woody37

I've been beavering away with the 2nd Blenheim, it's not far from finished now. Looking at photo's, there appears to be mud splashes up the sides of the fuselage, so I've tried to recreate the effect. The let down on these kits is the unnecessarily thick frames on the clear parts. It leaves the kit looking a bit chunky. I much prefer the style that other manufacturers use where the frames are subtle. I used Falcon sets on the Frog and old Airfix kits so in some ways, they look better. There's a little bit of paint touch ups needed on the front of the canopy, I'll get that done today. Also, I prefer to have the flaps closed so as well as doing it that way on this one, I've changed the Mk.IV too. Cheers

Look forwards to seeing what you do Andy, I'll be making lots of notes! Good news about a potential canopy, I have confidence in your rumours 🤣

Agree, although I've got a CA one here that looks rather nice in the box, but a little more challenging to build. I wonder if anyone has used the nose from one to graft onto an Airfix rear? Lol, we put ourselves through unneccesary stress sometimes! The worst parts have been saved a little with Klear. Thanks Colin

Superb Bruce, lovely paint job

Looks brilliant mate, have you used an AM Vickers or is that the kit part? Be interested to hear on what replacement parts you're planning for the Trumpy one too as I've got both in the stash too. Cheers

That looks amazing! I'm not a chopper guy, but can certainly appreciate this

Thanks Paul Probably the biggest disappointment on the Blenheim kit is the turrets. Not only the interior, but the thick frames. I may change to the raised version as I don't like how the lowered one looks but there is some stress crazing in the raised part. The other thing I did was change from twin magazine fed Vickers to twin belt fed Brownings as most of the photos I've seen have this arrangement. A little bit of scratch building around some spare guns I had knocking about and it looks much better: Another disappointment was the way the aerial mast is designed to stick to the fuselage without anything to locate it. In the end, I drilled a slight slot to give the glue a little more surface to bond too and that did the trick. And now she's done apart from the wing tip lights: The old and new! Just before the new Airfix kit was released, I built the old one with quite a bit of extra work to bring it up to date: The Beaufort is also now done except for the torpedo and ASV aerials. It looks like the turret clear part is from the same cad drawing as the Blenheim one, the only difference is the height. The Eduard mask sheet I had was for the Mk.I, not the Mk.Ia, but fortunately I had a spare Blenheim mask set that fitted perfectly. Time to progress the Mk.I Blenheim now. Cheers

Absolutely brilliant. A Victor on steroids! It's great to see imagination come to life

Gorgeous and the single colour has a 'less is more' effect.

Lovely build Adrian and there's something timeless and nostalgic about being displayed on the old plastic base!

Another one to add to the heart warming comments. As well as the great model, it's lovely to see the common interest between you and your father. As a father of two boys, the last of who has just left home, I can really appreciate what this means to him.

That's lovely, it can be hard to get silver to look right in scale, but you've nailed it.

Thanks Kev, hope you are good mate? Thanks Dave, I'm still learning to master the oils, they never seem to do what I want them to do! Every build has a cock up! When I came to remove the masks, I was struggling to peel them off the triangular quarter windows on each side of the cockpit. No matter how much I picked at them with the modelling knife they wouldn't budge. I then realised I hadn't applied them 🤔 How does one miss the fact that you've not applied two masks before spraying? I managed to remove the paint using Tamiya lacquer thinner on a cocktail stick, but the pick marks from the knife are there to stay. I've dosed the windows in Klear to hide what I can but the frames need touching up now. fortunately I can use the masks now whilst I do this! A few minor improvements over the standard kit here too. Firstly, the base for the DF loop is too short in the kit looking at photos so I scratch built a longer one with a thin brass tube through the centre to fix it to the fuselage. Also, I scratch built some replacement gear door guides out of brass tube that is much thinner than the plastic parts included in the kit. And how it's looking right now... Another semi-minor issue on the Blenheim is that somehow there are paint marks on the inside of the canopy in a few places. Hard to see here but the worst is on the tall window at the side of the cockpit (curved lighter colour near the bottom). I took care to seal the parts with PVA before spraying so god knows what happened. Cheers

The weathering is largely finished now so next steps are to get the undercarriage on. I'll leave the canopy masks on until I've fitted the upper aerials as they'll be sprayed in place. It's a mixture of oils, soft pastel and a silver watercolour pencil as usual. Quite pleased with the Blenheim landing light, I've added a thin frame from black solar trim as there appeared to be one. Getting there now! Cheers

Just been speaking to Roger about some Yagi antennae and must have missed this in RFI. Stunning build and a great inspiration to do some more Beaufort builds, especially the photo with the three together!