gazza l

Very nice indeed, great finish on the painting. gazza I

Thanks Roland glad you like them. I do have a few spare jet pipes sets and quite a few searchlight reflectors that just need heat treating and polishing. Happy days! It was great living next to Wyton and indeed Alconbury back then being an aircraft enthusiast, I just wish I had had a decent camera.

Many thanks. So I presume you were based at RAF Wyton whilst on the R1's? I lived in St Ives in the late 80's and was quite often woken up by the sound of a Nimrod taking off!

Thanks for the info Jabba, nice to have a Nimrod expert on board, I may be picking your brains again in the future! Cheers, Gary

Evening everyone. This week I've mainly been sanding and a little bit of assembling. I've fixed a couple of stainless nuts to the inside of the fuselage, these will eventually be the fixing points for the display stand. The APU was boxed in with some plasticard, for some reason Airfix provide a clear part for this aperture. View from the outside. I'm sure it's the APU vent and not a window, please correct me if I'm wrong. The fuselage half's were then glued together with an added piece of shim to widen the cockpit to suit the replacement resin canopy. Any gaps were filled with superglue and talc including the gap above the repositioned light. Again with multiple applications of superglue and talc, I thickened the intakes so they can be reshaped to a more accurate appearance. The hatched area needs to be removed to reposition the landing lights inboard. After a couple of evenings fettling/ filling and re-fettling I'm quite pleased with the shape of the intakes... thicker and more of a squarish shape. That's all for this week, I suspect there will be more sanding to come over the next week. Thanks for looking Gary.

That's some extremely impressive modeling, incredible attention to detail. gazza l

Thanks Lord Riot. I turned them myself, (my day job being a CNC machinist helps). They measure 9mm OD with a 1mm wall thickness which tapers down to about 0.25mm at the end. Cheers, Gary.

Hi everyone. Not a great deal done this week just a few minor corrections starting with the landing light on the nose which is too high. So out with the needle files to take it down to the cabin floor level. I used Ammo's Ultra Glue for the first time on this and I was quite impressed, seems to be a stronger bond than PVA and is also thicker but still waters down nicely. I'm hoping this will be a decent replacement for superglue of which I have an allergic reaction to. Added a piece of silver foil to the rear of the light to make it reflective. The intakes are in without the engine faces so I can give the a good old rub with wet & dry and blend the joints. I also added a cut out on the lower and upper wings so the engine fan disc can be fitted at a later stage. The inlet between the two intakes was hollowed out and reshaped as this is pretty poor on the kit. Upper wing dry fitted, more pleasing of a heart shape. A pair of replacement grilles made out of an old cafetiere filter. These will be fitted behind the plastic that I chopped out and new splitters made out of some plastic card strips will be added in the apertures. A set of turned stainless steel jet pipes to replace the kit offerings, just need a bit of heat treating to give them a used look. That's better, definitely had some jet efflux out of them now! Plastic removed and thinned to accommodate the new jet pipes, these can now be added in the final assembly once they have been blanked off and painted black inside. Dry fitted the upper wing to check for fit. Also dry fitted the wing mounted searchlight again turned from stainless steel and highly polished. Thanks for looking. Gary

Nicely done, I do like a Hurricane in the desert scheme. gazza l

Thanks BerndM Although the kit cockpit is not too bad the Aires is a different level and as the cockpit is so prominent on a Harrier it's well worth the outlay. Thanks everyone for taking the time to comment. gazza l

Thanks k5054nz Yes I agree, not the most inspiring artwork is it. Thanks kev67. I wish I had bought a few more kits at that price.

Hi all 0 Another Harrier from me, this time the Hobby 2000's re-box of the old Hasegawa kit. Not a bad kit but I had real problem joining on the nose section. Nothing would join together or line up properly, I had to do some serious surgery and then add a plastic shim to get the alignment correct... probably just me being a muppet! I did add a Aires cockpit which unusually fitted quite easily with minimum wall thinning. Painted in MRP lacquer paints and finished with VMS satin varnish. Thanks for looking Gary

Thanks Paulaero. I did exactly that on my first build, it also worked quite well on the old Vulcan kit intakes as well. You can give them a good old rub without the danger of punching the compressor discs into the wings, never to be seen again. Cheers, Gary

Regarding the crew ACM Wigston wasn't around back in them days.😉 Cheers, Gary

Thanks Chris. Model Alliance part IV do XV250 with a sharkmouth, if you can source a sheet from somewhere. Gary

Hi everyone. It's been quite a few years since I have done a WIP so I thought I would start the year by doing one of a kit that I have wanted to revisit for some time. I built a 120 Squadron bird in the hemp scheme when the kit was first released way back in 2008 (can it really be that far back?) but have always wanted to do a early scheme in white/ LAG, she will be displayed in flight mounted on a wooden base and possibly LED's So without further ado this is the kit which has been insulating my loft for a number of years now, I still can't believe I only paid £10 for it at a Bramton model show! These are the enhancements that I will add, I haven't decided on an airframe yet but she will be white and grey. Because it will be in flight she will need a crew, the Airfix crew (top) look like children with helmets and oxygen masks that you wouldn't see on a Nimrod flight deck. Luckily I didn't use the crew in a Zvezda Hercules build a couple of years ago so they will be perfect, so much better. So here are the adult crew members dry fitted into the fuselage. I added a panel for the flight engineer made out of plasicard and just added a few spare decals from a Tornado cockpit, not too worried about accuracy in here because not much will be seen once the canopy is fitted. And finally for today a collection of bit that I have worked on over the week. Thanks for looking.

You can't beat a Chippie in RAF training colours. Beautiful work and you have overcome the droopy wing problem. gazza l

Very nice, looks stunning in that scheme. gazza l

Beautiful work, it looks stunning in the daylight. gazza l

Very nice work, painted and weathered to perfection. gazza l

All very nicely done but the Chipmunk looks stunning. gazza l

Thanks for the info Rich, I'll pay extra attention when I build the T2/T4 kit and have a good look at the link you provided. Regards, gazza l

Excellent work on all of them. I particularly like the Flanker. gazza l

A nice collection of unusual types, some of which I've never heard of. gazza l

Thanks very much. No I didn't notice the pylons were wrong...well spotted. I've chucked the remaining sprues now so I'm not sure if the correct ones were even present but looking at the instructions they do show the double angled pylons in both the assembly instructions and the painting guide. Kinetic aren't known for the best instruction in the world. 🙄 Nice photo by the way. Is that a pair of wind vanes I can see on the nose? Thanks very much everyone for your kind comments. gazza l