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It’s time to dig an old Lightning out of the stash and represent some proper heavy metal from one of best eras of the RAF. Those thunderous take offs and zoom climbs are always worth a watch on YouTube. If only we could still watch them from the fence at Binbrook! During the later years of their career, the RAF Lightnings had a number of interesting colour schemes; some still green/grey camo and some varying shades of grey with different demarcation lines. One of my favourites is the dark sea grey over barley grey, as shown below: This is the aircraft I’ll be aiming to represent, XS933/AJ of 5 Sqn, circa 1986. As an eBay bargain the box was disgusting; ripped and water damaged, so we’ll skip that pic! Plans ok though. Parts still on the sprues and bagged. Some decals unusable but luckily I think the end of the sheet with the ones I’ll need should be ok ...

Whilst sorting through a few old photos the other day I came across a couple of negatives taken on my dads old Zeiss Nettar camera that is older than I am. They were taken at the RAF Battle of Britain Display at Finningley (now DSA) I know now to be 1975 The photos are cropped off a 6 cm by 6 cm negative. Pretty sure it was an Ilford FP4 film (Roll film with eight exposures) and I developed it myself Lightning F.6 XS925 'J' of 11 Squadron RAF Binbrook Jaguar GR1 coded '20' of 226 OCU Lossiemouth, I have the lost the bit of paper with the serial on (doh!). The Jaguar was the latest thing in 1974, which is why I probably photographed it. The Vulcan in the background is XM597 used in the Black Buck missions and currently preserved at the Scottish Museum of Flight at East Fortune. I hope you like the bit of nostalgia. There should be some more negatives from the same display

Well as a mojo-sapping trial this kit was scoring very high on the whydon'tIjustchuckyouinthebinO'Meter, I had originally planned it as a nice shiny NMF Tengah example. Unfortunately my lack of experience and ham-fistedness with Vallejo and AK metallics caused such a mess that I needed a complete re-strip. Unfortunately the paint-stripper as well as removing the errant paintwork also ate the home-brewed resin cockpit, wheel wells and most of the nose cone in the process. The paint-stripper also made the plastic very brittle, and left a few breaks and cracks on the wings and forward fuselage, especially where the Dali-esque old wheelwells were removed and new ones slotted in through those cracks. Now why did I carry on you may ask? Stubboness and stupidity is all I can offer!! Anyways, the cockpit, wheel wells and nosecone were all inserted into an otherwise complete airframe (it's so much easier if you insert them when the wings and fuselages are in at least 2 pieces I can tell you!), the cracks and breaks were healed as well as I could with gloop and PPP filler, but like even the best of surgeons we did leave a few scars for us to tell tall tales of our war wounds at parties! Now there was no way that I could get the airframe pristine enough for a re-run of the NMF, so I chose to fight another day by going with a final air superiority grey scheme, and chose a 5 Sqn F.6, XS933 from an Xtradecal sheet. Having looked at many many photos of this airframe online, I could see that the finish was looking a little tired without needing to be over-weathered, and there was a variation in panel colours of the supposed same colour, the cockpit canopy was from a previous scheme and there we replacement panels in both NMF and black primer to add visual interest. These photos taken from public images shared on Flikr, to show what I mean. I have attached the links as well as they are not my photos so credit to Phil Bradshaw! https://flic.kr/p/nBm5LN https://flic.kr/p/nG17iV Anyways as I've said, this kit has been through the mill good and proper, and I am just happy to see it out of the other side looking as much like a lightning as it does! Now bearing in mind that this kit was a real save, and it doesn't come up too high on my top 10 list, it does however serve to highlight the improvement in skills that I have gained since discovering first Brett Green and the Brit Modeller. I'm sure like so many good folk of this Parish, many moons ago I made my kits with solid colours, no pre-or post shading, no washes, no AM parts or decals and less technique and products to deal with seam joins, so as a compare and contrast, here is my previous 5 Sqn F.6 from pre-BM days. It's still good enough to sit on the shelf, but I'm pleased with the progress I have made over the intervening years! Anyways stay safe out there!