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Dear all, One of the options in the MPM kit is this one - 208 Sqn WX956/A 1956: It looks pretty with its large orange patches. However I cannot find any photo's of this aircraft. Profile drawings are in (among others) Scale Aircraft Modelling November 1984 (volume 7 nr 2) and Valiant wings productions: The Suez Crisis. The reason that I am looking for photo's is that the serial number seems to be incorrect. WX956 was never issued to any aircraft. Meteor FR.9's in the WX serial block started from WX962. According to the book Cold War Shield volume 1, 208 Sqn usd red and yellow as flight colour markings, not blue as indicated by the above profile. In Airfile 10 - RAF Middle East & Near East is a similar looking profile of WX966/A: The main question is: Did this airframe really sport the large orange panels or was it painted in the high altitude Day Fighter scheme? Hope someone knows (and the difference can be deduced from b/w pictures) Kind regards, Peter

My latest model finished the end of last week of a Lockheed Hudson I of P5143, 'VX-M' of 206 Sqn, Bircham Newton, May 1940. The Hudson was derived from the Lockheed Model 14 airliner to meet a RAF requirement for a General Reconnaissance (GR) aircraft or as a trainer. Buying a US aircraft for potentially operational duties caused a lot of comment at the time, as some believed the RAF should use only British aircraft. It was then decided,with the threat of war looming, to use the Hudson in its GR role as it offered better performance than the Avro Anson currently used. The Blackburn Botha was the intended replacement for the Anson, but was unlikely to be available in any numbers and when it did appear the Botha proved to be a disappointment, being underpowered and most ended up as trainers. The Hudson first entered service with 224 Sqn in May 1939. 206 Sqn first received Hudsons in March 1940 as replacements for Ansons although the latter lingered until June 1940. The model was built using the MPM kit that first appeared in the mid 1990's and has been reissued by Revell. My model is from the original release and was a resident of the Shelf of Doom for some time, partially because I became disenchanted with the kit at a time when life and work were quite stressful. The kit, even for a limited run kit of the period is not the easiest. Although MPM had moved on to injected moulded transparent parts by that time, it still relies on butt joints in places where some more locating points might have been helpful, like the nose. Fit of some of the parts was also quite vague and not helped by the instructions. The kit has quite a few alternative parts to cater for later marks and this does not help the fit. For me the major jarring note is the Boulton Paul turret, that looks no advance shapewise on the Airfix kit from the sixties.. Thanks to a conversation with Tony O'Toole of this parish at the Bolton Show, the turret has been replaced by a spare from the Revell Halifax III kit with a scratch built interior. Also from the Bolton Show I purchased some Deluxe materials 'Looks Like Glass'. not cheap, but you get a lot for your money and really does look shiny and clear. Paintwork is from the Mr Hobby Aqueous Colour range for the Dark Green and Dark Earth with Vallejo White Aluminium Metalcolor undersurfaces. The kit offers the decals for the aircraft modelled, but looking ata photo of the real aircraft, these were replaced with markings made up from various Modeldecal sheets. now it is finished I am fairly happy with it and can now give my full attention to the Group Build York. As the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetic Corp. would say, 'Share and Enjoy'

The R-4 was the first true allied helicopter, undergoing initial trials at sea in 1943. Recognising its potential as an ASW convoy protection weapon, Britain ordered 240 of them for use by the RN and RAF, but with the end of WW2 this order was reduced to 45, most of which went to the Fleet Air Arm. The US Army and USCG also used R-4s, the former for jungle rescue in Burma and the latter for coastal patrols. Limited in the ASW role by their small payload, precluding a useful weapons load, the RN’s R-4Bs were used in a variety of Fleet Requirements roles (such as radar calibration) and as ASW aircraft until eventually replaced by the much more powerful Dragonfly. Well I definitely had some fun with this one. Who would have thought something so small could be so frustrating. Most of the kit is OK, with some nice etch parts, but that acetate canopy deserved a little more engineering thought from MPM. I managed to fudge it in the end and now have an important addition to my early helicopters collection. FredT