Alex Gordon

Oddly enough Bank Managers don't like being told that if it wasn't for the customer they'd have no job.

Hello again Chums,a little progress to show. Adrian,thanks old chum.I'll never be a vet but I'm starting to understand that there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. Troy,thanks old fruit.I'm not going with the shoes idea although it is worth doing.By the time there's some mud involved it won't really show and it means reshaping the hooves which I don't want to do this far in.Hopefully some of the links in amongst my ramblings will be worth looking at when you crack into your builds. Dromia,I'm not one for aftermarket if I can avoid it.I'm a tightwad at heart and too impatient to wait for the postie. Grey Beema,thanks old bean.You're not late at all,if some poor unsuspecting soul uses this thread as a reference for their build any gen is useful and welcome.When I was digging around for stuff before I started this one I didn't find a build thread anywhere and all the gen I found was distributed all over t'interweb and some was not easily discovered.The Wikipedia article on the sword describes modifications which I've incorporated into this one. Redstaff,cheers old lad.Give it a go,I look forward to seeing what you do.Don't doubt your abilities,you're better at it than you let yourself think . Ravnos,now you come to mention it that's maybe not a bad idea but you'd still have to make it fit together convincingly . I've gone as far as the end of my mojo with the feather ruse and I've started painting the leatherwork. You wouldn't believe the amount of paintwork it's taken to get to here and all you can see that's different is the wince inducing piece of copper wire which should stop our man from being knocked off his perch with any ease. The jobs remaining include more touching in of paint,festooning everything with straps,positioning all the twiddly bits and final assembly without breaking said twiddly bits off. More soon Chums,thanks for looking in.

No worries old fruit,for a small museum it is very powerful.

627 took up residence at Woodhall Spa in April 1944,their website here will give you all sorts of gen.If you haven't had a chance to look round the museum in their accommodation at Tattershall Thorpe I will highly recommend a visit.

I'm at Woodhall,I know that the Hole In The Wall Gang got here first but someone had to show folks where to look .

Yet another revised photo with bits of the recce image added

I had to do it on my Pe2 build earlier this year,it worked very well.

A couple of coats of Klear will do the job.If you are crafty and just cover each image rather than the whole sheet you'll make life easier.If you also use Klear as your setting solution and don't rush it life will be sweet and all will be well. If feeling brave a hot water dipped lump of bog roll will assist bedding the decals into the panel line detail.

Majestic work as always old fruit .

Let's look at what's there.We have one section of a 40+ metre wide open span heavy cast concrete structure. It looks like it was shuttered and cast in position.The sag we can see in the Historical Fighters photo is either due to the demolition attempt or the shuttering moved during casting. The width was derived from the Measure Distance option on Google Maps.40 metres would be enough to take a Heinkel 177 which was introduced into service in 1942. If the sag in the top beam was a product of defective workmanship it would have been demolished (and no doubt somebody shot) if there was time or it was left to stand while someone worked out what to do with it. Why it was so heavy a structure is a mystery,was concrete cheaper and more readily available than steel.The Deisel hangar on site was a prefabricated structure cast off site,positioned by crane and clad with other materials. I'm going to guess that it was going to be a hangar built to take any of the Luftwaffe inventory.

I found this photo here https://historicalfighters.com/hangar-1/

G'day again Chums,a little more to show.Real life has taken up far more time than I'd have liked but we're here now so here we go. Chris,thanks old chum. Jason,thanks old fruit.I hope your build goes easy.Never be afraid of trying something,it's knowing what you want it to look like and how you're gong to go about it.Most of what you've seen here is a series of lucky bodges made to look tidyish. Some gloss white paint was sprayed on to the inaccessible bits of the intakes.Once dry they were positioned for least amount of fettling and glued.I've seen worse. The biggest chunk of Milliput I have used in a long time was prepared and liberally distributed everywhere needed. Some smoothing off with a flat edge and water later has left us about there. Thanks all for looking in,more soon.

G'day again Chums,some more to show. Avereda,thanks old fruit.These kits are a mix of simple and challenging all at the same time,I'm sure you'll enjoy rattling a few of them. Adrian,thanks old chum.I'm glad it looks like the home straight from your end,from here there seems to be ever more to be done . Stix,thanks old bean.Short answer yes.For the long answer read on. Real life has been in the way this last few days but there's been some progress this weekend.I can tell you that feathers are not easy to work with and PVA glue makes life simpler and is more forgiving than superglue.With that bit done I turned to the hooves. Photo from https://practicalhorsemanmag.com/ . I hollowed out the centres of the soles of the hooves using a burr on the Dremelesque. I then stretched some runner. The tapered bits were flattened on one side and the thin end rounded off.These were glued into place. Once set there was a spot of levelling off and rounding off and then some paint was chucked at them. These should look something like under some added crud.More soon Chums,thanks for looking in.

Revised photo which makes more sense. Edit to add this photo from mil-airfields.de taken in 1974.

A quick and dirty in Paint has given us this.It's a bit rough and ready and approximate but the green rectangle in the top left corner is the location of the structure. Deep maintenance hanger?

Found it here . Edit-It seems to be a fair way from the airfield itself.It is also a big single open span,some 40 or so metres.

Ah yes,I see.There are clearly far too few there to establish a breeding colony.

I don't think acetone will do the plastic any favours.Mr Muscle oven cleaner will strip off the paint and the future with no ill effects to the plastic.

@Troy Smith oddly enough we discussed this one in my Seafire 47 thread back in 2014 and,as was usual back then,Edgar had the answer https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234934176-spitfire-mk-1-early-landing-gear-bay-colours/ Good work so far Adrian,your usual standard of building will make this one superb.

That looks superb old fruit .It would be a good experiment to see some closer photos in natural light with a real background,with a bit of care it would be difficult to distinguish between yours and the real thing.

Humbrol 117 for the green,67 dark grey,119 Light Earth and 65 blue.Looks like she's going together well .

Looking forward to this one old chum,it's odd enough to engage my attention and brings to light a lesser known unit.

I've been meaning to make a centre finder There is this thread Hope this helps.

Hello again Chums,a little more to show. Chris,thanks old fruit.Every build I start ends up being a festival of unnecessary complications,I seem to have lost the ability to work out of the box and unadulterated but that is the joy of decent reference material and can it be lived with.If I couldn't take a joke I shouldn't have joined . The wings have been glued together. The Milliput job sort of worked. The snag was that the Milliput didn't stick to the plastic too well so I re-did it but using another of my little ruses this time.Before I put the Milliput on the intakes I ran a bead of superglue on the bits I wanted the Milliput to stick to.This has a limited immediate effect but comes into its own when the Milliput has set and is solid. With that having worked (I don't know why I didn't do it in the first place) I started prepping for paint.There is no danger of painting behind the splitter plates once they are fitted so they will be painted beforehand.Maskol was run on to the intake contact faces and pushed on to the fuselage.That's that bit of masking done. The wing leading edges in the kit are rounded.I tried to take piccies but they weren't good enough so you'll have to take my word for it.Photography shows that they shouldn't be so there has been some scraping and file wielding and I'll try to take a decent piccie next time. More soon Chums,thanks for looking in.

There's something a little odd about that photo I had a quick play in Paint which made it look a bit less off. Good work on the Hurricane by the way .