Stuart's Scale Models

 Over the weekend I managed to get my little Vampire finished... What a fun little kit this was to build - it went together really well and I am amazed at how well the decals performed.  I did forget to fit the booms to the lower wing halves before I assembled the wings, which lead to a few issues further down the line - even thought I managed to get them fitted, I had to do it without first attaching the main gear legs. To fit them, I then had to trim a bit out of the gear bay wall, which in which in turn led to one of the legs being slightly out of alignment on the finished model. That's my story anyway!  I also had a couple of decals move at some point (like the nose 32), probably during the final clear coating, which I hadn't noticed until it had dried - annoying but what can you do. There were also a few crinkles in the leading edges of the orange decals, which I had to touch in. The model was brush painted as ever with Revell's 'Aqua Color' metallic paints - p

So a quick kit review  - Airfix's recent tooling of a Hawker Hurricane Mk.I in tropical guise.  It has a nice looking decal sheet for two marking options.  An Aircraft from the Rhodesian Air Training Group 1941 And another from no 274 sqn RAF based in Egypt 1941, flown by Sgt F.H. Dean. It's an interesting option this, with the mad patterned leading edges. The decal sheet also gives you two different colour options for the roundel squadron flashes.  The kit contains 5 sprues of nicely detailed parts (well for me anyway) on grey plastic (a bit pebbly maybe?) and one sprue of clear parts.  It looks pretty good, but obviously it depends on how it goes together - I'm very much looking forward to building it.  Cheers! 

These are the other two kits I have in WIP - both started in 2021 and being worked on as I can fit them in. Neither are on the ' Shelf of Doom ' as I don't have one - If I loose interest in a kit I generally bin it as a S.O.D is a serious mojo killer, they're just slow burn builds.  They're both glossed awaiting decals, I just need to build up the load outs first - as there's nothing worse for the mojo (asides from a S.O.D.) than getting a jet all decalled up and finished, to only then have to start building missiles and tanks etc. So I generally do them last, ready to fit after the decals.  Airfix 1/72 F-15B This is the new re-released 'A' kit, built as a 'B' as it still includes the parts for the two seater from the original release, even though Airfix took the option out of the starter set??? I do have two more of these in the stash, thanks to a poor delivery of an Airfix mystery box I had for Christmas - which meant they sent me two with the

Another one of my current WIPs is this little 1/72 Vampire T.11 from Airfix - one of my 'Fathers day builds' (purchased from the D.H. Museum near the M25) . It's a smashing little kit this, I'm really enjoying it.  I've had no real issue with it, other than I forgot to add the boom between the wing halves before I glued them together. Thankfully I did glue the wings in stages, which meant that I could insert the booms into the rear by prising the trailing edges apart. However the flip side of that was I couldn't follow the instructions and add the legs to the booms before it all went together...  You can add them after assembly like I am, but you have to trim a little of the U/C bay out to be able to insert them - you live and learn. The mad RAF day-glo orange strips are all decals. I was amazed at how well they performed and the only issue I had was a little wrinkling on the leading edges - entirely of my own making, as I didn't force them down enough. They

Just playing with this Blogger thingy, trying to figure out how it works... As I intend to use this blog as a sort of modelling diary, I thought it would be prudent to list the builds I have completed as of the 28 th August 2022 - overall I'm pretty pleased with all of them.  Matchbox's 1/76 Challenger I Matchbox's 1/72 M1 Abrams (built as part of my Team Yankee theme). Airfix 1/72 Hurricane mk.I Airfix 1/72 Zero Matchbox 1/72 Hawker Tempest II Airfix 1/72 Boulton-Paul Defiant mk.I Matchbox 1/72 F-16A Games Workshop Warhammer 40K Rhino APC And a squad of classic Citadel monopose Space Marines to go with it... And that's it thus far - not a bad years output, and as of this post I also have four others painted and almost finished - but that's for another post.   Cheers, and if you're reading this thanks for popping in.