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It's more a request to borrow the collective knowledge of BM to see if anyone knows who holds the archive for Hunting Aircraft. I have a (bizarre) need to research the Hunting H126, and would like to see if there are any Engineering Drawings anywhere..... I want to build a large scale model of the aircraft - perhaps with cutaways to show the ducting from the engine... It's not something that will happen quickly, but I've tried all the most likely suspects - RAF Museum, BAe, Brooklands and they hold small numbers of reports / external photos, but no structural drawings. I have even looked on Secret Projects, but despite registering I can't get to logon to look at the imagery they have. Does anyone know if the Hunting Aircraft archive is held anywhere, and if it is, how to get a look at it? - Long shot I know, but I thought that there might be someone here that might be able to help. Thanks.

Well I have moved the SR53 on to the painting stage so I'll kick off the next project. Having posted the options in the Chat, the overwhelming preference was the... Pogo. Its a kit I have wanted for a while but never found at the right price. Last entry into the stash and first one out. Oh well. Here are the parts from the box. Anyone remember when Airfix instructions looked like this? I'm not sure what the real cockpit looks like but the blobby shaped body and bent piece of plastic will not suffice. I fouund a picture of the interior and a good cutaway on the interweb so have chosen a few bits from the spares box to make the cockpit. The tub is an Italeri Tornado (which were replaced with Neomega) and the seat is from an F-84 which is the right era. The flat plastic around the cockpit will have to go....

Hi all Having withdrawn my unstarted An-14 from the Group Build (due to a lack of remaining time), here's my simpler/quicker alternative offering. It's a 1/200 scale, white metal/PE kit by Shed Models of the Hunting 126, STOL research aircraft. It's a delightful little kit (if you like that sort of thing), with a pleasingly comprehensive decal sheet. The H126 was designed to allow the investigation of the 'jet flap' principle as an aid to STOL performance. It first flew in 1963 and operated from RAE Bedford. In 1969 it went to the US for a period of wind tunnel testing at NASA, before being retired from service in 1972. It currently resides in the RAF museum at Cosford. As I understand it, the thrust from the aircraft's single gas turbine engine was ducted to various outlet nozzles. 55% of the thrust was blown over the wing flaps in order to provide additional lift. 30% of the thrust went to conventional fuselage jet pipes (to provide propulsion), whilst the remaining 15% was ducted to small nozzles on the wing tips and tail to provide roll, pitch and yaw control at slow speeds (as later copied in part, on the Harrier). The net result of all this was a stall speed of just 32 mph. Cheers

For those interested in the diverse aircraft used by the 7th Photographic Reconnaissance Group, USAAF operating from Mount Farm: IWM's subsidiary American Air Museum has a lot of digitised, large size colour slide pictures made by Robert Astrella which he donated to the Museum. Lots of little hidden gems amongst the expected F-5 Lightnings, Spitfire PR.XIs and Mustangs! http://www.americanairmuseum.com/person/192499

Hi guys, I'm off to Bovington tomorrow for the day, as my step father wants to have a look through the archives for family tree research, meaning I'm going to have most of the day, so if anyone has any requests for photos let me know and I'll see what I can do for you It won't be DSLR quality, but the camera on my OnePlus 6T is more than decent. 📷

One of my favourite YT channels for naval history Drachinifel just featured a slightly longer than the standard 5 minute guide - at two and a half hours - about the A6M Zero. During the originally for 30 minutes planned talk, a well researched picture is created dealing with common misconceptions and myths, used tactics, development and more. Research drawn from known good sources such as Nick Millman and Richard Dunn, but also many more. A list of sources is included in the comment section, well worth the time!

Hello All, I mostly model aircraft and railways and am utterly clueless on ships... I am hoping to build a model of the ship my Grandpa's was on; HMS Dianella which was a Flower Class Corvette. I have managed to find a rough service history and two or three photos via Google and the Imperial War Museum but other than knowing enough to be fairly sure none of the Flower Class kits are quite right for me, I have nothing which helps me know where to start. Are there any good reference sources which would help with drawings or good photos from a few angles? I expect with the nature of the subject that there will not be anything on the Dianella specifically, but with it being a fairly mass produced type of ship I guess that there will be some guidance on what the ships tended to look like if made at certain yards between certain dates? Thank you in advance for any help on this. (and for letting me into your mystical watery section of BM) 😉

Are there any short nosed hawks at all with the digital cockpit? Im building an rc model shortly when i get over a proper dose of the flu, i have a kit that has standard t1 nose but would like to build it with the digi screens in the cockpit, i will convert if necessary but if i can get away and save myself a couple of weeks work i will

Having learnt a lot from browsing the Britmodeller forum, I thought I should return the favour by outlining the planning and building stages I'm going through to create my model. I hope it's interesting and helps others to approach their modelling tasks. I hope to build up this topic with a series of postings over time. I'll start here with a bit of the history leading me to this point. My Dad served as, amongst other things, an air gunner with Bomber Command during WW2. He earned his DFM from 30 missions. 29 of them he was a mid-upper gunner and one a tail gunner. The tail gunner trip was to Peenemunde - to bomb the V1 /V2 research station. The other trips included several to Berlin and a round trip to Cannes. You can imagine he has a few stories about incidents on different missions, as well as life generally. It was his 94th birthday the other day and we talked over a fair bit. After taking Dad to London to see the Bomber Command Memorial, I decided I wanted to make a model of one of his aircraft. Dad's operations were with 76 Squadron, flying from Holme-on-Spalding-Moor. I knew from talking to him that the Halifax aircraft he went on ops in had Merlin engines, Dowty undercarriage, rectangular tail fins and the later perspex nose as well as, I was pretty sure, H2S. This made them the Mk V Halifaxes. Squadron records confirmed that they were Mark V, but bizarrely my Dad's log book says in the header they were Mk IIs. As that header is in the same ink and hand as that of the officer signing off the log, you would expect it to be right. As a double check, I looked up every serial number from the log book in the production records - these confirmed them as Mk V in every case. It just shows that you need to check all your facts. To emphasise the point about research and validation by cross checking: I have gathered various books and photos to inform my build and get the details right. I will be making two models. The first is a practice run to get my skills up - it will be the Matchbox kit and represent the one he was in over Peenemunde. The second, for a diorama, will be the aircraft he was in most, depicted for the Cannes op using a newer Revell kit with some after market amendment. There don't seem to be any photos of either aircraft, but the latter was LK646 part of the same batch as LK640 - an aircraft whose photo has been much published. The largest print is in Bruce Robertson's Halifax Special. There is also a colour profile of it in Osprey's Halifax Squadrons. The only bit of the Osprey colour image I was put off by was the old style tail fins. My understanding was that manufacturers were putting the late fins on by then. The photo misses the tail off. My Dad tells me that LK646 arrived with rectangular fins and that 76 was fully rectangular fins on main operational aircraft by that point. I will put dates and details in a future post. Well, I showed the colour LK640 to my Dad, thinking the only difference he would highlight would be the tail fin. No, he also listed the absence of an H2S dome; the need for a Vickers k gun in the nose; and, a perspex blister aft of the H2S dome, which he used for watching out for fighters from below. So, even very close in batch numbers from the same manufacturer, the details can vary markedly. Further, most relevant photos suggest that the aircraft code letters appeared on the undercarriage. I would have planned to put them on my model if Dad hadn't said they weren't on his plane. That's a preliminary post from me, my first on the forum. Future post should add detail and show how my builds get on. Cheers Andrew

Hello everyone! I've been doing some 1/1 scale modeling on my home lately so my smaller scale projects are waiting, mostly Heinkel He 111 that I started.. :] But the problem is I can't keep my hands off of some plastic so I decided I should do a quick and simple build, and my build of choice is Stearman Kaydet by Revell, 1/72 scale.. :] Now, I need your help! What I would like to know is what kind of weathering, exhaust stains, mud splashes, paint chipping and general extended usage deterioration could one see on one of these planes back in the day when they were extensively used? I wouldn't mind overdoing it a little bit, just as long as it is in correct places.. Any photos you may have, suggestions, anything would be helpful! :] Also, many pictures on the internet show the different propeller color/material..I'm guessing the original used was wooden, and the later restorations feature metal propellers? Anyway, type in question is N2S, known as the "Yellow Peril", with the tail number/registration as shown on the picture below.. I'm not sure where and on what kind of runway this particular unit was used, maybe that could be a factor in deciding proper weathering too.. Any help is very appreciated! :]