Lightning

At the time I had never paid so much for a model but when it arrived I felt fully justified as the contents of the box were something to see. All of the Vac Formed sheets had exquisite surface detail which I have only seen in the very best kits since. A bag of white metal and a large full colour decal sheet were also included as well as a superb clear canopy. Two large sheets of instructions with diagrams and a small booklet of written text and also a selection of plastic rod toped off the list of contents.

Construction of the model follows the usual manor with the cockpit going first, this was made from several Vac Formed pieces mixed with some of the White Metal components. The instrument panel is a metal part which needed some sanding on its rear surface to thin it down. To the back of this is attached a decal of the instruments which line up with the bezels. Incidentally its at this point that you have to decide which version you are going to make as the Fmk 2 has a different instrument layout.The side consuls are metal and need some detailing but this wasn't too hard as good references are available. The ejector seat is made from several metal parts and the structure needs a full harness made by the modeller.The rear bulkhead needs some detail as it is one of the most visible points in the cockpit.

The fuselage is the next part and to this needs to be added several bulkheads which give the model loads of strength. The intake trunking is made from vac formed components and is a swine to remove the seam down the inside of, however, if this is the only problem area we should be thankful to Mr Frank Brown for his fine engineering as the rest of the kit is a pleasure. I found that I wanted the scribed detail of the panel lines deeper so I set about rescribing them deeper. Small moulding pips are evident all over the parts and are easily removed with a scalpel. Before I went any further I made all of the small intakes and ducts which are easier to build from the inside of the fuselage.

The wings are the next major construction and here I had to be careful in order to keep the double crank in the leading edge. This has been captured by Echelon and when finished looks dead right. The wing tip lights are a bulged affair and here I found myself vac forming my own shapes that were blended into the wing with Milliput. The inside of the lights are visible and are made from various parts from my spares box. The fin and Tailplane are simple structures and need only minimal time to build, the Tailplanes need some form of pivot and I made this from Brass rod set in Milliput which goes into corresponding holes in the rear fuselage filled with brass tubing.

The rear end of the engines are a very visible part and the afterburner sections are made from a mix of plastic and metal, they give a good representation of the real Rolls Royce Avon's but needed a rear compressor face, I cast a pair in resin copied from a Revell F15 engine.

The undercarriage was built from the metal parts which are very high quality castings. With the majority of the construction done all that remained was to build the missiles and paint the model. The missiles I chose are the Redtop and I found they were lacking in detail when compared to the rest of the model. I decided to bring them up to the standard of the rest of the kit and at the time I had just got my hands on a new magazine that had a cutaway drawing of the missile. I built the main bodies first then added details like the seeker head which is visible through the clear nose section. I made the clear nose sections with clear plastic heat formed over a mould I had made from the kit original filled with Milliput.

Painting was started with Halfords Grey Primer which gave a smooth and durable surface to paint over, I also did any minor repairs and corrected any faults. This was the first time that I had used this primer and I have always used it since. This model was a large experiment as I chose to use Gunze Sangyo acrylic paint for the first time. The paint went on well through my airbrush and gave a beautiful finish first time. Once satisfied with the finish a coat of Johnson's Clear floor polish was sprayed over the entire model. All decals were then added and they settled well with the use of setting solutions. In order to try and mask the carrier film I sprayed several coats of clear and sanded them back to all one level with Micro Mesh. This took a few days to complete but the end result is worth the effort. Net result is that you cannot see any carrier film at all.

Some minor weathering was done with a mix of very thin grey oil paint run into all of the panel lines. Some of the other oil leaks and Hydraulic fluid was painted on with water colour then using the airbrush flowed back along the fuselage with some water. The effect is better than I imagined it would be.

A single figure from Gotha Sahib was painted with oils and a simple base was built and the project was finished just in time for the I.P.M.S.U.K. Nationals in 1995.

All in all this was a very rewarding project, the only thing I found was the time scale involved in making it was longer than I was use to and I began to wander at times if I would ever finish it. Approx. 3 months work went into this model and a lot of that was on research. Thank You Frank Brown.