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This build is of the Short Stirling MG-V W7445 based at RAF Oakington, that on Sunday 15th November 1941 eventually came to rest after just missing my Grandfather’s farm house at Westwick Farm, Westwick, with the wing then clipping another house close by leading to the Stirling crashing into the Orchard field on the opposite side of the road to the farm house. The two aircrew that my Grandfather rescued were Sgt A.J. Ansell R.A.F. and Sgt W.D. Topping and my Grandfather was awarded the British Empire Medal (Civil) for his heroic actions. My plan is to then create a Diorama with the Stirling backed by a LNER D16 locomotive and carriage that is captured in the photograph on the railway line between RAF Oakington and my Grandfathers farm. I'm 100% sure that W7445 was the first Stirling to be fitted with the Fraser Nash NN7A dorsal turret making it a Mk1 Series III. This isn't going to be Ia quick build😄👌 https://postimg.cc/CdpNHPSNI https://postimg.cc/T5QdSLZc https://postimg.cc/N2QGp7PM https://postimg.cc/YGKCmw6QII https://postimg.cc/nXmGv4XL https://postimg.cc/dD0RWPhp https://postimg.cc/kDD8QQZd

Having been lurking on this forum for quite a few months now, and occasionally adding my own ramblings to other people's topics, I have finally worked up the courage to start a WiP of my own. My main interest is the RAF in WW2, at the moment particularly the aircraft of Bomber Command. So having had a short break from model making, of almost half a century , earlier this year I acquired these: This first post is a bit of a test run to see if my 20th century brain can cope with the 21st century technology of photo-sharing. If it all works I have a back catalogue of photos taken over the last six months or so and I'll be sorting and posting from that, which might give the illusion of amazingly rapid progress. Once I've caught up I'm sure it will become apparent that we should be using the geological time scale to measure my work rate! No proper sprue shots in this thread. I think we all know what they look like and by the time I got myself organised a lot of mine looked like this: That's enough of my waffle, let's hit Submit Topic and see what happens!

So here's mine, Revelll's rebox of the Italeri Comanche in 1/72. You probably know the story behind this real life cancelled project but if not, here's a Wiki about it. A remarkable machine in many ways...but you would expect that having spent a few billion dollars on it! This kit was €10 second hand 😊 Revell_RAH-66_Comanche_Box by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Revell_RAH-66_Comanche_contens_1 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Inside, the plastic is by Italeri which has also been reboxed by Tamiya. Revell_RAH-66_Comanche_parts_1 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Revell_RAH-66_Comanche_parts_2 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Single clear canopy which I might try to open up. Revell_RAH-66_Comanche_parts_3 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Not much to it so will try to build as neatly as possible and add a suitable potential paint scheme that a potential real world operator might use.. Thanks for looking, good luck with your builds! Cheers, Dermot

Hi, I've had this Tigercat kit in the stash for many year. This seems like a good opportunity to start building it. It's the first Italeri rebox of the mid 1990's AMT Ertl kit, which is not a bad thing. Mostly... The details are very nice, with decent panellines. The dreaded vinyl tires have been replaced with normal plastic ones. I did order some aftermarket resin props for it, from Ultracast, as the kit ones are reversed. I also got metal landing gear legs from Aerocraft Models, which I think should be a bit stronger than those fragile plastic ones. For the rest it will be OOB, and I will try to do it as an all black one from VMF(N)-513 in Korea in 1952. I started a few days ago, with a coat of black primer, and then some MRP Interior Green where needed. Next up is painting all the cockpit details and putting it together.

Hi all and I'm in with this one, will be a OOB build. Italeri_F-35A_box_art by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Just the two sprues....some plastic fondling may have taken place Italeri_F-35A_contents_1 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr And clear parts and decals. Italeri_F-35A_contents_2 by Dermot Moriarty, on Flickr Good luck with your builds, happy modelling. Dermot

Hello all from the shed. First finished model of 2024. So, there I was making Chinook HC1 BN for a friend when crack went the canopy while I was giving it a little polish 😧. Nothing for it but to buy another Chinook model for the canopy. As the HC1 was the Airfix kit I thought I would get the Italeri kit for a change. However, it was remarkably similar (in fact identical) to the Airfix one apart from the decals. Just as well I suppose as I was swapping bits between kits. The HC1 built in parrallel has lots of Black Dog resin on it, as I enjoyed using those parts I bought Black Dogs snow shoes for this Italian cab build. I also added a little bit of scratch work in the form of aerials and the decals are a mix of Airfix, Italeri and Model Allience. Its finished using Xtra Color paints and varnishes and is panel lined and weathered using Flory wash and Tamiya powders. Not the best fitting kit but I do like doing a helicopter (two in fact) for a change. I'm looking forward to seing how the new Airfix moulding of the Chinook is in comparison to the old moulds. The model depicts a Chinook CH-47C of the Italian Army. 1 RGPT. “Antares” based at Viterbo in 1992. Here are a few pics. Hope you like it. Thanks for looking. Bravo November soon. Pete

This has been kicking around the stash for a number of years now and it just happen to be on the top of the pile when this GB has popped up. So here's what I'm working with. Most Macchi's in Brazil were two seat aircraft, but they did import a dozen single seat Impala II's from South Africa.

Hello Here is another finished kit. You can say that's a lot in a few days but actually I have been scattered since this winter and there were several in parallel. I can say some others are coming soon. So here is an EB-66E from Italeri. It is an old kit but it is quite nice with hollow lines and some details inside the cockpit. To be closer than a real Destroyer on the ground I cut the leading edge slats and with some plastic card I modified this area. I put some weight in the nose and that's all. The markings came from my huge stock of decals as I wanted to build this aircraft I saw on a picture on the Internet. This is EB-66E DL 54-440 of the 42nd Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron based at Takhli AB in Thailand in late 1968. All the paint came from the Gunze Aqueous range. All comments are welcome. Cheers. Patrick

Hello all from the Shed. This is the first of a pair of Daks I've been making for the South of the Rio Grande group build. This Uraguayan one and a Brazilian one. Ill save words and just say if you would like to see the build, here is the link. Hope you Like it Thanks for looking Pete

After the F-35A (thread) & the F-35B (thread), Italeri is to release a new moulds 1/72nd Lockheed-Martin F-35C Lightning II - ref. 1469 Source: https://www.italeri.com/en/article/816 V.P.

This will be a nostalgia build for me: I've fond memories of building the old Esci boxing during the school summer holidays when I went quite mad on Cold War US Navy subjects. I did a low viz scheme hand-painted in unthinned Humbrol enamels. The matt finish and the matt decals weren't a good combination - and this was before I knew of gloss coating and sealing in decals or even setting solutions. The decals peeled off within days. Hopefully I can muster something better this time around On with the sprues: There is a bit of flash here and there, but everything seems ok, though the plastic is a bit grainy in places. Not decided on the scheme yet. To continue the nostalgia theme I should really do the low-viz scheme, but that VA-25 bird is very tempting... Good luck with your builds everybody. FLY NAVY

Hi everyone, I will be building a 1/72 scale RAH-66 in the colours of the prototype Comanche, 94-0327 that first flew on 4 January 1996. More soon!

In the late 90's there was a Flight Sim called Joint Strike Fighter which allowed you to fly either of the two aircraft that were competing as part of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program, the X-32 and the X-35, in simulated combat in 4 different campaigns against a variety of targets. I don’t know what it was about this game but it sucked up a surprising amount of my teenage life. Now, since neither the X-32 nor the X-35 were to fly until 2 years after the game was released I think you have to take whatever characteristics were assigned to each aircraft in the simulation as being, well, not entirely accurate. But in the game , while broadly similar, each had it’s own strengths and weaknesses. I can’t remember exactly what strengths were assigned to the X-32 over the X-35 but whatever they were, they were the ones that suited how I wanted to play the game so it was aircraft I tended to fly. I’ve had a soft spot ever since for the X-32. I don’t think this is normal; the X-32 gets a pretty bad press... It lost the Joint Strike Fighter competition to the X-35, probably for the right reasons, although if you listen to some people you’d think it lost on looks alone; Boeing having made some rather interesting design decisions that resulted in a whole host of compromises, one of which was on appearance. But anyway, whatever the reasons, the X-35 won and is now the F-35, the X-32 lost and is now relegated to obscurity. According to Scalemates, Italeri tooled both the X-32 and X-35 in 2000, probably before either had actually flown. Revell and Tamiya reboxed them the next year but obviously once the X-35 won the competition the focus has been on everyone tooling the production F-35 variants. Italeri did release the X-32 and X-35 together as a Joint Strike Fighter Program box set in 2018 but I wonder if they’ll ever come out again. I’m not usually a Jet modeller but nostalgia wins out so I put my hands on the Joint Strike Fighter Program box set and hid it in the stash. I’ve had the nod from the hosts of both this and the F-35 STGB (thanks @81-er, @Wings unlevel!) for my plan to build the X-32 here and the X-35 in the F-35 STGB so it's time for the stash to relinquish this one to the bench. The GBs overlap so I’ll probably do a bit of the X-32 cockpit then put it on pause until August when the F-35 STGB starts; I can then get the X-35 underway and finish building them as a matched pair. As a novice on the Jet scene this is the sort of kit I can get on board with; I think there’s less than 50 components and since I plan on having the weapons bay closed I can cut that down even further! I’ve toyed with the idea of finishing it in WHIF FAA markings, since, had it won the JSF competition, it would have entered British service, but a bit of reading suggests that Boeing were going to add tailplanes to the production version which weren’t present on the demonstrator. This means that representing a production aircraft would need some very significant kit bashing which I cannot be bothered to do. So, rather boringly, I’ll be doing both the X-32 and the X-35 as the JSF demonstrators. Cheers, Richard.

Hi - I decided that never having built a helicopter kit I would remedy that by pulling the Italeri 1/48 WESSEX HAS1 out of my stash. I had a search on Britmodeller and found several builds of 1/72 & 1/48 kits as RAN HAS31's so that firmed up my decision to make the kit as a RAN HAS 31B. I took the photos below in the late 80's at Cooma Airport NSW when two Wessex were on exercise transporting soldiers from the airport to various spots in the local countryside. Some good RAN Wessex walkarounds here http://www.grubby-fingers-aircraft-illustration.com/wessex_walkaround.html - just follow link HELICOPTERS>WESTLAND for three different aircraft. I'm not sure if the HAS31A was purely in an antisubmarine role & the 31B utility as in the photo but I leaned toward modelling it in the utility role - maybe someone could clarify on that? So armed with the 4PLUS book and referring to the Grubby Fingers Wessex walkarounds I took the plunge. I also found references on BM in the various builds on here including some with useful photos from Navy870 with of things like the main rotor fold jig in place on the aircraft. When I opened the box, I found that I had luckily purchased a Scale Warship Rotor Fold etch & a Rotor Craft folded tail rotor resin upgrade for the kit - other purchases lurking at the bottom of the box were two Wessex HAS31 decal sheets & a Scale Warship Helicopter Deck Grill & tiedowns. Sooo I plan to make the Wessex all folded up with the cabin door open & I wanted to make the cabin interior detailed - the kit does not have the "dog box" on the Beetleback fairing for this version so whether the build would go ahead depended on whether I could scratch build a passable "dog box" I started by making a mould for the dog box from a piece of pine & then vacuformed it from some 40thou plastic sheet - I then had to carve a recess in the beetle back to accept the shape of the dog box fairing & remake some of the beetleback fins I had been a bit heavy handed with. I decided the fairing was good enough to keep going & would largely be tucked in behind the folded rotor blades, so I turned my attention to the cabin interior. I made use of the RP Tools strip cutter which was very handy when you need to cut several strips the same length. I decided to make the cabin interior framework more prominent by overlaying the frames in the kit with Evergreen 20thou square strip. Various gussets & boxes were represented by its of Evergreen plastic, pipes with fine lead wire & electrical cables from electrical wiring with insulation stripped off & teased out into bundles At this point after studying the RAN Wessex walkarounds I noted that the cabin roof extended only about halfway along the cabin and from there back the curved roof structure of the airframe is visible so I decided to try & incorporate this feature. I wrapped a piece of 40thou sheet around a metal tube with copper wire to hold it in place & plunged it into a cup of boiling water - after a few minutes it had taken up the curve I needed. Next step was to shape it to fit the rear cabin - photo below shows it glued in & frames added - the square of white plastic is there temporarily to help align it. The cabin roof part was cut so that it stopped between the two port windows & then the quilting was sanded back & filled with Vallejo putty followed by sanding. The forward bulkhead was detailed with plastic card & wire to make it look a bit more like the walkaround photos - I note the fire extinguisher should sit in a recess & I may or may not fix that - a piece of 5mm plastic tube was filed flat one side, cut to fit into the framework & added to the rear cabin roof to represent the tail rotor shaft housing. The fuselage halves were masked along the mating surfaces prior to painting of the cabin interior. Having done all that the following shows the glimpses of the interior when closed up temporarily. I'm still thinking about the "troop seating"? that fits along the cabin wall but just noticed that the new Airfix Sea King has them on the sprues for one of the kit versions - the other option is to scratch build them. Thats it for now! CJP

I kicked off a build thread for an X-32 over in the Project Cancelled GB with a promise that when this GB started I'd be coming in with the X-35B that came in the same box. Time to put my modelling where my mouth is! Here's the X-35 sprues. All looks fairly simple, although it does only seem to give the option of having the swivel nozzle at the rear pointed down. I've been holding off cracking on with the X-32 until this GB started becuase I'm thinking that building them together will somehow be more efficient, even if only in usage of grey paint. Let's get this Program started...

Hi, Here's my classic Italeri/Testors F-5A that I'll build a sa Norwegian one. It should be a simple build, simpler than the Kinetic NF-5A that I built before. I'm contemplating a second build for the GB. The countries in front of the GB participants got moved a bit and I received IS. I know it's not an obligation, but I like the idea of a lot of alliance members being represented. Iceland is a bit of a challenge as they do not have armed forces (there is a Coast Guard). I hope to build an F-102 of the Iceland-based 57th FIS of the USAF (the 1/72 Meng kit). Cheers, Stefan.

Hello all from the shed. So, there was this colourful decal sheet I spied on the web, just the job thought I for the group build😁. I decided to use the early Italeri kit as the basis for the build because it showed a single passenger door on the box art rather than a freight/passenger door. I didn't realise the later box offerings were exactly the same (offering both doors) until I purchased one to do the second of my colourful Dakota builds. (see other topic). But first to the Uruguayan one. The LF model decals are a taj confusing in that the main sheet shows only the air force wording and the presidential logo on the left side of the aircraft. However, there is a second sheet included with two sets of wording. Also I have found a colour plate on the internet showing the right side of the aircraft with wording and the logo behind the cockpit! There are precious few photos of Uruguayan Air force Dakotas to help me decide categorically which is correct, so unless anyone has pictures or drawings that show both sides of this aircraft thus solving the conundrum, I may have to make my own presidential logo for the right side and go for total symmetry, which to me seems logical. (Photos to follow when I can get it working.)

After the reported successful Macchi MC.202 "Folgore, Italeri is to release in 2024 a 1/32nd Macchi C.200 Saetta kit - ref. 2516 Source: https://www.italeri.com/uploads/news/0hFsarN8VqpofmHNCQiD0phaHkvlSZQY30JTdrFK.pdf V.P.

Hi Folk's noticed this one on E-bay a few weeks ago been up a couple of times and not sold this time at just under eight quid I thought I'd have a punt as it's a rare aircraft I've not modelled before so after the Sabre this one will be started.This is the boxing.

About a year ago I posted a trio of Lancias, and had promised myself that I’d add an Integrale to round out my favourite Italian rally cars. Started with the engine and ancillaries. I'm guessing it will be a tight squeeze to fit this lump in the engine bay. Then onto the chassis with a few extra cables and wires for interest Hmm, maybe the 037 was smaller than I thought… Perhaps the bodywork will shrink it down

My dad´s next project DSC_0006 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr DSC_0007 by grimreaper110, auf Flickr

Hello dear modellers, The model was kit 7078 from Italeri. However, since it seemed like it would be very boring to make a T-34 model out of the box, I wanted to make at least a small addition. A friend printed the mine roller with the SLA 3D printer. When the kit and 3D parts came together, I wanted to complete the resulting thematic model with a base and this is the result.

Hello folks, After finishing my vintage Italeri Crusader I (which I enjoyed a lot) I couldn't resist building another Crusader. This time, it is again an Italeri kit, Crusader Mk. II is a bit newer edition, but the only addition compared to Italeri's old kits is some new parts, mostly figures. The model is based on a tank on a reference photo captioned 'Officers reviewing artillery positions on escarpment south of Mersa', 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters), Egypt, 1942' so it should represent a 3CLY Crusader, according to the reference photo, close support version. The tank didn't have any markings (which was quite common for the Crusaders in this period), but being a CS tank, I guess that it probably belonged to the headquarters. At this time, the 3rd CLY was part of the 22nd Armoured Brigade, famous for its creative camouflage. This one is no exception and the reason I wanted to build this particular tank. The photo was taken in June 1942, at the time when Mersa Matruh was taken by Germans after the Gazala Battle and 3rd CLY was relocated to the escarpment south of town. Not long before this, the 3rd CLY was involved in the intense fighting around the Cauldron and the Knightsbridge Box during the Gazala battle. The only AM additions are the Panzer Art mantlet, Aber BESA and CS barrel (originally the kit included 2pdr), Eureka tow cables, and Panzer Art ammo crates. The tracks are original vinyl ones 😱. Again, I enjoyed this build a lot. The base color was airbrushed with MRP light stone, while the disruptive color was brush painted with Hataka blue line, specialized for brush painting. Disruptive paint applied on these tanks was (probably) locally produced dark brownish camcolor used for other purposes (construction industry etc.). It was applied by hand using whatever was available (brushes, cloth, etc.) and the result was not very neat, which I tried to reproduce. Weathering is just some pigments, first sprayed with an airbrush and then rubbed here and there to make it look irregular. And here's the reference photo taken by Major Wilfred Herbert James Sale. So now I finally have all three of them Had to take some photos of them together for comparison. I apologize for too many photos. Thanks for watching and as always, I appreciate your feedback. Cheers, Nenad

Here's Whirlwind HAR 21 WV198 as she appeared in the early 1960's. This little project started off with the Airfix Vintage Classics Westland Whirlwind HAS 22. The conversion required a lot more work than I was prepared to do so I donated the kit to a younger, and more appreciative, member of the family and I got myself an Italeri HO4S-3. The build was wrapped up inside of two weeks and I was able to made use of some of the rather nice new decals included with the Airfix model - younger member of the family hasn't noticed they're missing from his kit yet!! Paints: Ammo by Mig & The Army Painter acrylic. Decals: XtraDecal, Airfix & Italeri. Base: Trumpter 09802 Rotor blade tethers: cut from strip of PE brass. Pitot tube: thin plastic tube from Evergreen. Revell Plasto putty: the boom/fillet to fuselage join required a bit of filling and filing. The Italeri kit has the wiper blade moulded onto the windscreen. I just left it as is. Serial numbers are from Xtradecal and and had to be applied and lined up individually. Italeri do a nice decal for the instrument panel ...and I need to touch up the paintwork on the windscreen pillars. That's the Airfix warning decal around the exhaust: no transparent boundary around the printed area to worry about. Nice. I secured the model to the base with a tight fitting plastic peg. The locking wire under the bay provides a bit of redundancy. There's nothing worse than a model breaking loose and rattling around in a display case. Italeri give you the option to have the cabin door open or closed - and they provide some basic seating as well. I opened up the pilot's entrance/window with a bit of scalpel work.

The Italeri 1/72 Grumman EA-6A Intruder, I had originally wanted to finish it as a VAQ 33 airframe as depicted on the box but the kit decals were quite old and broke apart when they hit water so I purchased the Printscale decals for the same squadron only for those to do the same thing as soon as I tried to use them they just broke apart, so I had to raid my Fujimi boxing of the EA-6A for some squadron decals and used some stencils from an old microscale sheet I had so after a partial repaint to match the aircraft depicted here we are, to be honest I am just glad to see the back of it. 1/72 Grumman EA-6A Intruder by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 Grumman EA-6A Intruder by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 Grumman EA-6A Intruder by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr 1/72 Grumman EA-6A Intruder by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr