Jonathan Mock

Hamilton prop logos. Doh! Yup, I'll take the hit for that.

I also spoke to him, he said that was Gould's Fiery Fred and that some people should not claim to love cheese if a strong cheddar has them crying into their plastic viking helmet.

1 - Good quality scanners do not cost a fortune. 2 - Show us your decal sheet, a phone photo will suffice. 3 - The insignia are supposed to have those washed out portions. 4 - They are printed by Cartograf, but someone could always ask the artist for 100% confirmation.

Sounds like you’ve bought the old kit, A04005.

I am led to believe that a leading visual effects company has been out and about scanning aircraft for an upcoming movie about the Korea War, including Sea Furys and MiG 15s.

That would be almost everything forward of the main spar in this kit then. My impressions of seeing the test shots at Telford were that I'd hoped they correct some rather glaring errors with the engines, nose and canopy but the production kit hasn't. It reminds me of the FROG kit - not so much sharing the same errors, but just being almost as caricatured in the same areas. It's beautifully moulded, and I'm sure many will buy it, built it and enjoy it, but I get the feeling the HK kit was based on a duff set of drawings.

The March issue of SAMI believes wrong. They are not the same kit.

Can't wait for 2018? Then roll on 2016 because... Toho are making a new Godzilla film to bridge the gap! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11279206/Godzilla-returns-to-Japan-in-2016.html

Other manufacturers models make no money for Airfix. The Sea King is one of their best selling kits of all time, in the top five I do believe. The Dragon kit? It's all over the place, the nose is awful and, depending on territory, it's also vastly overpriced. They did look into it but the differences between the Navy and RAF Merlins are substantial, it's not just a case of adding a few bits, it would require whole tooling for substantial parts of the kit. Sea King though is different, most of the variations are bolt-ons which can be factored around a core kit. I would wager, IMO, with i

It is 100% all new, totally new, new tooling based on all-new research and LIDAR scanning of a real HC4. It is not a repop or retool of the old kit, but new, all new, nuevo, neu, nouveau, nuovo, nieuw, nové, новый, νέο, 新しい、新. Did I mention it's new?

No, Heller did not own the Airfix moulds (Humbrol owned Heller) and this Revell/Heller deal is apparently nothing to do with Hornby, and Revell have not "bought" the tooling either, mostly these things are poly bag deals. Everyone write that down, there will be a test later before another uniformed rumour gets passed around as fact.

I'm going against my normal routine by applying decals first, then weathering the model. But before that, a couple of coats of gloss. I decided to give Tamiya's X-22 clear gloss a go - lovely stuff, you thinned about 50/50 and sprays at low pressure, you can apply really wet coats and it'll flash off in seconds. I could have micro meshed this down a bit more, but I wasn't looking for a mirror finish, it's silky enough for decals and the matt finish will even it all out.

The two blues came courtesy of the Mr Color US Naval Aircraft Paint Set. The intermediate blue went down no problem, the dark blue seems to have dried loking a bit rough but is smooth to the touch. I sprayed at low pressure and at around 50/50 thinner, weird. It also didn't quite dry gloss either! No problem, I can level it down with some Skotchbrite. I didn't preshade on this model but opted to leave the upper colours a but patchy so I can define panels with oils later. Time to leave this to cure off for a day or so.

Yes, you posted a photograph - what are you trying to show? I think Andrew demonstrated that there is a variance in the wing root fairing, so are you sure those are mistake in the two recent kits, or perhaps a Spitfire quirk that you were previously unaware of?

Demonstrate they are "mistakes". And by that I mean with data, rather than comparing kits. How do you know the other kits are actually correct?

If the supposition is that they somehow shared design data, no. Zero. Nil. Zilch. You're making the error of taking other, older kits and assuming that because they more of less agree with each other, they must be right, whereas two new kits that most probably benefited from hands on measurements, don't. And let's not get started on scale plans. Plus you've thus far failed to refer to actual aircraft which Andrew has so eloquently illustrated above, which demonstrates some variance. The simple fix would be to run a tape measure from the leading edge to the "kink" on the real thing and use th

Time to start getting the final subassemblies ready for paint. The engine was a tight fit into the cowl, I had to sand the back down in order to stop the cowling sticking out, but also trimming the sides so it would fit in without cracking the cowl open. Time to try and be clever - or fall on my face. I gave the wing roots a coat of ZCP, hairspray, and then silver (should have been the other way around). Hairspray will go on prior to the final top coats with the intention of trying to chip it back to the underlaying colours - in theory! And finally some colour! Reading the IPMS Stockholm

OK, we're finally getting towards the paint stage but, frankly, I just to finish this thing off now. A few coats of primer, one of the leading edge radiators is still being troublesome to clean up. I'm going to let this primer harden off overnight, then blast the gear bays with ZCP.

"I'll take that as an admission that he could have said it...' - wow, that certainly explains your, erm, interesting method of interpreting photographs and seeing shapes that neither Roy or Edgar can see. Tell you what Gaston/Robertson/Sherwood/insert name here, you go look it up. It'll settle the argument once and for all won't it? Waste your time? Lorks a lordy, what do you think you've been doing with other people's all this while?

I really would not play the selective memory game, the odds would not be in your favour especially where Edgar Brooks and Roy Sutherland are concerned, two guys who have forgotten more about Spits than most people will ever learn. You apparently redeepened the Spitfire XII nose much back to how deep it was in the first place and then compare that to XIX kit as being an example of your fix. And you posted a link to something you posted under yet another non-de-plume (Gaston Marty/Sherwood/Robinson - tick where applicable) as proof someone else said something but you're not sure where and when

But they didn't go quite so mad trying to make the base kit possibly serve so many other versions. OK, hopefully on the final lap with this one, at least as far as construction goes. I'm still trying to clean up the wing tips and the break means you may end up with an area no rib or fabric detail. I really don't know what the fix here is right now, I did think about trying to carve a recess to match the other areas, in the end I may just end up simulating it with paint.

And now the (almost) scientific bit - no red pen here. According to the Vought GA drawings I have here the F4U-1 was 34.4.125 feet in length and this was measured from the rear to the tip of the prop. I double checked these dimensions in some trusted sources, so - me making a idiot of myself aside - I'll take them as read. So I drew a 12 inch square in a leading illustration package and scaled it down to 1/72 (1.38%) then step and repeated it 33 times then added a scaled down 4 inch square - that gave me a near as scale 34.4.125 feet. I printed this out and double checked the print out (allow

Sorry for the interlude, some progress. Tonight I added the gun ports - these are supposed to drop into a recess on the leading edge but the fit is indifferent so I added them with black superglue (gel type mixed with pigment) which enabled me to sand them into the leading edge and check for gaps. Same with the rear of the wing fit to the underside, this bridged with black superglue and wet sanded. One plus of the kit plastic is that it is easy to sand. I still have no idea what to do about those holes for the pylons - it's a poor tooling decision that should have been solved by flashed over h

Any chance of posting a 90 degree side on photo of your correction? I did, he says he doesn't remember saying that. Which issue was that exactly?

Well I appreciate the sentiment and I'm not trying to put people off the model, in fact I'd be interested to hear other experiences. Tonight, numbnuts here took some pics then managed to lose them so a few key ones are missing. Before adding the wing to the fuselage I remembered to paint the centre section of the wing green and also the underside of the instrument coaming black. The instrument panel was slid into place, vindicating the decision to put the upper deck in first. I also added the other wing tip - this one slipped in no problem with no adjustment needed. With that all done, final