Construction

Just a quick update to reflect the weekend’s work. By and large most of it was construction. I’ve had a B-1 mostly completed for a while now, just waiting for a recharge of my Xtracolour paint supplies from Hannants. Since I got that, I’ve put the Gunship Grey surface coat on the aircraft and finished all of the fiddly bits (such as landing gear and doors). Next up is decaling, for “Sweet Sixteen” from Texas.

I was also fiddling with another ancient model that I have been considering adding to the queue. It is the Matchbox Vickers Wellesley, a long-winged single-engined fighter. It is a second cousin to the Wellington. The problem was that I had lost the rear canopy somewhere in the dark spidery recesses of the garage. One day I was working my way through the What If Modellers forum– a fine way to spend some free computer time, by the way – and saw Kit Spackman’s model of a PR variant of the Wellesley. The interesting thing was that he had built it as a single seater, which means that it had no aft canopy.

I exchanged email with Kit, asking if he still had the rear canopy. He did, and very graciously offered to send it to me at no charge. Since he is in the UK and I’m in the US, this was very greatly appreciated. The kit part has made its transoceanic trip – this canopy is in fact more well-travelled than I am – and I decided to tape the parts together with Tamiya tape to see what it all looked like. I’ll be finishing up the cockpit and getting some paint on it later this week.