bryanm

Magnificent - love the colour scheme and the beaching trolley!

Lovely - a real blast from the past! It always was a good kit and yours is just right. Interesting re the decals - I always thought FROG decals were some of the best. Was there a tie-in with Modeldecal or is my memory playing tricks?

Very nice - just look at it from either the side or the top! Love the silver - what paint did you use?

Beautiful, and love the markings.

Thanks for the comments and 'likes'. Interesting re the rear of the canopy and the lack of a frame - I should have had a closer look at some photos! Although there's what seems to be a frame, it's never painted. Some nice photos now on the Cold War page suggesting it's possibly a pressure seal - thanks for posting.

It's a long time since I started a model on the day that I bought it (or in this case, the day that it arrived) but so it was with the Hunter. It was a pleasure to build, needed no filler at all and is from the box. Apart from the 'back to the fifties' nosewheel I can't think of any real improvements. I'm happy with the detail in the cockpit, I don't like my planes to be suffering from hydraulic failure so like the flaps tucked away, and although a gun pack might have been a 'nice to have' I probably wouldn't have used it. I wanted a standard day fighter scheme so went for Xtradecal's 74 Squadrom markings. It's brushed with Humbrol paint. Thanks for looking!

A picture of elegance!

Amazing to see a Merlin kit finished at all, let alone with such a beautiful result!

Great model, and to see a Mach 2 kit finished so well - and an unusual subject.

Very nice - brings back happy memories of holidays on the Scillies when I was young and less happy ones of being trussed up in a survival suit heading out to North Sea rigs when a bit older!

Thanks for all the comments and 'Likes', and for the tip re black. Yes, mine is very black - Humbrol's best! If anyone else is doing AA5R apart from Crisp (and pleased to make a very minor tribute to your Dad!), going back to the photo, it looks like the fitting (the thermometer bulb?) on the port bow wasn't fitted to these examples. Perhaps on AA4T there's a scab where it was? With a wet decal in hand the pragmatic solution was to overlap the port 'AA5R' marking over the spray deflector, but to do it properly, leave off the fitting and put the decal further forward.

Wonderful to see an ancient kit done so beautifully.

Very smart - one of my favourite display aircraft.

New Year Resolution complied with - my Walrus finished at last, not quite before the Hunter arrived but not long after. I got stuck last year on a couple of issues. The first was the finish - I started to get debris in the paint. I finally tracked that down to poor brush hygiene with Xtracolor paint. There was a quantity of paint still in the brush which remobilised every time I used it, giving 'hairs' of paint. I've since given it a really good clean and it's much better now although still not perfect. The other was the rigging. In 55+ years of modelling I've never rigged a biplane before and I finally decided on 8 gauge guitar wire following a tip on this forum. It's not perfect but shouldn't go slack with time. Ditto the finish - it is what it is and doesn't look too bad under a coat or three of matt varnish. It's from the box apart from Eduard harnesses, the rudder mast (curiously omitted by Airfix), and the window spray deflectors, fashioned from the trailing edges of the unused flap parts, The paints are brushed Xtracolor and the decals from Xtradecal. I wanted a scheme with a clean demarcation between the upper and lower hull colours and as an FAA scheme, AA5R was the obvious choice. Thanks to ex-FAAWAFU for his hugely helpful WIP thread. The photo of AA5R shows light bomb carriers so I used the kit practice bombs and also fitted the other bomb racks. The photo also shows the bracing wires clearly but no antenna from the rudder to the top wing aerials so I left that off. It's a brilliant kit and the struts are more-or-less self aligning - congrats to the new Airfix. Thanks for looking!

Brilliant - classic Monogram comes up trumps again (with a lot of work and inspiration!)!