Sten Ekedahl

Still got that magazine! :-)

A friend of mine bought that kit just over a month ago - and sent it back! He showed it to me first, and I was as horrified as he. £100+ for something that at £20 still would have been a rip off!

Indeed! I witnessed a lot of these intercepts on radar during my 35 years (1971-2006) in the RSwAF.

One of the reasons Sweden turned to the UK for purchasing new fighters, (Hawker Hunters, but we nearly ended up chosing the Swift) and battle tanks (Centurions) in the early 50's, was that the Swedish export to the UK at the time, by far exceeded the import from the UK to Sweden. Therefore the UK goverment was more than happy to sell to Sweden and thereby improving the trade balance between our countries and getting some money back. Edit: We also bought 10 Percival Pembrokes at the time. Turned out not to be the best aquisition the RSwAF ever made.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Airfix correct the main wheel wells/doors on their new tooling Hawks after the first couple of production batches?

Short answer: No.

Have never used a nose weight in any of my 1/72 Phantoms, not necessary.

IIRC Pavla also makes a couple of sets with British bombs.

Just saw yesterday that SBS Model have announced a resin correction nose for this kit.

Now, that's the talk of a well experienced modeller!

I think you missundersood me there. It's not me searching for these decals, but rather rivers3162.

None that I am aware of. The only aftermarket canopy I know of is the one from Falcon/Squadron, intended for the Airfix second generation Lancaster kit. I was actually looking at this the other day. It looks like it might be possible to fit this to the Hasegawa kit. But a bit of extra work will be needed since the Hasagawa canopy includes a piece of the fuselage at the forward corners, which the Airfix canopy doesn't, and therefore neither the Falcon/Squadron canopy, doesn't.

Model Art did a few Indochina French AF aircraft on some of their earlier sheets: Invaders on sheet 72-018, C-47 on sheet 72-020, Bearcats on sheet 72-033, Sikorsky S-55 & H-19 on sheet 72-038. Don't know how available these are today.

And I can even offer the old C Scale white metal conversion set, for sale!

I have got the Pavla replacement resin nose for the Airfix SHAR 2. But to be honest, I can't se much difference between this one and the kit nose.

Regarding the landing lights, this might help you out a bit: Available from Hannants. A very talanted Finnish modeller that I know, made the perspex cover for the light by just applying clear cellotape over the opening atfter having painted the model, and then painted the tape surounding the opening.

Yes, I'll be using an ESCI SHAR FRS.1 (got a few of those and some GR.1&3's in my stash ) for my "collection". Cockpit and wheel wells betray the age of the kit. However the surface detailing is a lot better than the modern Airfix kits. But just a little scratch detaling in the nose wheel well, and some aftermarket stuff like Eduard PE Zoom sets and Master brass pitot tubes, will bring these kits right up to modern standards.

I'm missing the two-seaters... BTW, I made a tentative start on the same project a while ago. Great minds think alike.

Yes, you are absolutely correct. I realised that earlier today, and have just now retured to this thread to correct my my misstake. But you beat me to it.

I managed to buy the Alleycat Freightdog correction set (now sadly unavailable still available) which corrects all of this, i.e. new nose gear, new main wheels, new bang seats and a new rear end to the fuselage. Edit: Corrected my mistake pointed out by Procopius.

The Blucher wreck in the Oslo fjord is as mentioned, a war grave. However it is also an environmental hazard since there is an awful lot of oil still left in the tanks. And due to corrosion this is now continuosly seeping out.

May we have a WIP thread, General?

As a sidenote, the gun pods used on the AJ 37 Viggen and Sk 60 in the Swedish Air Force contained the 30 mm Aden cannon (previously mounted in J 32 Lansens and J 35 Drakens). But, these weapons were sometimes changed to .5 mg's using the same pod, for practice puposes in order to save 30 mm ammo.

And IIRC, tha cocpit floor sits far too low. In fact the poor 1/72 pilots wouldn't even have been able to look over the IP in front of them!

Those are CMK wheels, not Quickboost.