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I finished this a while back, but it has taken me time to get round to photographing. Not my favourite activity, especially with whoppers. Anyway, after a long and educational build, here is my completed 1:72 Super VC-10, based on the Mach 2 kit, as a late service British Airways G-ASGI: A few mm bigger than the Heller 707-320, she is now (marginally) my largest model! The choice of airframe was largely inspired by this picture: https://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Airways/Vickers-Super-VC10-Srs1151/1202712 There is little to distinguish the Negus airframes, and Golf India as far as I know had no particularly distinguished history – not going on to RAF service afterwards, for example – but I like building ‘vanilla’ models to represent a forgotten moment in time, rather than recreating a famous airframe. With so few VC-10s built, its quite hard to come by one without an interesting story – Gulf War veteran, taxiing at Bruntingthorpe, Sultan's personal transport, blown up by terrorists..Golf India achieved none of these accolades, but does represent a late build Super in honest BA revenue service in the autumn of the 10's civilian life. I’ve tried to create with this model a visually striking and reasonably accurate representation of the Super VC-10. When dealing with a very basic and limited kit like this, where no details can be relied upon as accurate, there is a danger of driving oneself slowly crazy as the list of fixes mounts up, especially with a large plane - and this is meant to be a fun hobby. So I make no apologies for inaccuracies that are undoubtedly there, but at the same time I warmly invite anyone to point them out, after all can be useful for those who follow after with later, and better builds. Also pro apologia, there isn't a single straight edge or smooth surface in the kit, so its all down to my sanding and finishing, and plenty knarly close up! The build thread will give you the gory detail, but the main structural work involved converting the nose to be a more accurate, flush profile – in the end this meant pretty much scratch building it. This was hard. The fuselage has been extended with 3D printed plugs to create a Super VC-10. This work was not as difficult as I anticipated, and I have learnt a lot about 3D part finishing along the way. This technology has a lot to offer us, and there are other areas where I could have employed it – for example replacing the errant window line on the rear fuselage – that would have been relatively easy to design and print. I’d like to thank those who followed the build and provided indispensable encouragement, advice and resources along the way, particularly @71chally for a very useful nose reference pic and @Scott Garard for the British Airways logos. I’d also like to thank my Mum…who in the absence of my regular print shop actually printed the decals for me! (She is a retired graphic design teacher with a decent laser printer, so this isn’t as mad as it sounds). I could also thank BA for painting their planes white and not leaving them bare metal - I think if I had to do this in BMF, with the amount of filling and sanding I had to do, I would be in The Priory by now... Would I recommend the Mach 2 kit? Well, its tricky. I can't see how it is an advance - even marginal - on either the Anigrand resin or the Airways vacform, although I haven't built either. To put it into context – I didn’t use anything smaller than the engine pods from the original kit plastic. I think Darth Vader has more original components than this model. In its favour though, Mach 2 is marginally cheaper and more available than either of the alternatives, and it will build up easier. The wings attached remarkable easily for example. But without extensive mods, it will not be an accurate model, and if you are keen enough on VC-10s to build one in this scale, that will probably bother you. There is still, in 2020, a vacancy for the position of decent 1:72 VC-10 kit. Not an international scandal of course, but when I can buy a very nice 72nd kit of the Il-62 from HpH, or even the An-225 from Modelsvit, albeit for an arm and a leg, you can't blame a chap for looking forlorn! Anyway, it was a good lockdown project, though I do think it drove me little crazy at times and my attention span is now completely shot. For something a bit different, I have moved on to tiny car models done on my 3d printer, which make fun diorama accessories. I call this “British Engineering – A Paradox”: Thanks for stopping by! Harry

Hi, My first this year, build within Martime Patrol & CC GB. This is Consolidated Coronado PB2Y5 in colours of US NAVY VPB-15, which was based at the end of WWII on Saipan. Small improvments of kit were done, the build was reported here: Some modifications to model are done. Among them: removed original wide frames on canopy, new exhaust pipes, rear turret from Italeri B24, decals by Techmod (numbers) and stars from drawer (Aeroscale and Tamiya if I recognized them well) - the original stars had shifted white so it was used only on bottom. BTW - the box wing stars were too large, if you compare with photos. The company logos on props were not used since on photos I do not see them. Comments welcome Regards Jerzy-Wojtek