Dave Swindell

Ooh that's interesting Carlos. The front instrument panel especially. What's the rest of the book like? recommended? From the photo, wheel fairings natural metal (as are the wing join cover strips) light hawk motif both sides, outlined reg letters with different inner colour to surrounds. Outer wings do look slightly lighter than the inner wing/fuselage. The fuselage appears to be one single colour, not the red upper/green lower/gold cheatline shown in the book cover, however gold inner colour for the reg letters could account for them appearing light in one location and dark in another. The painting does lend support for green fuselage and red outer wings, possibly red tailplane as well (but allover red painted as a sub assembly rather than KP's green upper red lower?), does rather depend on the artist's research, I suspect it isn't a contemporary painting.

Ah yes, found it, p332. I was forgetting the appendix section at the back and just looking in the main section at the front. Yes the reg letters are definitely outline, both on the fuselage and upper wing (and therefore presumably the same below the wing) They're much squarer/angled than the decals show as well. The caption says green and silver for the colours, but the history entry says red/green. The reg outline could be white or possibly silver or yellow? The inside of the letters looks the same as the surround on the wings, but lighter than the surround on the fuselage, though this might be down to the angle of the lighting giving less contrast on the wings. Wheel fairings very light, so silver/natural metal? The rest of the aircraft looks too dark to be silver, and whilst the outer wings do appear to be a fraction lighter than the inner wing/fuselage this again might be lighting. The caption would suggest overall green with silver wheel fairings. The outer wings could possibly be red, but the tailplane looks the same as the fin/rudder/fuselage colour. BP colours are green and yellow, if the reg letters were yellow I wouldn't have thought they would have needed an outline, however if they were red then the outline could definitely improve contrast, could the outline be yellow? Shell colours are yellow and red, so there is some logic in the possible use of these colours. If the fuselage is green with red outlined letters, the outer wings could be the same or possibly reversed, red with green outlined letters. The Hawk emblem forward of the cockpit is light, not black as per decals, and there is a rear cockpit headrest & fairing that's not shown on the kit drawing.

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/AEC72005?result-token=DsWon

Any pointers on what you feel is wrong with the scheme for G-ADCF please Roger? I've not managed to locate any images of this aircraft.

Yes! I'm sure some of them deliberately line us up in the HUD!

Some nice metalwork there Alan!

Here's the F-35 pass, I'm sailing bottom left at 0:53!

Doh, should have got that, it's Watermillock church in the background here

As designed, yes, but they were sometimes wedged partially open. Belgian target tugs took off with a target sleeve inside the starboard flap and a wedge in the port flap to set the angle the same. The target was streamed (and the wedge jettisoned) by dropping the flaps briefly after take-off.

This was the Atlas pass (not my video!)

That sounds like Thursday's action, I was out on Ullswater sailing between Glenridding and Glencoyne, where were you togging from? Angle Tarn?

It might be a better kitbash on this basis than a complete scratchbuild, but you're looking at a longer fuselage and wingspan plus unequal span wings, so there would still be plenty of work to do on the combined bits to reach a reasonable representation of a 253. Would you be doing a monoplane Vildebeest with the bits left over as well ?

Unfortunately for those of us with civil leanings, military is what sells. Is it? The kit most likely exists because there are military options, plus there is a civil option included which may tempt some modellers who do so to finish their model in a non military scheme. Then there a aftermarket civil decals available for the die hard civil modeller. Surely a military model with civil options is a better option than no model or a very limited run/availability option?

Yes, the B sprue with the wings is the same in both A & D boxings

The control yokes slide in and out so the length is variable - push in to dive, pull out to climb. As @Tbolt says, go for what looks right.