Transall vaillant

Nice work. Those F.13 are seldom looking like the type figured by Revell and Master.X parts are very useful. @+

Nice Hurricanes... and rifles ! The first are easier to get, but much longer to assembly... 😀 @+ 😉

Hi ! Happy New Year ! This Whitley is over since yesterday. Roundels painted owing to Mr.Paint's tints. I don't like painting, i am not an artist, it 's always a struggle for me to deal with any problem with every kit. In the end, i find a kind of charm in this aircraft, an old fashionned flying bombing device : i will probably not say the same thing for the Wellington... I also ended this one yesterday, another Airfix kit, Xtra decals : I hope you will find find some interest in both. I felt very curious when Airfix started its rebirth some years ago : now i have several red boxes on my shelves, which proove anything can happen... Heller rebirth also ?... Just a sad joke... You all are lucky fellows ! Regards.

Good evening. Some decals problems, silvering, tearing when removing masktape... So only one way to proceed : removing everything and paint the roundels ! But first, get the right colours... Delays, delays... @+ :-)

Hello, What a strange ship !! I'm not familiar with WW1 aircraft, but i have two pictures of an Anzani 100 cv and it looks very different from a Le Rhone type C 80 cv. Found them in Icare n°197 page 128. Good work ! @+

Hello, Some news... Paint work is going on, slowly... Now it looks like a British bomber... Some thick heavy sepia oil paint to bring some life on this plastic thing, beginning with left extrados... and then a big time trying to represent those metallic things we can see on each landing gear leg, but i'm not sure at all about shape nor purpose : openning gear doors or (over)load indicators ?? The first attempt is on the left, much too wide, then four "things"... The result must be something like taht : It is only an interpretation of two pictures, i found no plan or scheme or rear side pic. The intrados will look like that when finished : I've done a little further work on it, i'll post pics in a while. Good evening ! @+

Thanks to all of you. For Chris, well I'm French... and you may be the "Chris" i have to thank for two superbs pictures of Whitley's landing gear published here a few months ago ? If so, you will see how useful they have been ! Tonight, or rather tomorrow, some varnish work... See you later ! @+

Good evening, It's the first time i start a topic with you. I'm not fluent with english language, but it is easier as i only have to write ! Main purpose is to share about plastic kit building, but also to practice again your language because, retired, knowledge is fading fastly... so i have a dictionary on my knees ! 😄 Why a Whitley ? Because a good friend is building a Manchester and i had to go with him on something in relation with his subject : too lazy to start my Planet Model Manchester kit after some hard previous work, i saw this recent box, and i also wanted to build a new Airfix big plane kit. Also because i did not build any flying british thing since... 1994 ! Meanwhile, i had at least made this : and this... So i expect to be forgiven... 😄 I have seen two other Airfix Whitleys built here and i got by the way very useful informations from you about landing gear legs. The kit seems ar first very clean and easy to assembly and as a fact after two days it seems nearly finished : nearly... 😜 First small correction with rudder's shape : Corrected one on the left side. As it seemed i would not have a lot of work with this kit, i started to detail the turrets which are already very fine from the box. Here the rear one (FN4A ?) : The scheme is coming from "British Aircraft Armement" from R. Wallace Clarke, an excellent book you surely all know. I had to sand very heavily for the first time when gluing engine's nacelles to the wing : maybe i did not proceed correctly as everything was going nearly perfectly until now. Then i started to look too often to the landing lights : Airfix chosed a solution which gives satisfaction when you look the aircraft from ahead, but which is really puzzling when looked from above... So i decided to make some extra work there also... Front turret (FN16 ?) : Here you can see how things look like with rudders and drifts. I was prone to think it wa nearly perfect, but careful attention to pictures revealed a real mistake here from Airfix : The left part has been corrected : I was also puzzled with wing's position light, but when you don't want to see... So i first made that : The light must be at the end of the straight part of the leading edge, and straight above the upper angle of the aileron : but if you get the first place, you miss the second, and vice-versa... It took me some time to understand there was something wrong with the aileron's size, as overall wing shape is perfect. Correcting this problem needed a big work, as i thought this kit would be finished in a few weeks only : but in the end i couldn't deal with the parts as they were and i started the correction, both extrados and intrados. Aileron's length is 8 cm instead of 7,6 : the number of ribs is correct, but you have to get rid of the last one. Of course, it means you also have to correct the part of the wing which is covered with linen, and move the command fairings. In the end, it looks correct after several days of sanding, gluing evergreen, spraying surfacer 500, sanding... It is a big amount of work, but if accuracy is one of your goals you cannot avoid it. I must add that the plastic is easy to work and that i like it (some people say it's too soft, another point of view...) Well, the plane is not finished yet and i hope to end it in two or three weeks. Some extra work as you can read and see, but this kit is a really good one : i only hope i will have less work to perform with the Wellington and the Fortress Mk.III ! Regards.

Thank you ! I checked once more : i had missed some valuable pics, we have everything we need. I do not believe my paint will match yours !!... @+

I confirm, it's not an easy one ! Perfectly built and finely upgraded... Did you get informations about the extra fuel tank we can see behind pilot's seat please ? I have found one partial pic only, it's better than nothing, but i hope to find something more... @+

Hello, First, i apologise for mistakes, but i'm not speaking nor writing correctly in English. First, as said Fernandocouto, don't build a Me 262 with two SC 500 or any 1000 kg payload : it was forbidden because lose of control occured and caused aircraft destruction and pilot's death. EKdo 262 only performed such trials under strict control but it never occured in operationnal units. Second, it is mentionned most of time, also in Classic monographie, that PC+UE was the only aircraft to use those RATO devices : for trials, yes, but Classic gives a picture of V10 with such devices when it performed maximum bomb load trials. You can read in "Me 262 bomber and reconnaissance units" from Osprey Combat Aircraft n°83 several very interesting things like the use of RATO in operationnal use, i.e. page 29 and 81. The funny point is that this book is from Robert Forsyth with Eddy J. Creek, authors of the exceptionnal Classic monographie... Accidents occured for several reasons, but it also worked and it was the only mean to take off an aircraft heavily loaded from an airstrip shortened by bomb hits from place to place... a simple matter of aircraft performance calculation. Of course, you may find in any book some minor mistakes that you can correct if you are combat pilot, aeronautical technician or ingenieur, or any combination of such qualifications... We can easily forgive those minor mistakes as those men bring us major informations in spite of small mistakes due mostly to lack of post redaction reading. I hope i made it clear for everybody reading. @+

You will find several pictures of St Ex 's Simoun in ICARE n°71. He has had several aircraft of this type, some of them being his own aircraft. F-ANRY was his first own Simoun. It is also the one with which he tried his record flight. I have a picture of it crashed in the desert December 30th 1935 south of Alexandria in Egypt. If you have read "Pilote de Guerre", the flight which is the frame of the book really occured : it was an important flight which took place on May 23rd 1940 with the Bloch 174 n°24. He also flew Bloch 174 n°8, 21, 22, 53, all with GR II/33 from march 29th to june 9th 1940 (seven war missions). He also flew before Potez 637 and after a Farman 222. He was test pilot in the 30's. He disappeared while flying P-38 F5B n°228223 of which we have no pictures (except his cockpit), i believe so. But he flew nearly 75 per cent on n°3080, recorded n°80 on his flight books, which is the aircraft of a tremendous amount of very nice pictures, some with him (but no war missions). He flew war missions on n°365, 273 (3), 292 (2), 219, 533, 126 and 223... Of course most of St Ex fans tend to build n°223 : i think i will not, there are other things to do, more accurate... You will find all those elements and pics in ICARE n°96, an old french review from 1981, which become rare and expensive... If you are a real afficionado, i recommend you ICARE n°69, 71, 75, 78, 84 and 96, all about Saint Exupery. Lot of large pictures, lot of informations... but all in excellent french language.

Hello Killingholme, I also admire Antoine De Saint-Exupery and it is much more easy for me to read his books and letters as far as i'm french... I built neither of his planes but i have planned to do so for a Bloch 174 or a P-38, let's say in the future... For the Bloch 174, as someone said, there is nothing presently but the Heller kit with a big amount of scratchbuild if you enjoy... Otherwise, you may wait for Azur's annonced Bloch 175 and modify this one, great work also... Saint-Exupery flew several Bloch 174 during the disastrous Campagne de France, and i have these informations somewhere if you wish, only need to remember where... For the P-38 E (F5-E ?), i may build it with an Academy base, or Italeri, and use spare parts from an old P-38 J/L Hasegawa kit, reference 816, that i keep in stock only for this : there are interesting engine cowling parts useful to make a E. For the camera nose, as it has been said, you can either use Contact Resine parts or if you are lucky find an old Carpena decalsheet which provided this useful resin part, reference 7209... but the resin nose has become scarce ! Saint-Ex also flew several aircraft and i can also say things about it, same time delay... Everything has been written about the Caudron Simoun. You can also think about a Breguet 14, Potez 25 and other old stuff of the Aeropostale if you are really a fanatic. He had nothing to do with FFL and FAFL. He eventually died accidentally, very probably, as those very high altitude flights were very exhausting because of the use for hours of oxygen : being a man with high moral principes, he managed to fly more than twice every other pilots did in the unit in spite of being aged like their fathers, 43/44 at that time. There had already occured accidents and incidents due to oxygen circuit failure, a pilot escaped death with great luck, recovering his mind close the ground... Saint-Ex did not. The fact is that he did not want to see the civil war he knew was to happen in France after the so-called "epuration" which saw communist partisans kill and murder about 100.000 people, most of them only being anti-communist and having never worked for germans ! Among them were numerous well known resistants... He publically blamed De Gaulle for being responsible of what was going to occur : it is useful to know that his books were forbidden in Algérie during De Gaulle's presidency in 1943 and 1944. He really was a great man, a pure patriot like many others that never went under the spotlights. There is a lot to say and learn about this period of France history. Write you more as soon as i get something to write...