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Hello everybody, I'd like to join the GB with this subject: Base kit will be the old Heller multiversion Mirage IIIE / R / 5BA Revell multiversion Mirage IIIE / R combined with Modeldecal sheet #92.

Some of my formative memories as a young adult was going to college in London in 1989, and in particular the dramatic events of the first Gulf War in 1990/1. The images of the planes on the news every night is a lasting memory. Also very big at the time were the various characters of the Infamous Viz magazine including...Johnny Fartpants! Have long wanted to make a Desert Cat, and having acquired the Modeldecal sheet from 1991, with lots of the nose art seen on many RAF airframes, some inspired by Viz. It''s only taken me 3 decades to get around to it! So, here is...an Italeri 1/72 Jaguar with resin EJ seat, Master pitot, Flightparh CRV 7 pods, Airgraphics fuel tank, flare dispensers and ECM pod. Its a toss up between this and the Hasegawa Jaguar...I will say this for the Italeri kit- at least they got the windscreen frame lines right. Thoroughly enjoyed the kit and the project as a whole. I finished it in Tamiya xf78 deck tan, which to my eye is dead match for the desert pink ARTF finish. Its precisely the same shade as the Xtracrylix desert pink, but much easier to apply. And despite the decals being 30 years old, they worked perfectly! Honk!

I'm so pleased that the Special Hobby version of the Academy Texan has made it to these shores as it finally will allow me to build a subject I've been wanting to build for over 40 years! My subject will be Harvard T.2B FX432/R of 500 Sqn RAuxAF stationed at RAF West Malling in 1952. The amount of times I've biffed up the Heller kit trying to convert the Texan into the longer canopied Harvard IIB/2B are legion, hopefully now, with this kit I can do it justice. So here's the kit... ...and here's the decals, which I first bought when I was 15, a mere 41 years ago... Now this kit has arrived I'm hoping it will give my mojo a much needed KUTA!

Mirage IIIE No.501 / 3-IB EC1/3 'Navarre' Nancy-Ochey, France, June 1985 This was built from the old Revell 1/72 kit from the 1970s. Not the best Mirage kit out there nowadays by a long way but it's been in the stash for so many years and it was time to build it. The inspiration was that Modeldecal sheet with those attractive EC1/3 anniversary markings. The French are usually very good at anniversary schemes, and though this one is quite simple it's also very French and looks good. The kit was basically OK. It gave the impression that it had been scaled down from the Revell 1/32nd scale kit of a similar era. This was noticeable in some of the attachment points and detail. particularly on the undercarriage, which were so small and thin as to be unusable. In the end I replaced the main gear with that from a Heller kit, and used the Heller nosewheel in the Revell nose leg. The inner main gear doors were leftovers from a resin conversion kit for a Mirage V and had nice internal detail. I added quite a bit to the ejection seat but the cockpit is a black pit so there's minimal detail apart from the seat. I struggled to fit the canopy neatly but just about got there in the end. I used Mig Ammo paints from their French Modern Jets set for the top surfaces which sprayed very nicely and dried in no time, and a mixture of Xtracrylic aluminium and light aircraft grey for the undersides. Decals were all from the Modeldecal sheet except for the roundels which were replaced with others having better depth of colour from a generic sheet. The topcoat was Humbrol matt varnish. Overall a fairly quick (by my standards) and enjoyable project And some of it's brothers :

Fujimi 1/72 BAe Harrier GR.3 #7A-B4 I thought that, rather than my usual Japanese dominated Stash Clearances, I'd do something a bit more unusual with a kit and colour scheme rarely, if ever, seen. According to Scale Mates, this kit was first moulded in 1983 and subsequently reboxed in 2008. This is the original boxing. Built OOB, save for a harness from Tamiya tape and aftermarket decals. The inbox decals are firstly for 1417 Flight and the second for No.223 OCU in the standard camo scheme of the time Dk Green/Dk Sea Grey/Light Aircraft Grey. I also had Modeldecal Sheet 78 which portrayed 2 aircraft in experimental Greens and Greys. I went with the ‘Greys’ aircraft of 3 Sqn at RAF Gutersloh in 1984. The greys are given as Dark Sea Grey (I used Xtracrylix XA1004) and Medium Sea Grey (Hu.165). We are all, I suspect, familiar with the previous mouldings from Airfix, ESCI, Hasegawa, Italeri and Matchbox of the early Harriers with the consensus seeming to be the new Airfix moulding of 2012 is the best of the bunch. It’s fair to say this will not challenge it. Fit was mediocre, panel lines were generally raised but, if engraved, were trench like or too faint to be visible under coats of paint. Nothing fitted. Every time a dry fit was attempted parts would wobble or absolutely refuse to go in either because the tab was too big or the hole was too small. The coup de grace was the kit had divided the front and back fuselages, presumably to accommodate different versions, and expected you to fit them together as a butt join with no locating pins or holes at all. (For 11 year old me this would make no difference at all and I would have made it, smothered the join with tube glue and been disappointed when it split in two a few weeks later!) On the dry run, the gap between the fuselage parts was at least a millimetre or the equivalent to a panel gap of over 3 inches on either side. Accordingly, and for the first time, I used the ‘cut up a yoghurt carton and use the plastic to make reinforcing tabs’ technique and it went well. No ominous cracks and despite vigorous sanding and filling it stood up to the punishment I inflicted on it tho the panel lines were destroyed. You are provided with a nice assortment of stores. Fuel tanks, rocket pods, 3 different types of bomb incl the BL155, what looks like a pair of anti ship missiles, Sidewinders, gun pods and strakes. The locating holes are however not flashed over and will have to be filled if there is less than a full load depicted. Other details Fujimi missed. 1. Complex lumps, bumps and lights throughout airframe, even the panel lines for them, were largely missing. 2. Backs of rocket pods are solid not hollow as they shld be. 3. Pitots on fin were missing. 4. Canopy frame lines off centre. 5. Blow in doors not modelled at all save for the faintest of panel lines.6. Tailplanes cant be angled as they are when aircraft is on the ground. 7. Decals are limited and too bright. (Roundel red is not scarlet!) As for the decals, it’s probably unfair to criticise as they were not designed to be used 30 years after being made but the usual Modeldecal faults were there. Instructions, altho carrying photos of the aircraft, were not the clearest and I still have decals left on the sheet as the instructions were silent as to their placement. They have a peculiar glue that looks and feels like soap scum...which is annoying and they really, really didn’t want to detach from the backing paper even when put into hot water and had to be prised off with a knife. Finally, and unusually, they were, in parts, slightly off register particularly the roundels. However the colours were good and looked right. The usual decal setting solutions were applied with no apparent effect. Overall, I’m disappointed. Lots of sanding and filling were required on virtually every part none of which just clicked into place. I expected Fujimi kits of the time to be better having acquired both their Skyhawks and Cutlass kits released just 4 years later. I assume there was a watershed moment at Fujimi just after this kit was released. By modern standards it is somewhat lacking and pitfalls await the unwary. The Airfix GR.3 remains best in scale. (Forgive the apparently random picture placements. Sometimes it happens 🤷🏻‍♂️. More to follow)

I bought an old Modeldecal sheet from Hannats to do a couple of matchbox Meteor NF kits that I had somehow acquired. This also had a somewhat colourful set of marking for a Hawk from 4 FTS/CFS in 1987: I am not at all au fait with Hawks or modern era (not that 1987 is modern) jets, so this may or may not work. It will be only OOB and the decals may well be interesting to apply!

This is the ESCI kit built OOB from, according to Scalemates, 1986, a rebox of a 1982 mould. Slightly odd as it's labelled an F-4S with the F-4J as an option. I'm not a Phantom expert so I'll take ESCI's word that they're interchangeable. Certainly there are optional tail pipes and rear tail planes on the sprues but no mention of which goes with which variant in the Instructions. So I guessed. I was fortunate to have another kit in the series because 1.The carpet monster ate the original nose cone when I dropped it and 2. When almost complete the model fell off the table and the undercarriage legs broke. With another kit it would have meant a one way trip to the Shelf of Doom, or the bin, but because I had a donor kit I was able to do like-for-like swaps. The moulds weren't great with depressions and mould lines. I scraped and filled as necessary with limited success. Fit was OK but the bane of Phantom modellers namely the join from the intakes to the fuselage was very apparent and despite 3 rounds of sanding and filling is still there. Next time maybe I'll try 6 rounds. Researching the differences between standard F-4J's and the U.K. ones and acknowledging inputs on ancient threads from @Silverkite, @XV571, @Sundowner14, in summary they appear to be: 1. The catapult spools on the underside of the wings need to go. (Done. Filled and sanded), 2. The aerial fit was different especially on the underside of the nose (Checked model to photos. All seems correct), 3. Formation lights on the U.K. a/c (Provided for by decals), 4. Small antennae on port side of nose ( Done using tip of a needle) 5. Wing reinforcement stripes (Not on early delivery a/c, as mine is, obvs... which also means the US seat can be used, or at least ESCI's interpretation thereof) 6. Cockpit instrumentation (Ignored as this is OOB and I have neither the skills nor patience nor inclination to scratch build them in this scale...and the canopy will be closed) 7. Stencils. (Ignored as minimal on U.K. machines) 8. The front nose wheel door as kitted bears little resemblance to the real thing ( Changed to comply with photos) The kit decals after 30 years disintegrated but fortunately I had Modeldecal set 76 which included an F-4J from 74 Tiger Squadron. You can model any aircraft from the Squadron with the set so I went with 'H' for the rather perverse reason I hadn't seen photos of it in real life nor as a completed kit. I also eschewed the common practise of modelling a black tail for aircraft of this Squadron to try and make mine unique. It's odd isn't it how the memory can play tricks. I remember thinking years ago of ModelDecal as the best decal manufacturer but with this set there were no stencils, not even such prominent markings as the wing walkway lines, the font for the registration number looked wrong and some just looked fictional such as the warning circles on the nose. They went on OK but there was a misregistration with some, meaning a white underlayer was visible. I therefore retrieved the kit decals, brushed on some decal film and used them as appropriate to fill gaps. Although the finish was the standard at the time of Barley Grey/Medium Sea Grey/Light Aircraft Grey these were painted in the US and, suffice to say, were found to be a not very good approximation of the British colours. The correct shades were substituted when the aircraft went in for servicing so mine will depict an early arrival yet to go to the maintenance hangar. Photos show distinct blueish and greenish hues. There has been much debate online as to how to depict these colours. There is no consensus so each to their own. Accordingly, for topside Barley Grey I mixed into Humbrol 165 an equal amount of Humbrol 248 and for the nosecone a ratio of 5:3 of the same paint to make the slightly different shade seen in real life. For the Medium Sea Grey I mixed Humbrol 167 with Humbrol 90 as I wanted a greenish tint. I started with a ratio of 10:1 but the green overwhelmed the Grey so I settled on 20:1 For the underside I just used Xtracrylix LAG as I could not see any marked change to the shade on the photos I had. I'll leave it to others to decide if my colours get anywhere near how these aircraft appeared (with thanks to @keefr22 for confirming there's no one correct answer) . A kit painted in unadulterated colours would be helpful for a comparison but I don't have one to hand. In due course perhaps. Finally, thanks to @Selwyn for pointing out that Skyflash disc markings show dummy rounds and they are blue not black with the bands also blue, an error that both ESCI and Modeldecal made. The kit, and it's donor at the top, are at the end. All comments and criticisms welcome.

This will be my entry to this GB, Special Hobby's lovely kit of the Meteor NF.12... The Kit ...I usually try and do something different than what's in the box, the kit provides markings for 25, 46 and 64 Sqns RAF, unfortunately the 25 Sqn markings are incorrect as Special Hobby show the bars as being silver and blue, not silver and black which is correct. For this build I'll be building a 264 Sqn jet stationed at RAF Middleton St George in 1957, these markings will come from Modeldecal sheet 93 and are the yellow and black bars... The stickers ...I've also got the Peewit mask for the multi panelled canopy although I have heard rumours about their lack of tenacity so they may just end up as templates for normal tape. What's not shown here is the Aerocraft clear resin, open canopy as seen in this link, the kit has a very good interior and it would be a shame not to show it off! I've got quite a lot of references for the Meteor, the aircraft sits squarely in my preferred era of subject so I've accumulated quite a few references on the type... References I've got quite a lot going on in the Heller Classic GB at the moment so I won't be getting around to this one any time soon.

I bought an old Modeldecal sheet from Hannats to do a couple of matchbox Meteor NF kits that I had somehow acquired. This also had a somewhat colourful set of marking for a Hawk from 4 FTS/CFS in 1987: I am not at all au fait with Hawks or modern era (not that 1987 is modern) jets, so this may or may not work. It will be only OOB and the decals may well be interesting to apply!

Westland / Aerospatiale Puma HC.1 230 Sqn, RAF Germany, Gutersloh 1979 This was of course the old Airfix kit. I picked this kit up at a model show back in the 1990s and it had obviously been in someone’s stash for a while before that. I say that because age had made the plastic quite brittle. I hadn’t experienced that to such an extent before, but it manifested itself in various breakages during the build, the most significant being fractured rotor blades while attempting to introduce some droop. Thankfully some carefully applied superglue put things right. For its time this was a really competent kit. Airfix had obviously looked at the real thing. The canvas seats, cockpit levers (cyclic, collective and seat adjustment levers) – though no rudder pedals – all looked pretty good and the lightly rivetted surfaces were OK. There were quite a few negative points that had to be put right though. Firstly, the kit was produced at the end of the ‘moving parts’ era and Airfix had made the undercarriage retractable and the cabin doors moveable. This meant that the undercarriage oleos were moulded in the extended position, giving a silly look to the aircraft when stood on its wheels. So task number one was shortening the oleos – a very small and fiddly job which I think came out OK in the end. The way the kit is designed means that the undercarriage legs need to be fitted during the build and not at the end, so inevitably I broke one of the legs off! Thankyou Lord for superglue. Then those door runners, which were so oversize as to look ridiculous. This meant fixing the doors either open or closed. At this point I thought about the cabin windows. The kit windows were extremely thick and had shrinkage dimples so weren’t usable. I had intended to use Humbrol Clear Fix or white glue to add the windows at the end of the build but after I had fitted the canvas seats they were too close to the front windows to allow that. So I looked again at the kit windows, and sanded down their outer faces which removed the dimples and thinned them. A few coats of Klear made them usable, so I went with them. I added some scale size runners from plastic strip after the doors were fixed in place. The next issue was the rotor head, which appeared to sit much too high. My solution was to remove about 2mm from the top of the gearbox. The assembly of the pitch change arms was extremely difficult and I must admit I gave up in the end and added some plastic rod after the rest of the rotor head had dried. This left the antennas to sort out. The kit position for the VOR/ILS antennas on the rear fuselage is not correct for RAF machines and they needed moving forwards. They may be OK for the French version. An additional V/UHF comms antenna was added under the rear fuselage and the HF double wire antenna added on the port side using pins as masts and EZ Line. On to paint and decals. I airbrushed Xtracolour enamels for the Dark Green / Dark Sea Grey camo, but hand painted the black underside using Humbrol Satin Black just to avoid the awkward masking with the undercarriage in place. I sprayed the rotor blades using Xtracrylic Dark Green to give a different shade from the camo.It’s interesting to see how different the enamel and acrylic RAF Dark Greens are, when they should be the same! Blade undersides were black. I struggled to find where the yellow blade handling markings were on the blades. They are there on the underside but I could find no evidence of them being on the top sides of the blades. Finally the decals. I would recommend to anyone building a Puma to get hold of Modeldecal Set No.67 which has a really nice set of stencils including all those white markings on the underside, in addition to badges, codes and serials for 33 Sqn, 230 Sqn and OCU machines. Overall this was a more complex build than I had expected but I got there in the end. I prefer these early Pumas to the later configuration with those (in my opinion) ugly air intake filters.

Another completion a bit of record for me 4 kits in a year, the PJ Production boxing of the HPM Mirage this is one of the early boxings with the overdone panel lines, I am a fan of this kits as the options are endless I just wish there were more decal sheets for all the different versions. This one is finished as an Aircraft 22 of E.C. 2/13 based at Colmar in 1980. the decals are from the kit and the Squadron markings from Modedelcal Sheet 88. Enjoy. Dassault Mirage 5F by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr Dassault Mirage 5F by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr Dassault Mirage 5F by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr Dassault Mirage 5F by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr Dassault Mirage 5F by Phillip Wilmshurst, on Flickr

I fancy making the old Frog Wessex straight out of the box with the Modeldecal set 18 decals for a plane guard Wessex XS880 57 Just how it would have been 40+ years ago using enamel paints and tube glue to see how well my modelling has come on Or Cross kit with the Italeri kit for winch, cockpit . wheel covers ect What does everyone think? Rodders

Ah-har me hearties (Buccaneer talk), first full week of the year, first fully finished model This is the old FROG offering with Modeldecal markings and a very small amount of photoetch (for the air brake and ejector seat handles). Other minor changes include a few sprue inspired cockpit details (although I eventually forgot to add my carefully crafted Observers windscreen before the canopy....grrrr), plus paper roll intake trunks (remarkably successful) and straw jet pipes to fill the gaping hole from front to rear that is the model's interior. The air brakes use Airwaves photo etch, plus a little plastic card and sprue (Frog's left and right side aren't identical). Not entirely successfull as I thnk I have fitted them too far forward - however its a learnign experience and the next one I will get right! The weapons (Bullpups and 1000 lb bombs) come from the spares box. And here she is with the rest of the fleet (so far): At this stage I think I prefer the FROG to the other two, with its slightly more convincing nose profile, although it is very obvious that the vertical tail surfaces are rather compressed: FredT

WESTLAND LYNX HAS 2 702 NAS, HMS Avenger Flight, Yeovilton 1979 This is the Fujimi 1/72 kit with a few alterations, the main ones being a new tail rotor drive shaft cover to give a more bulked-out look compared with the kit, reshaped fin (the kit gives the Army style fin) and reshaped exhaust area. I left the main cabin empty but worked on the cockpit a bit. The kit doesn't supply the pilot's collective for some reason even though the other 3 sticks / levers are there so that had to be added. I also repositioned the cyclic sticks nearer to the seats to give room for the instrument panel. I added the Seaspray radar display on the observer's (post) side, but the rest of the instrument panel came from Modeldecal's sheet. I really like the original Oxford Blue scheme. I've had a tin of Xtracolour Oxford Blue for more years than I care to think about, but it still sprayed OK - took a while to dry though! The old Modeldecals performed well as usual, and a final coat of Humbrol satin varnish gave it that semi-gloss look of the early Navy Lynx. Nice to have some real warm sunshine to photograph it in after a long grey winter. Chris

BUCCANEER S2 800 NAS, RNAS Lossiemouth, Mid 1966 I don’t know whether anybody out there remembers a certain mid-60s issue of Aero Modeller magazine with a painting of an 800 NAS Buccaneer attacking the Torrey Canyon on the cover. Inside were the best drawings of the S2 I had seen to date – and a photo of the first S2 to be delivered to 800 NAS in the grey/white scheme. This photo in fact: This is the only photo I’ve ever seen of this aircraft (XV156) in this scheme. It was delivered in mid 1966 but by October 1966 had been re-painted in an experimental EDSG/’Squirrel Grey’ scheme, and then repainted again in the overall EDSG scheme by March 1967. But thanks to Modeldecal, the grey/white scheme has been available in decal form since 1972. In fact the set I used on this model had been in my decal stash since that date! Similarly, the Frog S2 I used had been in my kit stash from roundabout the same time. The old Frog kit was typical of its time – see-through air intakes / undercarriage wells / cockpit with no detail at all. It was also based on an early RAF (ex-RN) aircraft in that the pylon spacing and type were different, and a single vortex generator on each wing top surface was deleted to incorporate this. The kit has the first 1mm or so of the pylons moulded in to the wings, so they all had to go. Similarly, the VG on each wing was replaced. But that was the easy bit. This was the rest: Air intakes were sawn off and plastic sheet blanks added to the rear and side. This enabled the intake interiors to be built up with Milliput. Engine fronts were added from an Airfix kit. Fin height was increased by about 2mm under the tailplane. The tailplane strake was replaced by plasticard and the front tailplane bullet replaced by rod and reshaped. I used the Freightdog resin nose which saved a huge amount of reshaping – thanks, Colin. I should have used the tailplane from the Freightdog set as well, but I had already reshaped the kit item before it became available (bear in mind this build has been ongoing for the best part of 40 years!) Cockpit interior was scratched – seats were white metal – not sure of the source (I’ve had them for a l-o-n-g time) Undercarriage wells were scratched, using tube to represent the jet pipes which are visible in the wheel wells. Arrestor hook, FR probe and nose U/C (with landing light removed)came from an Aeroclub white metal set. I used the kit main U/C as it has the correct style wheels (different inboard and outboard detail on the wheel hubs). Anyway, the 40 year old decals performed OK – they were a bit thick and brittle but laid down OK with Klear underneath and (many coats) on top. Roundels were also Modeldecal. Some stencils came from Xtradecal also. So at long last it’s done, and is a good companion to my 800 NAS S.1 completed last year at http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234922594-buccaneer-s1-800-nas-1964/?hl=buccaneer :