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Morning All. As I still have another 20 days before the B17 STGB starts I made a start on another Airfix kit, this time the new tool BAE Harrier GR3. Pick up from Ebay for £5.99+postage due to the control column and pilot being missing both of which I had left over from the other one I built 4-5 models ago. I have the Xtradecal sheet that I used for the 3 Sqn aircraft I made before so plenty of options. IMGA0419 by neil Connor, on Flickr The plan for this one will be in flight on a range sortie, firing SNEB rockets from 4 pods as seen in quite a few video clips from the 80's. The only decision I have not yet made is the range location. It could be UK or Belize, this give me 2 marking options. 1. IMGA0421 by neil Connor, on Flickr 1 Sqn in Norwegian exercise winter camo 2. IMGA0422 by neil Connor, on Flickr 1473 Flight based in Belize, I was based in Belize for 6 1/2 months and watched the RAF set fire to the live fire training area with rockets and bombs and then spent 3 hours putting them out with fire beaters. Made a start on the cockpit and tested pilots for fit, the painted one is a revell figure and just looks like a giant compared to the airfix pilot IMGA0423 by neil Connor, on Flickr IMGA0426 by neil Connor, on Flickr IMGA0428 by neil Connor, on Flickr IMGA0427 by neil Connor, on Flickr Not sure the canopy will fit of the revell pilots head

Seeing as Airfix have already announced their Spitfire XIV, on the IPMS UK site https://ipmsuk.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Scale-ModelWorld-2018-Timetable-V1.pdf the timetable of events includes an announcement by Airfix at 11 o'clock on the Saturday. Wonder what it could be.... Robert

Hi all, Having just joined this forum, I thought I'd share 3 builds from my youth, and the lessons learned for each of them before I start sharing current builds. Many many years ago I build the old 1/72 Airfix Albatros DV. The kit is from the 50s, originally, and has been re-boxed multiple times. I got it in this box, many of you might remember it: The plane I chose to build was a Jasta 5 crate, shown in this picture, as it looked so beautifully elegant: Things I wanted to try with this kit This was my first WWI kit I decided to: Rig - I got transparent fishing line and pulled it over a black permanent marker. Paint using masking tape - I cut the star out of tape and painted the green fuselage band around it Angle the control surfaces The model was painted without an airbrush. The completed model The lessons learned whilst building this particular kit Rigging is much less daunting than it seems and adds nicely to the finished model Masking tape works, even with brushes Angling control surfaces is a nice touch and worth the effort in 1/72 A windscreen and propeller decals for the manufacturer logo are also quick wins in terms of added realism A semi-gloss finish looks nice, especially on varnished plywood, but reveals every unevenness of the paint job 😮 A great finish using brushed enamel paint is very difficult to achieve - airbrushing might be unavoidable Best regards, Rob

Hi all - having recently got back into the hobby and after a very nice welcome from everyone here, I thought I’d put my latest work in progress on here for some scrutiny- it’s the current Airfix typhoon which is a plane I’ve always loved - and Airfix kits seem to build pretty well (mostly) and they're nice and cheap. So with every build I’m trying to expand the skill set and try something new - this time I’m adding some pe parts from Eduard for the cockpit and attempting some riveting. I’m also going to go for some nice weathering on the fuselage using oils and maybe some double layer chipping... we’ll see how it goes. After 4 nights (about 8 hours) I have the following: My first photo etched part assembled and painted... I thought this was going to be a nightmare but it turned out okay I think. All done with a modeling knife and tweezers. Cockpit all done and ready for assembly- all that lovely detail that no one will ever see. So far so good. I painted the base colors with Tamiya cockpit green - used Tamiya panel line wash and chipping with a silver artist pencil which works surprisingly welling as it’s a pencil. Dry fit of the fuselage half’s seems okay. Some fiddling required on the cockpit seat. Glued, clamped and left to dry. I haven’t tried riveting before but love the extra detail it brings out - using this as a source and using my new riveting tool from trumpeter I hacked out rivets on the upper wings. The results are so so... I really need to figure out a better way to do this before doing the rest of the model. I used a transparent ruler to use but it kept slipping and so quite a few rivets went where they shouldn’t go. I was going to use label tape but the stuff I got was way too thin. If there any kiwis or aussies know a good brand to get for this job I’d appreciate it. That’s all for now - thanks for reading and for any feedback you have to offer. I’m only working on this for the moment so it should be a relatively quick build.

Well I've been lurking on here for nearly three years only occasionally sticking my head above the parapet, so it's high time I contributed a bit more. For my first WIP I'm going back forty years or so to the first kit I built with Dad's help, or was I hindering him building it? Said kit was the venerable Airfix Wellington. I've no idea what happened to that model, nor another Wellington I made on my own a couple of years later. For most of the intervening years I've pottered around in the model railway world not really achieving that much. Three years ago though I fell off my bike and broke the top of my leg. Unable to direct my wife to the railway kits and bits in the shed down the garden I remembered how good a friend had said the new Airfix Spitfire was. Well it wasn't just the one Spitfire that was liberated from the LHS and my wallet has felt feint ever since. Coming up to date I purchased from an auction site a Wellington of similar vintage to the original one and with the upcoming release of a new version I thought it about time I got cracking with it. The intention is not to build a super realistic Wellington but hopefully have a reasonably competent bash at assembling the kit well. Opening the box showed that the plastic bag was still intact which was very pleasing to find. So with a bit of a James May moment I slashed my way into it. And it's still got its stand :-) That's where the initial joy ended. There are sink marks and flash all over the place. A degree of fettling will be required to get bits to fit, but that's part of the fun. The two biggest problems are probably going to be that the upper part of the port flap is slightly short shot and the port fuselage just in front of the bomb aimer's window is also. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the ribbing yet. It's a quite pronounced but vague in where it's going. Hopefully the sink mark remedial work won't obliterate it and I'll be to gently calm it down. I've seen some builds where it appears the ribbing has been removed and it doesn't look right. Airfix have provided some crew, though I'm not sure that Tie fighter pilots were acting as gunners during WWII The crew have all been cleaned up and had spears shoved up their ... ready for painting Much of the work over the last couple of days has been cleaning up the fuselage, turrets and glazing and then carrying out dry fits. The cockpit fitted relatively well and only needed lifting a bit on one side (it'll need plenty of filler though!). The bomb aimer's window and the front turret were both a bit wide so strips of plasticard have been added on one fuselage edge. I've also assembled the cockpit such as it is. Starting with this horror Thanks Airfix! And there's only one of them. Wimpey's seem to have been dual control. Cleaned up and looking a bit more like the real thing. With the jam jar glass of the cockpit not a lot will be visible anyway. And assembled The pilots and cockpit glass will hopefully hide much of the seat horror, though I must dust the filings off before taking future photos. Thanks for looking, comments are welcome - are the photos too large?

Good evening gents and gentesses, having landed back from New York about four hours ago I am now back in the work room thinking of Telford. Whenever we get down to the last couple of weeks I feel the need to push myself to finish something last minute. This time I found a Gnat in my stash crying out to be built. Looks a lovely kit with two very nice schemes, but which to choose? After a bit of deliberation I chose to do both, so dug the other one from the stash. Now I can do both for Telford. Also I can keep changing my mind for the final schemes, what joy. So. On with the building. Thanks for looking.

A second Meteor F8 finished in one of the markings options from the Airfix Club kit: A73004 Gloster Meteor F8 Queen's Coronation Review The Airfix issue of the MPM 1/72 kit. Also issued by Hannants under their Xtrakit name Painted with Xtracolor High Speed Silver Meteor F. 8 of 92 squadron, September 1952

This is another kit built for the recent Classic Airfix Group Build. This kit dates from 1959, and although this was a much more recent boxing of it, it's a bit of a shocker to be honest. Every part will fight you as you try to build it. My top tip is to remove the locating pins or file them down much thinner as they seem to all be out of position. Dear Airfix of you are reading this please update this kit, it's not doing you any favours. Build / Battle in progress below This is how it turned out, not as good as I would have liked, but let me know what you think. cheers Pat

Hi all, Another teaser set of shots for a model built for Geoff Coughlin's Scale Modelling Now web magazine. Read all about it over there... ;-) Cheers, Dean

Hi all - like many here, I’m recently returned to the hobby after about 30 years away - bought a model for my kids and rediscovered how much I enjoy fiddling and painting plastic. This is my 7th build all up and the first one I’m reasonably happy with. First one painted with my new airbrush which I’m very happy with. Airfix kit - quite recent I think, painted with Tamiya acrylics. Used oils for the weathering. Nothing on the work that’s posted here but a step in the right direction for me I hope! Thanks for any feedback and apologies for the smart phone photography.

I finished this a few years back using the Airfix kit and augmenting weapons with Coastal Craft offerings. I came across Kev's (Longshanks) build during the build which was an added inspiration. I should have replaced the stern steps with wire and shusshhhh - don't tell anyone but the mast is in the wrong place ......... (You live and learn) Thanks for looking Rob

Built mostly oob. I added a crew man in the wheel house and a figure in each turret. I added a chain length and a coil of rope to the anchor. I do have too many aerial separators on those wires tho I changed the boat number from the kit ones as I didn't want a well known boat

Airfix is to release in 2014 a new Lancaster variant in 1/72nd, the Avro Lancaster BI(F.E.)/BIII - ref. A08013 V.P.

Hello all, I saw a caricature of a P-40 as a Jack O'Lantern and got the idea to make my own design. This is the 1/72 - Airfix - A01003 - Curtiss Hawk 81-A-2 , a very good model! I already made it once few years ago, so I knew where to take extra care when assembling. All markings are made by cutting the masks I made in CorelDraw on a cutter and then spraying black paint over it. The guns are made out of syringe needles, some wiring added to the landing gear and antenas are made out of EZ Line. All was made in about 5 days, and the goal was to get it done for the 5. Aleksić Cup held in Pančevo, Serbia on the 20.10.2018. to compete in the Sci-Fi/What if category. This was my first competition and I earned bronze for it 🎃🥉🍻 You can see the WIP pics on the following link: https://www.scalemates.com/profiles/mate.php?id=16559&p=albums&album=44687&view=list

Hello everybody. I've been thinking about building this beauty for a while now and after looking for some info and possible builds to follow I have come to the conclusion that either I've stumbled upon a lesser known kit that people just don't know about (prolly not) or that it's a kit that's been started, become a pain right up the Harris (understatement) and relegated to the draw of doooom. The few I have seen together and finished are wonders to behold I'm fascinated by its enormity and sheer balls out crazyness. It has curtains!!!! For better of for worse I'm going to run at this with everything I've got. it's going to be OOB pretty much with some scratch work here and there. I hope you'll join me on this adventure of plastic and string. It's going to be fun!!!! I'm starting this thread to attach to my P38-RFI Currently it's sitting waiting for move one. Here is the obligatory box shot. isn't she brilliant! I've bought a couple of the windsock ref books and I'm planning on building the "last days" one. Here we are as of now. The mouldings don't look too bad and I think all the parts at there. Now the RFI has been done on my P-38 I'm looking forward to getting my teeth sunk into this. Updates soon. Take care and as always happy modelling guys. Johnny Stringbag.

For some time I've been thinking of putting a small railway scene together using Airfix kits in a static display. Colin Marrow sparked this idea with his Airfix Village project. Alan Bean (Beany) and others added fuel to the fire with their projects, and with my recent railway builds I decided it was time to stop prevaricating and actually make a start. Firstly I measured all my kits - buildings, platforms, all statics - and cut out scale templates. I only have two platform kits, so decided this would be a terminus station with the Booking Hall facing the buffer stops. I was looking to use a single 607mm x 1220mm baseboard, and my crude plans indicated this may be possible - the determining factor would be the track geometry. Having reclaimed some track from my long-stalled loft layout, I laid out the point-work to discover that the station throat alone would need the 1220mm length, and an additional board was required for the station area. I purchased two hardboard sheets and four battens to support them an give them some rigidity, and set about gluing and screwing the frames to the boards. This had to be a simple construction as my woodworking skills are lamentable. The two boards bolt together giving an overall area of 2160mm x 607mm (that's 7'1" x 2' in old money) The tracks are glued down and only tacked at the ends. The turntable ring is dry fitted and positioned only. Likewise, the level crossing is an old one, merely laid down to check dimensions. I have found locations for the two footbridges I am working on.

Well folks this one has sneaked up on me a bit! I got a sharp reminder while perusing the GB's for what was happening to see lots of you were piling in with some great choices. So with out further a do here's mine.... IMG_2743 by G DSC, on Flickr Box art from a 1992 issue made in France no less.... IMG_2744 by G DSC, on Flickr A big box full of bits, which i hope to make in to a Stirling shape! IMG_2745 by G DSC, on Flickr And, yes it does have the tractor and bomb trolley too. Looking forward to this immensly as i haven't made a 1/72 4 engine type in years. Cheers Greg

FINISHED MODEL Got this kit for £12(?) off a guy on Facebook, it sat in the stash for a week or two, but I was itching to build my first German aircraft (German aircraft being my favourites in WW2). Yeah the canopy needs a little clean up, but that's effort. It's not built to an amazing standard, just enough for me to be happy with it on display without close scrutiny. Criticism welcome though, I'm always looking to improve where I can (be bothered) . Yep wonky gear, haven't glued it yet, so that why. REVIEW Quick version (copy pasted from my review on Airfix's website) The cockpit goes to together nicely, and is well detailed for the scale. I added some seatbelts made from masking tape as that's the only area I can really fault the interior on, not having any. The wing fit however I found to be off, I don't know if this was due to my error or the kit, which also messed up the fit of the engines to the wing. The landing gear doors (front of the nose gear door, and both of the main gear doors) have quite a tight fit, and may need a small amount of sanding to fit well. The decals were a little difficult to get on right around the tail, the checker pattern being made of two decals, which I think were labelled with the the wrong number (which was rather confusing). I got them on in the end, with some chipping using some silver paint it looks acceptable now. I completed the kit in little over a week, a very good speed for me, and it was a fun kit to build. I would consider getting the other variants available to add to my collection. Long Version First thing is the sprues, the parts are aranged onto 3 (not 4, one was cut so it'd fit in the box I was washing them in) main sprues, and one clear. The parts are well organised with only a few small issues immediately obvious, one of the wheels was a little off and misshapen, but that was fixed with relative ease. This looked like it would be an easy build, and as per normal now, I decided on a gear down build, and wanted the cockpit open with no pilot. First thing to build was the cockpit assembly, which goes together very nicely. I added seat belts using masking tape and painted them in a tan-yellow colour (looks more yellow on the photo. Next was the wings, which had a terrible fit with the body, and threw off the fit of the engines I kinda stopped taking so many pictures here... Lots of filler, and sanding, and frustration around the engines (ended up trimming most of the join away and using filler instead), and added bullet holes. Painting, always silver primer for me, Maskol was sued for chipping, and blu tac for the cockpit and wheel wells. Not bad for a first attempt (no practice) at mottling Decals now Tail band decal was a nightmare, and I got aftermarket for the swastikas, which are not included Link to the kit here: https://www.airfix.com/uk-en/shop/aircraft/messerschmitt-me-262-a-1a-schwalbe-1-72.html

Dear Friends Here is the Airfix Bf 109E-4 dressed up with resin wheels, resin cockpit, exhausts and brass gun barrels. The markings are for I/JG52 to whom Ulrich Steinhilper belonged. He wrote a book called 'Spitfire on my tail'. He was shot down in October 1940. His memoirs mirror in many ways his RAF counterparts. The exhaustion of flying up to 4 missions a day and losing about 2/3 of his colleagues in the battle. Hope you like it? Andrew

Good evening all, I got a bit of a steal on eBay and found this started Lightning F.2A/F.6 for £15. A real Mojo restorer! There were some parts painted and built and the decals were unuseable as they were water damaged, so having an F.6 which I intended to build in a grey scheme I hatched a plan to use the 11 squadron stencils and some Model Alliance decals to build the 'King Cobra', Flagship 92 of Wing Cdr Mitchell. Humbrol metal cote aluminium was used for the undersides with some panels picked out in Bare Metal Foil (Matte Aluminium). Topsides were Humbrol 163 aerosol with a Flory wash and tonal variation was acheived by using matte and satin lacquers on different panels. Enjoy.

Dear Friends Here is the Airfix 1/72 Whitley MkV. Thank you Airfix for updating this classic British aircraft! Airfix are quite innovative in their kit engineering, which can be a mixed blessing as many of you will know. However, they do their best to be true to the original, and I love their wing spars going through the fuselage. The kit has Eduard photo etch, quickboost resin exhausts and Xtradecal decals to represent the aircraft of 58 Squadron based at Linton on Ouse in 1940. I love a story from the time of a leaflet dropping Whitley getting lost in I think in 1939 and landing in a field in Germany. The crew went to ask locals where they were and a helpful boy scout explained they were in Germany and which direction to fly in to get to France. I believe the take off was somewhat hurried! Later the local Pastor had to intervene to stop the Gestapo throwing the boy into one of their jails. Hope you like it? Andrew

Aircraft Carrier HMS Ark Royal – Airfix 1/1200 This one is a small but nice snap-together kit from 1976 that was designed to go together quickly. This is another quick build, so I plan to forgo any improvements to this one and simply bang it together as God and Airfix intended! Airfix cleverly depicted the hangar and other decks visible behind the Ark’s outer skin with snap-in inserts. The insert boat and hangar decks go aboard quickly, and they impart a pleasing sense of depth and complexity to these areas. Snap! On goes the flight deck. The little Ark’s island was a sraightforward assembly; only six parts, including a lower section which was already molded as part of the flight deck piece. Cleanup of the small parts was simple but fiddly. A homemade sanding stick helped! The only glitch was a set of visible locator pins inside the funnel halves, but these were easily removed. Although the well engineered parts do snap securely together, I’ve been cementing everything in place anyway for a more positive fit. The mast consisted of two parts which fit together well – that is after I figured out that the instructions had incorrectly shown the mast mounted backwards so that the little mounting pips for the support legs faced the wrong way! Still, I appreciate this little kit more and more as I work with it: the parts are so small I hadn’t even noticed the faint depressions at the front of the bridge until I saw this enlarged image. Bridge windows! Some of the nicest moldings were the eight tiny radio antennas. Though only 12mm in length, they show Airfix’s game attempt to depict the lattice structure of the originals. Here’s Airfix’s 1976 HMS Ark Royal finished out of the box with no alterations other than parts clean up. Out of production since the 1970s, Airfix has finally re-released this kit, along with a 1/1200 Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Hood, Sufolk, and Tribal class destroyers as a combined “Sink the Bismarck” set. Very cool. Having finished the little Ark Royal with an out-of-the-box unpainted build, I liked the kit so much I went and bought the new Airfix “Sink the Bismarck” set to get the 1/1200 Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Hood, Suffolk, and destroyers to go with it. Upon opening the box I was surprised to find a flight deck stripe decal for the Ark – a nice plus not in the original 1976 release I built! This was so cool I went ahead and shot the Ark with a coat of Model Master Acryl 4755 Dark Gull Gray (approximate for 507B) and again with a darker mix of Dark Gull Gray and 4752 Gunship Gray to highlight the catapults and lifts. After coat of Future to gloss the surface, the flight deck stripe went down with no problem. Even the clear decal film within the circle aft disappeared completely under a second coat. Sweet. I love it when companies add value to re-releases with little upgrades like this. Go Airfix! After the gloss coat was dry I reinstalled the masts and gave the ship a thin wash of Grumbacher Raw Umber artist’s oil with a bit of Titanium White & Ivory black added to grey it down. The mixture was also applied to weather the hull sides (unfortunately, I may have gone a little too subtle earlier with the catapult and lift color contrasts, since they almost disappear under the oil wash...) Airfix had provided faint depressions to represent the bridge windows, but I added a decal to make them more visible. This was a cut down set of victory markings from a 1/72 German fighter aircraft - you never know when those odds and ends you keep in the scrap box will come in handy! This is a great little kit, highly underrated.

Today I was at the North East Aircraft Museum, where Avro Vulcan XL319 is, interesting for reference pictures as you can get very close to it, some of panels are loose, and of course the tail is in a bad state after it tipped up in snow in 2010- you can see some of the internal structure. One of the staff there said that Airfix called them a few weeks ago because they wanted to come and get scans of the Vulcan... surprised they want to go for XL319 rather than an airframe in better condition, such as XH558 or XM655, unless they are scanning multiple. New kit being worked on confirmed? (Airfix if you're reading this, I'd like to pre order 5 😂)

Here's the old Airfix Comet 4b in Olympic Airways livery

Hi all, I completed this kit around the beginning of the year and along got round to photographing it now. I found the kit to be rather enjoyable as I did not have major problems with it. As for the painting this was the first that I attempted pre-shading and post-shading. I used my usual Vallejo model air colours with weathering done with a dark brown oil wash as well as some chalk pastel smoke stains. Constructive criticism is very much welcome!