Dad Paul B

I have fond memories of building this one back in the 70s. I would love to see some photos of the finished product.

The old kits are a mixed bag. I got HMS Ark Royal for christmas (I had built it as a kid back in the 1970s and wanted to apply my current skills to it). It was still a good kit, though the detail is far below what is possible with modern tooling. The Halifax was more of a chore - a brilliant kit for its time but the tooling was on its last legs with lots of flash on the smaller components and transparencies polished to smoothness over the years removing all of the surface detail. Still came up well. It is a matter of personal choice. I love the modern toolings as you can do so much with them but also do old kits when no alternative remains. I have done several of the old vehicle kits because I was building wargame forces and others when you need a particular subject and no modern version is available (in my case a 1960s tool Macchi C202 Folgore by an Italian company I had never heard of to go into a dogfight with my son's Desert Air Force Curtiss Tomahawk). A lot of the older stuff is ideal if you appreciate a challenge and enjoy scratch building things like interiors. But I favour the modern stuff. But will still consider the Vintage kits.

The flying hours have increased, though you can now go up to Series 9. None of the material put out at launch mentioned the old discount so I assumed they had dropped that benefit. I haven't decided whether to join the new club or not yet.

A nice build. I have done this model with both the Red/White/Grey and Dayglo schemes. The orange decals are difficult. I had to use warm water, Micro Set and Micro Sol and quite a bit of finger pressure on the leading edge wraparounds. However once these set the rest went on fairly easily, though some of the tip tank markings haven't completely settled over the surface detail. The two tone grey scheme is tempting.

Smirfy I have looked at Jeremy Brook's 60 years of airfix models and there is only a 217. Of course it may be possible to get aftermarket parts to convert the new Do-17.

Don't forget Illustrious in 1/350. It would need some new parts to bring it back to 1982 Invincible (replacing the foredeck and adding a Sea Dart launcher and deleting the Phalanx mounts). Some of these were done in 1/600 (Fearless was a nice model) and there were Leander and County Class models as well.

The traditional colours for the V-Bombers was Bronze Green and Medium Sea Grey over white but for its display career XH558 was finished in Dark Sea Grey. I am not sure what green was used - either Bronze Green or Olive Drab which is closer to the colours used on RAF aircraft from the 1980s.. Vallejo do both sea greys, Bronze Green and Yellow Olive

The last release of the Halifax was nearly 10 years ago. Spares are usually kept for a while after release but represent dead space in the storage facility so they will tend to be cleared out after a moderate interval after the production run. I built this a couple of years ago and one half of one of the horizontal stabilisers was missing, spares had gone by then so I scratch built a replacemetn from plasticard. The tooling dates to 1960 and was pretty tired; lots of flash and the transparencies had lost nearly all of their surface detail from repolishing. It was a very advanced kit for its time, the landing gear looks like it is supposed to be retractable with moving doors as well as control surfaces. I think you may need to go the metal gear route or close the doors so you only need the wheels as suggested above.

Looking good so far James. The interior detail on this is the best I have seen, I drilled out most of the skin on one side for my build and the interior detail is still difficult to see without a direct light. The fabric surfaces of the wings are beautifully textured as well. I am looking forward to seeing how yours turns out.

This could be dust settling on the model from the air.If so the best option is to cover the model with something while the paint dries. Another alternative is to give the paint a rub down with a polishing cloth or very very fine sandpaper, you can find tips insome other threads on the forum.

Tamiya tape is pretty much the standard. Available from Hobbycraft when they reopen (you could try online). Hannants do their own brand which is fine as well. I am sure there are others available.

There are a few sets of Vulcan decal sets. 'Gods of Fire and Water' is good (Vulcans and Neptunes) and has all of the stencils (though some research is needed). Xtradecal do a 617 Squadron set which has a few Vulcans (and a Mustang 3 and Mosquito which I want to try at some point). Check Hannants and see what options are available. Postage is free for decals over a threshold (I think it is £7 but check)

This was a quick build for me, only about a couple of weeks. You need to be careful with the size of some of the attachment gates, particularly on the wings (this was a slight issue with early Hornby designs which has been fixed on more recent kits). I had some decals for a Royal Australian Navy airframe. The cockpit canopy didn't stay attacheded in the open position so I had to fix it closed later on. Itis a nice little model /media/tinymce_upload/f8cff3f22ae17284b625df3a516daa7d.JPG /media/tinymce_upload/bb9725a1686da158b2cd80b8f3a8a816.JPG I had to cut the nose glare panel decal to fit around the gun sight and it could do with more ordnance - most photos I have seen show a lot of bombs. Impressive for such a small plane. Worryingly the US Navy managed to drop one of these off of a Carrier into the Pacific with an Atomic Bomb on it. I don't think it was recovered but I would need to check that.

Nice work Ratch. I remember building one of these with my brother back in the '70s. The same year we were at the Biggin Hill airshow where one of these crashed in the dip. It dropped below the treeline and everything went quiet until a big plume of black smoke climbed up. The owner had several passengers on board for the display which he was not supposed to do. We saw it warming up on the runway just before and got into an argument with some bloke who swore it was a Mitchell. I have been reading Arthur Schlesinger's book on the Kennedy presidency. A-26s were used by both sides during the Bay of Pigs fiasco (the Cubans also had quite a few Sea Furies, one of which sank the nationalist ship which had most of their ammunition). I will have to see if there are decals for this period.

Olive Drab will be for the flight suits and Gull Grey is the gloves on the crew.

Given that Swastikas are illegal to sell in some countries Airfix leave them out of their kits. Hannants do a sheet if you want to add them to WW2 German equipment.

Well, it is available through Airfix directly and game design is very different to model engineering so Airfix won't have the capability to expand the game themselves. Modiphius were producing a free quarterly e-magazine which included material for AB but have not released an issue for a while,though the back catalogue is available on their website. Their hardcopy store is temporarily closed down as their warehouse has shut in the current situation. I have been wargaming for 40 years and was impressed by the package, I have devised cards for new troop types and written some scenarios. Hopefully it will be possible to tie in new 1/72 vehicle kits to the game to promote sales, especially if it is possible to include a unit card in the package. Don't be put off by the price. Many rule sets require a core book and several more of Army Lists which run to a lot more than the price of Airfix Battles. The counters are nicely produced but miniatures are more fun.

Pete I would say that 1/72nd is probably the way to go for new tools. The classics range are 1/76, as were the old Matchbox kits and they do well partly due to the price point compared to new, and more advanced, 1/72 options. As a wargamer I am price sensitive due to needing several of most things. The new Sherman Firefly and Tiger I look nice, but I already have all of these I need. There are gaps at 1/72 - especially the Armoured Cars and the early war French tanks used in Normandy during 1944 (which I still need). Also some of the Cold War Classics like the Centurion and Chieftain are missing so there are clearly options. I think 1/76 is stricly for the old tools as I think the Cromwell and Tiger II may not have done so well - although the Cromwell is a nice kit. Still I would like to see some new vehicles.

Great piece of work Ratch. Plenty of variety. The twin Hotspur is interesting - was this a conversion of the old Frog kit (currently available from a Russian producer)? It would be nice to have some space for this sort of project but that won't be for quite a few years for me. Thanks for sahring. Paul

Well, I had a £5 gift token from Hobbycraft so bought a small project. The Grumman Martlet Mk. IV is a slight modification of the Wildcat tooling with a shortened cowling for the engine. Having read the last interview with Eric 'Winkle' Brown in Flypast (May 2016) I decided to model an airframe he was photographed flying (Inverted). 802 Naval Air Squadron's R-Robert (which research suggested had the serial AL254). Converting back from a Mk.IV to Mk. I, based on the photos in Flypast suggested the only change was in the gunnery. Reducing to a 4 gun fit meant filling one of the inboard guns, both the hole in the wing leading edge and the case ejector shute underneath the wing on each side. The tips of the barrels also protrude slightly from the leading edge so the spares box was raided for machine gun barrels which were glued into the holes as below. /media/tinymce_upload/9a3db1f782d9f90b03e91bedbdcaffaf.JPG Ohterwise the build was unchanged (note the Mk.Is did not have folding wings!). This is a nice tooling, with posable ailerons and rudder. The only bugbear was around the landing gear bay. There was not much positioning guidance and fitting the wheels in the retraced position proved awkward. The doors under the gear were also a tough fit and my results were not perfect. The tooling is probably designed for wheels down, although this would leave the fragile struts fitted during all the rough handling of sanding and be vulnerable. It should be reasonably feasible to paint the model with the engine block and cowl off and fit the gear and engine afterwards. The camouflage scheme was slightly different, with the fuselage side camouflage extending under the wings and horizintal stabilisers, unlike the kit schemes which have sky in these areas. Photos also showed a ragged demarcation line here. Colours used were Vallejo Sky Green (which came up a little dark compared to the Humbrol version), Humbrol Dark Sea Grey and Vallejo Blue Grey Dark (which is darker than Dark Blue Grey). Decals had to be sourced from the Rocketeer Battle of Britain Decal sheet (which had over thick yellow borders but were adequate for the purpose). I also noted that the underwing roundels had yellow borders on the photos in Flypast. 802 NAS embarked in HMS Audacity, one of the first Escort Carriers, adapted from a captured German Banana boat SS Hanover. On 21st December 1941 Audacity was torpedoes with only Brown and one other airman surviving. This was the second of three ships sunk under 802 during World War 2, the others being Glorious off Norway in 1941 and Avenger off Gibraltar at the end of 1942. Since this was to be an operational airframe I applied chipping on the front edges of the wings and engine cowling and plenty of oil streaking and white weathering pigment to represent salt spray. Audacity had no hangar deck so the planes had to be kept topside at all times. Overall I would recommend the kit, though not as a beginner project due to the tricky landing gear area. It is a surprisingly small aircraft; ideal for operating off the small deck of an escort carrier. It should look nice in pale blue-grey as a US Navy Wildcat. So here's to Captain E M Brown RN (as he became). /media/tinymce_upload/85ecce4495943af1dae9536321d003f1.JPG /media/tinymce_upload/24ff13465b05e874792b16178b650ddd.JPG /media/tinymce_upload/4b539144af18ed1d2abc708430b64c3f.JPG /media/tinymce_upload/4c39d453eabf3ee8b218ea9c75c7dbfe.JPG

Try Hannants. Use advanced search and set the scale to 1/48 and type to Figure, This will show up stuff that may be suitable even if it is really something else.

Nice work Ratch. I remember this kit - running gear was incredibly complex - the hardest of any of the loco kits. I think only 2 of the class were build. I went through a Loco building patch in my early teens. I can recommend 'Biggin Hill' as that was my favourite of the train kits. You could almost certainly convert it to Merchant Seaman Class without much work.The Hall Class was nice as well. It runs on wheels along the ground and is definitely not Military so Cars (and Trains) is the place. I suspect the reason for no Train sections is that all the toolings were sold to Dapol so are no longer Airfix.

The starter and gift sets do include cement, brush(es) and paints, but they are small pots (potentially not enough for a large ship model) and can be a bit of a pain. You will also need some primer (Humbrol 1 is fine, using acrylic thinner is often advisable too as it can be a problem getting it to bond onto even a washed surface when thinned with water) and varnish (gloss - Humbrol Clear Gloss is fine - before you put the decals on then either Matt or Satin on top depending on the subject. Though Humbrol Matt and Satin Acrylic varnishes can be tricky and leave white residues when brush painted. I favour vallejo, though Ammo-Mig do some nice varnishes, though they don't work with decal setting solutions. The 1/600 ships are pretty good models for their time. I have just built Ark Royal and that went well. I found Graf Spee good as a kid in the 70s and Bismarck is highly recommended but I havenever tried that one. My personal favourite was HMS Fearless but that hasn't been brought back so far. Any of the newer tools are excelllent starting points, maybe a dogfight double as you get a stand for the pairing and both will be relatively easy builds for a beginner.

As far as I understand current official guidance to mail order companies is to keep going if possible and it would not put staff at risk. This to support business as much as possible in the circumstances. Local(ish) model shops, where they still exist, are closed for the duration but obviously go to their web site if you can. All the best and good luck with the builds. Paul

Some paint ranges reference the FS number equivalent. If you can find these then it may help you identify suitable colours. Otherwise go with your best guess and remember that colours look different at scale.