Peter s

Rightly or wrongly for the recovery set I used Tamiya XF-15 intermediate blue (which is a bit light) but then used a darker grey filter over it and it looked spot on. The final result was almost identical to Humbrol 96 but looked a bit more travel stained. For model air the PRU blue with a similar wash over the top might work OK. You need to push the blue to a slightly more grey shade. The model air colours are generally a touch satin. One of the reasons I used Tamiya was that it sprays hard matt. A good matt varnish over the top would probably do it.

If that doesn't work try (Paul or Ratch can probably add to this suggestion) certain Airfix spitfires have a lot more parts than others. I'm 95% sure the 1/72 Spitfire Va kit has TWO props (its an amalgamation of different kits and has excess parts for several other types). Two spitfires are twice as good as one 😆 Plan B would be to buy a resin aftermarket part on eBay and plan C if you have the spinnner hub still and some scratch building skills would be to cut a disc of clear plastic and combine with the spinner to make a "moving prop" effect. The 403 Forbidden thing has stopped me posting a link but "1/72 Spitfire propellor" on eBay throws up a nice resin one for about £6 including postage. If you have to go down that route use superglue gel to fix the blades to the spinner not poly-cement. Resin parts are often higher detail than polystyrene but can be more brittle and need a bit more skill so best to do it for your son. BTW even at 43 I have bits fly off the table and apparently leave the universe!

Do you mean why is the white narrower than the other 2 colours? TBH I can't remember! I may have struggled to find a suitable surplus decal or it may have been one of the kit decals I reused. Probably the former but I did use the serial number.

Vallejo model air do 8 paint sets called "The air wars" which are a convenient way of buying paint sets. Early war RAF, RAF post 1942, early war Luftwaffe, late war Luftwaffe etc. Some of the colours I think are a bit off-colour but I've worked out my own formulas to tweak them.

What did you paint it with? Don't use enamel varnish on acrylic paint! You can have a real disaster on your hands. Acrylic varnishes if water based brush on are generally safe with enamels but some spray varnish such as Humbrol acrylic is solvent heavy and can damage paint work. I generally use Vallejo acrylic either matt or satin. As Harold D says Satin may not be that accurate (although Satin paints were used in WW2... a satin black proved a better camo for Blackwidow night fighters than matt, Canadian Lancasters were satin black underneath & a satin finish was good for an extra 20mph on a mosquito) but it can look better. Generally I do my WW2 planes hard matt and my jets Satin. BTW especially with matt varnish it can make clear parts go cloudy. Thats unfixable so mask your canopy before you varnish. I use microsol and set too

I'm not surprised.... its like driving around with molotov cocktails strapped to the tank. I HAVE seen plenty of pics of German tanks carrying fuel (I've got one somewhere of a Tiger with a 200L drum either side of the turret.... among other things this would stop the turret rotating) but these are clearly on road marches and don't expect trouble. I've seen Afrika Corps Panzers with racks of Jerry Cans on the roof too. I assume water, but can't rule out fuel although if fuel clearly they also don't plan on being in combat that day.

There's no shortage of 1/72 Spitfires, P51's, FW190s etc. Any kit manufacturer has those on their books. Airfix sell them by the bucket load because there's are at least as good as anyone elses. I'm in the other camp... I like to display my aircraft as diorama's and the 1/76 ground vehicles and figures are just too small. Not badly so buy you can tell. Afrika: I think your list would make a fine kit but it would obviously add to the cost of each kit. I don't wargame but I think wargamers need quite a lot of any one unit... ONE sherman isn't enough. They need a squadron so cost is important. I've started doing the same with some of my aircraft. Rather than buy 1 Hurricane I buy 2 or 3 and do them as a set. At £6 or £7 per kit this is very affordable. At £15-20 not so. Paws4thot. Not quite! Not all parts were interchanged with other parts. For instance you would never had a diesel engine in a cast hull with HVSS suspension and a 17lb gun. However just to counter-argue with myself you had multiple mantlet styles (early war M4s didn't have a big gun sheild). BTW I make it 4 main guns: 75mm 76mm 17lb 105mm

German water cans were often the same Jerry can you'd carry fuel in but with a big white cross painted on it. Your average German tank crew were anything but dumb. Any jerry can in contact with the exhaust will get very hot. I'd bet the price of a Series 1 kit that they were heating shaving and washing water in the jerry can. The AFVs I used to crew had water boilers so we always had red hot water for hot drinks and boil in the bag rations. PS A Full german jerry can was 45lbs in weight when full. Given the back deck of a tank can be 7 or 8 foot off the ground thats a fair weight to lift up. 5 gallons isn't going to get many tanks that far (about 5 miles.... ) so you might need 20 or even 40 Jerry cans to fill the fuel tank but they can be carried on trucks (or even horse drawn carts) and in the field are possibly the best way refuel. Bowsers are vulnerable and obvious targets & 1 bowser can only fuel one tank at a time. A truck full of Jerry cans can fuel a whole squadron at the same time.

I periodically have a burst of passion for Vietnam planes that never lasts long (Robin Olds F4 and 2 Mig 17s have been almost finished since before Xmas) so the Bronco is on my list. Revel do a load of 1/72 WW1 aircraft which are OK-ish but so small they're beyond what I can do well. The Sea Fury is a good build. I don't keep many of my finished models that long but the Sea Fury has been hanging up for a few years so far.

One piece resin parts might be the way to go, if you can find them. Or save the cowlings for the 2nd day and don't try and rush it! Resin brings its own set of "fun" plus for a gladiator price kit doubles the price.

Tamiya medium blue (XF-18) isn't a bad start but I'd add a dash of grey to it. Otherwise I agree with the other guys: the vallejo model air is out-of-the-bottle perfect.

I hate the concrete slabs too. I've found the sort of clear plastic they use to box up resin aftermarket parts (and 9V batteries etc... "blister pack"??? ) makes a good base as its dead thin and clear but also very rigid for its thickness. Cut the original base off and superglue onto the clear plastic. No need if you're going to fix to the (excellent BTW) diorama but good if like me you use figures as "props" and just briefly photograph them with a plane. The clear plastic is good for mounting front and back wheel chocks on too.

It's not to do with thinness, it's in order to mould the rocker bulges without using multipart slide mould tooling. Aaah.... I've had the same issue with the Blenheims & I seem to recall Swordfish too. Not impossible to do neatly by any means but probably the single hardest part of the kit and very visible so easy to get glue damage and hard to tidy up with filler.

WOW! Thats a worst list than my "do the entire battle of Britain" I can help with a few. You'll need eBay. Hasegawa do/did a good KI-43 (built... and very pretty it looked too .Trumpeter do a Sea Fury (also good) I think Italeri do a Bell 47 (reports say getting the tail off the sprue needs a brain surgeon) Metero F8 is easy. Tamiya do A PR Mosquito. I can't tell you the exact model. Revell and Academy both do a Bronco The Beaufort will be almost impossible. I think wait till Airfix release theirs and try and modify

Looks like the 403 "Forbidden" is still a problem....... Models are finished and look good. I'm going to try and upload them to the product page for the SM79 and then hopefully post the full build when I can....

Again I'm with Ratch on this one & it influences my choice of model. I'm rarely happy with my bare metal finishes so tend to stay clear & stick to weathered WW2 cammo but my cold war jets look OK too, especially my air defence grey RAFs. I HAVE binned a few models either because I've made such a catastrophic mess that the end result will not be what I should be achieving or because of a major problem with a "substance". I had a few badly blistered when Humbrol varnish and Vallejo model air did not agree with each other. If you saw the R...... Bf109F the moderators kindly let my picture with my recent Heinkel at one point I was so unhappy with that I used paint stripper and took it back to bare plastic. PS If you need a confidence boost why not get something mono-colour like a defiant or black widow and try a can of black rattle paint? Tamiya matt black etc?

I built it a few years back. A USAAF New Guinea scheme (white tail) and a rather unusual Russian red star in a ring decal for a second option. Both olive green over medium grey. I remember it going together quite nicely but it needs a bit of weight up front. If you google "bell airacobra raf" there's a remarkable number of pics and even you tube video. Apart from the individual aircraft codes (and you could print those yourself on a sheet of clear decal film) all you need are generic roundels and the letters UF and the aircraft individual letter. Xtradecal sell sheets of Sky-S letters I use for that sort of job.

I've picked up a few genuinely old airfix kits on eBay - most are good builds but some of them are utter c**p. The vintage classics I've bought recently (SM79, Black widow, Fury) have been really fun to build. The Whirlwind I recently posted was also a fine kit but some of the Palitoy vintage baby blue ones simply don't fit together. There's challenging and simply substandard. The new tools are great but often I find more parts than you truly need. The 3 part engine cowling on the gladiator just seems excessive. I know its probably the only way you can make it thin enough but its very tricky.

I'm with Ratch on this one. Keep your brush wet with tap water and model colour brush paints perfectly. Model AIR brush paints perfectly if you let it sit in the palette for 10 mins to dry a little and thicken up. I've said it before but the problem isn't the paint. You've tried the major brands. You either have bad brushes (I've got kids ones at 10p each I use once for glue etc which are useless to paint with. Stiff nylon bristles.... I've got a huge collection of varying quality and to do a large area I use a large soft brush) or more likely there's a problem with the surface you're painting. You either need a better primer or to wash the parts in soapy water (or better still do both)

I've always liked the SM-79. For some reason I still remember when I first discovered it.... in a "Commando" comic about 1984. I remembered a load of guff about putting a Blenhein prop on a Gladiator plus fixing extra machine guns and taking on swarms of them. Incredibly I've FOUND the commando comic! Free to read for those of a certain vintage: https://view-comic.com/commando-for-action-and-adventure-issue-5196/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=ee91d357cf8635fa0dcbda2c6a31d1fb354acd06-1597326790-0-AWHARxWo8JrsIyIhuMSJim6kUCLAkwAIyo7d2aUWUY0ESiI1zxke2LoZ_puQdhsfmSgHHM8Ohn6DIwKyOtdCBJyDGduSNwuBLB5uPnaJeQWJjGfAYQvdxtBzsRQWPhXbEI9szNffUK3fMH2yQgZCEY1UD4lp0toUQbpnqK7jT-5tkcjqm0bDBRNviZJxryjT2UnMo5n8qOsnvrjmcnA_8LxqoKG_JFFgBLPVyBnCgpZ1Fil1wboe7Qj9v9Xg6go1G_JIudn7nGHb1-j1IL3ROwDfh6QaUBPNIDsbI1-MaMOiga2D7wRd30qPgu6eC0cpph5x4Yayr7NxY7RLkdmpLZs I've had the SM79 on pre-order since it was first anounced & I'm pleased to say it was worth waiting for. Not the most complex kit to build (nothing wrong with that) clean mouldings and not much filler needed. Since lockdown started I've been trying to build at least one of every aircraft that took part in the battle of Britain. While there's no evidence the SM-79 took part the Italians DID use 70 Fiat BR.20 bombers (like ugly DO-17s) and contributed several fighters including the CR-42 biplane (I have the matchbox) and Macci 200 (made by R..... ). They also used the Fiat G.50 and I managed to find an old airfix on eBay. When that arrived I saw two horrible features: "made in France" and "made of bably blue plastic". I've had bad experiences of these palitoy vintage horrors but this one actually went together really well. Pics to follow as soon as they're moderated.

You'd expect to see that on a heavy bomber. They spent a lot of time cruising with the mixture leaned right off for economy. The exhaust becomes very hot and burns white. Rich mixtures leave a sooty trail. I'll see if I can find the photos. High quality 1940s colour. The staining is extreme.... I wouldn't have gone that far with a model if I hadn't seen the pics. Also very obvious that 6 exhausts stain the upper wing bit the outer exhausts on engines 1 and 4 go under the wing.

Thanks. I've seen some exhaust staining on a Lancaster which was damned near white. That would have looked really weird on a black plane so I went for a greasy brown colour (thinking oil rather than soot) you can see it along the sides but thats more due to it being a little more glossy than the hard matt black.

Its difficult stuff to get a good result from. The only time I ever succeeded was day-glow red-orange vallejo model colour (not air) thinned with alcohol airbrushed over a base of Tamiya XF-2 flat white. The model colour spits a bit when you airbrush it so I did this first then masked off the parts I wanted to remain day-glow and sprayed the rest of the model (Airfix chipmunk BTW... dayglow orange and bare silver finish)

Don't joke about humidity. Any decent compressor should have a water trap. Without one you can get drops of water entering the airbrush & that can really mess up your finish especially with an organic solvent based paint. I primarily model with Vallejo and its always worked for me... however I never got to grips with Gunze paints and plenty of people swear by those too. My gut instinct is that its not the paint that the problem but "something else". I used to do (commercially) large scale modelling especially figures. These guys were brush painted with Model colour: http://www.precision-panzer.moonfruit.com/communities/9/004/006/621/409/images/4528322566.jpg The Heinkel I finished a few weeks ago airbrushed with model air.

With the club closed for a while I've built up a huge stock of flying hours. I've just this morning sent 30 off so hopefully a Me262 or yet another Beaufighter for just under a fiver. Not a bad deal..... none of the other makes do the tokens things. PS I have noticed the vintage classics are a bit more generous with the tokens too. 2 for the SM-79 and Black widow aren't bad. Effectively thats 1/4 of a Spitfire.