Nick McV

I will find a way...

Thanks, @cherry268, I'll have a look. Bit of a difficulty emerged yesterday though: there is a part missing. One of the rear wheel hubs (it should be on the sprue near the "7" in the sprue shot above). Not sure what to do. Order another kit (expensive), or come up with a replacement by somehow cloning the remaining one.

Wonderful job, bravo!

Don't go fondling an Eduard anything while you're involved with this GB is my advice. Still, I don't think I have much to complain about with my tractor.

Here we go then! Sprue shot! Not that many parts, a few of which have found their way off their sprues in their eagerness to be glued together. Large transparencies staying in their placcy bag for now. Four tyres made out of your actual rubber. Dinky decal sheet. All very nice. Instructions nice clear colour graphics. Paint callouts appear to be Humbrol to this day. And a nice addition... ...or if you're in the mood... I'm sure visitors are just desperate for me to show them my model kits! Cheers Nick

Fantastisch!

Demasked canopy looks excellent, if you ask me, Whole thing is splendid.

The box art pic seems to have been lifted directly from this photograph (with the addition of a more interesting background), right down to all the shadows and the positions of the prop blades. The "3" in the s/n does indeed look rather like a "9". I seem to remember doing the cannon on mine red, they do look darker than the silver. Cheers Nick

That's a great choice - I built this kit as F-JWL myself many years ago, it's a shiny silver classic! Oddly the serial number on the box art is wrong - there was no such Spit as RW996. The decals (kit, and aftermarket) get it right, RW396. (The box art also shows your Spitfire flying over something that resembles the Malayan jungle, when in fact she was with the Central Gunnery School at RAF Leconfield near Hull in the decidedly less exotic East Riding of Yorkshire, and was written off after an engine failure resulted in a forced landing on West Skipsea Ranges 😁) I'm looking forward to seeing your progress! Nick

In advance of getting busy with this on the 18th, I've been doing a bit of research, and truly I am spoiled with the number of colour photos of the 2680 from angles. None of that poring over old black-and-white photos trying to work out if a particular shade of grey is this colour or that colour, like with my WW2 aircraft builds. The 2680 was produced by Massy Ferguson between 1981 and 1985. It was a "row crop" tractor, i.e. developed with the growing of crops in mind (ploughing, harrowing, weed control etc.). It had a Perkins 5.8 litre six-cylinder engine that delivered 130 horsepower, which at first I thought was a bit feeble, I mean it's a lot of horses for sure but I used to have a VW Passat that did 110 HP... it's all about the gearing, I guess - it had 16 gears! As I said there are tons of pics out there of 2680s in varying configurations and states of muckiness. The grey thing on the front I think is a bunch of weights to keep the front end down and get maximum traction from the front wheels. Who would have thought I'd be excited at the prospect of building a tractor...

Awesome choice. I believe the Bentley Blower was the original James Bond car, in Ian Fleming's first Bond novel Casino Royale. Cheers Nick

Splendid choice. I've built a couple of these over the years, I'll follow your progress with interest. Cheers Nick

Hi all, My pick for this GB is Heller's 1/24 scale Massey Ferguson 2680 tractor. This is a little outside my comfort zone as I've never built anything other than planes. 1/48 is my preferred scale which doesn't offer a lot of options with Heller. So I thought I'd have a go at this, and build it for my grandson who's three and like a lot of little boys is well into tractors. It's also a bit of a nostalgia thing for me I suppose, I feel that if you say "tractor" to any British gentleman of my vintage, he will immediately picture a shiny red Massey. Here's the box on Christmas morning with some other goodies from Santa: This new boxing doesn't even show up on Scalemates yet. The kit was originally issued in 1983 under the Heller Humbrol "Bobcat" brand; in the intervening years it's also been issued as a blue Landini 16000 DT, which I understand that back in the 70s was an Italian subsidiary of MF. It'll be nice to do a bit of something different. Cheers Nick

Looks fantastic. Those Romanian crosses must've been a reyt faff to paint on the real thing though. Cheers Nick

Thanks @2996 Victor. Just realised I've forgotten to do the wingtip lights 🙄