Dave Swindell

Yes, it does seem unfair now, and it most likely cost a few lives that would probably have been saved if ejection was an option (the Heathrow vulcan crash being a classic example), but would a viable aircraft have been available in the given time frame given the complexities and weight penalties involved in fitting the extra seats? The nose of the Victor prototypes was designed to separate for high altitude escape, low altitude escape was to be by ejection seat/bailing out. I can find no reference to this feature on production Victors, but I also can't find any reference to it being deleted... If it was fitted I can't find any reference to it being used. Wikipedia says this feature was abandoned in 1950.

Well, this weekend I've been mostly looking at and measuring photo's of baby bus wings. Finding good photo's from above with flaps retracted is difficult, finding one from below is impossible (well I did about 20,000 photo's on Anet and didn't find one!) Results of my labours? Well it's humble pie for tea tonight..... Thanks for that link Andrew, an interesting article I'd not seen before. The Airbus webpages I'd saved previously (and which no longer exist having been updated) quoted the wing area for all versions as 1320 sqft/ 122.6m2. The above article gives an increas from 124m2 to 128m2 for the A321, 4m2 over the span of the flaps. This gives an increase in chord of the inner flap of approx 246mm, or 1.7mm @1/144, a substantial amount which should be noticable in photographs. Comparing ratios of measurements taken off the photo's I found, the wing structure forward of the flaps on the upper surface is the same across all marks, but the flap chord is greater on the A321, and taking averages I came out with a scale difference of 1.6mm based on the Revell kit dimensions - ie pretty damn close to the difference calculated from the Flight article. If Jonathan (XV571) has access to the flap dimensions, I estimate the inner flap chord to be 1310mm for the A321, and 1080mm for the others. To clarify, the Revell kit is correct for the A321, for all other versions:- Remove the small flap track fairings Reduce the inner flap chord by 1.6mm Reduce the outer flap chord by 1.6mm inboard tapering to 0mm at the outboard edge. Fill any remaining lines of the double slotted flaps Shorten the aft end of the inboard main flap track fairings by 1.6mm Shorten the aft end of the centre main flap track fairings by 1.2mm Shorten the aft end of the outbd main flap track fairings by 0.4mm Whilst on the flap track fairings, Revell mould them with all sides coming to a point at the aft end, whereas in actual fact they end in a vertical chisel edge. This can be modelled when shortening the fairings. This photo of an A321 wing clearly shows the subtle change of angle of the wing trailing edge just inboard of the aileron, and the shape of the aft edge of the flap track fairings. The A320/A319/A318 wing trailing edge is a straight line from tip to inboard flap. No worries Jonathan, having worked (briefly) in a drawing office, I did exactly what you're not supposed to do - scale off the drawing and ignore the (incorrect) dimensions! Came out spot on as you say :-) I'd forgotten about the latest BA A320's with G-EUY* reg's, these are the ones that are apparently going to get the sharklets starting next month, must remember the fairing when adding the sharklets to mine! Whilst hunting for the photo's mentioned above I found several A321's with the fairing (or very similar), here's one for starters. I'd noted that, but it's easier to fill and re-scribe than partially fill the line . As the photo's show, it needs modifying when I rescribe anyway. Haven't got the Zvezda kit (got a whole stack of Revell ones though) so can't comment - how's the flaps for size? Interesting & useful summary on the engines, thanks very much! Now I've worked out the flap arrangement I've got a load more corrections to do!

It's a 100 on top of the terminal Neil. Access is from outside the terminal ie you can't get to it from departures/arrivals when you have a couple of hours to kill between filghts :-( Edited due to dodgy aircraft recognition!

Only the drivers ever got ejection seats on all 3 V bombers Rob. Mockups / Tests were done for sequencial seats firing through a central hatch for the back seat guys, but it was never introduced on any of them. Victor drivers went out through seperate hatches.

You're cranking them out there John, and all with excellent results! I've got a few of these and the C47 in the stash, there are a few DC3/C47 schemes out there if you look, there's a few on Nick Webb's Classic Airlines site for a start

Excellent observations there Rob, but you're confusing the hell out of me with your terminology. Wing sweep angles are traditionally given relative to a datum 90 degrees to the aircraft centreline, ie max wing sweep angle is 90 degrees, parallel to the centreline. Without measuring the actual angles, I think you're trying to tell us that the B1 trailing edge sweep is 3 degrees, and the B2 trailing edge is 3 degrees inboard, changing to 5 degrees outboard. The Flightpath B1 conversion set I have clearly shows the removal of this section of trailing edge in the instructions

Any significance in the date of the first mods?

Time lapse video of him painting it

Well I've eventually got back to the modelling desk after a week away at the parents, going down with the flu and organising a load of stuff for work. I didn't see much of Huddersfield show apart from setting up, taking down and assisting with the competition (rather nice BMI A319 in class 1) however I did manage to catch up with Geoff Eastham on the Airliner SIG display and we had a good chat about life in general and baby buses in particular. So, this week I've been mostly doing wings. Most of what follows would have been much easier to complete after building the wing, but before attaching it to the fuselage which just gets in the way - you have been warned. Oh, and most of it applies to all baby buses. First, the nav lights, there's two coloured lights and a strobe behind a clear fairing. To model this I first drilled a couple of 0.5mm holes into the wing where the coloured lamps are positioned. Next the recess where the clear part fits was backed with a strip of aluminium foil, shiny side out, stuck in position with superglue. Don't worry about it being oversize or try to trim it too close. Once firmly stuck poke through the foil with the point of a cocktail stick, then fill the holes with the appropriate colour paint, again don't worry too much if the paint gets outside the hole, this can easily be gently scraped away once dry. The clear covers can then be cut from the sprue and trimmed to fit, then stuck in position with superglue, which is also used to fill any gaps. Once the glue is dry trim off the excess foil with a sharp blade, then file and sand the light flush with the wingtip. It should now look something like this:- This needs a polish with micromesh to restore full clarity. Moving inboard a bit to the ailerons, and this excellent plan photo of G-EUNA shows that Revell have got the chord of the aileron wrong on the upper surface, its far too big. The hinge line is shown in line with the leading edge of the spoilers when it should be about mid chord on the spoiler. I took a reference as the kink moulded in the inboard edge of the aileron, and using a set of dividers with one point in the Revell hinge line, scribed a second line parallel to it for the new hinge line. The old hinge line was then filled in. Moving inboard again, we're looking at the flap track fairings. As well as filling the sink marks on the sides, these should be flush with the top surface of the wing. The A320/A321 kits aren't too bad, but the A319 kit (and hence this conversion) has a bit of a step even after thinning the wing trailing edge. Sections of 15 thou card were glued to the top of the canoe fairing immediately aft of the trailing edge, and then filed and sanded to fill the gap. Before doing this on the outboard fairings, a 15 thou strip 0.75mm wide by 4mm long should be added so that it extends equidistance either side of the fairing, and the edges need trimming so that they're parallel to the canoe fairing. This extension can be seen on the photo of G-EUNA and here which shows the fairings flush with the wing surface. And moving further inboard, we come to the join between the inboard and outboard flap sections. Below the wing this gap is bridged by a flexible membrane, above the wing there are large rubber seals on each flap section which extend most of the way to the trailing edge, at which point there is a noticable notch. Geoff tackled this by making a large cut along the flap join line, to be filled in with strip and rod to represent the seals, I've gone for a more subtle approach. The join line between the flap sections was heavlily scored with a P cutter, then the top edges of this line were rounded off by scraping with a modelling chisel. Scoring the line deeper gave a V notch on the trailing edge, this was rounded out using the side of a 0.5mm drill as a file to get the right shape and depth. On the underside the scribed join line was filled in. This gives the shape, the actual seals I plan to represent by painting or strips of decal film once the basic paint scheme is on. The last mod which I've started but haven't finished, came after viewing this image in the Britmodeller A319/A320 walkround (excellent ref pics as usual). Compare it to this image taken from pretty much the same angle, and you will notice a significant difference in the above wing root fairing - there's a distinct bit of "mini area ruling" going on. The Revell kit represents pretty closely the second configuration without the large curved fairing, but if you look closely at the earlier linked photo of G-EUNA you will see where this curved fairing extends out over the wing root, and also the fairing extends further aft and higher up on the fuselage sides. This is one of those things that isn't immediately obvious until you become "zoned in" on it, and I've been looking at a LOT of baby bus photo's recently. This appears to be a fairly recent addition to later build buses, and not confined to any particular model. It doesn't appear to have been retrofitted to earlier built aircraft, certainly not in the BA fleet as the only 2 that appear to have it are the A318's. It doesn't appear to be structural, so I assume it's something aerodynamic to get a few less GPM (gallons per mile!) To model this it's going to be a bit of good old fashioned sculpting with Miliput, and to get the fairings symetrical I've masked out the outline to use as a guide. I first roughed out the shape in pencil, then stuck 2 strips of masking tape in position over the lines, which were traced through. The tape was removed and stuck to thin plasticard, and the lines cut through the masking tape and card. The card was removed and flipped over onto the sticky side of another strip of masking tape and a mirror outline cut, then the strips were re-attached to the model to give a symetrical outline. Sculpting the fairing is the next task. The observant among you will have noticed I haven't attached the tip fences yet, they're staying off until much later in the build, cos otherwise they won't be attached for long! One last point regarding the Revell wing, it's moulded as an A321 wing and I'd already removed the extra small canoe flap track fairings and filled the scribed lines of the split flap sections, however there's a school of thought that says the wing trailing edge should be modified to reduce the wing area as this was bigger on the A321. I firmly believe this to be a myth, which is strongly supported by Airbus who quote the same wing area for all models of baby bus. Yes, the trailing edge of the flaps was modified to produce a split flap which increased the wing area of the A321 in comparison to the A320/A319/A318 wing with the flaps extended - however when retracted the clean wing has exactly the same planform/area as the others. Edit:- disregard this last paragraph, see below for changes to flaps.

Thanks to XVTonker for pointing me in the right direction, and a big thanks to Neil at AIM, who came back straight away last night with the promise of a replacement resin body for my Sentinel kit after I sent him a couple of photo's of the part received. Top class customer service - Sorted!

Thanks for the obituary John. My Mum and Dad met at Annie Holgate School as teachers, lots of stories of disrupted lessons by young would be plane spotters such as yourself (and me!) At least my mum knows what a flying bedstead looks like!

Another one for the shopping list Ta very much, I'll drop Neil a line tonight.

Got mine this morning, looks very good except for the bottom of the main resin body. Looks like the casting block has been taken off on an industrial sander, the underside is curved fore to aft and on a slant port to starboard (and opposite slant front & back). Need to check ref photos to see if this can be straightened up by taking off more resin, but suspect too much has been taken off already.

Rapide? Dakota? Viking? All carried flying key and peony pinstripe

Ooooh Luvverly John. Got the AA and Channel express ones in my stash, must get round to building them soon.

Err, Airdecal? least that's the sheet I have. I rather suspect you're right, and I also suspect a visit to take photo's will gain some good pics of the externals and a gaping pit in the back where the test equipment was. This photo shows what appears to be a medium blue blanking structure where the rear instrument panel/footwell used to be. The original instrumentation package that stuck up above the canopy line is obviously gone, I would guess it stayed at Bedford when the aircraft was disposed of. Logic would have it mounted to the original ejection seat mountings for ease of removal.

Yep, he does some great schemes, the only one that's no good is the one where you don't get what you ordered.Pity, as he'd probably make much more in the long run dealing with folk honestly.

Well, I take that back and apologise. You have indeed followed the instructions. Never seen that before on a Spitfire, bit of a Munich Crisis oddity.

Not me personally, but quite a few have had their wallets burnt. Caveat Emptor

Numpty decalling tip No 1 - RTFI! (read the flippin' instructions) No amount of decalling techniques to get perfectly applied decals will help if you go and put the decals in the wrong place in the first place. That's a nice looking Spitfire, but the decal you've put on under the wing should go on the top surface! Colin's tips above are all good, but primarily you want a good glossy surface to put the decals on. Use gloss paints or gloss varnis over matt to get a good gloss coat before putting the decals on. Without this you'll always get silvering and poor decal adhesion. Some decals respond well to heat - hot water on a lint free cloth, or with care, a hairdrier on low (avoid the higher Salvador Dali settings) Oh, and welcome to the madhouse

Hi Graham & Walter Sorry for the delay in replying, been away for a few days. Er, no, hadn't twigged that. On looking again all the photo's of Blenheims that I can find with Vokes filters and definitely without the 11 o'clock intake are either MkI or MkV Sorry Walter, my poor explanation. As Graham points out below, MkI's were supposed to be covered by the "still in Service" comment. So some MkI's were modified after manufacture, but none had the mod on the production line as production had ceased by the time the mod was introduced. Some MkIV's on the other hand were produced with the mod, and some modified at a later date. Original post edited to reflect this.

x 3 ! Picked Up S&M models nose & wing probes for this one at Huddersfield

Congrats on a very well deserved 1, 2, 3 there Steve, and great to meet and put a face to the name . The models are indeed truly outstanding when seen live and close up. On with the Hawk, next year's class winner?