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I'm going to build a B-17 that I've been thinking about for a long time: N809Z, with the Fulton Skyhook system. This B-17 has a fascinating post-war history. It was originally 44-85531 and doesn't seem to have seen operational service during WWII. I can't find much info about it in the immediate post-war years but it ended up at Clark Field in the Philippines in the hands of the CIA. It was painted flat black, given the serial '639' with no other civil or military serial, and used for overflights of China. During that time this B-17 is said to have flown the longest mission ever flown by a B-17 at over 19 hours. '639' went back to the US in the early 60s where it became N809Z, registered to Intermountain Aviation (a CIA company), and fitted with the then-experimental Fulton Skyhook system. N809Z's most famous mission was to pick up James Bond at the end of Thunderball. But it really should be Operation Coldfeet - one of those Cold War spy missions that sounds too good to be true but really happened. Major James Smith (a parachutist and Russian linguist) and Lieut. Leonard LeShack (a former Antarctic geophysicist) were parachuted onto an abandoned Soviet arctic drift station (a research station on an Arctic ice floe) to retrieve whatever equipment and information had been left there. They were dropped from N809Z - from a door in the floor, in the ball turret position - and picked up three days later using the Fulton recovery system. Three extractions were needed - one for the Soviet equipment and one for each man. The mission is said to have yielded useful information on Soviet activities in the Arctic including research on acoustic methods of submarine detection. Apart from its appearance in Thunderball N809Z doesn't seem to have had much use for a few years after that. In 1969 it was converted into an air tanker and used in a firefighting role until 1985. During that time Intermountain Aviation became part of Evergreen and was re-registered as N207EV. N207EV was restored to B-17G configuration with a full set of turrets and flown as a warbird for a while before going to the Evergreen museum in Oregon. The Collings Foundation has recently acquired it and is restoring it to airworthy status. I'm going to build N809Z with the Fulton recovery system but haven't decided which stage of its life it will be yet - ideally it would be as flown in Operation Coldfeet but I can't find a lot of information about the colour scheme. There are a couple of black and white photos in William M.Leary's excellent book on Coldfeet and I've found a painting which shows it with red markings on a white upper and grey lower fuselage, but that's all I can find. For Thunderball N809Z seems to have been in white and grey with blue trim: And later in the 60s N809Z was photographed at Marana in natural metal and white with light blue trim: Much as I'd like to go with the Coldfeet scheme, one I have the most complete info on is the late-60s scheme. So I think that's what it's going to be. The kit will be the fairly recent Airfix kit, I've got the RAF boxing. All conversion parts will be scratch-built - I've got some 3D printing to do - and decals will have to be custom printed. more soon Julian

Aircraft in Miniature Ltd AiM) is reported working on 1/72nd and 1/48th Cessna CH-1 Skyhook resin kits. Source: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/wingsofpeace/conversations/messages/99462 V.P.