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Hi, First time I've gotten round to posting on here - mainly because I'm such a slow builder. This is a scratch build of a fighter featured in one of Gerry Anderson's later series, 'Terrahawks'. I always liked the wedge shape and thanks to some meticulous research (not by me, I hasten to add), most of the kit parts have been identified, enabling me to scale up studio-scale plans. Although the original was made from perspex I opted for plasticard as I'm more used to working with it. The first step was to make the thing strong enough to support itself and withstand being picked up! The side wings are split into three parts so had to be connected with a 'runner' between them. Once the main shell was complete, I got on with adding the kit parts, mainly from German tanks, and carving the cab out of balsa. The tailplane is plasticard with some Plastruct angles. And that's the state of play as of today!

Hi everyone, I'm in the planning stages of a scratch built 1:8 scale model of a new concept design of FAB 1 from Thunderbirds the TV show. I'm studying for an MA (master of arts) in Design - 3d innovation, and the main part of my studies is to explore how people value models that they might commission to be built. Value can take many forms, monetary, sentimental, historical amongst others. But what do people feel gives a model added value? Material choice? Methods used? Limited numbers? Historical provenance? In order to find out, I'm making a 1:8 scale model of a theoretical design for a new FAB 1, experimenting along the way with different materials and processes to hopefully find what people like and where, if anywhere, a line is drawn to say 'that's enough', be it due to time, money or client specification. I've started a Facebook group so you can follow progress there, and I'll try to post updates here too. https://facebook.com/groups/373568053080542 If you'd also like to get involved and join a mailing list of model makers, retailers and collectors who I'm hoping can provide useful feedback along the way, please drop me a pm or let me know on the Facebook group. cheers! *update, the model will no longer be a new concept, but a model of the latest version of FAB1 from the ITV show 'Thunderbirds Are Go'. There will be no use of or reference to the Rolls-Royce brand in the model.

Hi all. I am looking at buying a thunderbird 5 kit. I have seen two i'm interested in, either the Aoshima one, or the IMAI one, has anyone on here built on, and is there any difference? looking online it seems the IMAI one is an older version of the Aoshima one? best regards Dan

Hi everyone, I've joined this forum hoping to learn and share ideas on scratch building model making. I started out making airfix kits of spitfires like many of us do, at around the age of 13 and my new found hobby quickly became more than just something to do in my spare time. Fast forward 22 years and I'm now studying for an MA in Design. With model making being my background I've decided to build a model of a new concept design for the Rolls-Royce FAB1 limousine from Thunderbirds. The idea of this model is to explore the relationship between client and model maker, and to investigate how clients value models and what makes models valuable to them. Hopefully I'll be able to share my work in progress here and seek assistance where and when I could do with it. cheers, 'Parker'

A long winded title on the label for this one; General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon 'Thunderbirds' USAF Display Team Can be built as a single seater for the Thunderbirds or a 2-seater for the Dutch; I fancy doing this wheels-up as the Thunderbirds version. I've not built a display aeroplane since I built an Airfix 111 sqd Black Arrows Hunter everso long ago Reading my teabags I see a lot of Micro-Sol & Set in the future of this build

I just can't help myself, its an addiction I tell you! So stuck in the house unable to use the shed to paint I looked through the stash to find something that would be fun to build. Needless to say, this appeared in my search like a hypersonic vision from the future: Obligatory Sprue Shot: Instructions: I've had this kit for a few months, but during Telford, our esteemed Chairman, Eric came back tot he stand triumphantly carrying a base card depicting London Airport. The wheels turned and an image came to mind, so on the Sunday I collared him into showing me where he bought it - thanks Eric! This is what he had found: Superb - can you guess what I'm going to so with it? Anyway, back to the model. Its pretty straightforward construction-wise, moulded is silver/grey plastic with no flash and only a few visible injector pin marks which are easily filled. The basic components are easy to assemble: Note the main fuselage hasn't been joined together as there is a cunning mechanism to allow the wings to retract or extend in sync. To this end you attach two sets of pivot brackets and a central separator within the main fuselage: The wings fit in thus: So taping the upper part of the fuselage on and the rear section you get this: Mmmmmm, looking good! So there is a vertical thruster jet nozzle you can attach to the bottom and this was a perfect fit for a 5mm hole to take an acrylic rod and brass sleeve: This needed a little bit of fettling with the central partition and then the brass sleeve got fixed in using some araldite: So returning to the base, I used an old wooden plaque that previously held a large ornate coat hook and cut a portion of the London Airport base to size for it: with a suitably drilled hole, off centre and angled, I can do this: or even better this: Now I've left myself in a quandry, I'm almost ready to start painting the main components. I want to do it Alcad Airframe aluminium but that means I have to start visiting the shed again This may mean I'll have to start to build something else... Maybe I should pluck up my courage and make a go at this one... then again maybe the CY fumes will play havoc with my cough...

Hi guys, I will be building a box from Revell with four 1/48 F-16A's in them. They will be build in flight. I will use some Hasegawa pilots for this as well. It will be build straight out of the box. Here is a link to the box. https://www.scalemates.com/kits/163676-revell-4749-general-dynamics-f-16 I will post some pictures later. Cheers,

So after a hectic summer of building ridiculously big Oil Platforms or ridiculously complex Eagle Transporters (although THAT was well worth putting the effort into in the end :D), I've had a couple of weeks of building a couple of "simple" out-of-the-box kits that will eventually be posted in the RFI section for Aircraft. However while the paint it drying I decided I'd revisit the plan I had for my second Aoshima Mole kit. If you can remember all the way back to the middle of last year (2015), when the world seemed a much less complicated place, I built the superb Aoshima kit of the Mole from Thunderbirds, and in the Telford comp that year it won a Bronze medal Well I was so enamoured with the possibilities of this kit, that I went and bought 2 more from HobbyLinkJapan and made plans... One of those plans is to take the tractor section, which is a superb rendition of a Vickers Vigor toy tractor that was used by Thunderbirds as the basis of many of the pod vehicles, and converting it into an screen-accurate Firefly. That would of course leave me with the rest of the kit, ie the Mole itself! Another plan came into my head and this is the plan I aim to execute in this build, namely... well you'll see as we go along. So lets start off with the same pics fromt he previosu build to illustrate the kit itself... So the bits we are mainly intersted in are the yellow bits plus quite a few bits fro the various little baggies. These contain the "moving parts" and electrical gubbins (technical term here!) which will be a bit more important in this build tha n int he previous. To start off with, as before the silver plated screw and associated components were cleaned up, which removed most of the silver plating. The rest will be removed with some Mr Muscle Oven cleaner and then they'll get the Alclad treatment. Next I jump back a bit again to the Aoshima Thunderbird 4 kit I built at the start of this year which can be seen here. This included an electric motor which I didn't use in that build but kept it to one side as I knew it was the same electric motor that was supposed to be used in the the Mole. So some time was spent wiring this up with the various gears that come with the Mole kit to get this: Yeah I know its boring looking at a static pic of something that should be moving so here is the Youtube video of it in action! So thats all good if a little noisy. They supply a little tube of grease to help with that. You can see the red light on the top - I dicided to use the one supplied rather than replace it with a slashing red LED as the voltages required are different to that powering the motor. Its intended to be powered by 3V, so for that the pea-bulb they provided will do the trick. Next is the base or rather the "mounting" for it. So I ask you what does the Mole do? Why (I hear you reply) it digs through the earth in a generally downward direction... so that is how it will be displyed! This is a cheap picture frame with 2 layers of my favourite insulating polystyrene stuck to it with a slot cut out to contain the Mole. I'm going to make a hole int he back to thread the wires through so that the batteries and on.off switch can be mounted on the back of the picture frame. This will be a vertical model, which will be good on the club's display table as it won't take up much table space I'm still pondering exactly what the Mole is coming to the rescue of - but its likely to be something in the lower left of the display... more on that later...

This is my second attempt at building this classic scene from Thunderbirds. This one benefited from the experience gained on the first one: a) I didn't try to do a scratch built cockpit as it can't be seen; I used smaller batteries to power the LEDs. The build thread is here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235003077-thunderbird-2-launch-diorama-2/ ...and here is it with the camera flash turned off to allow the lighting to show

I've had the Aoshima Fireflash kit for a while and it comes with 3 elevator cars and some cardstock runway, but I wanted to build a diroama of a different Fireflash rescue, from a Thunderbirds episode called "Crash Dive". Here is the kit box: http://www.mardona.org/gallery/d/21987-2/DSC_5301.JPG/img] In this story, a test flight of Fireflsh crashes into the ocean and sinks with the crew on board. They are strapped and it turns out the only way to save them is to refloat the aircraft which is being weighed down by the atomic engines in its tail. THus along comes Thunderbird 4 to cut off the engines on the tail. Screenshot of Fireflash on the sea floor: I had a tiny TB4 left over from the Thunderbird 2 launch diorama, so I used this. Its a little too large but Thunderbirds were never too bothered about scale issues, particularly in the Fireflash episodes! The kit provides transparencies for the wing lounges, but nothing to put inside, so I scratch built some lounge furniture.

I've started my next build - even though I haven't finished the last so I thought I'd start posting it here. The kit is this one from Aoshima which is a decent enough rendition of this iconic airliner in jeapordy! However I don't want to to the cliched "trying to land with on undercarriage" type of diorama depicting scenes from the first ever Thunderbirds episode "Trapped in the Sky", but rather I want to do one form the other episode featuring Fireflash, "Crash Drive". In this episode, technical problems on a test flight of Fireflash end up with it crash-landing onto the ocean and sinking, trapping the pilot and co-pilot The solution is for Thunderbird 4 to cut off the engines so that the rest of the aircraft can float to the surface (yeah okay I didn't write this stuff!) So I have a tiny TB4 left over from my recent Thunderbird 2 on the launch ramp builds, so it should be trivial to mount it next to the tail of Fireflash to make it look like it cutting... how about a bit of fibre-optic and a flicker-effect LED? More to come...

Here are the compelted phtoos of the brand new Aoshima 1:48 scale Thunderbird 4. I ordered this direct from Hobby Link Japan late last year and it arrived in January. I didn't do a WIP thread for this but its a nice kit without any major faults. The kit comes with a choice of underside plastes to allow you to add wheels and a the kit includes a small electric motor that can be used to turn this into a toy. It also comes with a light bulb to put in the lighting panel at the front, but I replaced this with 2 Surface Mount LEDs. You also get a selection of tools that can be fitted to the front, including the rams that are used to free the trapped Martian Probe capsule in "Day of Disaster". There are also 3 torpedoes and the two central tubes have springs that can be used to fire them. The shape is excellent, much better then the old Bandai kit, my only complaints being the scaling of the Gordon figure and the way the thruster tubes are attached to the main body. I also think they are too long (they are the red tubes st the rear). The kit somes with a nice base and even some lichen to stick to the base. I just painted the base brown and dry-brushed some grey over the rocks. The kit provides decals for the red stripes, but I masked and painted them. I had troubel with the decals as they were VERY delicate and the "Thunderbird 4" decals on the sides and rear rolled up on me during application never to be usable again, so I had print my own using th etemplate I'd created previsouly for the Bandai kit. So here are the photos And now for a couple with the Bandai kit In this one you can really see how bad the shape around the cockpit is on the Bandai kit!

So for my third entry into this GB, I have decided - probably against my better judgement to have a go with at least part of the huge 1:44 scale Thunderbird 2 I managed to acquire recently. In case you didn't see the post it was this kit: (Note the 12" ruler in the photo!) I'm not quite ready for the whole thing just yet so I thought I'd start off with something simple like - ahem - building the internals of the pod!!! There are plenty of references out there, for example: So lets start off with looking at the pod that is supplied in the kit So the first thing to observe is I'll need to cut open the door. That little nick you see is where I experimented with cutting this material. Its very strange stuff - very dense expanded polystyrene with a resin outer coating. Its VERY hard to cut! inside the pod you have this: for the bottom - the lumps are indents in the underside to accept rollers as the undercarriage. In these photos you can see how think this stuff is! So the first job was to fit a floor for the pod - those bumps look like a nice base to work to, and here is my first attempt: However you can see its a bit undulating as I only used 0.5mm plastic card which just isn't solid enough. So I tried again with 1.5mm and got this You can also see I've cut out the lower part of the doorway down to the level of the floor. This leaves a bit of a gap under where the moulded door goes further. I'll have to fill that later. Finally for this initial post, here is where I am on cutting out the upper part of the door This took about an hour and half last night after which I'd had enough - its really hard work cutting this stuff, especially as if you saw too fast it generates too much heat and the stuff melts where you are trying to cut!!! I'll try to finish this cutting off today and in the meantime start designing the inner ribs that will define the internal shape.

http://www.airfix.com/uk-en/news/5_4_3_2_1/ Robert

The next in my series of Thunderbirds builds in going to be a quickie... The Bandai Thunderbird 4 kit! Its a very simple and quite small kit Its almost totally lacking in cockpit detail - well its got this piece but I don't think that counts as "cockpit" So we'll have to scratch build one, just like I did with the UFO Interceptor last year! Thankfully there are plenty of references available, especially in the areas of the inter net where I tend to hang out I'm going to have to source a figure to make Gordon, but the rest is all scratch buildable. This kit scales out to be about 1/60 scale (TB4 is supposed to be 30 feet long, this kit is 6 inches long) but a 1:72 scale figure will have to be acceptable. I've made a start on the cockpit: Now this is not a complicated build, so lets see if we can make it more complicated... So for a start these things sprint to mind: along with these pieces: So if we are going to ladd LED lights to the lighting erm... thingy, then I need to get power to them somehow. As you can see from the upper photo, I can use a very thin copper wire along the arms back into the main hull. Then from the hull to the base that will hold the battery we have an arm so we need a socket in the bottom: Then for the support arm I'm going to use a pair of thin brass tubes each with the plug end of the connector at the end then the socket part will fit inside the tubes embedded in the base of TB4 Thats the story so far...

For my next build I shall be building the new Aoshima Thunderbird 3 kit that arrived on my doorstep a couple of weeks ago. This is intended to display on the IPMS Farnborough display at Telford in November. First the box art: Now the contents: So construction is pretty simple for most of it apart from the middle section with the fins. Here I've painted them up while they are still on the sprues since the sprue gates on the side that will rest against the body. I've used Tamiya Metallic Grey: I've put together the 3 engine pods and attached them to the lower body. There are seperate white pieces for the tops and bottoms of the engines. These were mouled with depressions to represent the retros and exhausts, so these got drilled out. There are some quite bad moulding seams on some of the parts, but the plastic is that brittle but solid plastic common in Aoshima and Imai kits, so these sand out very well and the surface polishes up without too much hassle. As usual the camera flash has overexposed things. You can see that I've drilled out the base of the engines as well as I have had some thoughts about how to pose this On the right you can see the three docking rings that are supplied with the kit. One has thin rings, a second has a thing ring with tow thinner rings on either side and the third had boxes along the circumference like this: As you can see here, you can see the bad joint around the middle and my first attempt at sorting it out, but I don't think its going to work. This is just about the worst part of the kit. I think the only other things I could do here would be to cut some thin plastic card squares, however to be honest I'm not sure I can be bothered! in the background you can see one of the other docking rings which I think II'll use instead. Here are the legs ready for priming: The kit comes with a loat of "fillets" that fit into the slots int he legs and are moulded in dark blue plastic, these will be sprayed Tamiya Nato Black before fitting. This is the base that comes with the kit: which is okay I guess but I have had a different idea which will involved a ring-shaped construction and some more cotton wool Finally here is the decal sheet: The tall blue "U" shaped decals are intended to wrap around the base of each fin in the middle of the body. The Yellow chevrons are intended for the base of each fin which is a different colour. I think I might use them since the thought of masking all 18 fins creeps me out So next I need to get hold of some Peugeot Seville paint from Halfords...

Hi folks, I've been searching the interwebs for schematics of Gerry Anderson's Thunderbird's 1 & 2, with little success. I'd like to attempt scratchbuilding these two craft, and work best from schematics as opposed to photos - does anyone have any links they'd be willing to share? Many thanks in advance!

This is my next build and my first not in a group build so hopefully I can maintain the motivation! I bought this kit for the large mouth intake for my TMOA build so figured as it was sat on the shelf I would give it a crack. I'm building this as it's suppose to be, a replica of the 2009 thunderbird that visited Japan. A whole load of white plastic! Every build at the moment I'm trying to learn new things and stretch my skills, so this new bit of this build will be the excellent aires wheel wells as this was an area of the last hasegawa F-16 I built I thought was lacking! The only thing I hope is that I can do them justice, the level of detail is incredible, something that I would never of guessed with the pictures I'd seen! I'm also planning on painting the markings as the kit decals are about an inch thick but I've got to find paint masks first or I'll end up trying to masking all out. Sprue Brothers have the ones fitted to the tamiya kit in 1/48 but I don't know if they will really fit! Any advice/pointers/criticisms are always welcome, I'm trying to learn with every build I do.