TheyJammedKenny!

That's a beauty! Well done in every respect. As another wrote: it looks fast just sitting still.

Nicely done lawn dart! I also love the contrast photo with the immaculate Thunderbirds jet.

Brilliant results!

Nice! Are they ROCO Minitanks? They are very expensive now.

The Canberra kits, with corrections, remain in production with AMP. I have no idea about the Wasp, but with LF's pending releases, this seems hardly necessary. The Avro 748 has an interesting history. Mel entrusted it to Mach 2, who after his death, have accorded the project a low priority. Mel did not provide any good reference material, or even a workable prototype--only a built resin kit that probably was from AIM. Didier told me the shape of the cockpit was all wrong, which would confirm my suspicion it was the old RugRat Resin kit.

How easy or difficult is it to backdate a PBM-5A to a non-amphibious PBM-5? Is it just a matter of sealing up the gear bays? According to what I've read, Martin only built about 44 or so -5A's, 10 of them conversions of the earlier PBM-5.

Well, it IS the old Matchbox kit, so...expectations should be set appropriately. But you did well on this! I built a couple Matchbox PR.9s in the hemp over LAG with No.1 PRU badges about 28 years ago. There's a back story to it that begins with someone at work asking "what's a Canberra?," and my answering incorrectly: "it's a plane the Brits don't use anymore." I was wrong. Our RAF liaison contacts very quickly acquainted us with the many fine features of this bird, but it was all for naught--policy reasons.

Stunning job on a type I'm unfamiliar with, and resembles someone's nightmare vision of a Thames houseboat!

Beautiful work on this! It looks quite realistic and faithful to the original.

This ticks all the right boxes...with excellent results! The nose radome comes with the kit and hides the flaws inherent in the contours of the forward fuselage, so good on you! How did you do the windows with such precision? Mine cracked under the strain of being pressed in place and in the course of manipulating the fuselage assembly. Also, how did you weather the metal areas? They look very convincing.

These are excellent results! Having built the Airfix Friendship years ago, I know what you had to go through to get these results. Your fuselage stretch is seamless, as is your use of clear styrene for the pax windows! I also like how you've captured the air intakes for the FH-227, and as you properly depicted, there are no wing-mounted pitot tubes on the Fairchild version.

Oh, yay! Now we can do reenactments from the movie The Final Option!

Great job on this and beautiful details. Did you view the hardened aircraft shelters where these aircraft were placed on alert? Did they have openings in the floor to allow the weapons to be raised onto the pylons from below? How far from the airfield were the storage sites for the "sharps?"

That's an amazingly good result with the passengers and pax seating. Go all the way and add little seatbelts (neatly folded) to the unoccupied seats!

Variable elevation or not, I'm sold!

Not at all. The route you've taken is actually quite affordable, time and money-wise, in comparison with some of the alternatives!

I can't wait until you do the same with your Heston Steps, if that's in the cards for you! These look promising.

Netherlands, KLM.

Best way to ensure symmetry is simply to place the model, gear attached, on a level surface, and to use a measuring stick to check the height above table level of each wing tip. Be sure to check the same location! I think the tolerable variance in 1/72 is 1/8." The closest I've come is within 1/64," but I'm more in the region of 1/8" on the C-54, or somewhat less on the B-24. Getting dihedral correct is a non-trivial process on a large model, so rather than sweat the number of degrees dihedral, do yourself a big favor with the approach I've described. If you become obsessive about this, you'll never make headway. I once built a 1/72 KC-135 with shallow dihedral because that's the way the kit was engineered, and correcting that engineering was beyond my skills then. My non-modelling friends knew it was wrong, I knew it was wrong, but the overall effect of the model was still impressive, and even the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum thought so, which is why they put it on display in 1997 in honor of the USAF's 50th Anniversary.

It's an excellent idea to fit the gear, even temporarily, to check the wing dihedral, especially on so large a model, so yours is the right approach. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of headache later.

Bravo on this build! I built it, oh, about 40 years ago myself, with decent results considering my skills and expectations. I just sprayed it with a can of OD green and was happy with it. I understand the RM were using these as late as '56 for the OP in Suez. When did they finally phase them out, and why no interest in continuing with the AMTRAC as a means of delivering troops to shore?

The artwork is very strange to me, especially the one at the bottom that claims to depict one of the "original series examples" of the BE-12 in "original paint color." It looks like purple.

Brilliant work on this, and the effect is really impressive. Did you use aftermarket masks for the clear parts? Methinks the engine nacelles need even more oil and grime splattered on them!

That's a beauty! Very well executed in resplendent and hard-to-work-with silver, and those yaw/AOA vanes look extremely delicate.

What a treat! You're making fast progress on this worthwhile WHIFF.