George Aldrich

Thanks chaps 😁 Some more work. Airfix 1:72 BAe Nimrod MR2P by George Aldrich, on Flickr There's no denying that the Eduard exterior PE set is extensive! Here most of it is attached, apart from a few small details to finish. It really brings the surface of the aircraft alive! Heartily recommended, but if you're like me, plenty of coins in the swear jar when applying!! Airfix 1:72 BAe Nimrod MR2P by George Aldrich, on Flickr Tail more or less completed. The tailplanes have had new fins added from plastic card as the kit ones are just a fair deal too thick! Some additional strip on the MAD boom and this area is ready to go! Airfix 1:72 BAe Nimrod MR2P by George Aldrich, on Flickr The underside has a LOT of access hatches on it to apply! The smaller details, such as the wing pylon attachment points are all worth the effort I think though. A little filling of the bomb bay to fair it into the fuselage halves, and some final details around the engines and she'll be in primer soon. Then the fun part - paint! Airfix 1:72 BAe Nimrod MR2P by George Aldrich, on Flickr Here the AlleyCat resin windscreen has been fixed into place. Went on without any real issues, a little bending to get it to sit as best it could, but with a fair gap around the edges, it's going to need filling anyway. You can see they supply you with wipers in PE - the Eduard set offers these too so I'll probably use a mixture. Just by the nose, you can see the original Airfix kit part, and how truly wrong it is... All the windows are too square in height, there's no arch in the middle panes like on the Comet series, and the eyebrow window panes aren't precise 'triangles' either. It's an area I think the Nimrod is really let down by so the resin replacement is a strong recommendation! Beautifully cast and clear too. Next steps should be to finish the details on the surface, mask the windows, and then it's a trip to the paint bay! George

Well, for one reason or another the enthusiasm slipped. Another sideline project had to take priority, and now it's complete - back to work! Airfix 1:72 BAe Nimrod MR2P by George Aldrich, on Flickr State of play as of around a month ago. Mainly focusing on filling the fuselage seams to a smooth finish, and rescribing the lines in and flushing with ET. I reworked the landing lights I relocated, as there were a few seams that needed resolving. A new filler for me - Vallejo water-based putty, very easy to wipe off when wet and sand when dried - love it! Airfix 1:72 BAe Nimrod MR2P by George Aldrich, on Flickr A major modification area still not tackled is the tail. Airfix's is wrong in a few respects. The fin fillet is too thick and out of proportion on the stock kit, and the tip fairing is too short on the front. It should project forward more. First job was to cut out the fillet for the AlleyCat resin replacement, and to chop off the kit's 'bullet' fairing to receive an extension. Airfix 1:72 BAe Nimrod MR2P by George Aldrich, on Flickr Replacement fillet glued with CA, and scraps of AlleyCat resin offcuts were placed onto the cut tailfin fairing to extend the body forward, before regluing the tip on, and lashings of CA and filler sanded smooth. Now the fin looks more as the real deal. There were some large gaps between the fillet and the kit fin, so some 0.5mm styrene plating has been glued on, and filled in with putty, to represent some of the strengthening plates on the fillet, whilst conveniently hiding some gaps the conversion presented! More soon, I hope. George

Looking at a few images online, seems you're right in that it should be just a bit further forward, just short of the intakes. On the bomb bay, it looks roughly halfway between front and rear. Interesting..! Thank you! Thanks Orion, appreciate it! Good to have you along for the ride, albeit a slow one 😀 Hey! With work and life, it's fallen a bit by the wayside. Picking up again now! Hi CedB! Yes - I couldn't get mine to fit. A little heating in hot water to get it to be less wide in cross section to sit neatly on the frame of the kit fuselage was needed. I didn't bother with the spacer the instructions tell you to make. Filler round the edges and she seems to be smooth! Looking forward to seeing how your 'Rod progresses! I have. Her owner is pleased 😉 Indeed John! Just love the shape. One of my all time favourites! George

Finally the full set of aftermarket resin has arrived! Between work (and the associated lack of energy), general life and a commission build also on the go, work has been slow. But since the AlleyCat resin has arrived, things have moved! Here is the full complement of sets - the SCP intake, nosewheels and guards, fin root, payload bay, and canopy set. Quite impressive in the flesh! First job was to insert the windows and porthole bubbles into their appropriate holes. Nothing extra-special - each fits very satisfyingly, with a good almost snap-fit tightness! Plenty of ET used to make sure all is strongly fused! In this view you can see just how neatly the lower bubble of the fuselage skirting has fitted to the main fuselage when the main wing is split into two. AlleyCat supplies the payload bay in two halves to reduce the risk of malformed castings and increase consistency. Absolutely no problems here - beautiful detail, and intricate! Bulkheads are supplied with added detail, which here have been attached with copious amounts of cyano. They provide an extra bulkhead to apply just ahead of the intake roots, as they mention plenty of flexing and stress. Because I have attached the wings pre-fuselage join, and thus differently from normal, I saw no reason to add them to an already strong joint! So the extra isn't shown here. Cockpit was inserted after being primed black, and the nosewheel bay boxed in and glued also, awaiting painting later. A view of the great detail put into the payload bay. AlleyCat provides beams for adding the Airfix bay equipment onto, which I will add later. I intend to pose her as a clear bay so the Airfix parts won't be needed. You can see the bay fits with a minimal amount of gaps around the plastic joins, which with filler will disappear. I intend to add more piping and ductwork myself to hide this also, and increase the fidelity. And then the two halves become one! Plenty of large areas to fill but all in accessible areas on the fuselage centreline. Wing roots still need to be sanded, but they are strongly joined to the fuselage and do not move, unlike every other Nimrod I've built in the normal way! So these will be swiftly tidied up. The MAD boom has been added, and the fin root fillet has been cut out, ready to accept the new resin correction piece. More in due course! George

Hi vit79! In short terms, very little at the moment. I have been informed the resin is on it's way from shipping, so I await it with great interest! In the meanwhile life has gotten in the way a lot, I have very limited evenings now to model, and with the Vampire detailing in progress there isn't anything I am able to do on the Nimrod until the resin arrives, and things can get buttoned up, so to speak! Thanks for your interest. Be rest assured as soon as I can, things will continue. George

Thanks! Looks like we had a fair day of flying given the conditions. Wx was very touch-and-go at times. Think seeing Jeff Bell's JP T5 in the RAF100 livery has to be a favourite from the day for me! Thanks Martian 😁 An update. Time to pick up the pace! The new tube of filler (putty) arrived! Vallejo's wondrous stuff. A new one for me, not being used to not having to sand to death Miliput and Humbrol fillers just to find lots of lost detail. Yes, the filler might not be able to fill big dents and holes that the other two products will still be useful for, but for little jobs, it's a dream! Smooths with a wet finger, or water applied by cottonbuds or a small paintbrush very easily, removing excess. Not sure why I didn't buy this years back. Good stuff! I should gather that Perfect Plastic Putty is very similar. Above you can see the tub has been closed together once plenty of metal offcuts were shoved into the nose. Bits of cruddy white metal I have had no use for, or no wish to fill the imperfections in (bits from the interesting 1/72 Esoteric Bell 47, if you may need to know). Boy, that was a challenge of a kit. No such evil surprises with the ole Vampire! All was swiftly enclosed, and for once, the fuselage fitted perfectly when every other one I've done, has left huge gaps because the panel and tub forced the halves apart. Bliss! Wing upper was attached to the filled and scribed booms, and the tailplane lined up neatly, so a testament to Airfix's engineering. Some unusual gaps between the booms and tailplane and stub joins, which a tiny bit of putty should set right. Once the intakes have been made up, and painted (with the intricate, somewhat invisible, but very pleasing full-length tunnels and Goblin compressor face) they slot in nicely into the fuselage pod. And then, the marriage of wings to fuselage! I found here it was best to join the centre engine access panels, to the fuselage with glue, and once set, work on one wing and set it with glue in the right location. And then once set, pull the other wing down into place and glue. This allows time to make sure the parts edges, which fall on panel lines, are neat and do not need to be filled so much. There was much chafing of the upper wing and intake mouths, which needed a touch of a blade to thin down. Some gentle persuasion from the folks at Tamiya to get one such wing to sit properly! You can see the cutouts in the wing Eduard wants you to make, to fit the PE flaps. Also the sink marks in the flap and middle wing area which will be addressed. As I write her flaps bays have been fitted and work commences on the PE exterior panels, before priming soon. George

Today the painted PE parts were applied, the panel is especially convincing I think with the layered plates giving that depth to the gauges. I might add some varnish or clear-coat gloss to these dials to give the effect of glass. Or conversely I might just not. 😝 The whole shabang was given a flat coat and weathering added with an old friend - a pencil! Chipping bits of graphite on the edges of details and wiring on the cockpit walls, and giving the black a slightly broken patina. Probably little will be seen once the tub is put together, but as I plan to pose the canopy open, there stands a good chance it can be viewed. So far, so good! As I type the fuselage has been glued together and a start on the flaps has been made. I'm away at Duxford tomorrow, so while the wings and booms are drying now, filler will be applied tonight. More soon... George

Thanks Chris. Sounds like a cracking build you'll have! I'd love to build some more of these. The 'Admiral's Barge' appeals, as does some Swiss T55s! Thanks Mike! Sorry I didn't see this earlier to respond, I was away. An interesting detail, that now you mention it, I can't unsee! Crawling over the real jet post-sortie gathered a few reference images I can use to help the build along. Update due soon... George

Thank you! I will amend my post. Something didn't look quite right with what I said, last night late - getting in a muddle I is! Thanks for your insight into that and for the correction. Tonight will be mainly Vampire fiddling, the 0.25mm plasticard stock has arrived so I can get on with the Nimrod's bomb bay skirting amongst other little panel details. Till then... George

So, with the Nimrod project I've been chugging away with awaiting supplies, time to divert attentions to something new! What do we have in store? Ahh, something of the twin-boomed variety... And she will be built representing...this! I was fortunate enough to capture her departing at the weekend, for another local sortie. The kit scheme (and coincidentally the subject I will be modeling) is the well-covered WZ507/G-VTII of the Vampire Preservation Group. Being now based from my local airfield at Coventry and regularly flying, this model is in appreciation and dedication to those who maintain and fly her today, not least the pilot Mark, and a good friend, Tatiana. The aim is to have mini WZ507 finished with the eventual hope that she might see her full-size counterpart one day! So, on with the kit. Arrived yesterday and today, work began! The Eduard set comes with some very nice and refined details both for the cockpit and for the exterior. Airfix's Vampire has been well documented already and with very little issues, there is not much to say. A well fitting kit, grab one (or several) already! Here, the basic cockpit parts have been made up and Eduard's metal rudder pedals ready to be folded. And with all the metal bits on! Only the metal needing paint is attached first. Eduard needs you to remove one electrical box from the rear cockpit and some throttle box detail from the sidewall needs to be thinned down. All in all, rather therapeutic after a day at work! Yes, even the fiddly little rudder pedals that threaten to pop off the tweezers in a milisecond! Speaking of negatives, here's one... mis-formed transparencies. Crack in the canopy panes, and the plastic seems to have met in the mould when cooling and created some wonderful swirly lines in the otherwise exquisite frames. An inquiry has been sent to Airfix, hoping they will have a sprue that can be sent...please!! Cockpit bits primed and painted. Black undercoat and a dusting of dark grey for the cockpit tub. The flash has exaggerated the grey colour of the Eduard panel, but the cockpit matches it more, at least. Tomorrow will be weathering and attaching details. George

A long overdue update. The outboard wing lights fused into place with Tamiya ET and roughly filed down to shape. As you can see, they are a great deal more inboard of the original locations. These need to be filled over and sanded/polished back to clarity. Which was done inbetween this photo and below... ...you can see the change. Light lenses have been masked , and black painted to infill the clear parts to give the light a dark 'scale' appearance when finished. A coat of Klear was applied after polishing to give a little more lustre! With rescribing and some more filling to be done these will hopefully then be finally completed. You may notice a rather big part of the kit attached now to the wings! Fuselage halves! Here you see the current state of progress. I ignored the instructions and take problems into my own hands. The wing assembly was cut down the middle of the bomb-bay skirting, and each wing glued into the fuselage half. Each Nimrod I have built always ends up with the fuselage not properly meeting the wings and forcing the wings to glue to what little intake area there is. Invariably, forcing the wings upwards when gluing, to make the wings and body meet, only makes it worse by giving the Nimrod a dihedral to the wings that she doesn't have. So now the main structural join on this model will be the fuselage which is very easy to clean up, versus bendy bits of fuselage and wibbly wings. Filler has been applied to the wingroots to tidy those up. By making the Nimrod in this way you can save yourself some gaps on the wingroots which are very hard to reach neatly. When the AlleyCat resin payload bay arrives it will be sandwiched between fuselage halves along with the cockpit and nosewheel bay, and glued as a conventional airliner kit, for example - left half, to right half. Another advantage of this method is that the forward bomb bay skirt fits effortlessly rather than bending and caving under pressure, and as you can see, when glued it is perfect and seamless. The Nimrod has sealing strips running along the skirt and the joint between the 'double-bubble' fuselage sections, curving up to the windscreen on the real jet, so this will be added with stock card. Here you can see the LORAL/ESM wingtip pods have been attached, rescribed and sanded awaiting details. As I type, I have run out of filler. More has been ordered. Your patience is appreciated, as always... George

Thank you, Nikolay! I'm trying to find more to put into the pictures, as I realise the speed I'm building at, is not as fast as some can! I will try to keep things as interesting as I can. You're very welcome - hope it continues to provide some enjoyment! George

Thanks Hovis - I will do my best, to be. Looking at some of their other bits as well, all very tempting - hoping to attend SMW2018 so some inspiration to get projects going should come again!

Thanks to you all! Time to update again with the little tidbits that have been making pace. Intakes mostly complete they were chucked (neatly) into the wings. Filler has been sanded and the forward LAG-coloured sections of the intake and lips need to be re(re)painted again, ready for their Hemp 'lipstick' touches! Nimrod is certainly a fussy dear! 😂😂 On a serious note the intakes are pigs to work on when installed in the wings, but if you end up with large gaps even with pushing the tunnels as far forward as they'll go, be neat with the filler, work slowly and don't sand too far into the tunnels and all should be well. In the shot you can see the flaps have been installed, they were an evil fit on both sides, plenty of chafing and tightness in fitting them in, so some heavy fettling and they were in. Uncannily each outer flap fuel dump vent has been knocked off during work - they're simple enough to construct with rod so I will redo that soon. Wings leading edges have been rescribed so that the leading edge lines curve all the way round to the underside as they should. The stall vanes on the leading edge had to be removed during sanding, but the Eduard exterior panel provides them (when bent they will look like V-shaped and hollow from the sides, as the real vanes are on the Nimrod, not like Airfix would have you do). Wings mostly complete and awaiting their PE treatment and Loran tip pods, and searchlight, attention comes back to the intakes. I did begin the project with complaining of Airfix's lack of blunt intake lips. Out with some wet-and-dry sandpaper, and you can see the (very rough) initial sanding. Now the lips are much blunter and have that thicker appearance hopefully when painted Hemp. You can see the excess debris clinging onto the intakes all over! Another key error in the Airfix kit is with the landing lights. Inboard of the intakes at the fuselage junction are fine. Outboards are in the wrong place, too far out of the intakes. They should be sitting almost on the edge of the outboard Speys. Also they are more square lenses, rather than elongated as Airfix has. As this is a really visible and characteristic feature of Nimrods, it must be fixed...(sigh). Out with a saw and perhaps some very heavy-handed hackery later, you can see the new notches inboard of the original locations. If you're looking at the holes in the wings above the payload bay skirting and thinking 'what the heck have you done to the inner wing walls' two of the Spey fans had to be reglued as they fell out during masking ,in the traditional tissue-stuffed-into-tunnels method. So some mad chopping later and the tunnels were re-accessible through the sidewalls of the wing. All will be hidden once the fuselage and payload bay is in! All fans restored into place with very fiddly work but they should remain. And now good news! The first lot of aftermarket arrived!! Eduard's BAe Nimrod external surface panels. The details on these is exquisite. Almost everything you could think of is here. Even some very ingenious methods of neatly gluing all those delicate static dissipator wicks that need to go around the airframe! I can't wait to get stuck into these. Complemented (hopefully soon) by the beautiful AlleyCat resin parts then the only item left to get will be stencilling. In this view you can see the intakes have been tidied of the plastic crumbly bits, and the centre mini-intakes have been filled over for the Eduard grilles. The new landing light locations have been boxed in with plasticard which is drying now, to be filed down soon. The lenses will be then added and polished to clear. In my email correspondence with AlleyCat Models, it notes to wait 3-5 weeks for resin to be cast and shipped (if need be) so with one week elapsed, the enthusiasm for the project is gently sinking. But with some bits to do yet before I really run out and have to wait for the parts to arrive, things will continue. George

Thanks for your patience. It's been hectic here, managing a new job, and still to this date no response from AlleyCat Models regarding the resin parts. The e-mails did mention a potential 3-5 week wait for these to arrive, but I can only hope that they might arrive sooner. Knowing that the business is often a one-man operation though, they must be given due time and credit for their work! The Eduard exterior panels are on their way through the post which is something though. To 'Vit79' - Sorry to keep you hanging... there's just nothing much of extreme interest to show you! Nevertheless... Fuselage doors attached. Nothing much to report here, they fit moderately well, with just a little fettling of edges to get a neat fit. The door windows will be added with the fuse windows when all is to be attached. This shot also shows you the very faint sinkmarks on the lower nose which is unfortunate, but some light sanding should level these out. Lower right of the image shows the Airfix standard tailfin fillet which will be cut out and replaced by the corrected AlleyCat resin part when it arrives. Speaking of the tailfin... The top 'canoe' fairing is too short in it's forward length. Airfix portrays it as almost being equal in projection from the tailfin forwards and back whereas the real Nimrod has a little more length on it in the forward section. Chopping the front canoe off and adding some plastic stock in between should rectify this. SCP intake has not been added at this stage. Can you believe we're still stuck on these evil little things! You may recall I spoke briefly about latex paint in the intakes. Suffice to say this did not work, and I got tired of waiting for the paint to dry. Cue my impatience, and a heavy soaking in white spirit (nooo..!) and the paint turned to rubber gunge, which was duly scraped out and sanded back. Thick coats of Revell's matt white Aqua Color were applied to smooth the walls again. This made a good finish and because of Aqua Color's great self-leveling properties, the tunnels were once more white and smooth. On the subject of white. Many Nimrod builds are built with white intakes. Even Airfix mentions HU130 in their instructions. Naughty... Look at real Nimrod intakes and you will see, especially on Hemp MR2s that the intakes are actually a subtle shade of LAG. I must admit, I have fallen for this in the other three Rods I have built...but not this time. I made my own mix of LAG, with Vallejo's Ghost Grey primer and White primer in a 2:1 ratio and brushed initially, then sprayed the final coats to completion. At last, they're done! No. Not yet. Yet another Nimrod detail missed... The intake tunnels on the Nimrod have their rear half in a much darker colour, almost a dark metal unpainted colour of some sort. Just so happens that excess black and EDSG paint was available... A small cardboard box was made and taped tightly to just a little larger than the intake assemblies, allowing them to sit in it to about halfway down the tunnels. Paint was poured into the box (a mix of Ghost Grey, black and EDSG to look like, well, EDSG, without using my supply of the correct EDSG up) and each intake dipped into the box up to their middles. This gave a very neat demarcation and the visually correct representation of the Nimrod tunnels at last! In the image you can see the finished tunnels, and the Spey 250 IGV faces, which have had their wash cleaned and varnish applied to darken the effects. A better view of the border between LAG and inner tunnel colour. The shininess of the satin colours inside the tunnel will be cut back with a flat coat when the intakes are installed. At last. The finished articles. Illuminated by some extreme sunlight you can see the streaky satin finish inside the tunnels which will be removed with the flat coat. Bottom intakes face-on to show those beautiful Spey 250s! At the time of writing the intakes have been installed in the wings, and halves glued. The intakes have ended up with some large gaps between them and the intake lips, so the LAG has been masked and filler applied. So the Nimrod intake saga has finished, yet somehow is destined to continue. As I say, apologies for the slow speed of progress, a conglomerate of wanting to get it right, doing the Nimrod justice, having no aftermarket still, to be starting with, starting my first entry into the world of gainful employment, and even time for photographing airshows (Cosby Victory Show) at the weekend. I picked up another favourite of mine, the sometimes infamous Airfix 1/48th Canberra B2, with a couple of aftermarket resin parts of Cammett and TwoMikes. I intend to make a T22 of it. Could be fun...! George