Wow, Tom. Nice Hornet, a wonderful addition to your modeling portfolio.

Thanks Ben!

No trying to scratch the drop-tanks and fix some small bugs.
I must say, for such a simple model it was surprisingly much work involved. But maybe my references were too good

Greetings from Shanghai

Hello Tom, I knew it would be a beautie! Congratulations!

Hi Peter,

Wait, if I manage to make the droptanks
If I only could do vacforming

Greetings from Shanghai

Well, spent some time on the Chipmunk, but most of it was filling and sanding.

I have some Vampire style tanks from the old Hobbycrap kit you can have if you like. I think they could easily be adapted.

Hi Tom
Fantastic build! Definitely the right choice leaving off the ugly radar nose etc. - the Hornet was such a beautiful aircraft in its unsullied form!

Pressure at work and home has meant I still haven't even started my build - I'd better get a move one!... I think, realistically, I'll probably stick to just the Trumpie Vampire now I realise I'd need to do a bit of fixing to the Alley Cat one too. That can be a project for another day, when I hopefully have more time...

All the best

Rowan

Thanks Rowan, my work will probably interfere a bit later, so I started early
Thanks Jessica, for the offer, Can you throw so far from BC to Shanghai?

I think will try to make the tanks myself. All I found were too thick or too short, seems they were really special for the aircraft.
Have already 1 or 2 ideas. Will of course report.

Btw, does anybody need the parts for the NF21?

Best regards from Shanghai

Started to make the droptanks myself.



Fortunately found then the aluminum tanks of a Tamiya P-47M which just needed to be shortened a bit and saved me a lot of putty and sanding.

I Like it the way it is now. Added just very little exhaust stain. I think the planes were very well cared for.







Hope you like it

Greetings from Shanghai

Hot dayum! Great looking Hornet Tom!

Thanks Ben,

She is a beauty. Pity that none is existing anymore.

Greetings from Shanghai

Hi Everyone.
I thought that seeing everyone else is building with littlens at the moment I would do something a bit larger..

This is Airfix's 1/72 BAe Nimrod, which would have been a de Havilland aircraft if the Government hadn't stuck their big, meddling noses in it and decided to change the name to BAe..
Yet another in a long list of idiot decisions by various British governments for their aircraft industry.
Decal sheet is huge!!

And a smaller sheet with white roundels to put under the coloured roundels, something I could have done with with my Amiot if I had realised the problem..

I am not a fan of stencils but I will get a workout here!

There are six, yep, count em, 6, different marking options supplied..


One white, three hemp over grey, one plain grey and one two tone grey.
So this will be something a bit different you don't see built very often, well I haven't anyway..
I have the paint already and I will be doing one of the hemp over grey aircraft with four sidewinder missiles under the wings to deter Argentinian fighters. Was this the biggest aircraft to carry these missiles? I wonder...
Anyway, that's all for the moment,
Lots of nice builds here by the way, and I am very interested to see how the Tasman Dragon Rapide comes out..
Lovely Hornet as well Tom..
I wonder if Rowan will finish his on time..
Cheers
Warren

Got the Nimrod started today.
The cockpit went together easily. Nice and simple as nothing will be visible through the tiny cokpit windows when it is finished.


And the huge bomb bay.

That's it for now.
Cheers
Warren

Hi Warren,

Nice start. Are you doing a Falkland version?
How is the fit?

Greetings from Shanghai

Hi Tom.

Yep, the one with the four Sidewinders under the wings.

Fit was great until I went to join the fuselage halves. Due to the way the kit is designed there is very little to no support in the middle of the fuselage. Makes it difficult to keep them together while they dry. The other thing is there is now a gap on the top near the forward bulkhead as for some reason the bulkhead must have moved or something. Easy enough to fix with some filler.

Cheers
Warren

@Warren - I will be following your build with interest, as I have that kit in my stash.

Now that I have cleared the work bench a bit, I have finally started work on my Sea Vixen. There is a slight change to my original plan, as I've decided to build the Xtrakit version as a FAW 1 now (I found out that the pinion tanks have a bad fit). Also, I am building an FAW 2 for the Frog Campaign (next month), so I'll have one of each on my shelf. In addition to the 3 sets of Airwaves PE, I have also recently acquired all 3 sets of resin goodies from FAA models. I will be distributing PE and resin bits across both kits, so they will both get badly needed upgrades. Pictures over the weekend.

Glad you are along for the ride Lee.

Well the Nimrod is coming progressing without too many issues.
Fuselage is buttoned up. Bit of filler needed but nothing excessive.
Flaps are made.
Intakes built with compressor faces stuffed in the back. Seams were a pain but oh well..
Undercarriage is all-but finished. Just need to paint the tyres and structure.
Today I finally started to mate the lower wing to the main fuselage. One side has a sizeable gap that is going to need packing to line up the bottom of the fuselage with the top. Not to good really for such a new mould. I think Airfix could easily have simplified the engineering but seemed hellbent on upping the parts count for such a big plane.
Here it is on its side while the first part of the mating is drying..

The plane underneath is my 1/72 Heller B-707 RAAF version I am resurrecting after it got all its engines and main undercarriage broken off. Not by me I might add..

Regards
Warren

Some progress on the Sea Vixen FAW 1. Started putting the cockit together, here you can see job 1, which was to lower the observers floor by a couple of milimetres, otherwise the bang seat sticks out over the canopy!

As this kit is a limited run kit, known to have "issues", I am closely following two build logs. One is on the excellent "Thunder and Lightnings" website (Damien Burke), and the other one is the Airfix Build and Convert "Classic British Jets" publication, written by the chap who produced the resin sets now produced by FAA Models, which I am using (Steve Muntus). Hopefully, my build should be relatively painless, as they have done the hard bit. In this next pic, you can see the characteristic gap in the cockpit wall, between the pilot and observer, which I opened up. To the right, you can see the undersized bang seat supplied with the kit, next to the correct sized replacement from Pavla.

The Nimrod build continues..


As you can see the wings and empennage are now firmly attached and I just have to solve the problem of the seams left behind, which may be considered to be rather large...
Cheers
Warren

Nice work everyone! I have started my entry to. I'm building the Trumpeter vampire. I know that it is not considered to be correct but I had it in my stash and I think that it looks pretty good to when not together with the Alley cat one. I also bought the Eduard etch to dress up the interior and exterior, I especially like the wheel wells. Here are some pics with my progress:

The dark "stains" are really aluminium don't know why they turn out so dark on the camera.


The forward cockpit window dosen't fit well at all.




Cheers

Jakob

Looking good Jakob!

Made some more progress today.
The Nimrod now has its tail feathers.

There were some nasty crevices left after I cemented the upper wing in place.

I used thick CA glue to fill them then filled and polished them for quite a while and they are now nice and smoooooth..

And I got the wheels painted..

That's it for now. Surprisingly there is not much left to attach but I realised today I forgot the nose weight so will have to cobble up something and glue it in the nosewheel well. Just call me Mr Forgetful...
Regards
Warren

A wise man once told me to drill a small hole in the nose gear well and stuff solder thru the hole till there was enough weight to drop the nose down. I have a goodly supply of .015 and .032 solder laying about and tried it on my Banshee when I hadn't gotten enough weight into it the first time... Worked nicely. Do take care as I managed to knock off the NLG in the process.

If you're not going to leave the bomb bay doors open you could stuff in a lot of weight there.

Hi everyone.

Well the Nimrod might not look it but the construction phase is mostly over. All that is left is the undercarriage, which I will attach after painting, and lots of external aerials to add and a few clear bits and pieces.. oh and maybe those four Sidewinders.

That's it for now

Cheers
Warren

Hmmm, this kit is certainly a challenge - check these out for moulding tabs:


Today's job is to open up the airbrake bay - the patient is prepped for surgery!: