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BEA Trident 2 'Ground Gripper' 1/144 Airfix with modifications The Trident earned the name 'Ground Gripper' due to its long take off run, seeming reluctant to take off! The Trident 2 was a development of the Trident 1, with an increased wingspan but utilising the same fuselage with a different internal arrangement increasing the seating, and 1 door less on the starboard side. The Airfix kit has been around for 50-ish years now, with a few accuracy issues, which I have have attempted to rectify There is a new kit from Eastern Express, but at £60+ it is way too expensive for my tastes, and anyway I get a lot of pleasure from doing a bit of real modelling and improving things. The main things are, straightening the leading edge of the fin, adding the fuselage to wing fairing, reshaping the centre intake, and a first for me, adding the leading edge 'wing kink' There is more detail at the end of this post, but for now, on with the pictures. I chose G-AVFB as it is preserved at Duxford in these colours: With something else, my recently completed Airfix Comet 4B These are the main improvements: I have never attempted putting the wing 'Kink' before. It is tricky because it is only in the leading edge. The trailing edge remains straight. I scored each wing upper & lower part on the inside, and bent & sanded it to obtain the kink, which slopes down from fuselage to about 1/3rd of the way along, where the rest of the wing takes on some dihedral. It worked well and I'll definitely do it on my next Trident build. I used the 26 Decals BEA Red Square sheet, but had problems filttng the black nose decals. I struggled to get then to lay down around the compound curves of the nose, and they started to split as I endevoured to line them up. So I removed them and decided to mask and spray all the black, including the cheat lines along the sides. It worked well and I am pleased with the result. I did the black on the fin top at the same time. This is all paintwork with no decals yet applied: It was a lot of work, but very satisfying! Thanks for looking, John