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Hey all, This is my first venture into the "vehicles" department of Britmodeller, but I'll give it a go. @LaurieS built a layout depicting Jersey Airport at a particular time and included this image that inspired me: The Viscount is itself a beauty to behold, but the fuel truck and its trailer really caught my eye. I figured that with some modification, I could turn the JB Models Bedford Tactical Refueler into a civil airport vehicle. After all, airliners need to be refueled, too! I'm no export on Bedfords, but from the looks of it, the civil Bedford is a 4x2, rather than a 4x4 vehicle, with only the rear wheels driven by the powertrain, so no transfer case. As there is no requirement for off-roading, the truck also has narrow diameter tires, with double bogies in back. Fortunately, I have a set of ROCO wheels and tires, designed for large rigs with double bogies, that are about 3mm narrower in diameter than the kit's giant wheels, and which I think will do just fine. Here are some of the components I've modified so far. As you can see above, the civil Bedford has a much taller tank and pump housing than the military version, so I went to work with styrene on both components. I also put a housing around the top of the Bedford's bowser. I am using the cut-down chassis of Airfix's AEC Matedor and fuel tank as the basis for the trailer.

It took me a while after my last build (DML's DO335 Pfeil that gave me all sorts of fits) to get my mojo back up and start on a new project. So far, my night fighter collection includes an American P-61A Black Widow and the aforementioned DO335. So to round it out I decided to tackle Tamiya's 1/72 Mosquito: The particular aircraft I will build is NS 838, "Wag's War Wagon" of No. 605 Squadron. Flight Officer Alan Wagner flew “Wag’s War-Wagon” and became an ace in the plane on the night of March 5/6, 1944. After its March 5/6, 1944 mission, Wagner’s aircraft carried two victory markings for Japanese aircraft Wagner claimed over Ceylon earlier in the war, along with three marks for the German aircraft shot down—two Me 410s and a FW 190. In total, Wagner shot down nine confirmed enemy aircraft and two V-1s. Tragically, he was killed while chasing a V-1 “buzz bomb” in heavy fog when his speeding Tempest fighter struck the ground in July of 1944. He was 29 years old. While researching this Mosquito, I learned that the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum in Everett, Washington owns a flight-worthy Mosquito that has been repainted in WWW's scheme. Google will point you to many photos and in-flight videos of this beautifully restored aircraft. Let's see what's in the box: Being a glutton for punishment, I've loaded up my plate with a hefty serving of aftermarket: The kit's instructions start with the engine nacelles, so my first task was to build the resin engines and firewall/engine mount in the Aires detailing set. Basically, I need to turn this: Into this: with only a bare-bones set of instructions for guidance: Many of the included resin parts are very fragile, especially the frames for the engine mount. I found some of these broken when I opened the box, and was able to salvage parts for only one engine/engine mount combination. Building the engine, itself, was straightforward: Building the engine frame was a different story! With only the above diagram to follow, I managed to CA the frame's fiddly parts together and mount them to the firewall: But I had unknowingly made a major mistake! I had assumed the lower frame section (RP 32 & 33 in the above diagram) should be attached at right angles to the firewall, and installed all of the other frame pieces based on that assumption. When I test-fitted the engine to its mount, I discovered the electrical generator on the engine left side interfered with the engine frame: After finding photos online of the Merlin engine installation, I realized that the forward upper section of the engine frame, and not the lower aft portion, needs to be perpendicular to the firewall (i.e., horizontal in-line with the engine's major axis). My only recourse was to break apart my hard-fought frame and re-install it properly: Now my test fitting of the engine to its mount, although not perfect, should hopefully be okay: Next steps are to paint and detail the engine, firewall, and mounting frame, and then piece the engine assembly together. How this is supposed to fit in the kit is still a mystery, as the Aires instructions say nothing at all about how to install the various resin assemblies (engines, gun bay, etc.) in the Tamiya kit. What have I gotten myself into?