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Hi, Patrik, First, I'd like to add my voice to the admiring comments posted on your work on the Esoteric Dart. Absolutely splendid! I am now wishing I'd bought two of them, because the one I have is absolutely committed to a Greek Velos. I had thought the main problems would be adding an aft gunner's position and scratch-building the floats (no, don't think Shark floats would do, different era). But most of the things you've uncovered will apply to my Velos conversion. Thanks to Troy Smith for his tip on the woodworking scraper, I'll be ordering a couple of these right away. I foresee plenty of uses for these, not only vacuforms. Re the in-flight photo of 460 Flight - beautiful! Something new to me was the bit about the signal flags used to identify the individual a/c within the flight. This photo confirms it, except for '83', where you can't see the flag because of the angle. Thinks: at this time the aircrew and many of the groundcrew would have been RAF. I wonder if they would have known how to read signal flags? I suppose that after a certain time serving on a ship, they might have learned to. About your number '86', I wonder if the rudder horn is actually black. Look at '82', which has the same arrangement, but clearly in red. If we're talking section colours here, then '86' would have been blue section leader. And I see no point to a white fin. My vote would be for silver dope. Cheers, John

Julio, Beautiful job. Your first airplane model, maybe. But while you didn't mention what your usual subjects are, it's clear you're an experienced modeler, and I think experience in one area of our hobby gives you a leg up when you venture into another area. And you couldn't have chosen a better subject - I feel the Airfix P-51D is the best out there, rivalled only by the latest Hasegawa kit (they both appeared at about the same time). I've begun work on both, along with about 10 older P-51D/K kits, which will now be used simply to model interesting paint/markings schemes. Again, congratulations on your great 'Stang. No one would ever believe it's your first aircraft model. Cheers, John G.