Nik W

This really is absolutely super! The level of detail you've added into that back end and the engine itself is absolutely staggering! I do have one question for you though, how do you make sure that all the internal ribbing and other gubbins you've added stays straight and all lined up? I'm attempting something similar myself at the moment, but one thing that keeps upsetting me is my inability to get it all to look straight - something you seem to have cracked! Keep it up though! This is great! regards, Nik

This really is looking impressive as hell! I've got one of these in the stash, I think I've had it for around 10-12 years, but the fuselage is warped as hell. However seeing this really makes me want to have a crack at mine now! Regards, Nik

Giorgio, That really would be awesome if you don't mind doing so! Even if it isn't 100% accurate, the combination of that plus some decent reference images should certainly be a big help! Shall I send you a PM with my email for you to pass them on to? Cheers mate! Regards, Nik

Hi Bjarne, As long as you don't mind I would absolutely love a scan or a picture of the Stoppel decal sheet! That really would be great of you buddy, thanks a lot! I'm away for a couple of days (I'm writing this on my blackberry - modern technology eh?! ) but once I get back I can send a PM in your direction with my email to send the scan/picture to if that's what you'd like? Let me know buddy! Thanks once again! Regards, Nik

Bjarne, Absolutely super set of pics there! Thanks for sharing those, like you suggested they'll provide some brilliant inspiration for the project! Thanks for that build article from ARC as well by the way, might just pick up a few tips on how to achieve the finish I'm after - that one really is a cracker! Thanks mate! Good point indeed Craig! One which I must admit I really hadn't thought of! Hopefully some kind soul will be able to help out on that one too!

Thanks indeed for the colour reference here, that's two of you kind people both suggested the same shade, so that confirms it enough for me! Painting the faded shades will indeed be a bit of a challenge, not to worry about suggesting a shade, I was planning to use this as a test of my ability to alter the shade of a particular colour by tinting it with white and various other greens. Hopefully should turn out quite well, I've got plenty of reference material in my Dad's slide collection as Danish Starfighters in this scheme were fairly common visitors at Leuchars airshows over the years. Regards, Nik

Niels, many many thanks for the help! I do appreciate it Regards, Nik

Evening all, Couple of quick questions, next in line for the build pile are a pair of Danish Starfighters, a single seater and a two-seater (both from Hasegawa). A scheme which I've seen many a time (only in pictures and my old man's slide collection) is the Overall Green scheme worn on Danish Starfighters from the 70's onwards, the scheme appeals because of the way the green paint faded and looked so shabby and tatty, and basically it will be a test of my modelling/airbrushing skills to get it looking right (also there's only so many Natural Metal finishes you can do before you start going a bit daft!). The problem is, does anyone know of any decal sheets available which cover Danish Starfighters in this scheme? As far as I've been able to find, the only decals which cover Danish Starfighters are from Model Alliance and these sadly are the earlier scheme of overall grey with the larger style roundels. Last question for today, does anyone who has built a Starfighter in this scheme have any tips as to the best colour of paint to use? I'm sure its probably on here somewhere, but I've not been able to find any kind of definitive reference as to what the shade actually was. Sorry if I'm asking questions that have already been asked many times folks, any help would be greatly appreciated though! Regards, Nik

That is an absolute cracker! Magic job on the Alley Cat conversion set, I'd initially planned to do mine straight out the box, and use the Alley Cat set to do another one later, but after seeing this I may have to re-think that plan! Regards, Nik

Afternoon all, After seeing some posts on here asking for progress, I decided it was about time I got off my rather lazy behind and got cracking on these two beasts again. Since the last update, the T.5 has seen some major progress, all the major assembly is now complete (wings, fin, tailplanes, cockpit canopy on and faired in, nose ring attached, missile pylons on...) no pictures of this phase though, I wanted to get through as much as a possibly could as quickly as I could and I couldn't really demonstrate anything on here with regards to gluing on the wings (hopefully at the roughly the correct anhedral) that many other hadn't already shown. Out came the grey primer which revealed several small touch ups needing to be done with some fine wet & dry, but nothing too serious. Then came several shades of Alclad onto various panels (aluminium, magnesium and duralminium) which were then masked off prior to the gloss black undercoat, so that the stainless steel alclad (a personal choice - I think airframe aluminium is just a touch too bright looking) sprayed over the top could show some subtle variation in the panel tones. As you can see from the pictures above, I decided to go back on my original plan to have the canopy open and choose to leave it closed (underneath all that masking tape). This is my first attempt at a vacuform replacement canopy, and while it went not too badly cutting it from it's backing, I wasn't confident enough in my ability to chop it in half and then detail the inside without ruining it. Sadly though when I was gluing it on, despite dipping it in Klear, the glue has crazed the canopy in parts, so looks like I may have to have a canopy cover draped over part of it, being pulled back by the groundcrew and another groundcrew stood on a ladder polishing the canopy to disguise the fogging (no pictures of this at the moment, but they'll follow in a later update). As this is to be the pink tailed Akrotiri Station Flight aircraft, it was going to need a pink tail fin (much to my girlfriend's delight!). Humbrol 200 was the closest shade I could find to the required pink, so I loaded this up into the airbrush and sprayed some onto the fin to create a bit of pre-shading. This was hideously bright (so hideous in fact I chose not to photograph it) so in my first ever attempt at post shading I loaded up the airbrush with some more pink and this time added some white into the mix to tone it down. This worked a treat and has given it a rather nice 'sun-bleached' look which in reality would probably be fairly appropriate for a Cyprus based aircraft. Apologies for the quality of the picture, I took it using my phone as I had a supreme attack of laziness and couldn't be bothered to walk all the way downstairs to grab the camera! Still it looks not bad I think! So after that debacle and masking off the various parts that needed masked, the whole aircraft got a good coat of Alclad gloss black primer in prep for the stainless steel. This went on rather well and only needed minimal polishing with micromesh to get it to a nice flat, even glossier surface. Out came the airbrush and the alclad again! I really do love using this stuff, it is so easy and provides some of the best natural metal finish results I've ever seen! So a super shiny finish for my T.5 now! Hopefully keep this one updated a little more regularly again as I seem to have managed to get the modelling bug back again! An update on the F.6 will be on the way shortly, these are both roughly at the same stage, although I'm now waiting on some decals arriving from Hannants for the stencil data for the T.5 but once they arrive it should be full steam ahead! Thanks for stopping by folks! Nik

Absolutely Phabulous! (Sorry terrible joke ) Two really good looking Phantoms there pal! Regards, Nik

Looking forward to seeing how this progresses! I've got one of these in my stash that keeps catching my eye.... just need to finish everything else first! Regards, Nik

Morning Unc²! Thanks for the kind words bud, nice to know somebody is paying attention to what I'm doing here! Yeah the shims were a bit of an odd one, you're right in saying they're roughly 2mm in width (just under I think), but as well as widening the front end of the fuselage to fit the cockpit tub in the addition of these actually resolved another issue with the resin. In order to fit the resin parts, it obviously requires some fairly sizeable surgery to the kit fuselage halves as well as grinding a section down inside the kit fuselage halves to accept the resin nose. I forgot to take a pic, but Bill Clark's T5 build shows what I mean, so if he's looking, thanks Bill! http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.p...mp;hl=lightning I couldn't get a pic to work, but if you look at post #3 the third pic from the bottom shows the area that needs ground down so that the fuselage halves will accept the resin replacements and sit flush with the kit parts. I'm not sure if it was something I did wrong, but when I had the two resin parts attached to the rear fuselage halves (as accurately as I could) they wouldn't meet at the bottom, so the shims did the job of plugging the gap as well as widening the fuselage to take the cockpit tub. As for the nose ring, it was all part of my cunning plan! If I hadn't had the issues with the bottom halves of the fuselage (and then as a result the top halves) meeting, the nose ring would've been far too big for the front end, so in adding all these shims it's actually given me a damn near perfect fit! Just lucky really I guess! Cheers bud, Nik

Evening folks! Fairly significant progress on the T.5 again today, although it didn't go without a fight! Decided to take the plunge and fit the cockpit and intake trunking, however this was where the first of my issues would arise. The cockpit tub is about 2-3mm too wide for the resin fuselage halves, and having thinned these down already I really didn't want to shave anything off the sides of the cockpit tub in case I got myself into a situation where the ejector seats wouldn't fit in. But all wasn't lost, as in those immortal words 'I had a cunning plan!' To try and get round this, I decided to add a couple of plasticard shims to the bottom halves of the fuselage to act as spacers. This worked fairly well, and allowed me to fit the cockpit tub in snugly without having to shave any more from the insides of the fuselage or the cockpit tub itself. However, as Newton said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction... In adding the plasticard shims to the bottom of the fuselage I widened the whole front end, which when I glued the bottom of the fuselage together (I glued it all in separate stages) the top of the fuselage didn't come close to meeting... Planning 1 - Nik 0 So more plasticard shims needed adding, this time to the top of the fuselage. Then of course once the top had been done, the front of the lower half of the fuselage now wouldn't meet between the rear edge of the intake ring and the front edge of the nose undercarriage bay... Planning 2 - Nik 0 So you guessed it, more plasticard shims and brute force this time! The moral of this story is definitely plan ahead. I don't actually think this was anything to do with the kit or the conversion parts, more my lack of skill/forethought, but it's a lesson learned I guess, and hopefully somebody else building a two seat Lightning will be able to learn from my mistakes! However, after all that battling and some fairly heavy duty filing and sanding (not a drop of filler used up to this stage though, so I must've done something right!), everything looked reasonably ok considering the cock-ups I made along the way. Next up was attaching the spine panel, in one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that sloppy marking out and cutting left me a bit of a gap between the rear of the resin replacement spine panel and the kit spine, so since I was having so much luck with plasticard shims, the spine got the same treatment and Hey Presto! Problem solved! As you can see, theres a bit of a difference in heights between the resin spine panel and the kit spine, so in order to get round this I slapped on a bit of Medium cyano glue, which I then sanded and filed until both sides matched. Next up was a coat of primer to pick up on any blemishes I hadn't noticed, and surprisingly there weren't an awful lot! Despite all my cock ups, I seem to have managed to rescue myself from going too badly wrong thanks to good old plasticard! Next on the agenda is scribing all the panels missing from the resin parts, and adding the appropriate rivet detail - and after looking at the plans, there is a lot to be done! Apologies for the picture heavy update guys, but hopefully my cock-ups here will help others building this avoid doing the same. Regards, Nik

Evening all! Another update today, this time a little more work done on the T5. After a recent visit to Bruntingthorpe and some incredible luck a situation arose where I managed to get access to Dave Thomas's Sea Vixen, Jet Provost, Victor cockpit and Lightning T5 cockpit, so camera to the ready I was able to get some smashing detail shots of the interiors of all of them. Armed with these shots I set about adding little bits and pieces to the cockpit so that I can finally satisfy my urge to make this as accurate as my modelling skills allow and get the fuselage closed up. The biggest difference I noticed between the CMK cockpit panel and the real thing was the lack of the fairly prominent radar scopes on either side of the cockpit, and the Mach bar at the centre of the panel. Compare the panel above to the real thing below, Since I plan to have the canopy open (to be fair even with it closed you'd be able to see these) I set about adding some scopes and their rubber covers. I realise they're probably a little oversized, but they look not too bad with a lick of paint The mach bar comes from the instrument dials sheet provided in the Flightpath set, which as beautifully detailed as it may be, is way out in terms of size to allow it to actually fit into the cockpit of a single seat Lightning without some hefty surgery to both the etched instrument panel and the kit itself, which is a real pity. I did try to add some of the enormous amount of switches you can see on the instrument panel, but my modelling skills combined with some rather chunky finger tips and the inability to manipulate tweezers and pieces of fuse wire that small very well sunk this plan fairly sharpish. If anyone has any tips for adding switches and the like I would appreciate it greatly! Next up was the area behind the seats. CMK have done a fairly good job of the rear cockpit bulkhead, but since I plan to have the canopy open, there are some fairly prominent 'bits and pieces' back there that will be noticeably absent. The rear bulkhead as it comes in the box... And the real deal... So armed with more plasticard, fuse wire and brass rod, I got busy making the area behind the seats look that little bit more busy... Not a massive amount of work done today, but at least I'm making progress with this again now that the F6 is nearing completion. That's all for tonight, hopefully get a fairly larger bit of work done on this again tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by folks!

Absolutely cracking Lightning there Calum, I'm a big fan of the RAFG Lightnings and you've really nailed the natural metal finish on the undersides! First class job! Just hope mine look as good when they're done! Regards, Nik

Evening All! After a break of what seems like a rather long time, thought it was about time I put up some progress on the Lightning build. A touch of the old lazy bar-steward syndrome crept in with regards to updating, but mainly because there are only so many shots of stencils being added to a Lightning that you can put up before someone dies of boredom. So here's the F6 of the Leuchars TFF all decaled up, decals are a mix of the Model Alliance set for the roundels, serials and TFF markings, and the stencils are a combo of the appropriate ones taken from the Barracudecals stencil sheet and Airfix's own stencils from the box. Oh, before anyone says anything, I realise that I've missed off the white spine panel, that was one of those 'DOH!' moments, but it'll be getting masked up and sprayed as soon as I can get round to it! While all that's been going on, I made a stab at the undercarriage doors as well. The kit parts are pretty basic, so to these I added the absolutely delightful photo-etch bits from the Flightpath set. It's a shame you can't buy the undercarriage detailing parts individually because I would honestly recommend these for any Lightning build as they are very easy to use (much more so than the resin replacement wheel wells I used on the T5) and add a fantastic amount of detail to what is sadly the poorest area of this kit. Below shows a before and after shot of the kit u/c door and the door with the Fligtpath etch added. Finished after a coat of alclad aluminium and some oil washing to make them a bit more 'used' looking. Thankfully not much left to do to this now, mainly attach all the fiddly little bits, the ventral fins and paint up and fit the ejector seat! Then I can get my bum back in gear and crash on with the T5! Thanks for stopping by folks! Nik

Hi guys, Just wondering if anybody on here happened to have pictures of Lightning F.6 XS895 while wearing the disbandment markings of the Leuchars Target Facilities Flight from circa 1975-76? Trying to model this aircraft in the scheme mentioned above, but having real difficulties finding any pictures of it for reference in order to get an idea of what stencil/warning markings were applied. If anybody could help here I really would appreciate it! Regards, Nik

Making me seriously jealous here! Absolutely itching to get my hands on one of these when they finally come out! Looking great so far though! Regards, Nik

Superb project you've got going here! Must admit this is something I've fancied doing for a while but never got round to/worked up the courage to attempt it! Will be following this one closely though, looks great so far! Regards, Nik

Cracking model bud! Interesting scheme as well, something a bit different from the usual NMF or camouflage seen on the European ones! Very nice indeed! Nik

Since my F.6 was in grave danger of hijacking my own build thread for the T.5 I thought it probably best to do a bit of renaming. So as you can see this shall now be a dual Lightning build, the T.5 and the F.6... nothing like cutting my work out for me eh? Good progress over the past couple of days on the F.6, the panels I'd sprayed with the various shades of aluminium, duraluminium and magnesium were masked off prior to the gloss black primer, which after a couple of coats of Klear and some polishing with micromesh, I had a nice smooth, glossy surface on which to spray some alclad. Colours used here were Stainless steel (which I think gives a slightly better colour than the Airframe aluminium which seems a little too bright to me) for the main body, and although its not obvious in the pictures, some Airframe aluminium was sprayed onto the nose ring to give it the brighter metal appearance seen on NMF lightnings. Couple of general shots to show off the nice shiny finish! What it should look like when its done. Leuchars TFF from Model Alliance's BAC Lightning Part 2 chose this one because its a bit out of the ordinary, as its not a scheme you see modelled very often, and its nice to be able to build something I can associate directly with somewhere I've been plenty of times! Now that I've got the natural metal finish sorted, next step should be applying the decals I think. Question time though, what is people's experience with applying a clear coat over the highly polished alclad to seal in decals prior to weathering? And weathering over alclad for that matter as well? I've heard the klear can affect the finish, but having never tried this before I was hoping to get an idea of what the best approach might be? Thanks for stopping by folks!

Great work so far! Will be following this one closely as some day (after a major thinning of the stash to be fair) I'd planned to build Faith, Hope and Charity. Looks to be a lovely kit, keep up the good work!

Thanks Calum! Credit where credits due though, I saw your F2a build, in particular the natural metal undersides, and thought 'Oooh I like that!' So armed with your build pics and some reference material that's where I took the inspiration for the belly tank. Nik

Afternoon all! Progress on the T.5 has stalled a little, but only because I've had another project on the go at the same time.... ANOTHER LIGHTNING!!! Progress on this one has been a bit quicker overall, mainly due to the fact that I've not had to saw the front end off this one. Bits added to this include the Flightpath photo-etch set (although only bits of it, because as beautifully detailed as the parts are, some of them are seriously out of scale), and Eduard etched cockpit bits out of the F1a/F2 kit, which with a small bit of adaptation now look like the F6 cockpit. I suppose I might as well admit that I'm only posting this because I've reached the stage where I get to play with the Alclad paints (undoubtedly my favourite part of any natural metal build) and I'm particularly pleased with my efforts so far! The main purpose of this spray session was to lay down several base shades over particular panels, which I'll mask off before giving the whole aircraft the glossy black primer for the high shine finish, in order to give my Lightning some variation in the shades of natural metal. So the three colours used were Aluminium, Duraluminium and Magnesium. Which explains why my Lightning looks a bit patchy at the minute! While ploughing through reference pictures, a common feature I noticed was that the belly fuel tank on the F6 was usually much more dull than the rest of the natural metal, so starting with a basecoat of aluminium the rear half of the fuel tank was then sprayed in lines around the circumference of the tank with duraluminium and magnesium to generate the dirty, worn look that these fuel tanks had. This was covered with a very light coat of aluminium to blend it all together, and I must say I'm pretty pleased with the results! I apologise for the quality of some of these photos, the lighting conditions weren't great, and I was in a bit of a rush to take them, I can assure you it looks MUCH better in real life! Thanks for stopping by folks!