Davidf66

Thanks for all the answers chaps. Figures have now been sorted, I ended up using a mix of PJ Productions US Navy pilots, F-16/F-18 pilots and the Aires Aerobonus figures with a couple of Hasegawa arms chucked into the mix. I don't kmow how to post pics on here but I have a few on facebooks U-S-A-F models group page. Thanks again, cheers, David.

Thanks, I think my mate has a fairly decent collection of Hasegawa and Monogram/Revell 1/48th kits. I'll see if he can help, otherwise it's a re-sculpting job.

Hi everyone, just started work on my first diorama, going to be reproducing the Inverted F-14 versus MiG-28 (F-5F) scene from the movie Topgun. I have the kits, got a few aftermarket bits but I need to sort out the crew figures. I can do some re-shaping if necessary but thought I'd ask here first. What I have so far is the Aires (Aerobonus) F-14 crew figure set, which is lovely by the way, for Maverick and goose and a couple of PJ Productions modern US Navy pilot figures. The issue I have is that for the Tomcat crew, I need to have them with their visors raised and oxygen masks on and for the MiG-28, I need them to have their visors lowered and oxygen masks on. Neither of the above mentioned sets provide this/these configurations. Does anyone out there know if there are any figures, even just separate heads, available either in kits or as aftermarket items that would save me the hassle of re-sculpting the resin figures? Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks in advance, best regards, David. As an aside, I have to say that the AFV Club F-5F is possibly one of the best fitting kits I've ever made. I have pretty much completed assembly of the main wings/fuselage section and, so far, not a drop of filler has been used. The Hobbyboss F-14 is almost as good but takes a bit of work to fit the U/C bay doors in the closed position, and the intakes are going to require a couple of filling and polishing sessions to get them to look seamless....

I agree with the above comments, The Pro-Modeller kit is the better of the the two, Revell (USA) also released it as an F-84E with the earlier unframed canopy.

Hi Leptiprince, if you have no luck, feel free to pm me. I might be able to order them for you since I work in a model/hobby store in the UK that stocks Airfix kits. Good luck, best regards, David.

Very nice! Think I might have to direct some of the newbie model makers that come into the shop I work at to this video. I think it would help them a lot, well done!

Stunning! Seeing the results you achieved with this kit has got me all fired up to see if I can find a 1/48th one somewhere. I built the Italeri version for a client many moons ago, it was nice, but yours is awesome! Well done!

I'm making the 1/24th GR.3 for a client at the moment, while doing some research into the kit, I found a very comprehensive build which used elements of the Flightpath and Heritage sets. I wish I could remember where it was as the guy making the model gave a very in depth look at the pros and cons of the available updates. I do remember that he said that both the Heritage and Flightpath cockpit sets had good and bad points, hence using elements of both, I believe a certain amount of scratch-building was also required. I'm making my clients model strictly OOB, with the pilot figure in the cockpit to help hide the lack of detail, as the extra cost involved in adding all the upgrades, cockpit, wheels, U/C bays, nozzles, etc, put it beyond his budget. It actually goes together fairly well but definitely needs careful test fitting and parts preparation.

By the way, if you haven't had a crack at the Airfix Vampire, I can recommend it most highly. I'm not known for my fast-paced builds but I quite literally had this built and ready for priming in one day. I used the very smallest smear of filler around the port underside wingroot, the rest of it needed nothing more than standard parts prepping and test fitting techniques. Now if only they'd scale it up to 1/48th or, even better, 1/24th! (I'd actually really like it in 1/32nd but Airfix don't do 1/32nd aircraft kits!)

Many thanks Wez, Dambuster, Deanflyer, Yep, looks like I was getting confused with the markings it wore as part of the Vintage Pair and the markings it wore when in service with 79 Sqn. Thanks so much for all the help/info. I'm off to see if I can find a suitable decal sheet. Thanks again, best regards, David.

Hi all, I'm currently building the 1/72nd scale Airfix Vampire T11 in the markings of XH304 I've got the model pretty much completed except for the Sqn emblem on the nose. the information I have points to it being in the markings of 79 Sqn, however, I cannot find a decal sheet with this emblem on it. Unfortunately I cannot post pics at the moment but it appears to be a white circle with an arrowhead on each side, coloured black and dark green with a pale blue strip dividing the colours vertically. On the white circle, there appears to be a Flamingo. Apparently this is the markings it wore when flying with The Vintage Pair and, so I've been told, there was a decal sheet for the Vampire and Meteor of the Vintage Pair released many moons ago. I have had absolutely no luck in finding these decals. Does anyone on here have any information regarding these decals? Or, even better; does anyone have the markings I'm looking for going spare? I don't need roundels, codes, etc, I've sorted those using Xtradecal sheets, but I do need the nose emblems to finish the model off. Worst case scenario is that I end up hand painting them onto decal film but I thought I'd ask here first, Thanks in advance for any help or information provided, all the best, David.

The Monogram B-26 is a nice kit, I made one years ago, didn't do anything special or add any aftermarket bits to it but I did rescribe the panel lines. I remember it being a fairly easy build as long as everything was test fitted. I believe it was also released by Revell a few years back. If you can still find them, Meteor Productions did a couple of sets of decals in their 'Pick Your Nose Art' series and I believe there may have been some done by Superscale or Xtradecal. Monogram also released the kit in a limited edition which actually had a bag of resin updates and some very nice decal options but this is super hard to find nowadays. The 1/32nd model that was mentioned was supposed to have been produced by Wingscale but I believe that there were some problems between the owner of Wingscale and the Chinese company that was going to be tooling the moulds and producing the kits, I'm fairly certain that their first kit, which was going to be a B-25 Mitchell, was later released by Hong Kong Models. Either way, I think we're long overdue a decent, modern tooling of the B-26 in both 1/48th and 1/32nd.

I made the Academy F-18D a few years ago, it's a lovely kit although you might want to look into some A.M seats for it, depending on the A/C you're making. Apparently, the seats included in the kit aren't relevant to any of the decal options provided by Academy. As Dad 203 mentioned, you would be doing yourself a favour by getting the G-Factor landing gear. The intakes are the only area of the kit that I had any issues with, they take a fair amount of sanding and filing to get them looking right, if possible try to get hold of the Rhino Productions seamless, resin intakes. The F-18 D was never a dedicated 'Wild Weasel' Aircraft but there are plenty of pics of them toting HARM's. As for the Trumpeter F-18E, it's horrible! I made one on commission a while back and was truly disappointed with it. The intake trunking assembly is awful, I ended up having to use kitchen roll superglued to the outer seams to get any strength in them and then had to spend hours sanding and filling to get a seamless look to them. It lacks detail for such a large kit and just feels very 'clunky' during assembly. Having said all that, it looked OK when it was finished but it wasn't a 'fun' build whereas the Academy kit was a joy, even with the intake issues. Hope this helps, D.

No worries, glad to hear yours is on the way. treat yourself to some turned brass M.G barrels for it as the ones in the kit are a little lacklustre, especially if you're doing a strafer. Also, check out AMS resin, he does a great set of propellor blades and prop governor upgrades. Personally, I'd have one of each version, the B-25 is one of those aircraft that 'does it' for me, but funds just wont allow it at the moment, ah well, maybe one day......

This subject has also been discussed on LSP. Gary at G&T resins was looking into it but, unfortunately, came to the same conclusion that Mel at S&M did; basically it would involve so much work that the conversion would cost way more than the actual donor kit, (about $250 if I remember correctly) and, based on the amount of sets that might be sold, it just wasn't a viable option . I was getting all excited about a 1/32nd British Phantom but it does look as if it might never happen unless someone just goes ahead and produces a full injection moulded kit. I can't see Tamiya, Revell, etc going for it but Trumpeter might, the only question then is how much would it cost and would it be up to the same standard as their TBM/TBF Avengers (YAY!) or to the same lack of standard as their E.E Lightning (Boo!) I'll just keep my fingers crossed that someone decides to take it on, would love to do an F4-K loaded with SNEB pods.....

I think there was a strafer version that included the glass nose fuselage, I believe it was a limited run/special edition with the fuselage halves moulded in clear plastic (I think it was called the 'B-25J Crystal Clear' edition). I saw one on E-Bay a while ago, seems to be a bit more expensive than the standard kit but it is still available whereas the original glass nosed kit is out of production. I don't know if this version of the B-25 kit was ever imported into the UK though. Sorry this a bit vague, hope you get hold of one as it's a beautiful kit, I recently swapped my Trumpy Su-27 for one of the glass nose B-25s. The only downside to the kit is the decals, they're a bit pants to be honest , no stencil/data detail at all and I'm not too sure about the colours they used but you can always get some of the Kitsworld decals for it.

I'm making a 1/48th TSR-2 for one of my clients. I believe he's supplied me with the underwing and belly tanks, as well as a whole load of other resin bits. I can't use all of them so, if you like, I could sort out what he wants fitted and ask him if he'd be willing to part with the spares. Might take a few days to find out what's not going to be required but I can PM you when I know. If you're interested, just let me know, cheers, David.

I've just finished making one of these Airfix AV-8A kits, couldn't resist the colourful stars'n'bars! Anyway, it went together beautifully, just needed a bit of fettling around the intakes to get them to fit nicely. However, for anyone else thinking of making the box art version of this kit, please ignore the Airfix instruction regarding the arials behind the cockpit, this A/C had both arials fitted and they were painted white. I nearly missed this detail but just before I broke out the filler and sanding sticks, I found a photo of this actual A/C in the Detail and Scale book and it's definitely got twin arials. Judging from the pics in the D&S book looks like a lot of the AV-8A's had this twin arial fit. Also, I'm fairly certain that the 5 Inch rockets in the pods included with the kit would have had olive drab noses with just the very tip in silver, not overall silver as noted in the instructions. Anyway, apart from that, it's a lovely kit, I even fitted the IFR probe to mine. Right, now back to that 1/48th Hurricane/Spitfire double build...........

I used the Barracuda cockpit updates, wheels, cockpit door and seat on mine. I've no idea how well the Aires 'pit will fit but, to be honest, I'd just go with the Barracuda upgrades. You could alao use the Master, turned brass M.G barrels if you want a little extra finesse.

is it a Mk.I or a Mk.II bathroom? Just remember that there were significant differences between the two....... Yeah, OK, think it's time for my meds !

Lots of very interesting and useful information in this thread, I've built the new Airfix Hurricane kit and loved it, yes, the wheels are not the correct type and the trailing edges were just a little too thick but it goes together beautifully. Not a drop of filler was used anywhere, the build sequence and instructions were excellent and, when finished, it looked 'right'. The only extra work I did during the build was to sand down the trailing edges, get rid of the locating pins and make a seat harness from tape. On reflection, given that I made it closed up, I copuld probably have painted the harness directly onto the seat. Losing the locating pins on the wings sorted out the slight mis-match at the wingtips and the dihedral looks just fine. My own preference is for 1/32nd scale aircraft, I'm currently prepping my Tamiya 'Birdcage' Corsair for paint and doing battle with a Trumpeter F-18E Super Hornet. (A truly horrible kit! Although that's just my opinion) But these new 1/72nd Airfix kits are lovely, OOB. projects to keep up the modelling momentum. So far I've finished the Hurricane, Harrier GR.1, GR.3, Vampire T.11 and the Typhoon. I'm halway through painting the E.E Lightning and have just started the folland Gnat. I've had a blast making them and I'd recommend them to anyone. My previous comments regarding fit and filler apply to all of these kits. I just really, really wish they'd consider reproducing these kits in 1/32nd scale. Buy 'em, build 'em, enjoy 'em. Just my 2 pence worth.

That's beautiful! I want one. Kudos on a fantastic build.

I'd make the Spitfire 1st if I was you. I made the Mk.IX a while ago and have got the P-51D in the To-do pile.

Hi all, thanks for all the info posted here. I'm halfway through an OOB of the RN version and have just started on the AH-7, they're both, hopefully, going into the Coalhouse Fort Museum. It's probably old news by now but Jamie Haggo built the RN version for SAM and mentioned that if building this A/C, you should use the armoured pilots seat, lucky I read that before closing up the fuselage! I also found a way of representing the 'disco-light' under the fuselage. Basicly, I took some iridescent film that I found in the hobby store where I work and wrapped it a couple of times around a piece of plastic rod which was cut to length and inserted into part 8E. Before doing this I painted the rod gloss black as the film works best with a black background and, before the paint had dried, I stuck the film to the tacky surface and wrapped it around the rod. You have to do this as no glue seems to work on the film but I did manage to seal it down with a coat of Future. I'm looking forward to seeing the Revell 1/32nd Lynx, just hope they manage to get the same level of detail on the surface of theirs as Airfix have managed. I'm off to do a bit more, TTFN, David.

Both the FSM article and the description in the link above give you pretty much everything you need to know about how to achieve the 'stressed skin' effect. It's not actually that hard to do but it does require a huge amount of patience, excellent references and a fair amount of practice. I tried it on a few scrap kit parts, not too sure if I'm ready to try it for real yet. The other thing to think about is that on an aircraft with a matt camouflage finish, the effect isn't all that noticeable, however, high gloss or NMF finishes are a different story. I may well have a go at replicating the effect on my Revell Hawk, if/when I eventually make it.