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Just an old fashioned Stirling With old fashioned ways A fuselage tattered and torn. Four Hercules engines keep chugging away She's flying from midnight to dawn. Though she don't go so fast, No great height does she claim, Sure there's something that makes her divine When she flies there on high She's the Queen of the sky She's that old fashioned Stirling of mine Taken from Stirling Wings by Jonathan Falconer - song often sung in the sergeants mess at Lakenheath where 149 Sqn were based in 1943 After 10 months of slogging away the Stirling is finally done. By far, this has been my most challenging build to date, the first vac formed kit I've ever completed (first attempt ended up in the bin!), the first time I've vac formed my own canopies if crash moulding doesn't count and first time soldering parts! The overall shape of the Sanger kit is pretty good, however there are a few noticeable errors, the first being the wings formed upside down and the second being the squared off rear fuselage when it should match the profile of the FN20 turret. It's built as a dedication to Ron Middleton who was posthumously awarded a VC for his bravery on the night of 29th November 1942 when he sadly didn't return from his 29th mission to Turin. Hit by flak over the target, he lost his right eye but maintained control of the aircraft and managed to get it back to the coast of England. 5 members of the crew bailed out, two others remaining to help him fly the aircraft but it lost control and crashed in to the sea taking the three crew members with it. There are two build threads to this because it was started by @Mike way back in 2008. After several years of me pestering him to finish it, he sold it to me and I picked up the gauntlet to get it to Telford as part of the 1/48th Bomber Command SIG VC display this year. The build continued here. There's lots of people to thanks for their help in this build, John @12jaguar for his wealth of knowledge and reference photo's, Nick @SleeperService for sending me a Wellington nose turret of which was used for the basis on the front turret in the Stirling, Alain @corsaircorp for sending me some resin parts that got used in the cockpit including the instrument panel and Chris @stringbag for his 1-2-1 soldering lesson and incredible drawings that were critical to get the complicated wing and undercarriage structure aligned. I'd also like to thank Megas Tsonas for his truly amazing 1/48 Stirling build that you may of seen in air Modeller, however this also proved to be a demotivator because I could in no way achieve the results he did! My goal was to get it finished in 2018 (well actually it was to have it ready for Telford but didn't quite make that!!) and I've just about squeezed it in! It's by no means perfect Anyway, enough blurb, here's the piccies. Hope you like her. Thanks for looking Neil