Jobbie

The F-35 colours are: Overall- FS36170 “Camouflage gray” / SMS Have Glass grey PL69 Markings- FS36231 “Gray int’l / AC Gray #23” / SMS Dark Gull Grey PL118 Interior- FS36375 “Medium gray” / SMS US Medium grey PL120 Obviously add white to the list for the weapon bays, etc. I have the advantage of being able to walk over to the paint locker and having a look for myself; The paint shades utilised are not secret, but the composition, additives, NSN’s and part numbers of the coatings certainly are. The various methods employed to mask over panel gaps and such-forth start life as FS36170, but can change over time due to the different materials utilised, ambient temperature, time of day and all that. The paint patches forward of and behind the intakes are the same shade, but have different additives in the paint for…”reasons”, so they look a tad darker. In short- There are many, many different photos of F-35’s on the internet. Paint your model however makes you happy.

Thanks for the comments. What's the normal protocol now? Do I rename this build as completed? Move it somewhere? I'm not sure what's expected.

I rather enjoyed this build. I'm glad I was part of it. Happy 50th birthday, Matchbox.

Handley Page Victor XH672 first flew in 1960 as a B.2 bomber, was the last Victor converted to a K.2 tanker in 1978, was the lead aircraft for the Falklands Black Buck raid in 1982, flew in Black Buck 2 and 3-4, flew the highest number of refuelling missions in the first Gulf War in 1991 (52), and was the last V-bomber to be retired in 1993. She's preserved at the RAF Museum at Cosford, now painted in desert hemp and is known by the name she aquired in the Gulf War - "Maid Marian".

And there we are! I'm calling her completed. I added couple of antenna cut from plastic card, and re-made the towel-rail antenna from stock. The towel-rail still look a tad large, but better than the kit-supplied one. (Oh! I just noticed I hadn't removed the maskol from the aft crew observation windows at this point.)

The only decals I used from the Matchbox decal sheet were the walkway stencils over the wing-root. They're the only ones I had as I want to use the Airfix ones for that build, sometime later. Note the (quite small) brass pitot probes and aluminium refuel receptacle. I like them a lot. Much better than the kit-supplied ones. I used AK Panel-liners to mark along-side the raised panel-lines. I rubbed them back with a slightly thinner-damped cotton-bud after a few hours. Note the terrible silvering under the serials on the empennage. My bad.

Lower formation stripes completed. The pods are missing lots of detail, but that's a combination of a forty year-old kit and after-market ones printed in the wrong colour. I look forward to building the Airfix kit. The lack of all detail in the wheel wells is...understandable. But I figure it's not worth spending the time on this one. It sits so close to the ground, anyway.

I spent a full day contemplating which squadron I was going to reproduce. I now had the original Matchbox decals, a sheet of Xtradecal Victor Collection (X72256) and PrintScale HP Victor (PSL72187) and the decals with the new Airfix kit (A12008). I was building for a Facebook "British Aviation In Scale" #Falklands40 group build, so it had to be an aircraft which took part in the Black Buck raid. I also had to choose which aircraft serial I was going to make with the Airfix build later. I still can't decide between an anti-flash white Blue Steel aircraft or a camouflage one, but I figured if I didn't use a serial starting with "XL" fir this build, I could have more flexibility for the later build. So I looked up which aircraft were assigned to 57SQN that had a serial that didn't begin with the letters "XL"... I settled on "XH672". You could say that I experienced an existential Victor stencil crisis. Haha.

Fluorescent Orange (SMS PL46), mixed with white for a first coat, then more orange for the second. Less white as I moved away from the "sun", as it were. I realised the next day that I accidentally reversed the long stripes under the fuselage. I was just going to leave it, but found...I just couldn't. I re-sprayed it the day after.

The original decals that came with the kit work, but they're very cloudy and generally look stuffed. So I purchased a replacement set from PrintScale; part # PSL72187. I was even less happy with them. All the underside stripes are red rather than fluorescent orange. So I decided to use both sets as a marking template to paint the stripes myself. It all went rather well, actually. I started by diluting the orange with a few drops of white to "sun-fade" the stripes...particularly the over-wing ones.

Camouflage time. I used SMS paint that conforms to: BS641 / FS34079 - Forest Green (SMS PL77) BS637 / FS36440 - Medium Sea Grey (SMS PL108) White undersides - (SMS PL02). This photo was taken before I went back and cleaned up some edges I wasn't happy with. I am, however, very happy with the colours. I generally use SMS lacquer paints when I can for exteriors and Vallejo Model Air acrylics for interiors.

All together, ready for primer.

The windscreen wasn't a bad fit, but I wasn't great either. Mind you, it was a better fit than the crew entrance door and airbrake. I cut my own masks. I sliced off the refuelling receptacle because I bought a MasterModel turned aluminium replacement with two turned brass wingtip probes. (Personally, I don't think they're pitot probes out there on the wingtips. They're too far away from the instruments they'd supply a reference to. I reckon they're HF antennas all the way out there. Can anyone confirm this? You can kinda see the card I placed on the inside edge of the intake duct in this photo.

The difference between the Matchbox surface detail and the Airfix surface detail...

The kit was generally good. I was impressed by how well the wings slotted into the fuselage. Fitting the outer wing to the inner wing was more of a problem. There isn't enough meat on one surface to fit well into the other. And what there was, I found I had to chop and shave it all away to reduce what would have been a large gap. Once I was happy with that, I glued the wing together with Selley's Araldite- an Australian two-part epoxy. I placed five wooden stirring sticks under each engine nacelle to square everything up so the wingtips touched the table surface. Then I left it set 24 hours. It was at this point that I decided that I wasn't going to put too much effort into this. I won an Airfix 1:72 Victor B.2 in a Models For Heroes fund-raiser organised by James Skiffins, and it arrived that day. Looking through that kit, I decided I'd go the full effort with that one...Eduard PE Interior detail set, external detail set and airbrake set ordered. More decals ordered. Wallet blown. As a result, the only effort I put into this cockpit was masking tape seatbelts and a scratch-built rear crew table. (I forgot to take a photo.) Black dots painted on a grey instrument panel to represent gauges.

I've heard the intakes are notoriously bad with this kit. There's terrible seams on the sides and the guide vanes don't align too well. before I glued the upper and lower wings together, I placed a strip of Tamiya tape along the inner and outer sides of the intake ducts aligning the top, straight edge of the tape with the top of the duct moulding. Then I used a pencil to follow the contour of the scolloped lower edges of the ducts. I peeled off the tape, cut along the drawn lines with a blade and then stuck them to 0.4mm plastic card making sure I flipped the top wing stencil's tape edge to meet the corresponding lower wing stencil. It all worked out rather well. I found the only adjustment I had to do later was to shorten the cards slightly, as I didn't allow for the engine intake faces being hard-up against the sides of the duct.

I’m still trying to figure out how to post stuff here. I’m also on a model ship world forum. It had the same engine (invision community), but you can just post stuff from your iPhone there. For the life of me, I can’t see why your moderators don’t just flick the same bloody switch.

Thanks. In the end, I just painted them all using SMS fluorescent orange and LOTS of masking tape.

Hey, Guys. I'm in the middle of building Matchbox's Victor for a group build on a Facebook group - "British Aviation In Scale". I was listening to the podcast "Plastic Model Mojo" episode 62 the other day. At the 11 minute mark, they mentioned this very group build. I found myself being totally impressed by the concept, so I had to seek it out. I started my build on 1 April 22 and the Facebook group build's scheduled to conclude on 30 June 22. These date's neatly align with this Matchbox thingy, so I've decided to be part of it. Whilst I've been on Britmodeller for a couple of years, this is my first build on this site. It may take me a while to come up to speed, but I always welcome advice.

Oh! I just found out about this. I'd like to play, as I started building the Matchbox kit PK-551 : Handley Page Victor K. 2 Tanker (1983) on 01 April 2022.

A question to the hive mind: I’m building the Matchbox Victor K.2 for the Facebook page "British Aviation In Scale" #falklands40 group build. The original decals are no good- they’ll go down I reckon, but the finish wouldn’t be the best. So I ordered these PrintScale decals Cat No. 72-187; As you can see, the hi-vis refueling stencils are red on the new set. In fact, they match the red of the new (blue sheet) roundels. The decal set is predominately the hemp/ light aircraft grey Operation Granby schemes, with one green/grey scheme- the one I’m shooting for is Operation Black Buck. So my question- Were the orange day-glo stripes toned down to red for Op Granby, or are the decals just plain wrong?

Thanks for your input- I very much appreciate it. I wasn’t aware there was a slat/flap aftermarket set available for this. It seems to me odd that is they’d model it without them deployed, as they’re weighted to extend at high wing incidence angles. I’ll seek them out! As for the wing-strut problem of the kit, I had read elsewhere that the attachment holes under the wing were 4mm outboard of where they should be. That would create an anhedral problem, I’d imagine. I’ll find out when I mount the wing, I guess.

Thanks, Chris, that's brilliant. Decision made.

Morning / Afternoon / Evening (Apply the greeting that suits your specific timezone presently), I'm building the Eduard / Gavia 1:48 Westland Lysander... Yay me. I've had a look for interior photos on this Britmodeller walk around forum and wherever else, and I've found no definitive answer to the interior colours of the Lizzie- It looks to me like the RAF museum example is standard British interior grey-green BS283. However, other photos one one being restored at Duxford is grey-green above the window sills and silver/aluminium below the windows- to include the internal structural cage and external stringers and formers for the outer linen. Which is more correct? I'd assume the inside of the doped linen skin is unpainted, so I was going to paint the inside of the fuselage halves a sail linen colour with pink splotches and mottling. But would I be correct to assume the fuselage internal horizontal stringers were unpainted in wartime? And only restored examples are painted as a corrosion control measure? Does anybody have a photo of the back seat area of any Lysander, be it a Mk.I, II, III or SOE? (I'm cheap that way...) Any input would be most welcome. Kind regards.