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OK, the Hellcat is off to its new home and the bench is cleared for a commission build of a 1/32 HK Avro Lancaster Type 464 in Operation Chastise mode. Have to be honest, the box picture is more exciting than the opening of the box. The well documented poor HK packing was evident but everything was thankfully in one piece. Two nice instruction books, one for the standard MkI/III build and another with the special bits for the Dambuster build. Also a nice little extra a little book called "Rad Shutters Auto" by Stuart Reid, a former BBMF pilot. Nice little touch. The failings of this kit are well documented but, I love a challenge and it was the only option really. My client wanted a Dambuster aircraft and, of course, the Border model is a ferrari against a ford in their base state but there are no Border Lancs about at the moment and God knows when or if a 617 squadron one will come along. With lots of work, reshaping, scratch building, tons of research, ( I'm about 30 hours of research in already and still only sorting out cockpit layout, there's a brilliant kit to be built. The floor for the pilot's seat has to go, it's way too high and misshapen. Pilots seat is very poor but a resin one from Resin 2 Detail is in the post and the IP is frankly, disgusting for a £300+ kit. Thank the Lord for Peter and Airscale. Their IP arrived today and, as ever, it's superb. Also got one of his new branch out of seatbelts for the pilot's seat, they look more RB than HGW. I'll get that made up tomorrow. The eyes will suffer for that one! Spot the deliberate mistake BTW? I've gone and ordered the Sutton harness in 1/24 instead of 1/32 Still, it'll be fine for the new spitfire in the autumn So today, the horrid box construction that the pilots seat sits on has gone, I'll reuse some of it for height but it needs a total reshaping before that. The engineers panel has been filed smooth ready for the Airscale PE plate. I've removed the two little star shaped knobs first though for further use. Go in through the back with a ball cutter and they just pop out. Thanks to Nigel at Nigel's modelling bench for that one. Used it on the Hellcat too. I've made up the pilot's seat too just to get a feel for the fit and hardness of the plastic although I won't be using it. That's about it for now, got a trip to Lincoln at the weekend and maybe a detour to look at a Lancaster.........

Hello everyone, i decided to come back to the forum and try to picture a new WIP for this ugly but good looking airplane. This is what i am after, i will finish it as in the picture, bare metal. This was the one and only prototype built before they came out with a kind of SEA scheme, that i dont like by the way, and i dont want to do a WHAT IF airplane. I am using Tamiya's P-51D and the only resin kit available in the market for a 1/32 scale from RESIN 2 DETAIL. I am going to talk about the conversion set, there is no need to talk about the model itself, because we already know the quality of tamiyas models. this is what you get inside the box, plenty of pieces in white resin the detail in the pieces is good, some pieces came twisted, but nothing that some hot water can take care of. The nose section is a huge chunck or resin, very heavy, i will need to drill the center of it to remove some resin to lightened the nose section, te detail in the nose is basic as just panel lines, i will need to improve some of the details by adding some fasteners and some PE clamps for the engine cowling doors. One important thing is that the resin kit comes without any instructions at all, so you have to figure it out where to cut the model pieces , this guys promised a PDF file with instructions, but so far nothing, so i will have to use common sence on this build. Here you see in black what needs to be removed from the original pieces in order to make room for the new ones So lets start, as always , we start with the cockpit, the rear fuselage fuel tank needs to go away and make room for the new radio compartment here it is