Dave Swindell

Yep, back to normal....

Yes, the photo's I've already uploaded are there and displaying correctly, but I get a 403 error when attempting to upload. @perdu has reported issues in one of his threads as well

Thanks for expanding on your initial announcement Colin, and for outlining plans of how you're going to release them. The unreleased kits/incompete masters are a bit of a tease, I'm sure I'm not the only one to be intreagued as to what they are, but I'm sure you'll let us know in due course 😁

I'd concur with @T-21 and add that the RadAlt aerials were only fitted to later war Mosquitos operating in a low level role capacity eg Coastal Command. As the kit instructions show, one option had them fitted, one didn't. A nightfighter operating at medium - high altitude wouldn't need them, but they'd definitely be useful for a night intruder stooging around at treetop height. They're not easy to spot under the wing in shadow, especially when the wing underside is painted black, but if you can see them on other night intruder mossies there's a good chance they were fitted to your aircraft.

Possibly because it was designed/used for servicing sea defences (eg defensive booms etc) and not doing the actual defending?

The profile artwork also shows the carrier band to be red - my understanding is Furious was red, but Courageous was blue. The profile shows checks on the fin and tailplane, but the photo's show these extend onto the elevators as well, and the colour apears to match the carrier band, as does the fuselage upper decking, which Jarrett claims to be blue. The light shade would indicate this to be a pale blue, much lighter than the roundel blue. The profile gives the upper decking as a dark green (NIVO?) but I would have thought this should be black in general - 446 flight has obviously repainted theirs in a much lighter colour. Jarrett also claims the upper wing surfaces have been painted blue, but I'm not convinced by this - possibly the upper wing centre section has been painted the same blue as the carrier band, but I don't think this extends onto the main wing panels themselves. It's not easy to spot a difference in length of the floats, but there is a clear difference in the rear strut arrangement - those with a bungee shock cord suspension unit in the rear strut appear to be shorter than those with a plain rear strut. Assuming this to be correct, most of the photo's of IIIF's on floats with shock rear struts appear to have blue/white/red rudder stripes (pre Nov. 1930) and those with the plain struts appear to have red/white/blue rudder stripes, so there appears to have been a change in the use of short vs long floats around late 1930. There's a photo of S1224/42 purportedly of 445 Flight off Courageous at Calafrana which shows what I think are short floats on p134 of Jarrett's book. This would support the use of short floats on Courageous (or at Malta) in roughly the same timeframe as the photo's of S1307. Given it was supposed to be a quick job (around an hour is quoted) to swap from wheels to floats it is possible that S1307 used floats during her deployment in Courageous; and given the timeframe (1928-1930), location (Med Fleet/Malta) and photo's showing predominantly short floats in use, it's likely these were used if they were fitted. I know this isn't the conclusive photographic proof you're looking for, but unless this appears I'd suggest given the above that if floats were fitted to S1307 at some point whilst wearing the photogaphed markings, these would have been more likely to have been short floats than long ones.

Not spoked or solid, the "spokes" are the wheel hub, l"solid" is a brake drum. Later Mosquito's (inc Mk XIX) had twin brake drums, one each side of the wheel.

There's photo's of S1307 on P134-6 in Philip Jarrett's book on the IIIF when it was "40" of 446 Flight on Courageous, but it had wheels not floats at the time.

Seventytooth

@Colin @ Freightdog Models has announced he's aquired the Skybirds '86 range and some Aeroclub products from John Adams:- https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1125378069594726&set=a.261948272604381 "I am pleased to announce the purchase of the Skybirds’86 range from John Adams, originally produced by Mike Eacock and passed to John on Mike’s passing. This includes all the original masters from kits released between 1986 and the early 2000s, along with a number of unfinished masters that were never made available. I hope to release several of these during 2025, and also re-issue a number of viable items from the back catalogue of previously available items. John has also passed me a few items from his Aeroclub Models range along with the plastic tube, rod and strutt material. I also hope to revamp these for release in 2025."

Not Monica - There's a thread on this here:-

XV279 was one of the 6 Development Batch HS Harriers (XV276-XV281), when ordered in 1965 they were ordered as P1127 (RAF), it wasn't until the first 60 production examples were ordered in 1967 that the name Harrier was applied. P.1127's all carried XP serials, 2 research prototypes XP831 & XP836, and 4 Development Batch XP972, XP976, XP980 & XP984. Kestrels all carried XS serials, 9 XS688 - XS696

I built this for the importers (RiKo/A.A. Hales), this would have been late 80's, 89 I think. It definitely wasn't an easy build, tolerances were very close or non-existant. The model was left unpainted at the importers request to display the construction. The FW190 looked better than the Spitfires, but if you're looking for a painted display model as a finished product there are much better injection moulded kits on the market today Correct - same as the material used to make die cast cars (Dinky, Matchbox etc)

As @EwenS says, what you see in the photo is an Unrotated Projector or UP mount, the PAC or Parachute & Cable rocket that @Graham Boak mentions is what it fired.

Fingers crossed..... but I'm not holding my breath.