I’m assuming it was one of the 2 then; it really did look the biz - and quite made my day!
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Well, I don’t live anywhere near the RAF, but I do live in the same town as the U.S. Air Force Academy, and we’re getting buzzed by a B-52 and two F-22s. So not bad, I think.
Michael 
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Sorry Michael you are just showing off now.
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Honestly, cool as they are, I’d rather see a Hurri or a Spit.
Michael
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Have to admit to be a bit envious.
I live right under the flight path into Birmingham International, so we get airliners flying over 24/7.
Although occasionally we get the odd interesting private plane. Piaggio P180’s are a cool looking little thing. Last year we did have an Avro Anson fly over low as it came in to land. And my camera was nowhere near to hand!
Over the last year I have noticed Antonov transports coming in quite regularly. Usually of an evening we get a couple of big An-12’s (a big black one with red stripes is a regular visitor) and An-24’s usually during the day. There’s usually little information on my flight tracker app as to where they’ve come from.
Also get RAF C-17’s and A400’s sometimes and one time an E-3 Sentry. Only time I’ve seen one in the flesh, quite the sight seeing that big dish above it!
AAC and RAF helicopters are quite common too as they seem to follow the M6 motorway going north and south. Mostly Chinooks, but sometimes a couple of Wildcats or Apaches will go over.
Growing up both my primary and secondary school were right next door to the motorway, so we constantly had Lynx, Puma’s and Gazelle’s flying over low.
Oh and there was that time we were driving through the Welsh valleys over to Aberystwyth and we got buzzed by a low flying Tornado! That was something else.
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I used to work at EDI airport and saw loads of cool stuff. Especially during the airshow at East Fortune. A Mig 17 sitting on one of the cargo stands one morning was a pleasant surprise. Best had to be a visiting US refueler which dropped off some US troops. It was an RC-135 I think it is. I had to do the push back when it left. But had a great chat with the guys and they let me take a few pictures too
Pete
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Hey, hey.
I intend to build a Revell Germany 1/32 Spitfire MK II for this campaign, out of the box, and need to order paint. The paint schemes are both circa 1941, green and light brown with a light blue-green belly. I am also unsure what color to use for the interior and wheel wells.
What Vallejo Model Air paints would you recommend for this Spitfire project?
Edit: This is what I came up with based on Vallejo’s color chart:
BS 101 No.1 Sky Blue “Duck Egg Blue” = No.1 Sky Blue “Duck Egg Blue” = 71.404
BS 241 Dark Green = BS Dark Green = 71.324
BS 450 Dark Earth = BS Dark Earth = 71.323
Interior Grey-Green (variante) = Interior Grey-Green = 71.305
Also, is there anything tragically wrong about the model I should know about?
Thank you!
If you aren’t careful, it could end up looking like this:
I felt it went together reasonably well. The only issue was knocking the antenna mount off the rudder. I liked it enough to buy the IXc.
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Now that is very nice!
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All good stuff - and Stephen’s input (above) too); nothing like seeing the stuff close up.
It’s all prompted my memories and I’ll bang on shortly - massive thread drift I confess!
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I’m sure this amount of thread drift will get us slapped down anytime soon – and probably quite right too(!)
Given my vintage, my sightings of earlier aircraft will probably sound a bit exotic but in a way I was quite lucky growing up when I did; as a child, every year me and my 2 sisters were farmed out to various uncles and aunts for around 2 weeks or so, coinciding with the school summer holidays. I ended up with a favoured uncle and aunt at Odstock, just south of Salisbury and around 8 miles from my Wiltshire village on the edge of the New Forest. Incidentally Odstock gave its name to the massive hospital between the village and Salisbury, built by the US forces in 1943 in preparation for D Day casualties (I was actually born there – post war I hasten to add!). Anyway, I used to play with the local kids and we’d paddle round in the river Ebble, avoiding cattle, catching minnows, sticklebacks and freshwater crayfish and spotting herons and kingfishers. We also played amongst the corn high on the Wiltshire Downs, rescuing Lapwing chicks and avoiding patrolling farmers who all worked for the massive Radnor estate, owned, well, by Lord Radnor. The thing is, the locale was host to the airspace identified by Boscombe Down, the then RAF experimental establishment, and we’d often stop doing whatever it was and gaze up at the sky as soon as we heard an engine. I was lucky enough to see Javelins, Sea Vixens, Hunters, sometimes lumbering Argosies and Beverleys, and on a few memorable occasions, a white dagger tearing through the sky and I realized I was gazing at the TSR-2! The boys’ comic Eagle, had warned me of the existence of this aircraft, not least with an impressive cutaway drawing, but to see it in the flesh so to speak was, to a kid, literally awesome.
It wasn’t just fixed-wing; for some reason the Army Air Corps Centre at Middle Wallop also utilized the territory and their Westland Scouts and Sioux, would hover over the fields and fire-off endless flares, (God knows why) and discard the cartridges, which us frantic boys would race to collect and squabble over.
A few years later, by now at secondary school, and having moved villages, I was off sick with some minor ailment; there was a large recreation ground at the end of our winding rural lane, a huge grassed area with a couple of swings and slides. Coming from this direction I heard a jet engine noise, rushed upstairs and by nearly falling out of the window I could see a Kestrel hovering in all its glory. I mean – wow! And then some.
One other aircraft sticks in my mind but I saw that some time later when I was serving in a divisional HQ in Bulford Camp, a garrison quite close to Boscombe Down; I worked on the first floor and the view from my office window encompassed the feature known as Beacon Hill (which one of our generals, a zealous ex Para, would make us run up in full kit but that’s another story) which tied in with the main runway’s axis. One lazy summer’s day I heard a different type of engine noise – amazing when all my fellow clerks were chattering away like demented monkeys; I glanced out of the window and was rewarded with the spectacle of a Boeing YC-14 appearing over Beacon Hill; those who know the aircraft will be familiar with its over-wing engines and it was like no other aircraft I’d ever seen. No one else seemed particularly interested, but to me, it was fantastic! That said, as time went on – and I imagine it must have been around for at least a year – we simply got used to it. I’m assuming of course, that it was on trial for consideration for use by the RAF (now there’s a What-If colour scheme).
I’ll wrap up now; as I tried to indicate, this isn’t to crow or to big it up, but I was fantastically lucky in a way to have seen such interesting aircraft.
Back to Spitfires perhaps!
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Thank you for the reply! Your model looks quite well done to me. I have almost no experience building and painting plastic model aircraft and do not see anything wrong.
Those are nice memories. I guess most of us have similar memories, just like the time I was witness of the first time the huge Airbus A380 landed on the Dutch airport of Schiphol.
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That must have been quite a sight! A true monster; talking of which, and this isn’t one-upmanship, but I was blown away when in Iraq in 2003, (and by now cynical beyond my years) I gazed at the mighty Antonov An-225. I mean, what the hell?!
I say I was cynical, but you know, I think it’s a good thing that one’s perhaps child-like enthusiasm never quite dissipates. I’m sure you know what I mean(!)
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We remain boys who like toys… 
I travel past the airport weekly, but I remain awed by the airliners that I see there…
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That reminds me that Emirates have recently come back to Birmingham with the A-380. It’s an impressive sight.
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So I’m having trouble deciding which Spit to build here.
I have these kits:
Tamiya 1/48 Mk. I
Tamiya 1/48 Mk. Vb
Kotare 1/32 Mk. Ia
Airfix 1/72 Mk. Ia
I’d planned to build the Airfix one for this campaign, in flight over a small round base. It’s a dry run for a planned diorama involving the Kotare Spit in Dunkirk colors flying over an ocean scene with small (out of scale) boats below to give the illusion of altitude.
But now I’m wondering if the Tamiya Mk. I is a better choice for that diorama since the elevator is fixed and better for in-flight, while it seems a shame to close up the Kotare kit and lose all that detail. And if the Tamiya goes in flight, I’ll build the Kotare for this campaign.
But the Kotare is huge and will be harder to find shelf space for if built on its wheels.
Hmmmmmmm….first world “problems.”
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Boots is quite right. While I freely confess to having contributed to the tangent, time to get back to Spits. Thank you to Doug and Spitfire for trying to keep things on track!
Michael
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Kotare Kotare…oooo ooo…do the Kotare.
Pete
Some progress on mine
I hope to close up the fuselage and mate it with the wings this weekend…
BTW, I put some plastic over the camera holes from inside and painted it black. When the model is painted, I will close the holes with Micro Kristal Klear. There are no clear parts provided in the kit for them…let’s see how it’ll work out?
Good luck, mates!
Peter
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