kiseca

I think the result looks good. The reshaping work on the nose came out particularly well. I have read the Folland Gnat was originally intended to be a light fighter, not a trainer, and Indian Gnats did quite well against Pakistani Sabres, apparently. This always makes me wonder how well the 200 would stack up in combat. I think it would surprise some more expensive opponents.

The shading and weathering are really well judged and sympathetic to the model. It really adds life to the all grey colour scheme.

Thank you. Considering how much work you've put in to that March, it just shows how much more can be done with these models if the effort and skills are put in to them. Your March build makes the Brabham look as challenging as a weekend jigsaw puzzle

My builds tend to take an awfully long time, but I'm looking to go against that habit with this one. It's a simple kit, and I'm just looking for something that looks cool from two feet away, something that looks cool like a Red Arrows Hawk with that nice white arrow shape on the bottom. It will be wheels down because I think Hawks look nice with their elegant main gear down, the doors hiding half of the wheel like a long dress, but there's little else to configure on this model and it will join those suspended from the ceiling. The more recent Red Arrows Hawks have "Royal Air Force" printed down the side, breaking the white stripe. I preferred how earlier liveries looked, with the unbroken white line, so I looked for an older kit. I ended up with Revell's 2001 kit. It's a simple kit, only three sprues and not many parts. At 1/72 scale, this is a small model. It's close to Spitfire size, just a little bit longer. One of the main landing gear doors has broken in half at some point. I've since glued it back together on the sprue and lined it up as best I could. There are two schemes available, one is Swiss, which comes with some ordnance. I'm going to do the Red Arrows build (I guess that's obvious by now) in which the instructions call for the central cannon to be installed, with the barrel removed. Sounds a bit odd, most pics I see have something that looks closer to a tank on the centreline hardpoint as shown on the box artwork, but there is no such piece in the kit. I could use one of the wing tanks I suppose, but I'll just follow the instructions. I started this kit just over a week ago. Got the cockpit pieces painted up. I didn't spend too much time on them because it will all be closed anyway. Fuselage halves joined together All body pieces added, ready for filler, sanding, then priming View from underneath. All those strakes on the underside are a pain. The locating holes for the wing strakes are much too big, and need filling in. And there are no locating holes for the ventral strakes under the tail. All this means that all these pieces are secured only by the mating surface along their thin edge, and I keep knocking them off, which is annoying. Since these photos were taken, the model has been filled and sanded and I am now waiting for a break in the weather to get a coat of Tamiya white primer on it. The weather was great over the weekend but I hadn't finished prepping in time so I couldn't take advantage of it. If I get a break in the weather, I'm hoping to have this one done by the end of this coming weekend, which will be a record for me!

Black Thunder has now joined the patrol in the home office.

Hi all, I present my Aoshima 1/20 Brabham BT52. This kit portrays the car in its Monaco 1983 configuration. There are options to build the car for Ricardo Patrese, or Nelson Piquet, Brabham's two drivers for the 1983 season. I have done Nelson's car. The kit gives options and decals for a black rear wing, or a blue one. All the photos I found of the car in Monaco have the black wing, so I went with that. This is the first in a series of 4 Formula 1 cars I have in my stash, all selected for their aesthetic qualities: I chose them because they look nice! Three of them happen to also have been successful, with at least multiple race wins and a championship win each. The Brabham BT52 won the 1983 drivers championship with Nelson Piquet behind the wheel. Team mate Ricardo Patrese had many more breakdowns than Piquet and so the car only placed 3rd in the constructors that year. It evolved into the 1984 BT53, but by then the McLaren MP4/2 was on the track and the Woking team would go on to dominate the sport almost unbroken for the next 10 years. The BT52 was the last Brabham to win a championship and the team's fortunes steadily declined from this point. The BT52 was designed on short notice with very little development work or testing, as were all of the 1983 cars, due to a very late rule change near the end of 1982, which outlawed ground effects cars and made Brabham's well developed original car for 1983 obsolete. Murray wanted to retain as much traction and downforce as he could, given the loss of ground effect. He moved as much mass as far back in the car as possible to get more weight over the back tyres and improve traction. He also added a huge rear wing, which later in the season would grow even larger with the addition of winglets, pioneered by Ferrari that season. He also felt that the sidepods, without ground effects venturis to accommodate, would add lift and drag, so he made those as small as possible to minimise the losses. Two other teams followed that principle, Williams and Tyrrell, while other teams, notably McLaren, felt there was still downforce to be gained from the sidepods and persevered. In McLaren's case, they added the coke-bottle rear end that became a standard on the cars for over a decade. The BT52 evolved into the more powerful BT52B. The B version can be identified by its longer, reshaped nose section, in which the blisters covering the front suspension top mounting points have been much reduced in size and smoothed off. It can more easily, however, be identified by the change in colour scheme. While the original car was predominantly white with blue detail as modelled here, the livery's designer, a certain Mr Peter Stevens, felt the scheme didn't look quite right on TV, and he reversed the colours so that the B is predominantly blue, with white detailing. The BT52 never ran with the aforementioned winglets. The B was the only version which ran these, but they were added later on. early Bs ran without the winglets. Apart from Nelson Piquet, two other famous drivers ran the BT52 (in B spec) in testing: A young, up and coming Ayrton Senna, and Stirling Moss, who, in his Dunlop overalls, open face helmet and goggles, managed to lap about 4 seconds off the pace of the serious young test drivers that day trying to impress and get their break into Formula 1. This car sports the BMW 4 cylinder 1.5 litre turbocharged engine, which went on to claim fame as the most powerful engine ever fitted to a Formula 1 car while in the back of a Benetton, circa 1986, I believe. The engine used the block from contemporary BMW road cars of the time. Its designer, Paul Rosche, was responsible for most of BMW's early M engines, and went on to develop the BMW V12 that powers the McLaren F1 road car. The build had its moments but the end result has a nice shape and a lot of lovely detail. I'm really happy with it! I find Aoshima's instructions very difficult to read, and in some cases the press fit is a bit tight, but ultimately, with notable exceptions, most of it went together well. The biggest headaches were the exhaust assembly, the decals which would either set really quickly and then be immovable, or wouldn't set at all - and felt rather thick too, and getting the suspension parts together without breaking anything (I failed on that point..). All other problems that I can remember were of my own making. the kit is built OOB with no aftermarket parts and no scratchbuilt bits. For those interested, the build thread is here: And with that said, on to the pics! ...And now it joins its cousins on the display shelves: I noticed when taking the photos that the back wing isn't quite straight.... it's well glued on though, so once I manage to remove it without breaking anything I'll sort it out. It's most noticeable when viewed from directly behind. Anyway I hope you enjoy the pictures, thanks for reading and looking!

Final piece painted and ready. There's a decal for the white BMW lettering but it's raised detail on the plastic so I painted the lettering it instead of trying to get a decal to sit nicely down on the edges. This piece is carbon fibre on the actual car. The instructions ask for metallic black. I mixed 6 parts Vallejo Model Air Black Metallic with 3 parts Vallejo Anthracite and sprayed it, because the black metallic on its own looks too much like metal (I used that on the shock absorber top mounts). This part isn't glued on - it would prevent the top bodyshell from either being added or removed. So with this piece painted, the model is complete! RFA thread here, for those interested.

I'll find out where my friend was based and we can see if any of the deployments match up. It sounds like your dad passed recently, very sorry to hear that and I wish all the best for your family. I think he got to work with the SAAF during its golden years. Well funded, fast jets, unusual homemade projects like the Cheetah and that Mirage F.1 with a Mig 29 engine, exciting air shows, there was a glamour about them back then which I'm not sure is still there. It might be! I've been out of country too long now to know. The car was a Ford Sapphire Ghia - my dad's car. He had crashed it and after it was fixed, it had a small water leak that they never managed to resolve. It would also start to get hot during a long run at high speeds, and would settle down if you slowed down to normal highway speeds (120kph), but in SA in the '90s, who drove around at 120kph in a 3 litre Ford? On this occasion we were running late because I'd had friends back out, hence the round trip to Pretoria to pick up "reserves" and then back towards Johannesburg for the concert, so I was going a bit quicker than 120. On the way back from Pretoria, the temperature started climbing. I slowed down to 120, but this time it didn't cool down. Then it started pinking. We were passing Alexandra and I had a car full of people including my sister so I didn't want to pull over there. No cell phones between us in those days. So I pressed on, but didn't get much farther before there was smoke and the engine stopped. We were happily quite close to a roadside AA phone. I've been told when the tow truck picked us up, I asked the driver to tow us to the concert. I don't remember that particular detail personally Young and dumb. I'm not young anymore, at least.

Thanks for sharing your story too, along with the model. It really changes the perspective. My brother never really spoke much about the days in the war. He'd talk plenty about his initial training in Walvis Bay. Relatively recently he opened up a bit, sounded like they had a few scary moments under fire, or breaking down in the wrong place... but he also did time in the townships and he found that a lot worse. The friend eventually went on to get his dream and is now an airline pilot, after many years and many thousands of GBP of investment. He got there in the end, totally dedicated to it. I can't remember the air base he served at by name, I'm not sure I ever knew, but he was in Bloemfontein from the early to mid 1990s. Probably 1992 - 1994/5 or so. He also had some time up in Pretoria, but I don't think he was there long before he klaared out. In fact, the Pretoria days may well have been at the start. I can't remember now. I just remember picking him and a mate up there once to go see a Simple Minds concert (we missed it... I blew up the engine trying to get there in time... )

Lovely looking build. Well done with a difficult kit and nice matching of the quite unique colour shades they used in that period. Your model stirs a lot of memories for me, and I have a soft spot for SAAF Mirages. I grew up in SA in the 1980s and the Mirage III and F.1 were the fighters I got to see . I grew up thinking that's how a fighter jet should look. I have a photo somewhere of a young me, with a white bone dome on my head, sitting in the cockpit of a III painted in a dark grey scheme. I remember at an airshow, the commentator would nearly always try to get the crowd looking in the wrong direction when a fast jet was about to start their display. The first time I experienced it, it was a Mirage III. We're all staring out over the airfield waiting for this thing to show up. The commentator warned it would be loud. My friend and, at about the same time, both looked at eachother at the same time, both thinking we've been had, turned around to look behind us just as this Mirage came skipping over our heads from behind the crowd, moving almost too fast for us to track, accompanied by a faint whistling sound. We both looked at eachother and started to say "that wasn't loud" when the noise - a whole lot of it - caught up. No clue if it was an AZ or a CZ, it was going too fast Later in our youth both of us applied for pilot training in the SAAF, and were both rejected as they weren't taking candidates. That was enough to end my aspirations of an airforce career, but my friend went on to join as a weapons specialist and served 5 or so years working on Impalas. My brother incidentally also fought in the border wars, joining the ranks of veteran relatives on this thread. He was SADF, not SAAF, and spent his deployment driving a Buffel.

Wheels are done. First I did them in silver (Humbrol 11 enamel). Then I applied a light coat of Tamiya XF-1 flat black: Then I used 1000 grit to sand the rims back to silver, and some 1500 grit to sand the centres back to silver. The centres were harder to get to. I cut a thin strip of the sanding paper and wrapped it around the end of a length of sprue. After sanding I brushed on one coat of Humbrol acrylic gloss and added the decals. I had previously sanded the tyre contact surfaces down to remove the centre ridge. It also happens to give them a used look. Wheels installed in tyres: In addition, the rear wing is now painted, decalled and assembled, in that order. It needs some touching up before it gets a clear coat. The radiators are also complete and installed, and the gear lever mechanism has been painted and installed. In these images, the tub and wheels are installed. The rear wing is loose. That won't be added until I have completed the steps I listed above. The bodyshell also needs a clear coat before I add the mirrors and headrest. Apart from those only the induction cover and fuel fillers are as yet not done. Hopefully I can have it wrapped up this weekend. EDIT: Fixed image links

..... Aaaaand I'm calling this one done. Weapons are on. Most of the little aerials and pitot tubes and whatever are on. The nosecone instrument tube has been reattached three times already despite it being the last thing I added to the model, so it's time to get this one to safety somewhere I can't touch it. It's not been the easiest ride and there are a couple of things I need to do before it joins some compatriots patrolling my the ceiling in my home office / man cave / room-with-my-stuff-in. Firstly, I think I need to colour the nav lights on the wingtips - will check instructions. Second, I forgot to add the splitter plate that sits between the two exhausts. It's painted and ready, just need to glue it. Then, it goes in flight to play with the Rafale, Stuka, Beaufighter and Concorde already up there on patrol. Thanks to all for your comments, feedback and encouragement during this build. That's what makes sharing these journeys on Britmodeller worthwhile. I hope you've enjoyed the build thread, and for those interested, the RFI thread is here:

I present my Revell Black Thunder Tornado. It wasn't the easiest model to build, with lots of flash, fussy details, challenging decals and bits that didn't fit nicely together. Still, it's done now and I must say it's one I'm glad so see complete so I don't have to wrestle with it anymore. I do think it's a very attractive colour scheme for the Tornado. I was worried at first as the black paint just hid all the detail and shapes, but once the decals were on, that brought it to life and it's turned out a distinctive model which shows off the Tornado's lines rather well in the end. Paint is Humbrol gloss black, With Vallejo satin varnish as a clear coat, applied from a rattle can. The metals are Vallejo Metal Color. I did it wheels up to display as a model in flight with wings swept fully back, as to my eyes this is the Tornado at its best, looks wise. I may at some point build a display for this, but for now it's going to hang from the ceiling in the cave. I had some trouble with the decals, particularly over the wings, where I didn't manage to get the clear areas to settle into the detail very well so in strong light they reflect and look like silvering.... however I see a similar effect around other detail even when there is no decalling so it may just be the gloss shining through around any edges. For those interested in the build thread, here it is: And here are the final photos. There are a couple of minor things still to do.. the navigation lights on the wingtips need colour (I think, need to check instructions) and there's a splitter between the exhaust nozzles I've forgotten to glue on. Hope you enjoy!

Thanks for that. I hadn't considered BMF, never used it before. I've had problems (understandably in hindsight) with enamel on top of acrylic, but I've done it the other way around a few times without problems so I'm confident the wheels will work out. I leave them a while to make sure they've cured completely. I used Tamiya acrylic over Humbrol 11 enamel for the radiators on this build so I'm reasonably confident it will work out. I find it's much easier to sand back through the softter acrylic to the more hardy enamel.

Is it worth also checking the tip / nozzle for damage? If the result has changed and the paints have not changed, it must be something about the airbrush. Cracked nozzle, maybe a worn seal somewhere? Is it OK with everything that is not metallic?

All the tanks and pods and missiles are now painted and decalled. Paints are same as body: Humbrol gloss black enamel (Humbrol 21) with Vallejo satin varnish spray over the top. Exhaust assembly is all painted and complete, all with Vallejo Metal Colour paints. I used Jet Exhaust for the nozzle tips, Gunmetal Grey for the cans (with interior detail), and semi matt aluminium with a touch of copper mixed in it. I must say that mix didn't really come out like I'd hoped, it just looks silver unless it catches the light at just the right angle when it takes on a vaguely rusty hue. Once painted, I used Tamiya weathering powder to tone down the silver. The powders are easy enough to apply and get an interesting looking end result, but they are powder.... they don't set, and will just rub off if handled, so need to be sealed with a top coat. Then, you have to be careful with that top coat too... if you put it on too wet at first it just lifts the powder up, and it then gathers into little puddles of colour.. I used the Vallejo semi matt for the top coat. I was finding it hard to get the lighting right for these pictures. Either too much light, washing out the colour, or too little light. Hopefully with the sun we're getting lately, the model will be ready soon for some natural light photos which will bring them out better. You can see in that last photo I'm about halfway through adding the ordnance. The Sidewinder rails are really tricky. They sit on at an angle and the locating points are very shallow so they just slide around while trying to hold them in place. The one pylon that had broken off was a bit easier, but trying to get that one to sit nicely on the pylon that's on the wing was really difficult. Should have the rest glued on tonight. Then, it's just a few little details around the aircraft to do. Some small intakes, instrument tubes and pitots incl. the one on the radome. There's a plate I overlooked that needs to go between the exhaust nozzles, and the navigation lights on the tips of the wings. Then it's all done, apart from the display stand which I might tackle at some point in the future. I think this one's just going to hang from the ceiling.

Decals are now on the upper body shell. Some tidying up around the edges needed and I see a fold that I need to take care of around one of the fuel tank openings (don't know which side is inlet and which is breather - or if both are the same) They were a real challenge to get on and to lay them down nicely. Partly because they move around and move around.... and then are stuck solid and can't move them with water, Microset, wishes to a genie, nothing. So I had a limited time to get it right, and the big blue section on the top bodywork is two pieces. One for the front that stretches down the sides of the cockpit, and a smaller one that wraps over the engine / rollover hump. They have to align perfectly or the join will be obvious, but because they move, and both have some quite pronounced curves and severe edges to cover,.... well it was very challenging. I had splits near both bubbles above the suspension. I didn't get the edges to line up perfectly where the two different decals meet on the fuel fillers, I need to take care of the aforementioned fold on one side, and there's some trimming needed around the fuel tank holes and rollover hoop hole. Overall though, it's looking a lot better with them than without them. There are also blue bodywork decals for the floor: For the leading edges of the radiator housings, I had painted them blue when painting the floor, and I've decided to just leave them painted. the stickers won't make a difference, and the leading edge stickers are also two parts that need lots of careful work to get them to overlap nicely and then lots of patting and smoothing with cotton buds / tissue to get them to lay flat without wrinkles. The top ones were awful to work with. There are also blue decals for the blades that live underneath the wing mirrors. Apparently the car has those blades because there's a rule saying the mirrors are not allowed to extend outside of the bodywork when viewed vertically, and when they reduced the radiator size, there was no bodywork beneath them. I couldn't get the decals to adhere to these surfaces at all. They're a funny design, with splits so you can fold them at 90 degrees around the edges of the bodywork. I could get them to lay flat, but not to stay flat while I tried fold them around. Eventually I gave up and painted those too. I've also made a start on the wheels. They show as all black on photos I've seen on the car, but the decal sheet shows them with a silver rim and a silver ring around the hub. That looks cooler in my opinion, so that's how I'm painting them. They now have a nice thick coat of Humbrol 11 on them. I'll give that a few days to make sure it's properly dry and then put a coat of Tamiya acrylic matt black over the top, and sand the rims back to the silver. A coat of gloss will finish the job. I have rubbed the tyres down to get rid of the moulding join line around the middle. It makes them look a bit worn and I thought it came out quite well. I'll share some photos of that work a bit later when the wheels are ready. The white parts for the radiators are also now painted. They'll be completed and on the car hopefully by the end of this week. Still to to paint some details, assemble all the parts (looks like a challenge since some of the piping has to line up with the upper body shell and has no indentations to orient it properly. I also need to put the decals on the radiators... probably better done before I assemble them, because they'll need some careful pressure to get them to sit down into the ridges.

Top bodywork has now finally been repainted. 6 coats were needed to cover the areas I'd sanded back which had some grey primer still exposed. With the gloss, you can still make out that area in the right light, as a ripple. Anyway, that means there's ten coats of white on the top bodywork now, not counting the two - or maybe it was three - coats of primer it started with. I think the layer of paint is now thicker than the plastic! This is all dry fitted. The components of the rear wing aren't yet glued together and the wing isn't glued to the strut on the engine. It's just sitting there to see how the car looks with it. I'll paint all the wing elements and decal them before gluing them and adding them to the model. The wheels aren't attached. They're also just sitting there at funny angles because the cutting mat isn't flat. The engine has since been glued to the floor, along with the fire extinguisher and pedals. The fit of the cover to the model isn't great when dry fitted. If I glued it on it would fit OK but free standing, it leaves big gaps particularly above the front wing and around the roll hoop. I'm not sure I can do much to improve that. I don't want to glue it on, because it hides all the internals, so I might display the model with the top alongside. Closeup of the corrected area. I need to tidy up the vents, paint has built up where I had masking tape underneath. I've also added the decals to the tub. I'll leave the top until the weekend before putting decals on that. Currently working on the radiator assemblies, and I have to paint the wheels and rear wing, of course. Then it's a few minor things left to do in the engine bay and it's complete!

Quick update - I sanded down the finish on the radiators this morning. One side has what I guess are the opposite of ejector pin marks on it, as a couple of circles became prominent as I sanded the raised surfaces. The decal should cover it but I'll also see if I can reduce the effect before then. Other than that, I'm pleased with how that has turned out. Now I need to paint the white sections (currently all still primer grey) and assemble all the radiator bits together.

There has been progress on this. Decals on the aircraft are complete. There are still decals outstanding for the ordnance and pylons. I've applied a top coat of Vallejo satin varnish from a spraycan. The fuselage is now complete apart from pitot tubes and sensors, and the exhaust cans which I still need to paint. Happily, the varnish seems to have toned down all the shine differences I was getting between the decals and paintjob. I was worried I'd end up with a silvering effect. This has mostly now gone, however it is still noticeable in some areas on the wing where clear decal covers surface detail like the spoilers and access hatches. The clear area on the wing decals is the full area within the boundary formed by the red stripes. If I were to do the build again, I'd remove that clear area before applying the decals. I had tried to get them to completely settle with Microsol but it hasn't been completely successful. I've also applied a topcoat to the weapons, electronic pods and Sidewinders. I've used gloss black, as I did on the fuselage. I got a much smoother finish this time, but I have no idea what I did differently. Anyway.. they are now ready for their own decals, after which they and the pylons can be assembled to the aircraft and it will be complete. EDIT: Oh, and there's a little bit of much I need to polish off the cockpit as well. I think it's residual sticky stuff from the masking tape (I hope!) EDIT 2: One mistake I realise I've made is the Luftwaffe cross should be on the port wing only. I've put one on each wing.

Some updates to share with photos. The floor is nearly complete. Some detail work and touching up still needed. I decided in the end to go with silver (Humbrol 11 in this case) for the front half and a darker colour for the back half. The rear is a mix of Vallejo Black Metallic, and Vallejo Anthracite, mixed around 6:5 in favour of the black metallic. This is a combination I had been wanting to try out for Airwolf. I like the colour but it is too light to work on Airwolf. Top half needs a bit of polishing on the blue parts. I've also painted the radiator cores, still need to do some finishing on those. I did a silver coat underneath, a Tamiya Dark Iron coat on top, and I'm going to sand down the Dark Iron so the silver shows through on the raised surfaces. In addition, the pedals and fire extinguisher, which attach to the floor, are both painted and ready to assemble. Also, the front wing has been clear coated, and now needs polishing and smoothing. I haven't started the wheels, but assembled those with the tyres to get a look at what the car looks like when together. This is all dry assembled - the radiators, engine and tub are all dry attached, and the rear wing, which is still in primer, is also dry assembled in itself, and is sitting free on the wing post. It's starting to look like a car, though!

Beautiful work with what is known to be a kit with some big challenges! Huge brave pills to do it 4 times considering the kits reputations (I'm assuming the GR4 has the same intake fitting challenges that the ADV one has)

From the kills this ghost is apparently racking up, it sounds a bit like they're playing Ace Combat, which has a back story similar to what you wrote, actually. Basically, shoot down planes, get rewards. Use rewards to buy some other old, iconic fighter jet like a Mirage 2000, Starfighter, or MiG-29. Use more of the rewards, and the on base / in cave resident genius to soup it up and buy better missiles or special ammo for the cannon. Take off, shoot down a dozen more jets. Get rewards. Repeat. When it's over, retire quietly to your log cabin on a secluded lake and serenade eagles with your cello.

I reckon it will pretty much fit in my hand when finished, and I have small hands! I combined some maths and googling and came to the conclusion that a 1/48 Bugatti 100P will be smaller than a 1/72 Hawker Typhoon.

They could do it in 1/12 scale and not break any size records! I reckon the 1/48 version isn't going to be much bigger than, say, a 1/72 Typhoon, Tempest or Jug.