MikeC

Many years ago, when I were a lad in the 70s, I was a staff cadet on an ATC Air Experience Flight. Our Chipmunks had the four-point harness while they were painted in the light grey/dayglo scheme. I recall that this was referred to as "Q-type", and the straps were blue or black. Then they went off for refurbishment. The refurbished aircraft wore the new (then) red/white/grey scheme and had black 5-point harnesses which were referred to as "Z-type". Whether this was official or not I know not, but it was pretty general.

Wot, no Lakenheath or Woodbridge/Bentwaters birds?

Do they actually make money on that? I sent my Aztek back under the "lifetime guarantee" a few years ago because paint was leaking into the body; iirc all it cost me was the shipping, they replaced it without a quibble. However, I continued to have other problems with it until I hit upon the perfect solution - sold the blimmin' thing and bought a proper airbrush!

The short answer is yes; you'll need to cut down the fin to accomodate the rudder (the Aeroclub instruction leaflet has the info on that), and source some alternative three-spoke wheels if the kit does not supply the. Also bear in mind the issues many people have with the nose of this kit; I've never seen one built from the box so I can't comment from my own experience. Again, the short answer is almost everything to build an FRXIV or 18 bar wings. From memory, as the kit's upstairs: fuselage, two rudders (XIV and 18), complete interior in white metal and plastic, oil cooler, radiators, three-spoke wheels, prop, tailplanes. I'm building one at the moment using a Hasegawa IX as the "donor" for the wings etc. It's not the world's easiest build, but it is limited run and the end result will be worth it. The Hasegawa interior can be used in conjunction with what's in the Aeroclub set. Imo you'll get a better 18 if you splash out on the Aeroclub set. HTH,

Hey Daz, I'm with you my friend, the B-57B et seq is by far the nicest looking Canberra, particularly that fine lady Patricia Lynn in black I know, I am accused of heresy on three counts, heresy by thought, heresy by word, heresy by deed, heresy by action - FOUR counts - bet you didn't expect ... http://people.csail.mit.edu/paulfitz/spanish/t2.html

Personally I don't see the need to do it once, but maybe that's because I don't get on with it. I've tried it a couple of times: I don't know what I did wrong, but it just ended up looking like I'd slapped on a thick clear coat of varnish with a 4" decorating paintbrush! I use Bare Metal Plastic Polish. Lovely shiny canopy (Ker-ching!) This stuff is also useful if you've had to sand a canopy for any reason. Use a cotton bud and/or a soft cloth to polish as required. Tamiya tape works for me for masking, although I must admit that Eduard masking sets become very attractive on large "glasshouses" with lots of frames such as Bf 108s, P-47 Razorbacks, etc. Incidentally, if you re-polish a canopy once you've painted it and you get some polish on your otherwise nice matt frames, it will slightly alter the sheen of the paint; don't worry about it! Ground-crew polished canopies to keep them crystal clear, and didn't worry about polishing over the frame edges, so it's actually rather authentic. Finally, before anyone leaps in to tell me what I may have been doing wrong, I appreciate the thought, and if it helps anyone else then go ahead, but I don't intend to try "Klear-dipping" again.

You may find some useful info or pics here ... http://www.f-4.nl/ or here ... http://www.springtime.co.uk/phantoms/ HTH,

Surprised no-one's mentioned this yet: http://aviationancestry.com/Aircraft/Avro/...son-1924-1.html What's the difference between an Avro type 555 and a Brewster F2A? You can't wash your hands in a Brewster F2A! I think I got that a bit wrong ... You ain't kiddin' ! http://www.unrealaircraft.com/fowler/pages/mosquito_TT39.php

Of course, you could always build it as it was in service with one of the training units before they totally ruined the nicest-looking version of the most beautiful jet ever by chopping off the nose to put in an overgrown headlight - two problems solved for the price of one.

Same as the other Mike says, use Xtracrylix own-brand thinner and some retarder. I couldn't tell you what ratio I use, just "nice and thin".

I've kept a couple of chunks of that expanded polystyrene packing you get in things from mobile phones to TVs - about 4"-6" square, but the size and shape is only important in that it needs to be stable - and stick the pointy end of the cocktail sticks in one of those. Advantage - if I need to move the bits on the sticks, I can do it all at once.

A blob of Blu-tack at the cocktail stick/part interface works for me.

Nice one Mark.

Ah yes, you're right sir, it was indeed Charlie Manning. I've been in exile out West too long!

The guy in the first one seems to be an East Anglian, as iirc Billy Manning's fairground was in Felixstowe. PAGING JULIEN! Am I right?

Lucky old you. MrsC bought me a trip in one for my "significant birthday" in 06 - flew in PFU from Goodwood. flew it most of the way myself from climb-out to within about 5 seconds of rounding out (amazing how it all came back, if a bit rusty, as I haven't touched a stick since I was an Air Cadet), but the pilot did take over for the couple of gentle aerobatics we did. Couldn't really follow that, but as Tangmere was just down the road (Goodwood used to be called Westhampnett, a satellite of same) a call in there was the perfect end to a great morning.

Definitely the Monogram, but apparently not a bad one and arguably a better representation of an F-4C/D. See http://forums.europeanmodeller.com/index.p...amp;#entry10222

Thanks Graham, I was afraid of that. Looks like I'm in for a bit of grafting the Airfix A-frame hook from the Seafire IIIc/Spit Vc into the Hobbycraft 15. Cheers, M

Thanks Andy

Good point One could assume that, but there were plenty of Bs/Cs around at least to mid-44 ...

Hi people, I have a Seafire 15 kit and two possible sets of decals - by Ventura and Carpena - depicting different post-war Seafire 15s in French Aeronavale service. Carpena give one coded "54.S.22", with the British serial PR397. The drawings depict it with a "sting" hook, which I think is correct, but hold that thought ... Ventura's decals depict "IF23", serialled SR520, and this is where the fun starts. They specifically state that it was an "early prodcution aircraft with A-frame arrestor hook", and quotes a reference book "Les 'Seafire' dans L'Aeronautique Navale francaise", Jean Frelaut et Claude A Pierquet. "Wings Pallette" supports this view - http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/72/21/0/2 - but how reliable is either that site or the decal instructions? Because ... One of my Spitfire "bibles", the Harleyford book by Bruce Robertson, states that serial range PR338-PR506, built by Cunliffe-Owen, were ordered in July 1943 and delivered as Mk XVs. "The first 50 had 'A-frame' arrester hooks and the remainder 'sting-type' arrester gear". This ties in with accepted wisdom that only the first 50 of all the 15s had the A-frame, and this is the first listed production batch. It also indicates that, assuming they were sequential, the last A-frame would have been PR388 or thereabouts, and therefore PR397 is probably correctly depicted as having a stinger hook. Now, SR446-645 were the serials for 140 aircraft ordered from Westland in February 1944 according to the same source. SR520 clearly falls in this batch (which included "blackouts"). So by simple deduction it should have a stinger hook, yes? However, in the same source on P 196 it says "... sting-type hook ... incorporated on production from the 50th Mk XV produced by Cunliffe-Owen and on most of the the aircraft produced by Westland" (my italics and bold). Thanks for reading this far if you're still awake! So with apologies for the preamble. my question is simple - can anyone point me at a photo or other proof showing which sort of hook SR520 actually had? I'd like to build that one as, being Westland-built, there's a West-country connection. TIA,

OK, a quick dig into "Support and Strike - A concise history of the Ninth..." (Hamlin J) and "Squadron Codes" (Bowyer) and imo it's most likely to be 382nd FS, 363rd FG. That's as far as I go for now, time for some modelling! My brain hurts! But thank you for an interesting query - can anyone else shed some light?

I would have said 355th, given that the nose band - what you can see of it - looks to be a single colour that is bright enough to be white. A quick search on Little Friends ( http://www.littlefriends.co.uk/index.php ) using various combinations of "Rosco" and wildcards did not yield anything, neither did a search on "-C". The code letter shown is more likely, though, to be the first letter of the squadron code. The 355th were WR, OS and YF. The 356th FS of the 357th used "C5", but the nose band does not appear chequered, regardless of colour. It could perhaps be 359th FG; they used a single-colour light green nose marking, and sqn codes CV (368th FS) and CS (CR to mid-Mar 44) (370th FS) or possibly the 361st FG, whose 376th FS used CR - the site says for that one as well "to Mar 44" Interesting - of course, it could have been 9th AF, in which case I'll need to do some more digging - darn it, you've got me hooked!

Let's see: on grass, one wingtip on the ground - it's a glider, works for me. Well done. Big wingspan innit? Much more up-to-date than my first solo, Cadet Mk 3 XN236.

So it wasn't just me being hamfisted with mine. What markings are you doing Mish? I did mine as a USAF TG-9A, just to be different.