John R

A really superb effort and a neat solution to the problem of displaying an a/c without an undercarriage.

For comparison here's the real thing...amazing what sunlight does for a silver a/c. John

Be careful what you wish for....I built one one years ago and thought that it was awful John PS. That's a very nice job on the Demon. Maybe you can work your magic on the FJ4

Where have the photos gone?

Somehow I missed this when it first appeared but having seen it at our Model Club last night all I say is that the photos don't do it justice. It's exquisite. John

Very nice job on my favourite a/c. Also applause for that Vulcan - I missed it first time aound. John

Gorgeous job! I have built a couple of Pro-resin kits and have not been at all happy with the quality. John

Alekseyev built the I-211, which was converted to the I-215 having the Russian equivalent of the Nene engine. The I-216 was only a proposed development carrying the heavy cannon. I have seen a comment by Musa Zakoreev, who produces the Prop & Jet resin kits, that the engine nacelles of the I-211 are not the correct shape. When I built my I-211 I thought that the u/c geometry was incorrect as the doors did not match the length of the leg. I have just re-read my build notes and I did find the decals tended to break up and I gave them a coat of decal film before continuing. My build is here http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234952022-alexeyev-i-211-a-model-172/ Regarding the decals I think that the 211 is undersize. I have some spares which came from Musa when I bought one of his kits. The decal sheet covered a couple of a/c, one of them the I-211. Send me a PM if I you would like them

I built the I-211 version and agree with most of your comments although I did not have so much trouble with the decals. My biggest problem was under-estimating the amount of weight to add and ended up pouring 'liquid lead' into the engine intakes followed by a shot of CA to keep it quiet! I am currently battling with the A-Model XP59 which I thought was a recent kit but it has all the problems of the older ones. John

Nice work. I presume it's the Prop&Jet kit. I built one of these a while ago and they are superb kits, remarkable considering they are a limited production item. Mine is here together with a scratchbuilt version because I thought that nobody would issue a decent kit. http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234940120-lavochkin-176-prop-jet-172-resin-russias-first-supersonic-ac/ John

I went for an interview with Hawkers at Kingston a long time ago and there was some discussion about this a/c (can't remember why but I think that it was still in the construction phase) but the chap interviewing me remarked that it wouldn't work - but they wouldn't find that out for another couple of years! Nice work but I would rather you stuck to 'the way it was'. It had quite a nice paint job. John

The coloured drawing in the book about the 287 shows a two-tone 70/71 pattern but I can't make it match any of the photos. My thoughts about reproducing the 'barcodes' run along the the lines of producing one section and then producing multiple copies all joined together using something like Photoshop. The drawing in the book shows different coloured stripes, red being the most obvious. I would also like to know if it appeared on both sides.

Continuing with reading 'the book' those 'barcodes' are to indicate how hot the skin is getting. I don't suppose anyone makes a suitable decal...

Thanks Troy, It's the prototype around the time of its first flight in August 44. Actually I have just bought a book about the a/c 'Ju 287 by Ransom & Korrell' and this evening discovered a colour plate which shows it as having, in August 44, a two-tone green topside, blue underside and a strange black section on the underside of the inner wing and part of the fuselage. On this is painted what looks like a series of coloured barcodes. As this latter section is just aft of the inboard engine I wonder if it was something to do with where the exhaust gases went and/or hot they were. I wonder if it appeared on both sides. Actually the pattern given on the colour plate does not appear to match the pattern in the photos. There is also an article about building the kit in 'Sky Model' Issue 18 where the guy has another variation on the theme. John PS. Troy - another 'not Aluminium tube'!

I am building a Huma Ju 287 and the instructions containing the colours have gone wakabout. Can anyone please help with colour scheme, internal and external. John

Beautiful job. The real thing appears at Duxford for the Flying Legends airshow. I first saw one when visiting Bruges many years ago. As it appeared over the town I told my wife to have a good look as you won't see this again only have it reappear several times. Later we learned that it was giving pleasure flights out of Ghent not too far away. If only I had known... John

There is this post in the WWII section showing a photo and giving dimensions of the actual blade. http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234947300-gloster-trent-meteor-prop-blade/?hl=%2Btrent+%2Bmeteor Also am I right in thinking that you didn't modify the fin fairing? The instructions will have you removing the existing one and putting on a strange cylindrical thing with a hemispherical nose. I have nevr been able to find out what this was and when it was fitted. The only photos I have seen show a normal 'bullet' John

Nice work. I know what you mean about the u/c. I never did get mine to sit properly John

Be careful what you wish for...Or if there is one thing worse than not getting what you want it is getting what you want. I had long wanted a model of the Campini Caproni N1 to add to my collection of early jets as it was quite a significant a/c. The Italians long believed that they had produced the first jet a/c not knowing that the Heinkel 178 had flown nearly a year earlier. Its propulsion system was indeed a jet but not a turbojet. A piston engine in the nose drove a fan which compressed the air which was then burned in the aft section. It was not very efficient and was very much an aeronautical ‘dead end’. I believe that the first flight was made without the ‘afterburner’ meaning that it was at that stage a form of ducted fan. The only kit ever made seemed to be the one by Delta 2 which, I think, dates back to the seventies. They did appear on Ebay from time to time but fetched silly prices. Last summer I managed to get one at a price I was prepared to pay not knowing that the drop in prices was probably due to the appearance of a kit from Valom. It was not an easy build as the parts were warped and ill-fitting and, according to a book about the a/c, not terribly accurate. The fuselage was dreadful and I tried to the force parts into shape whilst the glue set but I ended up with it shaped like a banana and twisted as well. Out came the razor saw, the halves were separated and the each was taped to a metal ruler and soaked in hot water for some time. It was then possible to glue the halves together with a satisfactory result. Fitting the fuselage to the one piece wing resulted in a large gap that had to be filled but everything went well until I tried to fit the canopy. It looks as if it was designed to slide open like the real a/c but nothing fitted so it was more or less plonked on after much surgery. After finishing the Delta 2 version of this kit I discovered that Valom had recently produced a new version. Since the Delta 2 version was old and inaccurate and as I felt that it fell into the ‘toy’ category I decided to get the newer kit. This produced its own set of problems. The accuracy is somewhat suspect and whilst the main bits fitted together reasonably well the interior bits were a disaster, as nothing fitted without much trimming, and the cockpit components, including photo-etch controls, seemed to scale out at something closer to 1/48 scale. There is a photo of the cockpit on the Internet and a line drawing equivalent of it in the kit instructions so how they came to get the inside so wrong is an interesting question. The photo shows the original control wheel and its replacement made from a piece of tube. The cockpit cover was a nightmare, being moulded out of ‘thick clingfilm’, and does not fit very well. There is no representation of the mount in which it slides. The final straw was fitting the mainwheel legs only to find that they are apparently too short. Note the difference in track between the Delta and Valom versions. Neither matches track shown in the 3-view in the book. There were several variations of the markings. This Valom model represents the N1 around the time of its first flight and the Delta version at a later stage in testing. Keen eyes will note that I managed to get markings on the wings swapped over on the Delta version. The Valom kit is in the foreground with the rear canopy open, the coloured nose marking and large cross on the fin [/url] This shows the difference between the original control wheel and my replacement ( which is probably a bit too small)

Nice job. I have one of these in the stash to look forward to.

I built this pair a few years ago except that the Mig was the Zvezda version. The Berkut went together fairly well with a few issues with the fit on the front fuselage and around the intakes. It wasn’t clear (to me anyway) from the instructions how the boundary layer bleeds fitted and of course I got it wrong and had to correct it. I don't know if this applies to the Revell version of the MiG but the nosewheel leg has a weakness ahead of the wheel and it is easily broken. Also the upper and lower surface colours on the MiG were reversed in the Zvezda instructions. John PS. Mine are in this post (at the end!) if anyone is interested. http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/48529-johns-prototypes-the-foreigners/?hl=prototypes

A bit of a challenge is one thing but sheer incompetence/carelessness/'couldn't care less' on the part of the manufacturer is another.

Thank you. Most interesting in that apart from the very businesslike yellow handles next to the knees it doesn't look much like an ejection seat. Which bit does the 'ejecting'? John

Julien, When I tried to access the site it was flagged up as containing malicious software. Have you tried it recently? John

Weeman, Did you see my posts about my version of the Arrow http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234940353-avro-arrow-a-correct-version-of-the-hobbycraft-172-kit-i-hope/ http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234949577-avro-arrow-a-corrected-version-of-the-original-hobbycraft-172-kit/ I'll be interested to see how yours turns out and if you are still sane afterwards. Good luck John