AntPhillips

Me and the better half watched the first 2 episodes after which the Mrs decided she had seen enough and it was only after I realised that there were only 3 episodes that we decided we might as well watch the 3rd one, well, thats an hour of our life that we'll never get back, I think you can definitely say that the BBC literally lost the plot with this one The only upside being it made me want to download Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds to my Spotify account so that I could listen to it again in the car on my commute, altogether a much better version.

Glad you're on the mend Dan and look after yourself fella

To be fair to Trumpeter they have revisited and retooled aspects of this kit a couple of times, after the initial release they corrected some inaccuracies regarding the position of a couple of fuel filler caps and also some dimensional inaccuracies around the front mudguards, I think they also improved the fit of the turret bins too. The original kit was reissued with the retooled parts but there is no indication on the boxes to say so, and there are still original issue kits in circulation, the Airfix release supposedly had the revised parts too, but I picked up one from eBay last year that seems to have the original unaltered parts, of course being secondhand that could be down to the seller mixing and matching kits and boxes. The Kosovo and Op Telic releases had the retooled parts from the outset. The later Enhanced Armour kit has substantial changes to the moulds including a simpler all new turret without seperate bins, essentially only the hull and part of the running gear are common to the earlier kits, it is overall a much better kit to build.

Its a straight rebox of the Academy kit with new decals, there are a few reviews etc on the web, here's a link to the Scalemates page: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/academy-1393-m10--107515

The Anatomy of the Ship book on HMS Victorious has a couple of pages dedicated to a set of line drawings for Victorious' sea boats, if any one would like a scanned copy I'm sure I can arrange it.

I'm old enough to remember this kit when it was first released by Academy, and seem to recall comments at the time concerning the interior not being appropriate for a British Honey, yet another case of a manufacturer not doing their research fully and/or not fully understanding the differences between variants.

If you look at the instructions for the 2010 reissue of the Honey kit it shows the hole and the panel insert: https://www.scalemates.com/products/img/5/9/6/224596-27-instructions.pdf I would think it probably represents an escape hatch. If you cannot thin the kit part down sufficiently I'd just cut a new one from plasticard using the kit part as a template and fit it flush.

As it happens, I've just bought another Dragon Vc kit, I've yet to try any of the Tasca/Asuka kits as they are generally out of my price bracket, hopefully this one will be priced as competetively as the Easy Eight kit.

Spotted this one on Fcebook this morning, for December release apparently:

I have the Anatomy of the Ship volume for Victorious, it includes many detail drawings the photos below show the aft starboard side gun mounting. It would seem there was a simple single rail around the gun mounts. Theres also a photo of forward guns showing the simple rail. Hope these help.

I'm working on the Crocodile version of this kit at the moment, its at pretty much a similar stage as your's, with the obvious exception of mine having the armoured trailer too. It is a lovely straight forward build, although apparently it does represent a post-WW2 tank rather than a late war one. The Osprey Modelling the Churchill tank does include a list of some of the very simple mods required to backdate it, I'll post a copy later when I get home.

My membership expired in September 2018, just as they decided they weren't accepting renewals, I too have a load of Flying Hours just waiting for the right kit to come along to liquidate them, hopefully it'll be good news in the new year then.

The Heller 1/72 sherman kit actually includes several variations of glacis plate that illustrate the differences very well, see the 2nd picture in the link below: https://www.172shermans.com/kitreviews/Heller/SBrezinski_M4A2_prev.htm Hope this helps. Ant

Here's a cross reference list US to British: M4 - Sherman I (small hatch only, with exception of 105 mm Howitzer version that had large hatch hulls) M4 Hybrid - Sherman I hybrid M4A1 - Sherman II (initially only small hatches, but later large hatch hulls with 76 mm gun were issued particularly in Italian campaign) M4A2 - Sherman III (small hatch only, the large hatch versions were never issued to British units) M4A3 - Sherman IV (not used by British except for some trials) M4A4 - Sherman V The British system also includes a suffix that denotes the gun type: No suffix - 75 mm gun Suffix A - 76 mm gun Suffix B - 105 mm howitzer Suffix C - 17 pdr gun (Firefly) The Eduard kit is a small hatch M4A1 without direct vision slots, these were used in Normandy, mostly by 4th Armoured Brigade. The M4A1 was used extensively by Commonwealth forces in N Africa and Italy but photographs show they had the direct vision slot in the front of the drivers and machine gunners hoods. Hope this helps.

On the subject of the Boeing Clipper, take a look at this site, an epic story of courage and determination: https://medium.com/s/story/the-long-way-round-the-plane-that-accidentally-circumnavigated-the-world-c04ca734c6bb