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We take a look at a 3D Colour Printed cockpit set for the Airfix 1:24 Spitfire Mk.IXc from @Quinta Studio - I have a few of these sets now and I'm hugely impressed by the results achieved. Blue Skies, Iain

We have what is now the BBFM's MK356 Spitfire LF Mk.IXe as she hopefully would have looked the day before D-Day. LF meant she had the Merlin 66 fitted and was used as a ground attack plane. She was attached to the RCAF Squadron 443 Build wise, it's a superb plane. The fit is stupendous, if a little TOO tight in places and for £95 the level of detail is superb. I've modified her to an E wing although I'm sure Airfix will bring out an E wing variant in time for Christmas maybe. Lots of extra pipes etc on the engine which is a bit bare TBH and the E wing conversion kit Aerocraft. Sven at 1ManArmy was superb in helping me get a mask for her serial number and his masks for the kit in general are without equal in my opinion. Peter at Airscale as ever provided the cockpit detail. Link to the build is here. Thanks for looking and blue skies to all.

New Year, new model. The beloved bought me the Airfix 1:24 Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat for Christmas and I started it on Boxing Day. Engine just completed and I've saved all the photos up so here they are all in one build post. The P&W 2800 double wasp 10W is a little model all in itself and I think I spent more time researching this than most other models in their entirety. So to business. I'm sure most know that the crankcase of the engine is far to large in diameter to allow the various push rod rings and cylinder blocks to pass over it so lots of flexi file work needed as almost 1mm needs to come off across the diameter. I baulked at paying £9 for a resin one cast from a reduced master, after all this is what modelling's all about. While Airfix seem to have reduced the ejector pin marks, they've made up for it in seam lines so quite a bit of scraping and sanding needed. Once that's done, the cylinders need painting. The bottom halves I did in steel and the top halves in aluminium. I've used Vallejo Metal Colors as I think they're excellent. Quick drying, no mess and no smell and lovely coverage. The push rods were painted gloss black with aluminium ends. The crankcase colour was a first attempt at a mix but it had far too much blue in it. I read it should be Grumman grey but since the engine is made by Pratt & Whitney, not Grumman, I couldn't see that being the case and went for the engine grey specified. I finally settled on a mix of 4:3:1 of Mr Color Aqueous RLM 75 Dark Grey: Tamiya Flat White: Tamiya Blue. It seemed to be not too far away from some of the reference material. You can also see on this photo that I've removed the basic plastic links provided on the parts and replaced them, as they were originally, with rubber hose. The jubilee clips are thin strips of tinfoil. The oil flange is flat black suitably chipped and oil stained. Once everything fits onto the crankcase properly, it's time for the ignition wiring. I used 0.6mm braided cord from Hiroboy along with 1:24 sparkplugs in metal. I was a bit mean to spend a small fortune on scale nuts for the ends of the sparkplugs so I used 1mm evergreen hexagonal rod, drilled and painted silver then sliced into thin slivers and slipped over the end of the sparkplug before the ignition wire was attached. The intake pipes are gunmetal then brushed with copper and duraluminium till I was happy with the effect. The exhaust pipes go on very easily as long as you mark them up when they come off the sprues, otherwise it's a happy half hour mixing and matching. (me? never ) Paintwise, I followed a plan of painting them Tamiya red/brown then airbrushing with a very dilute solution of black/red brown as well as metallics and a light grey around the pipe ends. The heavy wear and chipping on the supercharger intakes is seen on many reference photos and was achieved by spraying first with a coat of duraluminium followed by chipping solution then a top coat of zinc chromate green. It's then a simple task to remove the green layer to the desired effect. Oil effects (which don't show too well on the photos) are sprayed on as a mix of black/redbrown mixed with Alclad Aqua Gloss varnish and diluted with IPA. The oil tank cap is yellow and my eyes were given a great workout by deciding to put the "US 19 Gal" writing on there in individual wet decals Some pics of the engine ready to mount are below, I'll be needing to add a fair bit of non supplied pipework when the time comes but next it's onward and upward to the cockpit. Thanks for looking.

I have been meaning to build this kit for a while and this group build is a great opportunity. Of WWII aircraft, the hurricane is my favourite. I have a few other projects I need to clean up before I can move onto to this, but I figured I would state my intent. Thanks for reading. Gord

Hi all. Here's my latest project completed. It's a commission build for a black, early Mosquito NFII night fighter from Airfix's excellent 1:24 kit. The all black finish and the night fighter variant, plus the fact its new owner wanted it in "flying" mode means there's not masses to see but it provided a good challenge in the painting, trying to make it look not black while trying to make it look....well, black! The cockpit gave plenty of scope for detailing and fine paintwork but was actually very well detailed OOB. Painting used the "black basing" principle of Doog,s Models, adapted for an all black plane. Link to the build is here: . As ever all comments gratefully received and thanks for taking the time to look.

Well, it's been a while. I'd not realised that my last post was a ready for inspection of my 1:24 Airfix Hurricane Mk1 back in January of 2018: I already had this build of the Airfix 1:24 Spitfire Mk1a on the go back then and with the sad passing of Squadron Leader Geoffrey Wellum DFC in July of 2018 I decided to build it as K9998, the plane he flew with 92 squadron in the summer and autumn of 1940. Sadly, due to hard drive problems and being too idle to upload the images to the cloud, I lost the build pictures I'd taken, hence it's miraculous appearance in "Ready for Inspection" fully built and ready to go. As far as the build goes, a brief resume: I lined the wheel wells, added an Airscale Instrument panel and their excellent cockpit placards to liven things up and a Grey Matter control stick. A metal coat hanger and some scratch built brackets gave me the dihedral and removed the wing droop. Dry stencils from Hobbydecal are brilliant for the instructional markings around the plane, even if their supplied diagram is a bit out in places. The drop down door had the crowbar that didn't appear on the Mark 1 sanded away and a locking mechanism added with some wire and made up spring arrangement. The hinge assembly at the other end is wire again with silver foil wound around to represent the hinges. So that pretty much took us to the paint stage. Black primer undercoat followed by Vallejo aluminium paint and a layer of Vallejo chipping medium meant I could spray the camouflage and chip away to my hearts content. Afterwards a gloss layer fixed all in place and allowed me to go to town on the markings. I sprayed these on using making tape and Tamiya paints for two reasons. One, it allows for more realistic weathering and two, I couldn't buy the non standard markings off the shelf. The fuselage roundels for this Supermarine built "K" plane had the 7" centre red spot instead of the standard 5" so it was do it yourself or nothing! Underside panel centre lightening and upper side panel line darkening gave me the effect I wanted and oil fading effects and a nice panel wash completed the job. I always like to try to envisage a moment when I'm planning how I want the weathering to look a la Jon Bius so here was my thought for the day: So I imagined: "A wet, miserable autumn morning in October 1940. K9998 has just returned from a morning patrol and is thickly caked with the clay of the wet soil. Ground crew have already swarmed over the wings to talk to the pilot and are about to get the aircraft ready for its next patrol with a refuel and re arm." Anyway, here it is. I hope you like it:

OK, my first new LSP model here for quite a while now, the Trumpeter 1:24 Bf 109G-6 (late version), graciously donated to me by our own Mark (dodgem37), thanks again, Mark, you're truly a good man. The ability to start from the beginning, and knowing that I already have some AM for the kit, has prompted me to throw caution to the wind and begin this, as one of my projected entries for the 2019 national convention, along with a few other choice selections.

Hey everyone! I thought you'd like to see what I'm working on at the moment, a 1:24 Harrier T.4. This is a conversion that I've wanted to complete for over 30 years and so now I've decided to have a go. In essence it's an almost complete reworking of the 40 year old Airfix Harrier GR.1 into the two seat T.4 and so I have to build a new nose, scratchbuild the cockpits and then build an entirely new tail section - as well as a complete redetail of the remaining airframe and features. I've given myself around 5 months to complete this model, so here's hoping I can! Though I'd love to detail it all on here, there's just too much information and too many pictures, so if you'd like to keep up with what's likely to be a very involved conversion, please follow the link and you'll find plenty more information! I'll also keep dropping some teasers onto here as well.. https://thekitbox.wordpress.com/2016/06/28/harrier-t-4-conversion-part-2/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfQeFAMdUVY