Vulcanicity

Wow, that's spectacular! I love the little touches like the replacement camo side door and all the scuffing and fading 🙂

I will be keen to see if they move into 1/72, and indeed what sort of quality the Scimitar and Hornet achieve. A new manufacturer of less obvious British aircraft in 1/72 would certainly get my attention!

Obligatory RAF Comet comment from me

Beautiful! I love the little practice bomb rack bolted underneath

Superb model, and looks like an excellent kit! It'll be very interesting to see where Flyhawk go with their 1:72 aircraft!

A beauty! Got to love Meteors in silver with big colourful squadron bars, that's what it's all about! Your High Speed Silver finish is very nice indeed 😊

That's quite a collection of US experimentals! Love the X-1, I can see why butt-joined wings and tailplanes might have given you more of a headache than usual!

Not sure I'd go flying in that, but looks seriously impressive sat on the ground! 😛 A real weathering masterclass, well done!

Wow, that's scrubbed up seriously well! A lovely little 'stang

Terrific brush painting, tops off a cracking model all round. Nice work!

Stunning model, easily the best F-104 I have seen and could be mistaken for the real thing!

Beautiful build, not a kit I've ever heard of and not a subject you see modelled very often. Didn't Matchbox do a kit years and years ago? This looks much superior!

Fantastic build John, hope its pilot is as chuffed with it as he should be!

Cracking build and a fantastic subject from the heyday of strategic airlifters 😍

Funny, I had always assumed the lightning flash on the fin was a resurrection of the 617 tail marking from Vulcan days, but from your post it seems it's on all of the F-35s in RAF service? Cracking shots by the way 👍

How on earth was anyone planning to cool that two-row radial?!

Try also 29 Squadron which flew NF11s from Jan '50 to Nov '57, although a quick skim through Cold War Shield doesn't bring up any mention of Malta. PS if you do narrow it down to 39/219/another squadron and want any scans of the copious photos in Cold War Shield drop me a PM

That's well and truly bonkers, and completely inspired. Hats off! By they way, are you by any chance really short sighted?!

No problem. Keep an eye out for a job lot on Facebook Marketplace, I bought a load of aviation books on spec last year from a house clearance and even after heavy sifting kept 90 of them, including both volumes of Cold War Shield. Not bad for £100!

Looking on on this debate as an interested bystander, I'm surprised bare steel wires didn't rust to the point of unusability incredibly quickly- we're talking about an aircraft sat on a carrier deck for multiple hours a day and battered with salt spray. If they were unpainted was any laquer or protective coating applied so that the ground crews didn't have to change the wires every few flights?

Had a look in three suitable books (Cold War Shield by Roger Lindsay, Gloster Meteor (Crowood) by Barry Jones and Meteor: Gloster's First Jet Fighter by Steven Bond) and no joy I'm afraid. The otherwise excellent Cold War Shield is a little light on 74 sqn photos unfortunately, although there are fine side views of VZ544/Z and WE885/G in High Speed Silver. Happy to scan these if of use? Drop me a PM if so.

That's a beauty, the mottling is terrific! 👍

Always proofread one's own posts! 😛

Oh, this is always jolly! (Until the mods shut it down for wishlisting, that is). In 1/72nd I would echo Canberra as a good shouts, a remarkably under-kitted aircraft in recent times (especially the fishbowl variants) considering its worldwide use. I definitely also concur on the Sea Hawk although there is the Hobby Boss which is a nice kit. There are still some other relatively mainstream gaps in British WW2 subjects with no decent, accurate mainstream modern 1/72nd kits, such as Halifax, Sea Vixen, Anson and Hudson. Three of those were in the range formerly so would seem like decent bets. In terms of 1/72nd bread-and-butter stuff from other nations, Corsair, P-38, B-24, A-20/Boston, P-47, Avenger, Ju-88 and maybe Ki-43 would strike me as possibles in either 1/72 or 1/48 (maybe not a 48th Liberator!) 48th isn't really my thing but I wonder if they might scale up the Tempest or two-stage Mosquito? I too am not convinced of the appeal of a twin-seat Spit- if it wasn't for the current craze for them it would be a minor historical postscript to the Spitfire story and a bit of a dead end development. If it had to be yet another Spitfire then Merlin Seafires or scaling down the 48th XIV would seem logical. As for the Lincoln, well I would buy one but it's very hard to see enough other people doing so, I've always thought that one was far-fetched!

That's an absolutely jaw dropping build, amazing attention to detail and absolutely flawless painting and weathering of a complex scheme. Stunning!