When time in limited

Hello chaps. Sorry for the longer than usual silence. I have been very busy at work, helping British Airways with their Olympics programme, so as you can imagine, things are quite interesting!

Anyway, what do you do when modelling time is limited? Apart from gloat over all the kits you're going to start when things go quiet, which they never will....

Airfix to the rescue!

here are some little projects I've finished just to keep things moving.

Firstly the Airfix (ex-Heller?) 1/72 Jeep. A delightful little kit that goes well with the Liberator. Brush painted and quickly assembled. From 5 feet away it looks ok.







Next, the superb Airfix Mark IX Spitfire. This was given to me by Alan from Harrow Model Club a week ago today and had been rescued from one of the Airfix make and takes. It had been assembled well and brush painted but there was some glue smeared on the canopy. Now a friend of mine has a 70th birthday and is a particular fan of Goodwood airfield in Sussex. So his birthday present was to be a model of one of Goodwood's regular visitors, Spitfire MH434.

Here is a history of the aircraft which has had an interesting career and seems to be the only Spitfire ever to have been continuously flown since it was built.

http://www.ofmc.co.uk/spitfire_hist.aspx

So, using the superb Southern Expo decals, this is what I managed in a few hours. Quickly brush-painted with Tamiya acrylics (which did not go down well over the original paint on the model unfortunately) and weathered with pastels, it was a nice relaxing little project and the masking tape (in case you hadn't spotted this) stayed firmly in the drawer!.









Finally, I picked up the old Airfix R.E. 8 at a local model shop. The tooling is even older than me (1958) and it has few parts but captures the large, ungainly appearance of the original. I went to see the R.E. 8 at the IWM Duxford and was inspired to start the kit.





The wings are a bit thick so it was hard to get a good demarcation line between the PC10 (Xtracolor) and the doped linen (Humbrol 74, all brush painted).




The new decals are superb however. They even give you markings for the hand holds. I will add better pilot figures and an Aeroclub Lewis gun and Scarff ring. Rigging will be fun and I will add it to our display for the RAF Museum.





happy modelling everyone and do keep up all the inspiring work on the forum!

tally ho

Jonathan