Dave Fleming

ESCI/Italeri - actually designed by the same person/people as the Fujimi one, but they obviously learnt from their mistakes or had a bigger budget! Not perfect. as Giorgio says the cockpit is a bit basic and it definitely needs a new seat for the FRS1 (Pavla do one that is underscale but fits the cockpit without too much modification) and I've never been entirely happy with it's sit (It always looks a bit flat). The main fit issue is around the intakes and there are one or two tricks to avoiding these (basically join the intakes to the fuselage BEFORE adding the nose, then you can remove material from the inside faces of the intake parts rather than trying to sand flush the outers). Other things to watch are the wing/fuselage joint on the underside - never yet built one that didn't need a little filler along there. But it's still the best Sea Harrier in 1/72 even after almost 40 years

Aren't those too late to be the correct colours for the Vulcan - they will be the colours for the 80s to present day? I think they were only added to BS381C in the late 80s I have seen a document for the Valiant that said that the pink was 5 parts red/1 part white and the blue 3 parts blue 1 of white by weight, and a late 60s document that gives BS381C 111 as the Pale Blue but no BS reference for Pale Red. I recall Compucolor had several variants of RAF/RN Pale colours

So the Aussie container arrived first!

Looking at the Impressements Log, photo, there are some interesting differences. It's a side on view, so you can't see the upper wings, but there are no red cross on the fuselage,a nd it has standard A underwing roundels. It aslo has a dark underfuselage with a demarcation line running through the wheel well to where the planing hull step is just at the tail plane. the under wing and cowl area is much lighter than the under hull

Fantastic photo of the Goose - by a strange co-incidence I came across another photo of it in the last couple of weeks, in Vol. 4 of Air Britain's Impressment Logs (1966). Impressments log gives the Fairchild as crashing in 1943, and the Goose in 1942, both at Benghazi, but it's 56 year old research so may be wrong! It also has the Goose serving with 1 Air Ambulance Unit after the SRF

Shipping delays due to the pandemic and the volume of traffic coming into the Uk I beleive.

They eventually got a ground laser in place and there was at least one live attack - iirc the second on 14th June was called off due to the Argentine forces displaying white flags

The 1/72 Skoda 35 tank hasn't been around since the early 80s Good to see the 1/72 F-5A back again too There are a few things from the 2020 range that never saw the light of day as far as I can see - https://www.themodellingnews.com/2020/01/preview-of-italeris-catalogue-new-items.html 1/72 Jet Ranger seemingly cancelled (The civil version has never been released, in spite of the moulds obviously existing https://www.italeri.com/en/product/2484

@tonyot Hi Tony, Found this this afternoon, an alternative scheme for X1032. https://abpic.co.uk/pictures/view/1740762

DVII

The only other one I can think of is the Lithuanian Fokker DVII, which served up to 1940 if I recall correctly

I looked it up - of approx 1700 registered civil aircraft, approx 950 were impressed.

Not all civil types were impressed, some continued to be use their civil registrations throughout the war (for civil purposes) and many more were stored during the conflict. There was a rationalisation of the civil register at the end of the war, and many types that had been destroyed, deteriorated in storage or otherwise were no longer fit to fly were removed form the register, so although a type is removed form the register in 1946, it may have stopped flying many years previously. I'm not aware of any photos of the 504Ns, but imagine they would have had yellow undersurfaces as they towed gliders rather than targets (Black/Yellow stripes were for target towing aircraft)

I hope the Nie17 has some RFC options!

The artwork for the announcement usually is - in the past we have seen the subjects depicted change as well as the artwork firmed up.

Nice - that old Airfix kit is pretty accurate even although it's crude

interesting observation they have added a recycling information tab to the sprues , so you can now add them to your domestic plastic recycling (Previously they would just be separated and land filled as unidentifiable)

Wonder what happened to the Scammell Pioneers? they were in the catalogue last year but not announced, and I had expected them to appear this year, but no sign

Not the first time that has happened, things change even at the last minute. IIRC AMW announced some Scammels last year that weren't in the original Airfix announcement and seem to have disappeared

There is a move at RAFM to tell the story of the Royal Air Force through it's people rather than just it's airframes. What happens when you put a social historian in charge I suppose, but that's why they are moving from 'grab one of everything' policy that previous staff had.

Because they filled the Graeme White hanger up with 'interpretive displays' and they don't have any room for it.

I expect permanent transfer to the Science Museum - for the RAFM it was only representative of the Harrier until they got a proper one. For the SM, it's an important and popular airframe

I wonder if much has been pushed back to 2022 as a result of the delays in 2020?

The under spinner intake looks like a separate part, so earlier versions may be on the cards too, but there doesn't seem to be any option for a separate nose for fighter variants

On the back of the ICM announcement, what odds on Airfix announcing a 1/48th Beaufort?