Roland Pulfrew

A little more progress today:

Being very s l o w at times, and having found the models in the stash again, I thought I out to do some work on these. So, a little bit of progress:

Another one bites the dust. So sad after 152 years of serving Bedford I didn’t use them much for models as I always used Gascoigne’s on Tavistock Street, but they were great as a general hardware shop!

Oh why not, may I join? According to my listing on ScaleMates I have 5 in the stash So now a Tallboy, Far East Force or a Mk II for something a little different?

Considering that the multi-mission aircraft programme only started less than 5 years ago, is this going to be fastest acquisition of an RAF aircraft since the Mosquito? Although in hindsight “only 5 years” now seems an awfully long time!

I guess they did, just like Typhoon has been used before (but was long out of service) and Lightning (twice before but also long out of service).

Triton is already allocated to the MQ-4C

Not strictly true. The PFI had to prove affordability and “value for money” against a ‘public sector comparator’ to win - not sure it ever did. There were other options looked at, including more Tristars, second-hand 767s etc etc for the ‘public sector comparator’ (but there is a whole different story in there). Not in the PSC were new build KC-30s owned and operated by the RAF; remember the RAF is/was the lead customer for the KA330/A330K, even if it was ultimately the second operator after the RAAF.

Trevor Not strictly true on either part. The RAF wanted C-17, but the Govt of the day wanted to be good Europeans, so wanted the RAF to buy the untried and untested A400M. The C-17 lease was just that, purely a lease, at the time there were no plans to buy. It was a stopgap until A400 arrived, that’s why we couldn’t use them for tac work or refuel them in flight. As for Hawk, actually the MoD wanted M346, but No 10 said no (remember whose constituency the Hawk factory was in?). The only option available was to buy the T2s, instantly creating a xx million £ hole in the budget.

I’ll be there!

If I could just divert this away from the E-7 for a moment, may I just point out that Airseeker is not the name of the aircraft. The programme to procure the RC-135W Rivet Joint for the RAF was the Air Seeker programme, one of a triumvirate of programmes along with Sea Seeker and Land Seeker.

Been away from home for the last few weeks changing jobs so time to start cracking on! First fuselage has come together. Looks like there might need to be a touch of filler required, but not a bad fit from the Airfix kit.

Airseeker was the name of the programme, part of a triumvirate with Seaseeker and Landseeker. It was never intended to be the name of the aircraft which remains RC-135W Rivet Joint.

This is coming together beautifully! Don’t know if you’ve ever looked at Google Maps/Earth but there seems to be lots of Meteors lying around on Syrian Air Force airfields today. This is the airfield to the east of Aleppo from Google Maps: I wonder if enough bits could be collected to make an airworthy Meteor??!?

Thank you, I hope I can do you justice But you could of course just join me in building another version. I don’t think I will ever get round to using the Egyptian Air Force markings if you would like them - I think we still have 6 weeks of the GB to go.