Matchbox 1/72 Lightning F.6

After a lot of tweaking and rescribing I've finally got the fuselage together and the wings on. The rear fuselage needed some filling and sanding due to the poor fit of the tail ring but looks much better now, the ejection seat was painted then glued into place along with the canopy and hopefully I'll get the rest of the parts on and get it to the painting stage;

It has been a fun-ish project but I can't wait to get back to a newer kit.

Heller 1/72 Mirage IVP

That's another off the bench finally and what I would call a four-footer as it will look good from that distance. Lots of niggling little issues with getting this one finished as just as I had predicted the decals 'silvered' quite badly and required over painting with the base colour to hide some of it.
At one point I managed to drop it on the floor which broke two of the undercarriage legs, luckily I was able to glue them back together. I'm not that happy with the model really as it has put up a fight all the way through however it's done and will disappear into the loft with the others;

Matchbox 1/72 Lightning F6

The initial idea was to put this together as a trip down memory lane but I started adding details that Matchbox missed because I just couldn't help myself. Starting with the fuselage there are quite a few vent holes and air intakes missing so these were added using various thicknesses of styrene sheet and the holes drilled and blanked off. Other vents were done using styrene rod that was drilled out and glued in at an angle, the cannon ports in the ventral tank were done the same way with drilled rod to represent the gun barrels.

I didn't intend to do anything with the main gear wheel wells but again the AMS (Advanced Modellers Syndrome) kicked in so the moulded lip around the inside of the lower wing was removed, the edges thinned out and a basic well constructed from strips of styrene;

Once dry these were sanded down until the wing halves fitted together. Before gluing the wings strips of styrene strip were glued in place underneath to shim out the lower wing.
This wheel wells now look much better;

I was going to just fit an Aeroclub Martin Baker Mk.4 ejection seat as I thought I had one in stock, unfortunately I hadn't (loads of Mk 10's though). I ended up ordering a cockpit by Pavla that was designed for the Trumpeter Lightning and it *does* fit (sort of) after some sanding but for my purposes it will do as you really can't see much;

The cockpit was painted and glued into place then the fuselage was stuck together along with the air intake lip and jet pipes at the rear with some filler being required on the back end. After what seemed to be ages with bits all over the bench I now have something resembling a Lightning;

I have even found a second-hand decal sheet (Modeldecal 65) online so I can finish this in the scheme I did originally.
I know there are much better 1/72 Lightning kits out there but it has been good to exercise some scratch building techniques that I haven't done for years such as building wheel wells and making vents and air intakes, hopefully I'll make a decent job of it.