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I enjoyed building my first one earlier this year so much that I bought another! You can see my previous build here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234996587-mpcround-2-148-scale-22-eagle-transporter/ For this build I want to ty to do something a bit more special, so there will be lighting, fixes to the overlong springs, enhanced paintjob and decals and most likely a Emergency/Rescue pod paintjob. This build was inspired by my visit to the Smallspace show last weekend where I got the designer of the Eagle, Brian Johnson to autograph the box I carry the first Eagle model to shows in I'll not be following the constructin sequence of the instructions very closely this time around as I have specific things that need to be done to support my other plans. So to start with, I began with one of the leg pods. My plan is to mount white LEDs in the front two legs pods to act as landing lights... As you can see, this time I'm using some serious battery power which will be mounted in the passenger pod. This will feed power to the LEDs in the leg pods and in the cockpit. So once again I've put power socket into the joint to support the cockpit and the cockpit internal bulkhead has been painted This time I've used Tamiya BUff and Deck tan colours istead of Desert yellow and white as I did in the previous build/ It still needs some touch ups and of course washes to bring out the detail. Now the power supply this time will be a block of AA batteries. These need to be mounted in the passenger pod is a manner that they can be accessible to change without having to disassemble the model. There should also be an on/off switch... On/off switch working... how about accessibility of the batteries? Panel cut out of the base with magnets holding it in place. Up the other way we see the mounting for the batteries So back to the leg pods, I've had to chop some plastic out of the support brackets inside the walkway modules so that the wires can come out of the pods This still leaves plenty of support for the leg pods. The connection between the pod and the leg is via plugs that allow the legs to be attached later for ease of painting, as is shown here: The internals of the walkway module start getting quite busy once all the wires are added but testing showed everything is working... Next task it to arrange the electrical connection between the walkway and the passenger pod/battery box and then sort ot the rear leg pods. I have a slightly different plan for those, more of that later...

This is my second attempt at building this classic scene from Thunderbirds. This one benefited from the experience gained on the first one: a) I didn't try to do a scratch built cockpit as it can't be seen; I used smaller batteries to power the LEDs. The build thread is here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235003077-thunderbird-2-launch-diorama-2/ ...and here is it with the camera flash turned off to allow the lighting to show

Finished this a couple of weeks ago but never got around to photographing it properly. The kit is pretty straightforward and a reasonable reproduction of the original. The kit does feature a spring loaded missile but that was relatively easy to overcome. The missile itself comes with a hemispherical end which needs to be sharpened into a point. The cockpit detail is typically spartan so thats where most attention was paid in this build. The biggest problem I had was with the decals. The kit supplied ones were old, fragile and a a very curious mix of "spanglish" text! So the decals were custom printed from a source I found on the net. Problem was once the matt varnish was applied the "black" text turned into pink blobs. So the decals had to stripped off and attempts made to print decals that didn't run. This was done by forcing the colour printer to print ONLY black for the stencil markings This, therefore isn't 100% accurate but as soon as I tried to any red text the ink ran badly once decal varnish was applied Anyway enough talk, more photos! I tried to get a decent photo of the cockpit but the lighting was against me and all I got was glare from the canopy. I may try later when its dark outside and maybe the flash will then penetrate the canopy Sadly during this photo shoot, the clips holding the battery compartment lid on the camera decided to break and now its almost impossible to take photos with the bloody thing - two tiny bits of plastic have turned the camera into a virtual write-off!! Oh well maybe its an opportunity to upgrade...

I put in a pre-order for this kit with Hobbylinc back in August and it finally arrived in Mid January, so I had to start it right away! its a marvellous kit, very well engineered and the second pressing of it will be even better as they've fixed a few of the issues that hav ebeen raised by people building this first edition. Anyway, here are the photos of the completed model. It has a red LED in the cockpit to illuminate the figures. The battery is a 3v coin-type battery hidden in the front walkway section, accessible via a slot in the bottom. With its little brother courtesy Product Enterprises Battery panel: The engine bells etc were painted with Alcad metallic paints, so no ridiculous expense with aluminium bells for me! This was a superb kit, huge fun to build and no major faults as far as I was concerned. The Replicas Unlimited kit in the stash will be consigned to history now...

So lets try again with a resin kit... I bought this one as an Xmas present to myself earlier this year, not knowing that a couple of months later an injection molded kit of a 22" (ie 1:48 scale) Eagle transporter would be announced by Round 2 for the end of 2015! So, my thinking is if I don't build this NOW, I'll never get round to building it and if I try to re-sell it, I won't get anything like what I paid for it when there is (in theory) a better IM kit available for less! Here we go then This was a very well received kit within the Space :1999 community and builds up into a good representation. There are several AM additions that can be added, including aluminium turned engine bells for the main engines and the vertical thrusters and other extra components available. However these tend to be extremely expensive and this kit cost enough as it is. I reckon I can do a decent enough job with some Alcad paint on the engine bells... Progress so far has been to spend an evening at the sink with a washing up bowl of soapy water giving everything a good wash...

So my second entry will be yet another Gerry Anderson production iconic vehicle, this time from the mid 70s and Space 1999, the Hawk. This vehicle only appeared in one episode (War Games) but was released by Airfix/MPC as a kit so has found an enduring fame. This is not the injection moulded kit from Airfix but the resin version produced by Warp, which is REMARKABLY similar to the Airfix kit... ahem... So as you can see its resin and white metal. There are no decals in the kit so I'm going to have to do some research to check on that. I had the Airfix kit back in the 70s and I've see studio-scale versions of this and its immediately obvious that the Airfix Saturn V kit plays an important role in the shape of the original studio model I'm not going to be able to start this right now as I'm now building a 6-wheel Tyrell F1 car for the French Fancies GB, but I'll be back here as soon as that build has progressed significantly...

Back in late December, one of the greats of TV entertainment passed away. As a tribute, I interrupted my current project and had to build something appropriate: which was a kit I picked up at Telford last year. As usual for Imai models, they HAD to turn it into a toy by adding missiles that could be fired from under the wings! Needless to say, I removed this "feature" and tried to add some flashing warning lights to the wingtips using flashing LEDs. The result was this: To be brutally honest, the paintwork could be better - had problems with the masking due to the panel lines - er trenches and the fit of some of the pieces. The LED lighting doesn't really show up very well unless you are at a particular angle - ie edge on to the wing HIdden under the "clouds" are the batteries but even though I beefed them up to 12v, the LEDs still don't show up very well. The LEDs: Fibre optics to illuminate the wing lights - I think the main problem is there just isn't enough fibres I can't honestly say this is one of my better builds sadly...

RIP Gerry Anderson, your marvelous creations were a significant inspiration to me during my youth! This one fought me somewhat - the mould has pretty much had it with poor fit and some distorted details. Still, the new decals are superb and the kit still looks like an Angel to me. Brushed Humbrol enamels, pencil detail marking and Klear to finish. I substituted a smaller pilot to address the scale issue and a cockpit panel shroud to hide the lack of interior! FredT SIG