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A great many modellers will be building Dambusters models this month or this year, either individually or as part of group builds, to mark the 70th anniversary of Operation Chastise. No doubt too that many will be using the really excellent new Airfix kit, or the slightly older but equally feted Revell AG version. Or even, if they are very rich , the Hasegawa "shake and make" kit. Me: I've built the ancient Revell GB kit, made in the UK in the 1960s, festooned with over scale rivets and in the case of my example, clearly from a rather tired and overused mould! In fact, the kit is quite simple, is reasonably well engineered and builds surprisingly well, although the poorly defined part edges (mould wear I believe) mean that some major seams need a lot of tidying up, with consequent loss of the detail (including those massive rivets that I was planning to remove anyway!). Apart from the rivets, panel line detail is a well judged mix of raised and engraved, unusual given its age. The kit also has many working features, including moveable elevators, moveable ailerons, lowerable outer flaps (but not the inner ones?) and a retracting undercarriage (but not gear doors?). And of course, the turrets turn and propellers move (I omitted the ventral turret as it was removed from most aircraft for the actual raids). I glued most of these moving parts in fixed positions for added strength . The cockpit is entirely bare and the large canopy reasonably clear, so I added a plastic card cockpit coaming and drilled out the hole in the after deck for access to the astrodome (a strange omission). Most of the crew figures come from the kit (they are very small, almost Hobbit sized!) although I added a rather better defined bomb aimer in the nose. Canopies were dipped in Klear for added clarity. The wings are a snug and tight fit to the fuselage, so I hope to leave them loose to enable the kit to be dismantled for storage and transport. As was to be expected given its age, the kit has some significant accuracy issues although its cut away bouncing bomb bay can apparently hold its own with the new Revell or Hasegawa. Oh and its wings have the correct dihedral too! Nevertheless, the rear turret is really not a good shape, the main canopy sits rather squint and looks to be too high, the engine nacelles are too curved along their upper edge and the propeller bosses should be more pointed. I am sure that there are more issues, but those are enough to be going on with. Decals are provided for Wing Cdr Gibson's aircraft AJ@G; these were pretty much shot, particularly the roundels, so I used some older FROG decals for these to add some additional details such as wing walkways. In fact, this is my second build of this kit. The first was back in the early 1970s, when I saved up sufficient vouchers (and cards) from Brooke-Bond tea packets (pre tea-bag days!) to send off for a Dambusters kit. Sadly it was missing (or I lost) a critical part of the bomb mechanism, so was never quite right, although it flew many missions over the fields and tracks behind my parents house, together with my next door neighbour's old Airfix example, to strike a blow at the strategically important puddles at the bottom of the field . Building it again some 40 years later has been a most enjoyable flashback to a simpler age and I'm certainly pleased with the results. FredT