skippiebg

Moa, your modelling is an inspiration that leaps across periods and subject matter and I am happy to have attracted your interest! Thank you for your contributions!

Proplineruk, thank you for the tip re. the Welsh Models Comets! (Now, if only they didn't cost well over a ton..! And, having said that, where would I shoehorn one of them without the missus raising hell..?) Fascinating, that about the AA Comet 4s, thank you! I had always assumed only the 1/1A and 2 had the curved windscreen panels. The Comet had quite a few winsdcreen layouts, mostly subtle changes here and there. I know for sure the front four panes on the 4B and 4C were taller. (Still not very clear on whether the Nimrod didn't end up having even taller windscreen panes all around...)

Many thanks to Jure Miljević and Bzn20 for some fascinating input! AA seems to have had a fairly ecclectic attitude to naming aircraft (and indeed painting them in a uniform manner). Lovely colour, though, and once I have decided on one of the many schemes the few AA Comets wore, I shall design and print my own decals and go at it Incidentally, it took me ages to work out what the writing on the AA Comet fins said. It is "DE HAVILLAND/COMET-4 (or COMET-4C, and yes, with a hyphen)/TURBINAS/ROLLS-ROYCE AVON". This, plus a 'credits panel' in English on some early a/c... Typographically, things were also quite haphazard. Wonderful

Wow, never knew of that clip. Thanks!. The Transport Wings Comet, hmm-m... I had one 20-odd years ago and sold it unbuilt. As I remember, plenty more problems than the Mach 2. Never seen the Welsh Comet 4s.

Jure, kolega, najlepša hvala (huge thanks) for this excellent information which I did not have! --- I have both the Mach 2 Caravelle and Comet 4C kits. The Comet appears to be based on the Airfix Nimrod. This means the engine intakes and the entire forward halves of the engine tracts are very much deeper than they should be (the Comet had thin and spindly Avon turbojets. The Nimrod had much fatter Spey turbofans.) Other than the wrong engine housings, the kit has inherited all Airfix's Nimrod faults, which are niggling, but not too offputting, to me at least. Among them is an indifferent nose shape, an indifferent fin shape, indifferently shaped wing pinion tanks, and the general feeling of a so-so kit. The really crooked cabin windows are a purely Mach 2 addition. In summary, using the Mach 2 kit to make a faithful model of the Comet 4C wouild call for a brave and complex refashioning of the lower centre section of the wing. This might, or might not, be your thing... Oh, and the Dan-Air decals my version has are wrong both typographically and geometrically, as well as being extremely crude. To answer your question, I would say that, despite its much greater age, the Mach 2 Caravelle is an altogether nicer and more straightforward kit than the Comet. --- Among Comet kits, the King-and-Sire has to be the FROG 1/96 kit of the Comet 4, much more widely available under the Soviet Novo late 1970s brand. It is chunky and sound in all general and quite a few particular aspects, and offers a superb basis for superdetailing or improvements. Best of all, it remains fairly widely available at very reasonable prices. The decals, either FROG or Novo, are unusable, but that is a small inconvenience easily forgotten while the rest of the kit fills you with a deep and therapeutic sense of satisfaction and gratitude

Aerolineas Argentinas Comet 4s saw a considerable number of variations in their colour schemes. Photos are few, far between, and of crap quality. Some a/c seem only to have a single photo online -- period! Sources are scanty and iffy... All in all, I need help! My research shows this: Comet 4 LV-PLM/-AHN "Las Tres Marias" Jan 1959 to retirement 1971 1st colours: style 1 (thick/thin, tall) titles, plain pinion tanks; 2nd colours: as above plus style 3 (ultimate) titles; 3rd colours (1964 onwards?): as above plus logo on fin, fuselage registration in cheatline Comet 4 LV-PLO/-AHO "Cruz del Sur, Lucero de la Tarde," then just "Lucero de la Tarde" (thank you!) Feb 1959 to crash Feb 1960 1st colours: style 2 (bold, tight-set) titles; 2nd colours: as above plus style 3 titles, titles on pinion tanks; 3rd colours: as above plus painted pinion tanks Comet 4 LV-PLP/-AHP "El Lucero del Alba" Mar 1959 to crash Aug 1959 only colours: style 3 titles, titles on pinion tanks, "de Havilland Comet 4/Rolls-Royce Avon Turbojets" credit panel over cheatline aft of port door Comet 4 LV-POV/-AHR "Alborado," also "Arco Iris" (thank you!) Feb 1960 to crash Dec 1961 only colours: style 3 titles, painted pinion tanks Comet 4 LV-POZ/-AHS "Las Tres Marias," then "Alborada" (thank you!) Feb 1960 to retirement 1971 only colours: style 3 titles, painted pinion tanks Comet 4 LV-PPA/-AHU "Centaurus" Jul 1960 to retirement 1971 1st colour: style 3 titles, painted pinion tanks; 2nd colour (1964 onwards?): as above plus logo on fin, fuselage registration in cheatline Comet 4C LV-PTS/-AIB "President Kennedy" April 1962 to retirement 1971 1st colours: style 3 titles, painted pinion tanks; 2nd colours: as above plus fuselage registration in cheatline 3rd colours (1964 onwards?: as above plus logo on fin My questions are: 1. Was LV-AHO really called "Lucero de la Tarde" rather than "El Lucero de la Tarde" (also, which words really had initial capitals)? No "El" and only nouns initial-capitalised, thank you! 2. Did other Comets also have credit panels ("De Havilland Comet 4/Rolls-Royce Avon Turbojets") over the cheatline, aft of the portside door? Al least AHN and AHO did, thank you! 3. Was LV-AHR really called "Alborado", rather than "Alborada"? Alborada it was, thank you! 4. Was the oddball LV-AIB (a Comet 4C, not a 4, and a "white-tail" bought much later than other fleet members) really called "President Kennedy", rather than "El Presidente Kennedy"? Was this ship named thus after JFK's November 1963 assassination? if so, what (if anything) was it called over its 18 months of service before Nov 1963? Appears to have been "President Kennedy" in English, not Spanish, from the start, reflecting a major visit by JFK to Argentina in 1961, thank you! 5. Did LV-AHS also get the post-1964 changes of fuselage registration in the cheatline and logo on the fin? It did, thank you! 6. Were LV-AHN and LV-AHS really both called "Las Tres Marias", or is this a mistake? They both were, thank you! Sorry this is so arcane and age-old, and many thanks in advance!

Brilliant work, and lots of it, too! The nose is amazingly true to life!

I'm getting some popcorn... (John @Viking, I have some Comet 4C drawings basically cadged off the old Aeromodeller effort and done up by myself. Drop me a PM with your email addy and they are yours.) Peter

I feel that's the reason Amodel keeps popping up amid all the criticism. Its intake and centre section area, while not perfect, are really rather decent! The Comet is a huge sculpture all over, really...

On window decals, it's worth noting the Caravelle had the Comet 1/2/3 windcreen. Comet 4 was as close as damn it identical to that (front four panes were flat, but that was all). Comets 4B and 4C, though, had slight height increases to the forward four panes, as shown in the Guy Montagu-Pollock illustrations. Though minor, this really shows in real life. All this, time, the Caravelle stayed with the Comet 1/2/3 arrangement until the VI-N inclusive, going for an altogether different layout from the VI-R.

A spiffy addition to the topic, that, what!? I like whoever-made-it's sense of humour. I take it the mysterious "upper-surface air-scoops" are none other than the fixed slots on the inboard side of the pinion tanks. (I'll take especial care to cavort about the room while I bask in my accomplishment!)

Thank you so much for this, John and Tommo! I'd say, personally, the AA nose is the same as their Caravelle. (Which are lovely and of which I have two in the stash...) Here is a brilliant set of Comet 4 and 4B/4C noses, by friend Guy Montaguy-Pollock. The Comet nose is a tad shorter than the Caravelle's and its windscreen sits a tad higher in the fuselage. A personal view, this, entirely unsupported by measurements...

May I add to that a request for the underside of the fuselage at the centre section? Ta in advance!

Wow! What a brilliant visual comparison! Thank you so much, John! On noses, I feel that AA is indeed too tapered -- looks like their Caravelle if you ask me. (The Caravelle did indeed have the same nose, but a longer radome, and the nose merged into a slightly wider fuselage in which it sat slightly low, giving an appearance entirely distinct from the Comet.) The Airfix is indeed too blunt, as is also the Amodel, I'd venture...

S'ppose by the time you add this and that to an Airfix, it all comes down to the same thing, money wise. Thing is, I like fiddling with plastic, personally. Be nice if I finished the odd build, too...