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A little outside of my usual timeframe of models, the TSR2 is a bit special. I first saw one at Duxford about a year after she arrived and my dad filled me in as to what she was. I took this photo in about 1978 I think and she stuck in my memory. She is XR222, a never completed pre production model. Only XR219 flew, and the only other survivor is XR220at Cosford. So when a 1/48 Contrails vacform came up at a good price I thought I would give it a go. I hadn’t built a vacform before but it would give me some practise in case I wanted to build another vacform in the future So here she is. Not perfect by any means and I left some of the kit inaccuracies, but had a go at fixing others. The intakes, for example, got a complete rebuild. The back end got a rebuild, with new jet pipes built in to shape around There was no cockpit so that was scratch built with resin seats. The vacform canopy was cut to pose the canopies open The jet pipes extend through the body and the main wheel wells and bomb bay are built around them from scratch The undercarriage had a totally rebuild with only the wheels surviving from the kit So so that’s her done. Not perfect but I enjoyed the build. Thanks for looking The build thread is here

This is my latest completion: Boeing's big twin in the form of a 1/144th KLM Boeing 777-306ER. This model was based on Minicraft's 777-200 kit, with numerous modifications. I inserted Braz's fuselage extension plugs forward and aft of the wings, did a bit of re-profiling of the nose area, added Contrails' extended and raked wingtips, completely re-worked Contrails' GE90-115B engines and pylons, and finished it off by using a DrawDecal set for the current KLM scheme. All paints were from Halfords' automotive range. This was a fairly straight-forward conversion, but I did create a fair bit of extra work by modifying the engines. However, I think it was well worth it and they are now a better representation of the real thing. Boeing 777-306/ER, KLM, PH-BVA, 'De Hoge Veluwe National Park' Happy modelling! Tom

With all the chatter about building a B777-300 in kit form I thought I would show you what I have been up to. This one has been on the bench for a while as I get distracted easily with other projects. I thought I had a thread going but can't find it. I started with a new Minicraft kt and one that I was recycling. I used the Contrails GE90 engines and wing tip extensions. The engines needed some work to refine the shapes. The lips were uneven and were squared up and thinned. The outer diameter of the cowl was also sanded down to reduce the overall size and get rid of uneven surfaces. This was all usingthe TLAR principle so the shapes may still not be that accurate. I have slowly been adding appropriate antennas and drain masts and finally added the the tail bumper that is common on the -300 I have been using 1/72 antennas form a trashed P-3 Orion kit. I glue them onto the fuselage with a glue/sprue mix into pre-drilled holes to give them strength. When set the oversized antennas are cut down and reshaped to something closer in shape and size on the real thing. I am using RichW Virgin Australia decals for this build.

This is going to be my next civvie - converting a 1/144th Boeing 777-200 to a 777-300ER, using the Minicraft kit with parts from Contrails, Braz and Draw Decals. Here I have pictured the Minicraft 'standard' -200 series fuselage which will be my starting point, along with Braz's fuselage plugs to increase the length to a -300. I have a set of Contrails' GE90-115B engines, as the -300ER is powered by this engine which is considerably larger than the engines found on the -200 versions, along with the extended and raked wingtips from the same company. Finally, a set of KLM transfers from Draw Decal complete the package. My starting point with this project is the engines. Contrails provide an after-market option, which looks as follows: Although these engines are a reasonable representation of the real GE90-115B, when I used them in the past (about 5 years ago now!) on a previous conversion, something didn't look quite right to my eye: In my opinion, and I stress my opinion, the engine cowling is too long, the intake ring is vertical where on the real aircraft it's slanted slightly forward, and I feel the whole engine sits too low. Also, the upper and lower lines of the cowling are parallel on the Contrails parts, whereas on the real engine the shape is quite bulbous. In this picture of the real aircraft (used for illustrative purposes only), you can see a significant curve on the upper lines of the engine, as well as the fact that the top of the pylon is actually level with the upper surface of the wing, unlike the replacement engines which I feel sit too low: So... I decided to do some surgery... The red area in the picture below was removed (approx 3mm) and the most forward cut was made at a slight angle to allow for the intake ring to slant downwards slightly and create the bulbous shape. Notice the difference in the shape to the picture of the real thing above: After the front and rear parts were reattached, the fan and intake ring detailed and inserted, and the engine cowling attached to the pylon, I think the shape looks a lot better. The pylon itself was modified extensively to bring the whole engine up slightly, and all panel lines were rescribed onto the modified parts: I must stress there was nothing particularly scientific about this, and it was all done by eye, but I think a significant improvement on the original Contrails parts. Compare my modified engines with the original build behind - I think it captures the look of the real thing much better now: Two, at least to my eyes, more accurate GE90-115B engines ready for installation: Next up will be cutting the fuselage up and inserting Braz's plugs - something I know from last time is more tricky than it sounds! Tom

Boeing 707-321, Pan American, mid 1960s This is the Minicraft 1/144 kit with various mods to make it look more like a 707-300 series. Firstly the wing trailing edges were cut back to reduce the chord, thin thinned down and spoilers / flaps / ailerons rescribed. The fin trailing edge sweep was reduced by removing material near the tip, tapering down to the original chord at the root. Engines were replaced with Contrails resin engines. These were a bit of a struggle. They come with pylons but I couldn’t get them to look right and in the end used the kit pylons. If you look at 707 photos you quickly see that the engines are not just ‘polished aluminium’ so I finished them well used with various metallic shades and some grime using oil paints. The biggest issue, though, was the nose profile. The kit nose looks too narrow and just not enough like a 707. In hindsight, I might have been better off buying one of the big bits of resin out there, but I tried the ‘big dollup of Milliput and much sanding down’ approach. The final photo gives an idea of what I tried to do. Still not sure it looks quite right though! Anyway the Two Six decals went on very nicely as usual, but I noticed quite a bit of silvering after they had had a coat of satin varnish when it was too late to sort it. This was mainly of decals applied over the Halfords Appliance White fuselage top, and may well have been my fault for not being careful enough. By the way I used the Aviation News plans for the E-3 Sentry to get the wing and fin profiles, which look just right to me in those drawings.