The Flying Triangle

There are some 'musts' when building scale model aircraft. Building a Spitfire is pretty much mandatory. Hawker Hurricanes, Mustangs, Bf 109s, Lancasters - all this iconic stuff really does belong in this list of planes you should build at least once. If you build models for a living you may well end up building them quite a lot.

One candidate stands out in my personal hit list. The Avro Vulcan.

There is only one mainstream kit where the Vulcan is concerned and that is the old 1980s vintage Airfix offering. 'Vintage' is another way of saying 'old and probably past it's best'. This has been a bit of a pig to build, fill, sand, fill a bit more, sand, fill even more....and so on.

However, once you get past the assembly stage you are left with this - a substantial lump of plastic.

It only gets better from this point onward. Adding a few coats of paint really does bring it to life - first the uniform Dark Sea Grey and then the Dark Green over the top. A few clear coats and some decals later..... one Vulcan B2.


Note that the actual camouflage is 'hard-edged' and not soft-edged as shown here. This is a result of me free-hand painting the Green camouflage patterns without the use of masks - by tidying up the edges with a narrow spray pattern the aim is to give a hard/soft-edge (if that makes any sense).

So there we go - one of the Aviation 'Must-Builds' successfully built. If Airfix were to release a new-tool Vulcan (similar to their Victor and Valiant) I would go out and snap one up like a shot. Until then, this old-school tool still scrubs up well!

Works in Progress - Lots of Harriers!

Given my unintentional leaning towards buying model kits of Harriers at seemingly every opportunity - the stash has had an overabundance of jump jets for as long as I've been modelmaking. I have built more Harriers than any other kind of aircraft - the build count sitting just shy of 50 models.

Despite building and selling Harriers at a semi-regular rate - the shelf seems to always have a ready supply of them. It has gotten to the point that the 'Harrier Stash' is almost as numerous as all my other kits put together.

Step One to cure this malady is to not buy any more Harriers. Will do.

Step Two. It would also be wise to build up a few of the ones I currently have in stock and thus trim down the Harrier population before the stash shelf starts to buckle under the weight.

The Airfix Sea Harrier FRS.1 and FA2 are both close relatives in kit-form that can be built in tandem. The plan here was to do the first and last Sea Harriers - hence the Mark 1 being in operational evaluation colours and the Mark 2 being in it's final livery before retirement.

SEA HARRIER FRS1

SEA HARRIER FA2

Next up we have a pair of GR7/9 kits (also Airfix). Again, they're the same kit with a few subtle modifications depending on the version you want. I wanted to depict one (GR7) as it was in-service and the other (GR9) in it's special farewell colour scheme just before the Harrier Fleet was retired.

HARRIER II GR7A

HARRIER II GR9

If in around a month's time you discover the online marketplace is flooded with Jump Jet models looking for new homes - now you'll know why.

On the other hand, if you happen to be after a 1/72 Harrier of some description you'll be well catered for!