died when I tried to use spray foam (that you use to fill around door or window frames) to stiffen the wings, and the stuff carried on expanding, giving a really odd, bulged, head-on appearance. I found reference all over the place, the odd photo here and there, drawings from Aviation News. I never found out about Bill Overton's book, and Geoff Gladstone's had not been published. A fellow member of IPMS Avon gave me another Contrail kit after hearing of all the troubled I had had with the model and how much I hated it. it is still on the shelf. I did, however, get hold of a Magna resin kit, I confess I have yet to try and evaluate it for size and shape. It is certainly going to be big! To conclude, rather than rework a Contrail, I would scratchbuild. But, maybe, Magna is the way to go ... If you can find one.