Wez

I'm watching this one with interest I asked the very same question a few years back on a certain website run by a nice, balding, Australian gentleman. My perception has always been that the wartime green was just that green whereas the aircraft I was working at the time were more olive in hue, I guess the difference is I saw the WWII green as being more of a blue green whilst I saw the current green as being more of a brown green. I got shot down by the colour police... Whilst the surface the finish will make a difference in the long run (because of differential weathering etc), in my experience the painters and dopers would always try to achieve a uniform finish. This means there should be little variation in an aircraft fresh out of the paint shop/MU. Another thing to take into account is that very few wartime aircraft would have lasted long enough to weather appreciably (there are of course always execeptions). Don't get me started on pre-shading!! Regards Wez

Tony, Sorry for not replying, I'm in the process of finishing the current job ready to start the next job in just over a week, gotta clear the decks. I was supposed to be working today and was hoping to get some gen (and photos) off of real cabs but we managed to do what we needed to do during the week. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera and the cabs with the gen you need were flying - soz! Will try again this week! Regards Wez

Shaun, Thanks for the gen on the Hasegawa kit - I already have said beastie but was unaware of the control surfaces issue. Thanks also for the link to the ARC thread on the Revell kit - I was hoping somebody would come up with the gen on the Revell kit. I thought it might be a repop of Hasegawa's - glad to see its not. Best Regards Wez

Ooh! Ooh! Me too can I play please? Once I've started my new job in a week or so I should have a bit more spare time so I'd love to have a go at this one. Plan to do my Airfix 1/48th B.20 as 56 Sqn's Target Towing B2 when 56 were based out in Cyprus with Lightnings. Go on, you know you want to let me in Wez

Mike, PM sent Wez

I keep saying I'm not a huge fan of 'lectric jets but I've realised what a little liar I am. Ok, I hate Tonkas and have no great affection for the Jag, current Harriers and the Raptor although I quite like Typhoons and Rafaels. At heart I'm an old fashioned "Cold War Kid" so I like anything British until the aforementioned Tonka and Jag and all of that US ironmongry prior to their current inventory. I also like the F/A-18 - dunno why but I do, perhaps it's 'cos I see it as the spawn of the underdog in the LFX competition and I always support the underdog! The question is - who makes the best F/A-18E in 1/72nd - now don't automatically go saying Hasegawa unless you've had a chance to compare it to the opposition. I've seen adverts for a Revell F/A-18E and I wondered how it compares for instance. Does anybody know? Let me know what you think. TIA Wez

I've got one of the original boxing I'm never gonna make (was it an E-5?). PM me if you're interested and we can come to some arrangement. Regards Wez

All the old Jag boys I've ever worked with used to say rather than reheat it had "Constant thrust, variable noise"! Wez

Mish, I'm afraid I'm going to have to withdraw from the GB - I've made very little progress and I've got too much on right now to even think about modelling let alone getting down to doing some. Sorry. My offer for a prize for the GB (Revell 1/48th Fw190) still stands though. All the best. Wez

ARBA resins did some long, long, long ago - IIRC they were OK, I've got a couple somewhere - Lord knows where 'cos I sure as hell don't. It would be nice if somebody did some now. Wez

Graham, I too have had a brain fart - and chose to see what I wanted to see. Told you it was a crappy camera (its MY excuse and I'm sticking to it) Regards Wez

Merv, The bottom three show 23 Sqn Tooms not 1435Flt. The b&w shot was a well known one during my first trip to the FI in '86 - it was taken when 23 were based at Stanley circa 1984/85 I believe. The bottom two are at Mount (Un)Pleasant. 23Sqn - red eagle on fin, red&blue bars either side of Falklands badge, 1435Flt - red (or Dayglo) Maltese cross on fin, no red&blue bars either side of Falklands badge. Here's a couple of snaps of XV442"H" doing her "escort" bit. The fighters have for a long time scrambled to escort the trooper flight in, in my case this was on my second tour (on Wokkas), in Feb 1991, my flight down was in a Brittannia Boeing 767 - much better than an RAF Timmy! Apologies for the quality of the snaps - they were taken with a happy-snappy camera. You can see the weapons fit on this one - two wing tanks, AIM-9L's on the inner wing pylons, four Skyflash and a centreline SUU pod. Here's another slightly better photo. Best Regards Wez

Mike, That kit has been released in the past as a "Spy Trawler", it's actually a model of the Arctic Corsair which was the last "sidewinder" trawler in use in the North Sea/Arctic waters. It finally retired in the mid 1980's and is currently extant as a museum in Hull docks (where a lot of the fishing fleets used to be based). There were rumours that these ships were used to spy upon the Russians in the northern waters hence the spy trawler boxing. Apparently it's quite close to the Arctic Corsair, it has a couple of errors but if you're not that bothered... Incidently, a sidewinder trawler casts and recovers its nets over the side, modern ships tend to do it over the stern - much safer aparently and you can have bigger nets. When I used to work in Oceanography we called into Hull for a refit, me and a colleague took a tour around the Arctic Corsair, the tour guides are former crewmen of the ship and include a former captain. All I can say was that it made us realise how things had changed and how much better off we were, commercial fishing is a very, very hard way to earn a crust. I'd reccommend a tour to anyone in the vicinity. HTH Best Regards Wez

I'll third that, I made all three within a short space of time of eachother when they came out - of the three the Esci-now Italeri is the only one I'd make again. Wez

Tony, That's a cracking effort well done! The rampant lion's you mention is actually a (to quote the official squadron history), "a rampant, twin-tailed, Burmese fighting tiger" and is the Sqn Marking of 78Sqn. If you include that you've pretty much covered the lot! In this incarnation, 78 Sqn was an amalgamation of the SH 1310 Flt (Chinooks - Kelly's Garden) and the SAR 1564 Flt (Queenies - Navy Point). When we first amalgamated at Mount Pleasant we were called by the rather catchy monniker of MPHS or Mount Pleasant Helicopter Sqn, the powers that be hadn't decided on a Sqn number plate at that time - 103 Sqn and 110 Sqn were also in the offing. Somewhere in my accoutrements I have a Sqn patch in the right colours, I'll attempt to scan it when I find it! I happened to go up on some staging today - the walkways on Mk.2's are plain black without any border. Only the first three Mk.2's had full colour markings (big roundels, light coloured codes and full coulour stencelling including the border to the walkway - it stood out like the proverbial spare part at a wedding! The first aircraft were later repainted. HTH Wez

There's a difference in the rear fuselage walkways between a Mk1 and a Mk2 - the Mk.2's extend much further rearwards. Unfortunately the linky aint working for me to check. Wez

Linky not working Tony! Wez

I have to disagree with Lighningboy2000, I think Revell represent exceptional value - particularly when they re-pop some of Hasegawa's vastly price inflated products which they do on a regular basis. I think with that any of their stuff it pays to be wary though, they have such a vast back catelogue there's some old duffers in there. Helps if you're old enough to remember the kits in their earlier incarnation - like me (although I'm only 44)! Wez

Julien, If you're going to modify the tailpipe (which as Bill says, is a distinctive feature of the 100 Series Avon engined jets) then there's no reason why you couldn't use the 9! The Aeroclub conversion for the early Hunters (V239) is very reasonably priced. Just a thought Wez

Tony, I like what I see I haven't got any pictures of the walkway area and I can't remember how or if the colouring of the walkways on Mk.2's differ from the Mk.1's (the first Mk.2's came back in full colour markings but these were tamed down after aircraft 2 or 3). Mk 2's also have a bigger walkway area inbetween the engines and aft pylon (it extends further back). Regarding whether people want the edging or the walkway and the edging I offer this. As you of all people know the walkway is painted in a non-slip material (although this didn't work too well between the aft pylon and engines on Mk.1's as it only served to retain the oil that got vented out here and turn that area into an ice rink - particularly on rainy days, anyhow I digress), whilst the full walkway decal may work in smaller scales it would look less convincing to me in larger scales - just my two penneth worth. The cut and exit markings should have been painted to set lengths but often this didn't happen however, they're mostly uniform so it may be better to produce them to the correct length. I know these are intended for 1/35th scale but is there any chance they'll make it to the smaller scales - after all, after many years we now have pretty decent kits in the common scales? Regards Wez

John, I wouldn't say we "worked" on these systems, it was more a case of learning it well enough to pass exams and a practical board fault finding on the system. This was the penultimate stage of our trade training, the aircraft equipments stage. They started us off on Gyro-Magnetic compasses before moving onto Flight Displays. Each stage was more complex than the previous but provided a building block to the next stage. The Flight Display system was the Military Flight System or MFS - it was fitted to Vulcans, Victors and Argosy's. After that we moved onto Autopilot - that system was the Mk10 autopilot, I can't remember who made it but it was fitted to Vulcans, Victors, Argosy's, Andovers and Herc's. IFICS followed this which was followed by the Jag HUD and NAVWASS (Navigation Weapons Aiming Sub System) as the final systems. After this we were let loose on the airfields where did a mixture of snags on aircraft and general ground handling (including marshalling). During my time on airfields I did snags on Canberra B.2, B.15 and PR.9 (compasses), Hunter T.7 (compasses), Gnat (IFIS - like IFICS but without the "control" part), Shackleton MR.2 & MR.3 (compasses again), Argosy (MFS and Autopilot) and even a compass swing on a Whirlwind HT.10, this was typical of the time (early-mid eighties). My final board was on a Canberra B.2. I enjoyed this stage immensely as it meant we got "hands on" with real aircraft for the first time. It was also quite scary at the time as we had to look out for unsafe undercarriages and "live" ejector seats etc. This was all part of the training of course - the seats weren't live and the undercarriages were perfectly safe but we had to react accordingly. I think the scariest thing was the realisation that having come so far you could get washed-out on a safety matter. We'd been in training for about 18 months by then. The ground handling was fun, we had to marshall ex-Red Arrow Gnats around a circuit between the hangars. There were a couple of instances where my colleagues panicked and marshalled the Gnats onto themselves. The instructors would stop once they'd expertly pinned their victim to a hagar door with the pitot probe. They probably use bycicles these days - less chance of blowing a Palouste up on start that way! I couldn't wait to leave Cosford and get out in the big wide world, I still love working with aeroplanes now Regards Wez

Tony, I missed these earlier (so quit yer boo-hooing), what can I say - toptastic My only comment is you may want to include a couple more 7's on there - it turns up more often than any other number in wokka serial numbers. Glad you got both the early and later size of OCU marking on there - just a thought though, you might wanna include one of 18 Sqn's "My Little Ponies" facing the other way, I recall reading somewhere there were a couple of instances of them facing forwards on both sides of the cab. Top man! Can you do 'em in 1/72nd too? Wez

JB, We had to learn all of that system and its various modes of operation when I was going through Cosford - if you could imagine the whole aircraft system including radio and radar feeds from test sets, the air-data computer system and the very scary flying controls (complete with hydraulics) on a live bench rig (none of this namby-pamby, wishy-washy not likely to kill you or give you a serious injury computer/synthetic simulation) - it disavowed me of any boyhood dream of working on Lightnings (that and the ex Lighning lineys who would tell you what a PITA Lighnings were to work on!). Can't say I have fond memories of that time... Wez

JB, The OR946 instrumentation formed part of the Integrated Flight Instrument & Control System - essentially this was the Lightning flight director, autostab and flying control system as taught to us Flight Systems guys during trade training in the RAF. It was supposed to be a common display and control system. Some of it was used on Buccaneers and Gnats. The strip speed meter was part of this, I believe the earlier Lightnings used a different ASI. Cockpit photos would be useful - trying to find some of the earlier versions is a bit more difficult. Regards Wez

Thanks Edgar, I knew about that bit and the fact that the earlier Lightnings didn't have the IFICS tape style instruments which were introduced on the F3 (difficult to see in 1/72nd anyway). What about the ejection seat on the early aircraft? I've settled on the 56 Sqn scheme with the red spine/wing & elevator leading edges (or rather my wife and daughter settled on that scheme 'cos its "pretty" ). Were the early seats all black or did these too have the grey seat pan like the later aircraft? Regards Wez