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.

Decalling the Heller 1/72 Mirage IV and Miniart 1/35 T-55A

As well as starting on the Matchbox Lightning, yesterday afternoon was also spent applying the decals to the Heller Mirage and Miniart T-55. Regarding the Mirage it will be interesting to see what happens when the final coat of matt varnish is applied as the decals came off the backing paper straight away, indicating that the adhesive had failed so it would not surprise me if I get some 'silvering' of the decals. I may go over the decals again with Johnsons Kleer.
Regarding the T-55 I used the kit decals and the Soviet Navy flags had some difficulty conforming to the turret curves, so much so I had to remove them. Luckily I had a second set and after smoothing them out while still wet and with the application of Micro Sol decal solution they look better. I also made a photocopy of the decal sheet in case I needed to make masks to paint them on instead;

Matchbox 1/72 English Electric Lightning F6

I've made a start on this one and the first job was to scribe around the panel lines I wanted to keep before sanding off the raised ones;

Seeing as it's a vintage kit I'll use some vintage reference too;

I thought I had an old Aeroclub Martin Baker Mk.4 ejection seat in the stash somewhere but unfortunately not so I've sent for a resin cockpit that may or may not fit (not that you can see very much of the cockpit anyway).
This should be quite enjoyable!

Heller 1/72 Mirage IV

Not long after I sprayed the camo scheme I realised that the colours would more than likely show through the roundels so using a vernier gauge I measured the diameter of the decals then divided by 2 (using a calculator because I was always shit at maths) to find the radius.
The vernier was set to the radius measurement then I set the compass cutter to the vernier;

Using a self adhesive masking film that I found on Amazon the masks were cut with the compass cutter, cut into squares to allow for any overspray then applied to the model.
Mr Hobby Aqueous white was sprayed over the masks rather than Tamiya as that stuff is a bitch to spray nicely for some reason, the masks were then removed and the model given another coat of Alclad Aqua Gloss;

While I was in the mood for spraying I masked off the air intakes and painted the red rims around them. Also there are dayglo panels on the main undercarriage doors and a dayglo stripe on each fuel tank and to do this I masked off the areas first, sprayed them with Tamiya XF-3 Yellow and when dry oversprayed these areas with Vallejo Model Air Flourescent Orange. This was the first time ever spraying anything a dayglo colour so I'm quite pleased with the results;

The next step is to get the decals on. 

Heller 1/72 Mirage IV

I sprayed the green camouflage and when dry masked off some areas and sprayed them with the green but with some light grey added, also the black anti-glare panel on the nose was masked off and painted.
All the masking was removed and the model sprayed overall with Alclad Aqua Gloss varnish ready for the washes the model will receive and decals. Thinking about it now I may have to make masks for the roundels and spray the areas white where the decals are placed as the dark colours may show through.