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Hi Britmodellers! Here is my most recent completed model - squeezed it into 2024 three or four hours before the midnight. The venomous Venom - in colors of the RAF 8th Squadron that was based at RAF Akrotiri in November 1956 during the Suez Crisis. Probably not much words needed about the airplane itself. DH Venom was a development of successful while rather unusual DH Vampire. Not much was retained from original Vampire though - fuselage was redesigned to accommodate for larger and more powerful Ghost engine. The wing was entirely new too - thinner with swept back leading edge. Tail surfaces are also different. Venom had quite short career with RAF in the 50s but was extensively used in a number of colonial conflicts such as in Malaya, Aden, Oman and it was deployed to Cyprus in course of the Suez Crisis. While the two-seat night-fighter Venom was more or less available in 1/72 through reissues of Frog kit and as a newer Cyber-Hobby kit - the single seat FB versions were non-existing in plastic (Scalemates indicates Aeroclub kits existing 30 years ago - not sure whether that was an injected kit). Only very recently a new injected model was released by AccsGB firm with plastic parts I guess molded in Ukraine by MikroMir. The kit contains several sprues with plastic parts, a small photoetch fret mainly with the parts for interiors and a decal sheet for two versions - one from Suez Crisis and another one from the RAF Squadron located in West Germany. Assembly process has caused mixed feelings. The molds quality is good, fit is mostly fine while sometimes tight. Photoetched parts very nicely take their positions. Fuselage is split between nose and centerline sections with centerline section molded together with wings. That really simplifies assembly and ensures the right dihedral and better alignment of tail booms. However the front fuselage consists of extremely high number of parts - add the need to squeeze some decent amount of weight there! Construction was mostly out-of-the-box. Decals are also fully from the kit - in fact I do not think much of the aftermarket exists for Venom! As far as I remember the kit did not have any seat belts so I think I took those from an Eduard RAF seat belts set. Also the kit is bare of any weapons and only contains the very unique pylons for projectiles of Swiss-operated Venoms. So pylons were grabbed from leftovers of Special Hobby Vampire kit and projectiles were from another Special Hobby RAF post-WWII weapons set (I think this just contains a weaponry sprue from Special Hobby Seafire kit). The model was painted by Vallejo PRU Blue and Hobby Color Dark Green and Dark Sea Grey. Fuel tanks on some photos from Akrotiri are lighter than the bottom side or fuel tanks on the wingtips. So I painted those in Medium Sea Grey. Operation Musketeer black and yellow stripes were the most tricky part. On the period photos they look like this: So you have: - semi-transparent thinly applied or heavily washed yellow - no black on twin-booms (I think there is black paint on the wings though) - paint has been probably applied in haste and noticeably deteriorated - especially on wing leading edges and on the booms. I tried to reproduce the same effects as well. After painting base colors and applying decals I sprayed the model with gloss finish, then sprayed it with Mr. Silicon Barrier and then applied yellow and black. Mr. Silicon Barrier eliminates adhesion between paint layers and allows to scratch the paint leaving the base paint intact. After I scratched yellow and black enough I resprayed the model with gloss finish again to avoid unintended scratching and then highlighted panel lines, weathered the model with Tamiya powders and installed all exterior bits. Aerials on the booms are scratchbuild of fishing line. Some close up photos: And lastly some family shots of my small de Havilland twin-boom collection. Now I need a good Sea Venom and a good and correct Sea Vixen to have the full set! Thank you in advance for any comments and ready to answer any questions on the kit! Kind regards, Dennis

Hello to everybody! Here is my second F-84 finished within the single type group build. Very glad I was able to finish it within 3 months of the GB. Moreover I received this kit just days before the start so it even did not spend any time in the stash! Thunderstreak has been a very significantly reworked version of Thunderjet that only for political reasons retained F-84 designation. A side by side comparison clearly shows that the two have pretty much nothing in common! Undercarriage probably being the most similar part of the two. Thunderstreaks quickly replaced Thunderjets in USAF as well as in airforces of many NATO countries. However unlike its elder brother, Thunderstreak did not have a long military conflicts usage history. The most prominent use of F-84F was with French Air Force during the Suez Crisis including temporary 'transition' of French aircraft to Israel for a short period starting on October 30th to support Israeli offensive against Egypt on Sinai. French aircraft continued to be flown by French pilots but as they were based on airbases in Israel - the French tricolor roundels were repainted with David Stars immediately after aircraft landed at Lod airbase. The new kit from Special Hobby is very well engineered, fit is excellent. It provides good level of details on the surfaces, nice cockpit. Some areas such as wheel bays are quite simplistic though and would benefit from p/e sets or resin replacements. Such aftermarket goodies are nor yet there so my decision was to go with full out-of-box construction. The only aftermarket used was Eduard seatbelts from spares. While the kit is good and simple for construction - decals are not so much. The kit provides full set of decals for all the squadron and operation Kadesh demarcations (not for the black area on the spine and olive drab area on the nose). It is of course possible to just paint these large areas but I decided to use the supplied decals. Decals in the kit are of new type promoted by Eduard and Special Hobby where carrier film is on top of the paint rather than below it. This allows to peel-off carrier film after application. I first applied all the stencils and those worked well - but film was keeping tough to the plastic so I did not remove it. Next step was large coloured decals and here I got some issues. First of all decals are quite fragile. If film is somehow damaged - the paint under it disintegrates into small fractions impossible to collect. The highest risk is on curved surfaces. In my case the tail pipe red band was a total disaster so that I finally repainted it. Secondly after application the film may start to raise just by itself. I did not remove it on purpose but in fact it self-peeled off from several decals. Unfortunately sometimes it peels off with some paint including (naturally) where decals overlap. I think next time I use Eduard decals I will plan to remove the film at least from the largest decals. Paints are Vallejo Metal Color for metallic surfaces. Most others are Gunze or Vallejo acrylics. Before and after decals application the model was covered with Vallejo Gloss Metal Varnish. For final cover I added some satin to avoid super-glossy effect. Lastly some more group photoes - with other Republic jet Thuds and with some counterparts such as Hunter and Super Sabre for size comparison. Thanks for looking! Dennis

Ok...here we go. I don't think we have one of this here yet...I checked. It is a strike aircraft...and I don't have enough FAA aircraft on the shelves... Nice box... Comprehensive looking sprue... Plenty of party favours and nice looking decals... Profile... I'll get into it sometime this week...have to finish the Hornet...and work on the 19 Sq Mk.I... --John

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree. The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. -- T S Eliot, "1920" "I would never have dared; and if I had dared, I would certainly have never dared stop." -- Winston Churchill, on Suez, c.1957 "We have created a system of international law and order in which we have to face the fact that the Security Council is, first, frustrated by the veto and, secondly, that it cannot act immediately. In a sense, the policeman has his hands tied behind his back. He has to wait a long time before he is allowed to play his part. "I myself believe that, if you have accepted that system, you are only safe if you also retain the rights of individual countries to defend their own nationals and their own interests." -- Selwyn Lloyd, 30 October 1956 I loathe starting a build before an old one is finished, but I await paint for a RAAF Sabre, and there's no sense wasting the waning days of my paternity leave on my son, seeing as he won't remember any of it anyway. (Have I said things to him in desperation, these past few weeks, that would get him taken away and me locked up if he could understand them? He will never know.) Oh no. the filial bond between me and young Winston (yes, I know in Britain only reggae musicians are named Winston now) can wait. It's time to build one of those kits we buy, and then talk about building, but never touch. Here's why: Everything I have built in 2015: (yes, my grotto is dingy) The Valiant: This is not a forced perspective shot. I'm running out of flat surface. But a man has to do what he can do while his squalling infant is still small enough to let him do it. So here we are: I'm building the Airfix Vulcan as a Suez Crisis jet, which means it's overall High Speed Silver as opposed to the classic "All-Out Thermonuclear War White". I have the base kit, the Alley Cat tail correction (as you can see, in a fit of misplaced confidence in my own abilities, I've already hacked off the kit tail), and the Freightdog Early Valiant Serials decals. Ideally, I would be doing a 207 Squadron Valiant, as they're rather well documented, but of course the kit markings don't include a 207 Squadron badge. Guess what the only identifier besides the serial was on Suez bombers. Guess. In fact, incredibly, the kit only has a 49 Squadron badge (in two sizes!), and that squadron didn't even participate in the Crisis. Why Airfix would even want to trouble itself with including a marking option for a Valiant that actually saw combat is beyond me anyway, of course, but there you have it. So, thanks to ACIG, which makes no mention of squadron badges for 148 Squadron, this helpful photo of a 148 Squadron Valiant on loan to 207 Squadron in 1955 showing no badge, and a good photo on p.166 of Wings Over Suez, we'll be going with Valiant XD815 from 148 Squadron flown by the Canadian Wing Commander Wilf Burnett (later Air Commodore Wilf Burnett OBE), who commanded the Valiant Wing during the Crisis. If anyone has any corrective or corroborating evidence, please tell me sooner than later. After I do something, I rarely undo it, which is why my wife and I are now parents. In any case, off to the races. I've sprayed the green bits of the cockpit Zinc Chromate Green (mixed with some Alclad Aqua Gloss out of sheer laziness), which looks a little light.