Welcome to the Matchbox Flying Nostalgia Campaign folks. It's now just after midnight on March 1st, Great Southern Land EDST, so you can all take to your styrene gems and create some magic !

The rules and regulations and all-important enlistment button can be found HERE , and the Campaign Gallery can be found HERE.

As I always like to do with my Campaigns, below is a Roll Call/Build Status list which I will keep updated during the course of the Campaign. Please let me know if I need to change any of the details.

CALLSIGN NAME KIT AND BUILD STATUS
agtquimi Alvaro PK-402 1/72 Wellington Major assembly complete, ready for paint
almonkey Phil 1/72 Junkers Ju-188 COMPLETED
almonkey Phil PK-30 1/72 Provost Mk I
amegan Andrew PK 605 1/72 HP Heyford COMPLETED
Aussiereg Damian PK-502 1/32 Bf 109 E Paint shop/decals
c4willy Chris 1/32 Sea Venom COMPLETED
Camogirl Sam 1/72 P-51 COMPLETED
DirkPitt289 Dirk PK-120 1/72 A-20G Havoc COMPLETED
EDC Grant
Jake451
Janglais Daniel 1/72 Brewster Buffalo Cracked open the box for a look
Jaypee John-Paul Dornier Do-X
Jessie_C Jessica PK-1 1/72 Fury COMPLETED
Jessie_C Jessica 1/72 Gladiator Primed, Paint shop, impatient pilot standing by tapping his feet
Leslie Leslie 1/72 Stranraer
McIvan Ivan 1/72 Heinkel He-70
MD72 Mark 1/72 F-86A Sabre COMPLETED
mtnflyer Guy 1/72 UC-64A Norseman Interior finished, major assembly underway
Mykroft Adam PK-401 1/72 He 115 Major Assembly Complete - stalled
Naseby 1/72 Walrus Stalled, dihedral dramas
NickZour Nick PK-123 1/72 Vickers Wellesley Box open
oraora Ken 1/72 Aeritalia G-91Y COMPLETED
phantom_phanatic309 Stephen 1/72 Fairey Seafox COMPLETED
ppawlak1 Paul
Sabot
SGTJKJ Jesper PK-18 1/72 Hellcat COMPLETED
Snorri23 Trevor PK-409 Do-18G-1 COMPLETED
Squidgy Mark Stuka Bailed out, real life issues.
Tailor Guido 1/72 Walrus COMPLETED
Tomcat31 Allen PK-126 1/72 Lightning T55 COMPLETED
tupolev
Warreni Warren
Watimena Jeremy


Good luck to everybody with your builds, please post as often as you like with comments or progress reports, and thanks for joining me in this tribute to our modeling heritage.

Cheers, D

I'm really looking forward to this one, Damian. Unfortuneately, its still Feb 29 here, so I have to wait until the morrow. To bad, since I have time.

But I can still take photos of the unstarted kit.

yea, I still got 14 1/2 hrs to wait.

Don't be shy fellas, dive in. My Campaign rules are the same as my drinking rules, it's ALWAYS past midday somewhere !!

I don't really think that a few hours at each end of the Campaign is going to cause conniptions in the masses.

Cheers, D

midday? Wow, you Aussies really do live large. Here in the states, we have to wait till it's after 5 somewhere.

And 'Their Off'!!!!





Parts clean-up underway today.

These handsome gents will not be riding in the Norseman. I believe them to be WWII fighter jockeys, and not civilian bush pilots. Matchbox must have had a standard pilot. These happen to be quite nice, though:



Frankly, I really like this kit. Taped some together to get an idea of fit, and I find that the plastic is very easy to work with. There was almost zero flash; only some typical sink marks. Glad I chose this kit.



Another update coming soon.

I'm chiming in with the kit that started it all. This is PK-1, the very first Matchbox model. My boxing is a Chinese "knock-off" from the time the moulds were sent to China and a production line set up there. The hint for this is that the box is a lid and tray affair rather than the familiar Matchbox end-opening with the peek-a-boo window on the back.

I bought it used, and at some time the windscreen decided to be absent without authority. I will have to do a minor bit of scratchbuilding in order to protect my poor pilot from the fiercely cold March winds.




All the rest of the parts seem to be accounted for, so I'll be able to get started briskly.

Welcome to the party Jessica. Thanks for joining in, and best of luck with your build. It is great to see that we are able to include the first kit in the long line that was so important to us all. The Fury really was an elegant looking biplane.

Cheers, D

Ok folks, time to do some leading if I'm to gain any respect as Campaign Leader for these shenanigans !

Here's my kit, PK-502, the Bf 109 E3 (according to the box), along with decals courtesy of Bill Cross (thanks again Bill) because the kit ones are unfortunately badly crazed. The decals are from an E4, but I have read in a couple of forums that the kit actually represents and E4 because of the cockpit glass shape.


Here are a couple of sprue shots.



The panel lines are recessed and a touch on the heavy side , and I think it's a Chinese boxing because of the markings on the little tube of cement and small QC ticket in the box. And before anybody asks, NO, I am not using the kit supplied cement ! Alas, I have no stand in this kit.

Cleanup of parts shall commence this weekend.

Cheers, D

While waiting for the decals to set on my What if Campaign entry I cracked open the box and made a start last night.



Check out the price I just wish they were still this price



The sprues, sadly despite the box say there is a stand included the box appears to be bereft of it



The instructions and surprisingly two different set of decals ( I suspect the ones on the right are for the F2/6)



And finally the progress i made last night









Next stage is to carefully mate the fuselage halves. I want to avoid any major sanding as i don't want to loose the raised panel lines

The inside bits of the Fury are wearing paint now.

I couldn't resist rounding off the corners of the pilot's easy chair to make it look more like a proper RAF seat (and to stop them from sticking out of the cockpit in a most un-Furylike way.

Now that F/Lt Bloggins is seated comfortably, we shall begin.

I'm going to have to give him some seatbelts and a bit of white drybrushing to spiff up that dismal looking Sidcot suit of his before the Squadron Leader calls him on the carpet for being generally disreputable. The interwar RAF was a bit of a posh flying club, what?

Wow, a lot of interesting entries.

I am looking forward to see your Me 109E-4, Damian. Always wanted to build that one.

Nice progress, Guy. The Matchbox generally just falls together.

I am entering with the Hellcat. Later I am planning to do the Halifax as well. More to follow soon.

Construction prceeds apace. I'd forgotten how nice it is to build a Matchbox kit right out of the box. It all goes together so quickly!



It needed a trifle of Mr Surfacer on the undersides.


More to come...

And I'm off. Already having fun, the instructions say to paint the fuselage "iron color". It also calls out this color for the exhaust cone and the gun covers. On the other hand the only call out aluminum only for the gear wells. I gusee the QC didn't improve when they moved this kit to Poland.

It's nice to see a great selection of entries and subjects.
I'll go with the 1/72nd G-91Y. I think mine's the chinese issue, the instruction sheet is written in chinese, dunno if it's a copy or under lincensed..

Mine has gone thru a couple of molders. The box has a cheap "Made in Poland" sticker next to the CE mark, hiding some other country of origin marking. The original "Made in England" on the sprues had been reworked twice. One time they did it professionally and put the new country into the tool. The second one took a grinder and just obliterated the text on the second country.

Well we have the first setback for my Campaign build. Working on some sub-assemblies last night I found one half of one of the horizontal stabilizers is missing. The kit was second hand when I bought it and there were a couple of parts loose in the box, but I obviously didn't check it over thoroughly enough. When I look now at the sprue shots I can see it is missing. I might have to deviate from the OOB rule slightly and form something from some evergreen sheet because I don't think there's much chance of getting an original replacement. The only other alternative I have is a set of stabilizers from the Hasegawa G-10 that I built a couple of years ago, where I used resin AM items.

Thoughts anybody?

Well D, a wise man once told me that "Model building is problem solving". An heaven knows as post adolescent modeler builders we had to solve plenty of problems with these kits.

You accepted me using homemade cockpit enhancements. I'm half tempted to say make the missing part from sheet stock, but re-using the old spare parts doesn't seem out of order.

Bugger- I'd say that any means will be OK to save the kit from the shelf of doom, so whatever you see fit will do. This is not an enhancement in the classic sense of the meaning. If I were you, Id make two stabilizers from styrene to get a more consitant look on your E-4 and safe the G-10 from certain damnation.
Cheers,
Guido

PS.: I'd have to confess that I added a small piece of scrap sheet into my Walrus to simulate a cockpit back wall.

Hmmmmm.....well, my Coastal Command Halifax seems to have inexplicably....vanished!

Can't find it anywhere, and I have a nasty feeling the wife has scooped it up while clearing away some junk in the rumpus room before a get-together of friends. Was really looking to building it too...but for the now it remains steadfastly absent. It's a while since I've managed to lose an entire kit!

So, having clambered over the stash, my entry is going to be the Heinkel He-70, probably in Lufhansa colours.

Unfortunately the wifey is off in Brisbane this week seeing her sister...and she nicked the camera, so no pictures yet. But I'll get there....

I started on the Walrus yesterday. So far I only put some 3 hours into this. In the Matchbox tradition I will include the pilot figure, probably only the second or third one I ever did.

Wow, Naseby, you and Jessie Have done such good jobs on the pilots, I may have to reconsider leaving mine out.

I'm just not the kind-a-guy to keep things simple. Especially when I'm not working.



Putting paint on for more than one campaign.

The prop and engine are matchbox. With the Aussie's mean OOB rules, I have to paint the seatbelts on the interior. Pictures to follow.

Naseby, looking forward to follow your build. I tried to build this kit some months ago and had to give up. I ran into problems with the engine. Probably my own fault - the first time I ever had to give up a Matchbox kit.

I have made a little more progress on my Hellcat. Two great marking shcemes are included, so difficult to make a choice.

More to follow