Neil

Thanks for the comment. I deliberately tried to keep the weathering and panel line shading down to a reasonable level, it can sometimes be too easy to over accentuate the weathering on light coloured (i.e: white/pale grey) aircraft.

I got mine from Argos, seemed quite appropriate for what I needed (I could do with another one actually!). Link to it is below: https://www.argos.co.uk/product/6141303?clickSR=slp:term:display cabinet:4:37:1 You cannot fit really big stuff in there of course, but it is ample for my needs. The biggest models I have in there are, for example, 1/48 Jaguar T2, 1/48 Mosquito, 1/48 F/A-18, 1/48 AH-64 Apache helicopter, 1/48 Albacore, 1/144 C-74 Globemaster and the biggest span-wise is the 1/144 B-52. There are also various 1/72 jets and quite a few single engine 1/48 WWII fighters and a smattering of other stuff too, etc etc.

Funny you should say that ............. (next to the 'Fluorescent' B-52!). 👍

Must admit, I do quite enjoy that side of it if I am honest ...... ! 👍

I can definitely recommend the brass undercarriage set, nice and solid and should not sag over time. The set also includes the nose gear strut too, and a small brass axle for the nose wheel.

Thanks for the comments everybody, much appreciated! It is quite a cute little thing I guess, and nothing overly complicated about it and relatively straightforward to assemble. Visually quite a pleasing little model too. Thanks again! 🙂

Something a little off the beaten track, possibly, and I have fond memories of building the tiny 1/72 Airfix kit of this aircraft when I was a young lad. Here we have the 1/48 ICM kit of the Cessna O-2A 'Skymaster' and a neat kit it is too, with nice recessed panel lines and ample interior detail and of course lots of separate cockpit glazing parts which fitted very nicely indeed. The only concern I had was the main undercarriage strut for the rear wheels, below the rear fuselage, moulded in plastic of course, and not surprisingly for aircraft of this nature I suspected that it would probably sag over a period of time. To avoid this problem I bought the SAC metal undercarriage set for this kit, but soon wished I had not, because it is cast in some kind of white-metal or pewter, and is, sadly, very soft and 'bendy' and is not much stronger than the standard injection moulded kit plastic undercarriage strut! So I binned the SAC set, and ordered the Aerocraft set instead, which is cast in solid brass and is MUCH stronger than the white metal set that I threw away. Problem solved. To stop the model tail-sitting, I added approx 10g of thin sheet lead, cut to shape and fixed to the space inside the roof of the nose leg bay. More than enough room in there to add suitable nose weight. For the cockpit interior I added only seat belts, although I did toy with the idea of adding lots of etched parts, but did not bother with that in the end. Model was airbrushed in a combination of Humbrol and Xtracolour enamels for the main airframe (thinned with Cellulose thinners). Applied some reasonably discrete panel lining/weathering mainly using Paynes Grey artists oil-colour, thinned with White Spirit, and a tiny amount of pastel-chalks here and there. I did not want to go too heavy handed with weathering and such. The noses of the underwing mini-gun pods were finished in Alclad Stainless Steel, giving a nice metallic finish, and the main bodies of the mini-guns and the underwing rocket pods were finished in Olive Drab. Decals used were mainly kit ones, with a handful also taken from the spares box , such as numbers and small stencils, all of which settled down snugly using Micro Set and Micro Sol solutions. After decals were dry, an overall coat of Winsor & Newton acrylic Galeria matt varnish was airbrushed on, to finish things off. Various antennas, aerials and static dischargers on trailing edges were made using fine fishing-line. The final touch were some RBF tags, cut from printed paper, added to the underwing stores and the pitot tube. Quite chuffed with how the model turned out, and must admit I do have a bit of a soft spot for aircraft like this, something of a cute little thing, and slightly esoteric with it's 'push-pull' double-engine layout! Also, I must add a word of thanks to @Mike H for laser-etching the brass name plate on the base board, sets it off nicely. Cheers Mike ........

Superb stuff, great to see one of these on here. Very nice indeed! Regarding the colour you have finished it in, you may inadvertently be correct .............. Back in the late 90's I very nearly bought a used example of the Evo II (real one that is!) but ultimately decided against it, I really could not justify it, something that unique was just a bit too ambitious at the time. The specialist dealer that was selling the car at the time explained to me that they were all finished in what Mercedes then called Blue-Black (metalic Black) except for one single example, which allegedly was finished in Silver at the factory. How accurate or true this is I do not honestly know, but I have sometimes wondered if there was any truth to this, and if there were some way to find out!

Nope, the masters/patterns/moulds were never sold on to anybody. Troy is correct, I still own and possess ALL of the moulds and masters from the entire Paragon Designs range, at the time I simply did not have the need to sell them on. Neil.

Thanks for the comments about my B-17, but it is Neil, not Daniel. 👍

1/48 B-17G 'Princess Pat' Based on the 1/48 Monogram kit. This was a commission build I did for the artist Robert Taylor. Apparently, Robert used this model as a visual/perspective aid in the composition of his painting titled "The Mighty Eighth - Coming Home" and I have included a small pic of this painting in this selection of pictures. Robert also sent me a personally signed print copy of this painting which is, without doubt, one of THE prized aviation related items that I own. Unfortunately I took precious few images of this model before despatching it to Robert, and I really do wish that I had taken alot more before doing so! (A couple of pics of the real 'Princess Pat' are also included here). Something worth noting for all you B-17 builders is the exhaust staining above the wings, it does not exit from the vents near the trailing edges, the exhaust staining works its way around these vents. Also, the staining is not symmetrical to both wings, the starboard wing staining is drawn slightly more toward the fuselage, as it were, than the port wing.

Good to see one of these being built, I had a real one of these myself too (Blue and White, surprise surprise!). I think I am correct in saying that Hasegawa got the larger 350LC rear cush drive correct in the back wheel, I think the Tamiya kits only had ever had the hub cush drive for the 250LC in their kits. I still have an unbuilt 1/10 Nichimo RD 350 LC bought donkeys years ago, intended to build it so many times but not got round to it yet! Nichimo also made the same mistake as Tamiya regarding the rear cush drive too, they only ever included the 250LC one.

Welcome indeed, from another Norfolk resident here (Norwich. specifically 👍). I think you may find this site quite useful, a very handy resource, for all aspects of scale modelling .

Actually, a very good question. In the past I have usually used an enamel clear coat of some kind on most of my models, however, at the suggestion of some of my local club members, I recently tried something a little different, and so far have been quite impressed with the results. I have actually switched to an Acrylic clear coat manufactured by Winsor & Newton, called Galeria, and they produce a Matt, Satin and Gloss finish. They brush on nicely and also airbrush nicely too, once thinned, and in fact some people down the club use distilled water for thinning, and others use cellulose thinners (lacquer thinners, essentially). I use cellulose thinners for thinning them in order to airbrush them, and on this particular Spitfire I used the Matt finish Galeria clear coat. For the main camo colours I always prefer to use enamels, with the Spitfire I used Xtracolour enamels throughout, again thinned with cellulose thinners for airbrushing. Here is a pic of the Galeria clear coats ........

Thank you. Also, managing to find a cheap circular mirror to display it on was quite fortunate, it means that the underside can be viewed without needing to handle the model.

Thanks again for the comments . A quick and simple display base using a circular mirror, with a printed information card, ready for this coming Wednesday evening's Club Night.

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated . As I mentioned, I know this is not a perfect kit, it does have faults, but I wanted this to be fun and enjoyable and almost straight out of the box, which Is why I decided not to add masses of extra detail and such. Wanted to build a 1/48 Spitfire Mk XII for a while now, actually. Thanks again.

Always liked the 'look' of the Spitfire Mk XII, maybe not as elegant as the Merlin powered versions, but with the clipped wing tips, pointy rudder and a whacking great Griffon engine stuck on the front, they did look very purposeful. Grabbed one of the Airfix Spitfire Mk XII's a while back, did not want to go down the route of 'all singing, all dancing' modifications and added detail and such, just wanted something to build more or less straight out of the box. The only real additions I made were adding a seat harness, instrument panel and cutting out the flap-down indicators on the upper wing surfaces, and scratch building the indicators from plasticard and rod. Before anybody says anything, I am fully aware that the standard procedure was to retract the flaps after landing, however, they COULD be lowered for inspection, or maintenance, or whatever, so as far as I am concerned there would of been perfectly viable circumstances when the flaps may of been in the down position, so that is how I have depicted them. It also makes the model more visually interesting, from my perspective. The model was airbrushed in Xtracolour enamels, thinned with cellulose thinners, and all decals were standard kit ones, straight from the box, and they responded well using Micro Set and Micro Sol decal solutions, they pulled down nicely into all recesses and details. Panel shading was achieved mostly with Paynes Grey oil-colours, thinned with White Spirit, and some low-key paint chipping applied by small brush. I know that the kit is not perfect out of the box, but enjoying the build was my main priority in making this particular Spitfire Mk XII. Nice to now have one of the lesser-know variants in my display cabinet.

I ordered a replacement canopy from them a couple of years ago, they were very prompt and efficient in sending a new one free of charge. I filled out the online form on their website. Is the kit that you want the part for currently in production? If it is not, they may not be able to replace the part that you need. The canopy for the kit that I needed was 'technically' not in production, although the identical canopy that I needed was in another kit version of the same type of aircraft (1/72 Hawker Hunter) so I ordered a canopy for that kit instead. They then promptly sent a replacement to me, free of charge. Link to thread below:

In a word, yes. Off the top of my head there was the NF XV (high altitude fighter/interceptor), the TR 33 (torpedo carrying version, with folding wings for carrier operations) and the Twin Highball version also had four blade props.

Was at the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, Brackley, a couple of weeks or so back, here's a few detail pics of the car in the foyer to the manufacturing dept.

Thanks again for the kind comments. As I mentioned, I was in two minds what to do with the model for years, I was rather reluctant to touch it I have to admit. However, I came to the conclusion that it seemed such a shame not to finish it, as it was so close to completion, ultimately, and the original intention was to post pics of it here on BM anyway. As it turned out, I had very, very little to do to it actually, my input was absolutely minimal, Steve was the one who did all of the main work to it.

Thank you kindly.

........and Jaguar XX725 still exists today, at Cosford, although without it's 'Johnny Fartpants' nose art. Link below: https://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk/jaguar/survivor.php?id=999 In a way, nice to see that it is still around.

Steve asked me to build one for him shortly after returning back to the UK after the first Gulf War, way back then funnily enough! . I based it on the 1/72 Hasegawa kit, using Modeldecals I think they were, and Steve asked me to put a loadout of 2 x overwing Sidewinders, 4 x 1000lb bombs, a centreline drop tank, ALQ 101 pod and Phimat chaff dispenser on it, which would of been a fairly typical weapon load. I constructed it in the take-off configuration, at the point of rotation on the runway, with flaps and slats deployed, nose leg extended with no weight on it, and nose-high just before leaving the runway. Four metal pins were fixed into each main-wheel tyre which also located in holes drilled in the base, the model was then self supporting without additional aids, as if it were just about to take off. I was very pleased with how it turned out, and Steve seemed quite happy with it too .