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Just catching up with this. Amazing build as always Mark. I'm sort of beginning to think of doing a silver/nmf but am quite daunted by the prospect, but your thread is helping. Regarding the wing surface finish, I've just found that out as well so will also have to back-track slightly - but working in a smaller scale it should be less work! cheers Rob

Have you got or can you get a radiator grille to fit on the front? Make a card bonnet to fit and maybe even add a side pipe to suggest a bigger engine. You may as well go all out! Wider wheels too perhaps?

Yes, although as the most powerful and manoeuvrable aircraft I'd flown up to that point had been a Bulldog it took me a while to stop overcontrolling in roll. The pilot had enough faith to let me fly it at low level through the Highlands, where I quickly discovered (helped by some very loud prompts from the left seat) that you need to pull much harder to go round a corner in a fast jet than you do in a light aircraft. 😧

Same here ! I may be wrong , but didn't the original Airfix kit come with an actual Bloodhound dog as part of the 'extras' ?

The kit contains a complete set of aluminum-skinned flight controls in addition to the fabric-covered ones, so you can add the fabric-covered pieces to your spares collection. With regard to the ailerons, the kit gives you the option of cutting and replacing the molded-on units; my preference is to keep the molded-on ailerons in place and conceal the rib detail beneath some primer and gentle sanding. As for the wing inspection lights, you'll need to fabricate these yourself, but there are options out there for making this a hopefully easy process.

Looks good with the primer on. You mentioned earlier that you were painting it in the RAF Germany tactical scheme, unfortunately Airfix goofed on those 92 Sqn markings, they should be red and yellow checks, not yellow and blue.

Thanks for the comments and likes everybody. Much appreciated Dave G

Hi @Armor Novice. Great to have you along. I have added you to our list in the first post. Looking forward to seeing what you decide to make. Kind regards, Stix

That's some serious looking lifting gear!

Thanks, @klubman01! This part is an easy fix. Is the Dominie engine set also suitable without modification for the Series 1 and 3 civil jets?

I think the original topic has been well answered by others more knowledgeable than me, but getting back to these points, yes, Ozzy did bite the head off a bat I can't remember why exactly, but the audience got into the habit of throwing toys on stage. Someone threw a real, dead bat on stage, Ozzy thought it was a rubber toy until he bit it, and had to suffer rabies injections thereafter. I can't remember if this was before or after the bat incident, but at one point he was with Sharon, pitching to CBS executives I think, in one of their meeting rooms. He was very drunk. He had some doves hidden under his top. Sharon had the idea that he'd release them into the room at some point, like a magician, I suppose. Sounds like a terrible idea, but then instead of releasing them, Ozzy took one out and bit its head off. I've ignored all your other examples because I agree with the point you were making. So much of the rumours going around about these bands, especially in the 1980s, were utter rubbish. AC/DC stands for anti-christ / devil's child (not), play records backwards to get hidden satanic messages (rubbish, half of them were so out to lunch they struggled to successfully make sense played forwards, and if they could figure out how to add subliminal messages backwards, they'd have been saying "buy more of our records"). Ozzy was at one point accused of singing "I tell you to end your life" on Paranoid when he was in court being sued for encouraging a teenager's suicide (the focus being around his song "Suicide Solution"). The actual lyric in Paranoid is "I tell you to enjoy life", which fits with the follow up lyric ("I wish I could but it's too late"). Heck, in the 1980s I even heard some anti-rock music minister arguing that Olivia Newton-John's "Physical" was satanic. So, just sharing Ozzy's stories as anecdotal because even in the bizarre world of 1980s rock stars, alcohol and drugs, Ozzy was a uniquely crazy person when he was drunk. He lost all of his limits. And yeah, every time I hear "Born in the USA" (chorus only) being played as a kind of Proud to be American anthem, I do have a quiet laugh. "Fortunate Son" I think was sometimes similarly misunderstood, though I think more people clicked in to what it was about. Often when played in a Vietnam movie, it's supporting exactly the people that the song was written about. Those stuck in the war with no idea why they're there. Maybe sometimes it's me misunderstanding what Proud to be American is, warts and all. Embracing the imperfections because nobody's perfect. I dunno.

This, like other demographic factors such as age and even occupation, is based on actuarial data. Basically, they know whether women in general are more likely to cause payouts than men, whether young drivers are more likely than middle-aged, and whether rock stars are more likely than vets. The result is that every man, every young driver and every rock star pays more on average than every woman, middle-aged driver and vet. And they would, of course, describe this as your other half's insurance being cheaper. They don't know drivers' personal circumstances, except for previous claims and motoring convictions, so how many goes you needed for your driving test, or how many times you've wound up another driver and got away with it, don't figure. You could, I suppose, volunteer that information, just to see what it does to your other half's premiums. And to see if she thanks you. Or you could say you're female next time you renew ... Oddly enough I think this is one of the few aspects of insurance that's reasonable. It's hard to see on what other basis they could set up the starting point for working out everyone's premiums. There are millions of drivers to insure, so going into everyone's fine detail to give them a customised quote would probably end up more expensive for everyone. On the other hand: you pay premiums; you suck it up and pay more when they tell you Oh, it's awful, we have to put prices up; then you make a claim and they make you pay still more. They do it to recover what they paid out on your claim - which will be a lot less than you've paid them so far. So, basically, what all those premiums bought you wasn't the cost of the repairs, or whatever. They got you nothing but the right to put in a claim and be charged more in future. Hence: scam. It's not just cars, either. My gas service price has just gone up because I needed a new control box. All the premiums I've paid them so far could have bought the thing twenty times over, but I still have to pay more. At least with a car there's a chance that you could smash the thing up completely and cost the insurance so much that you end up ahead. Hardly likely with your central heating, and they wouldn't cover it even if you could.

Great idea, the MiG emerging through the clouds ! And I'm also annoyed when kits come without a pilot.

I built this kit back in 1981 from that very boxing. It cost me 97p I do recall, same as all the other ESCI AFV kits I bought that year. Halcyon days indeed.

Hi All, Another brief update. I managed to spray a Flory wash: I also managed to remove it! I then added flat coats - the Kittyhawk had a single lightening drop of white added. Here's a before & after: Not displeased with that! I then added a couple more drops for the Tiffie, in order to compensate for the darker blue of the roundels: It does look a little extreme in the photo but the effect is quite pleasing to the naked eye. I shall however have to ensure that all components added from hereon in have the same fading applied! Thanks for looking, Roger

It looks ok to me, after all it's only to give some shade variation to the paint, so it doesn't need to be perfect James

Ok, so I have been busy but filling, sanding, filling, sanding ad and it doesn't make for good photos. But things have moved on, so this is a bit bigger update. I finally managed to get both models to the paint shop for a first coat of primer (Mr Finishing Surfacer 1500 gray) along with some smaller bits but prior to that I tried a shot to compare nose profiles. The OOB version is on the right ... It's hard to tell here but the nose aft of the carburettor intake fairing on the modified one is almost parallel with the lower fuse line and not curved like the OOB. Using the digital vernier calipers (? measuring thingy I do like to get the terminology correct) the depth of the OOB nose just in front of the wing leading edge is 1.6mm more than the "new" one. Near enough what I was aiming for, but worth all this effort? Not sure. Jury still out. Anyway, there's still some sanding to do before proper paint ...... The horizontal seam I created needs more sanding, but it was hard to tell before the primer was on. Also, not having much knowledge of Mustangs, I've been frantically reading up on various aspects, incuding wing surface finishes. It seems that I may have to fill in (or make less obvious) all the panel lines I'd carfully re-done after the initial sanding and fettling of the wing root and around the re-positioned guns and landing lights ..... Ne'er mind, it's educational ........ Talking of which, most of the major parts are together now and they are starting to look like aircraft, but this kit is like the proverbial Curate's egg - some good bits, some awful. On the awful side was the fit of the main undercarriage doors. I say "fit" but it was exactly the opposite, although slightly better on the OOB version (which seems a slightly better copy in that there is a bit less flash on the sprues and major parts seemed to line up better). Still working on those so didn't think worth a photo yet. On the good side are things like the details in the cockpit and the wheels. For the latter I got some resin replacements, but the kit ones look just as good to me with the same tread pattern as the replacements and hubs finely represented. Only difficult bit is removing the mould line seam flash without messing the tread pattern so I may keep the resin ones in the spares stash. Final bit of the update, about which @stevehnz might be interested seeing as he raised the point about the rear fuselage. It's slightly distorted by the phone camera but I think you can see that the line of the lower fuse slopes up less on the modified version (left) than the OOB. I was aware that I didn't really need to do the rear of the aft fuse so I did less sanding of the cut in that region. I seem to have managed to keep the depth of the 2 fuselages aft of the (wait for it!) leading edge of the tail wheel cavity the same to within 0.4mm - so near enough I feel. The bit I was pleased with is the lessening of the up slope on the fuse between the wing and the tail wheel. As an aside, I think I managed to avert disaster when I realised (in the act of picking up the airbrush) that there was a gaping hole in the lower aft fuse at the radiator outlets and that there was very little internally between there and the inside of the canopy and cockpit. If I'd not plugged the gap with hastily applied kitchen towel scraps I hate to think what would have been the effect ......... Finally (what? again? ), the leading edge of the wing root. I think you can just make out the new shape of the wing root leading edge, although it's quite subtle. At least I know it's there. The primer has also shown a little more sanding attention is still needed to finish off. Overall, I feel this is moving along ok. Just need to maintain the enthusiasm for a bit more filling and sanding, then we can get to paint! At last! I have to say that I will be looking to do next a simple build that mostly just needs assembling, just to balance things out - I'm getting a little weary of all the fettling for every piece ...... Now, did someone say that Airfix have a new P-51 Starter Set? Thanks for looking Rob

Hi Wayne, I’ve just come across this thread. Great work, I really must get on and build mine. As far as the rubber band tracks go, I bit the bullet and created my own ‘link and length’ tracks that represent the tracks of the rhomboid tanks much better: I was particularly disappointed at the quality of the MB tracks.

I've been getting a bit grumpy with myself over this. I was starting to get fed up with the base; it's too big, it's unwieldy, I'll never get it finished and so on. So here's a reminder of what it's all about. That's feels better. It's making sense again. At least to me it is. Mojo restored. Onwards and Upwards!

I’m in I have a nice 1/48 Corsair in the stash that should do nicely.

Thanks Jeroen.

That sounds more sensible indeed, thank you !

Nicely built, but where’s the pilot?.

I agree with your description of inset ailerons, and also that it may well be a repair requirement. I have not encountered any aerodynamic reason, but speculate that given the importance of the tip vortices for lift and drag, having a moving surface waggling about in them might not be ideal. If this is an effect dependent on speed, then that might explain why ailerons extending to the tip exist happily enough on slow aircraft but disappeared from designs as speed rose. I'm not sure how this effect, if true, would be got around in the case of very short-clipped wings such as the Spitfire, where there is precious little tip beyond the aileron. However, as aircraft grew faster and larger and more expensive, the more important the ease and low cost of repair becomes.

Thanks a lot Darryl. The way that I mix Tamiya paint is with an eye dropper. Because Mike Starmer's mixes are by the number of parts, it's easy to drip it into the cup and then add the equal amount of Tamiya thinner. I'm going to have to make up more batches for the turret and upper hull, so fingers crossed there isn't a drastic difference in the colour. John.