Peter s

The blokes in Germany would take issue with that! They have their own online shop and sell other brands as well. I assume you mean R............ I did not know that. Mind you is it REALLY them or a sort of franchise that trades under their name? I'm a bit wary of R........ some good ones but some truly hideous ancient things ex-matchbox in a new box. Their canberra was an expensive mistake.

I'd argue foundation is really no different to pigment...... A coat of spray varnish should work. In fact in theory you could use it on an SAS Landrover or Gulf war jet to weather the desert pink base colour

Actually I just really processed the gun barrels 😆 THOSE would scare the Bf110's away! They look like 30mm cannon. This is worth knowing about. I've got the Sunderland in my stash for a rainy day (or being locked up for 14 days because I've coughed once too often...) & I bet its not much better.

Three issues: -Their prime business is making plastic kits. When I got back into modelling (with bad memories of Palitoy era 1980s Airfix) I avoided them like the plague until the only sensible zero I could find was an Airfix (new tool although that meant nothing at the time). That was a AAAAH! moment. £ for £ new tool Airfix kits are better than anything else I can buy in the UK and I've built everything from Tamiya to weird nasty Russian brands. -The Airfix website and their shop does seem to be one man and a dog. Perversely they sell the kits in bulk to other larger suppliers so its quite easy to buy from someone like Jadlam cheaper and faster than Airfix themselves. That said Airfix is the only major kit company you can deal with directly. -Airfix are a brand name of Hornby so some of the "one man and a dog" policies probably come from Hornby.

Hi Aussie Jeff, I often spend more on aftermarket decals than the kits themselves. When you look at my pile of decals you've really got to question my thinking. Its one reason I built my recent Italian pair both out of the box.

I read it... its incredible but its really worrying too. Trying to seal a leaking cockpit window with sandwich wrap for instance. The pyramid of refuelling victors was insane and the navigational requirements on minimal fuel reserve terrifying. How the hell we did it 7 times without killing a crew amazes me.

Looks good! I can see a bit of decal silvering but its amazing when decals nearly 50 years old still work.

The most dangerous product I've used is Humbrol acrylic spray varnish. That can attack paint and decals too. Whatever the solvent is its potent. Its rare I get silvering even on a matt finish (a defiant was a recent rare exception) but I have found its harder to position a decal on a matt finish. Once it touches wing it often sticks quite firm. Flipside is that it doesnt decide to migrate when you turn your back so it works both ways.

You can get plenty of satin acrylics. Compared to an XF- Tamiya Model air is pretty satin.

I'm an acrylic person but the principle is the same...... I tend to wave a can of Vallejo spray varnish over the model periodically as I go along. Thin coats but it toughens things up, protects weathering that may be water soluble (I use watercolour pencils a lot and the water from decals washes that off... ditto water based washes). The idea behind a varnish coat before decals is that the smoother the surface the less chance of decal frosting (water behind the decal spoiling the finish) but micro-sol and set help avoid that. A coat of varnish after decals protects them (its not the first time a roundel has come off on my finger the day after I applied it) and can help soften and conform the decal. New Tool panel lines are quite deep so you shouldn't fill them with a coat of varnish. BTW a glossy finish sometimes repels washes and a matt finish can sometimes retain so much wash its hard to actually wash it. Depends on the solvent used in the wash and what effect you want. Organic solvent (ie artists turps, enamel thinner etc) tend to work better than water based ones. Ideally you weather after applying decals as the effect would cover the whole area and often streaks look more obvious over a roundel than over a cammo wing. Flipside is that if you're not comfortable weathering you could overdo it and then lose your decals. Best to weather lightly then build up. The planes leave the factory spotless and generally the crew try and keep them clean. There's nothing wrong with a clean plane but you can over-weather and get to an unrealistic level. I'm always happiest with some pics of the real thing to keep me in check (although I found some Lancasters with so much exhaust filth you wouldn't believe it. Looked like the crew had been having a BBQ on the wing!)

My bottle is marked "wax" too and its fine. A little yellow in solution but makes canopies shine and doesn't mess with any of the acrylic paints I use. I agree with Paul Brown: you can mix gallons of tamiya thinner with grocery store/pharmacy products (isopropyl alcohol aka surgical spirit and some glycerine if you want a retarder). Its 80% water so you're paying a fortune for a little jar of "tapoline" . Emery boards from a pound store beauty section are a fraction of "modelling" sanding sticks etc. Even proper swann-morton scalpels are cheaper than modelling knives.

Love the blue-grey and olive camo!

Yeah... i've been beaten to it. Tamiya is acrylic but uses alcohol as a solvent not water (Tamiya thinner is a mix of isopropyl alcohol -ie surgical spirit-, water and glycerol). You CAN thin with a small quantity of water but that sort of defeats its one advantage. I use it as a primer coat and for fine detail work (like canopy lines when brush painted) because it sticks harder and quicker than true water based acrylics but you don't get the problems of mixing enamel/acrylic with it. It sprays easily. I prefer model air for "proper" painting but an airbrush initial coat of Tamiya gives you a good primer in most cases thats ready for model air in 10-30 mins. I've bought a few model air own brand primers recently and they're also pretty good.

The mission I referred to was Black Buck 6 if you want to skip to that bit

There were 7 Black Bucks. 2-7 didn't really achieve much (in fact 1 got a single bomb on the runway with more luck than we deserved). The problem was the SHRIKE wasn't a great missile in Vietnam. By '82 it was old. The Argentineans shut down their radar and the missiles never hit. The one at East Fortune had two white missile symbols painted on the nose though. Here's some links. Firstly Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck "During the 1982 Falklands War, Operations Black Buck 1 to Black Buck 7 were a series of seven extremely long-range ground attack missions by Royal Air Force (RAF) Vulcan bombers of the RAF Waddington Wing, comprising aircraft from Nos. 44, 50 and 101 Squadrons against Argentine positions in the Falkland Islands, of which five missions completed attacks. " This one has a pic of the two missiles on a pylon https://www.aviationclassics.co.uk/black-buck/ & here's the Daily Express with Mrs T demanding we get our Vulcan back from Brazil 😆 https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/621106/Margaret-Thatcher-Falklands-war-Brazil

Thats interesting... its like a new tool but just not quite as good. As I said minor issues apart its one of my favourite kits. I must have done 3-sea hurricane variants (Cannon and MG), a Hurri-bomber, a night fighter version with wing tanks and even one with 4 60lb rockets... also a Russian one I covered in snow.

I don't know enough about Vulcans either but the full bay of 1000lb-ers screamed "Black Buck" to me. BTW there's another Black Buck at East Fortune that did a couple of SHRIKE missile attacks on the Falklands. I've loads of Shrikes in my stash so thats an option. I think the same plane ended up inpounded in Rio for the duration after its refuelling probe broke off mid-mission.

Nice! I did exactly the same pairing too BTW. I know there's accuracy issues with the Hurricane but especially the version that comes with the "flames of victory" club set (with MG and Cannon wing options) lets you build SO many variants that I really like it.

I got the same as a leaflet through the door then they sent some idiot round to canvas me. I did enjoy dragging it out and making him admit he didn't know what the chequer board means. Dangerous being anti-Polish in Nottingham. I work with a guy who's a great nephew of Witold Urbanowicz (brother's grand-son I think) & the Polish Catholic club is filled with paintings of Poles bayonetting people in WW2 (also Elvis..... weird) Ignoring the recent immigrants there were so many Poles with bomber command based around here who couldn't go back home its been a huge community for nearly 80 years.

The "Commando" comic was clearly a pastiche on Malta. (actually not bad for a kids comic is it?) The fact three sea gladiators are in a hanger was very coincidental. Hope Faith and Charity are a bit of a myth. There have have been 3 airworthy at a time but there were more than 3 airframes on Malta. Does anyone know if you COULD put 2 extra guns on the upper wing? Apart from being awkward to reload and adding ~100lbs of weight 50% more firepower seems desirable especially against bombers where weight of lead does matter. If possible I wonder why it was never (apparently) done?

Thats a really nice job. I built a similar Vb as part of the "channel dash" twin pack (with a new tool Swordfish) and for a kit pushing 50 year old it still builds up well. I do a lot of Polish RAF aircraft too. Great subjects. Those guys REALLY fought hard.

I'm with Paul. You CAN do good work with a spray can. A few weeks ago I did a Hawker Demon in a few hours largely with the help of a Humbrol can of aluminium & it came out really nicely but its SO easy to spray too much and end up with almost incurable puddles of paint on the model. I used to do huge scale models (1/16 tanks) and sprayed a single coat of rattle can as a combination primer / darker base shade. You could use 6 tubs of Tamiya XF- coating one of those monsters so the rattle cans made sense. I always did the real work with airbrushes though.

I use "croc-clips" for electronics to hold base/feet but the "avoid touching" is good advice. That soft plastic is quite paint repellant but also you don't have a huge amount of detail so you can't afford too many coats of paint. I airbrush tamiya flesh as a combination face colour / primer for everywhere else then give it at least 24 hours to dry hard. Even then you can scratch paint off but its good enough.

When I used to sell models on eBay I found this "phenomena" in reverse. Models (especially 1/16 figures) that looked great on the shelf looked like **** in some photos. I always got good feedback (and repeat business) but some of the pics if I used them would have had customers running or laughing at me (or both) It was like looking down a magnifying glass at them. I've found angle, lighting and not being crazy-close to the subject make a big difference. A variation is "whats does the model look like primed, especially primed in black or white". That can show up some bad defects in the build but equally when you have multi-colour plastic parts or white filler a primer coat can make the job look better,

There was a bad joke in Germany which translates roughly as "whats the cheapest way to get a starfighter? buy an acre of land and one will crash on it soon enough". The bribes even took down a pretty senior member of the dutch royal family. https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/07/archives/dutch-prince-was-given-11-million-by-lockheed-dutch-prince-tied-to.html $1.1M in cash in the early 70s was quite a bung. Like you say not a bad point defence interceptor (although its telling how little use even the USAF put the F104 to) but damned lethal at low altitude. I think it had a downward ejector seat! One engine too and personally I'd like two over water at low level.