My first ever kit was (I think) a 1/72 Airfix Trident when I was perhaps 6 or maybe 7 years old and ever since then, I have continued to build aviation subjects.
I recall the Airfix 1/72 Lancaster with the boxart of it landing with an engine on fire and the enormous (even in 1/72) Hercules with a tail ramp that opened. The 1/72 Spitfire that came in a bag was built several times (including once with the wings back to front!) and I remember other Airfix subjects from that period fondly.
I then must have been encouraged to move onto bigger kits (I never had any money to buy them myself) and I still recall my barely suppressed impatience as we wandered around Heelas in Reading with a new Revell 1/32 Messerschmitt 109 under my arm aged 9!! I also recall being given for Christmas when I was 11, the Airfix 1/24 Spitfire Mk 1. The box felt enormous! I recall loving the way that the wheels (sort of) opened and closed.
Although racing cars have become my main focus, I have built a fair few aviation subjects over the years and every year I seem to build one or two planes as a nice break from, and contrast with, racing cars and bikes. On this page I display my collection of 1/48 planes in RAF service!
Looking ahead, Airfix have recently issued a completely new Buccaneer S2C kit which I have now bought and which will in due course replace the one shown here. There are also much more modern Meteor kits now available and it would be nice to replace the rather basic Tamiya kit with a Korean war subject. Additionally, my stash of unbuilt kits includes Airfix 1/48 kits of the RAF Canadair Sabre and the Fairey Gannett - a plane I used to see fly over when we holidayed in Milford Haven when I was a young child.
A clean build of the Tamiya Mosquito which I completed in 2016. I built the model as the PR Mk.IV version as I was impressed by the rather vivid blue of the unarmed reconnaisance version which flew from 1943 until the end of WW2. I have subsequently bought the 1/32 boxing of the Mosquito from Tamiya - a project for the future and whilst this kit took about a week to build, that one might be rather nearer 6 weeks I would imagine.
This is the Tamiya kit of the torpedo-carrying variant of the Bristol Beaufighter. Like the Mosquito above, Tamiya's kit was a really lovely project with an intersting amount of internal detail without anything too involved or time-consuming!
This is the Tamiya kit of the Welland engined Meteor that (just) saw service for the RAF in WW2. I enjoyed using alclad sprays on the engines which can be viewed under partially transparent engine panels. However I also used the extra non-transparent parts to show the plane in its usual form.
This was a departure for me, a 1/48 Trumpeter kit of the extremely ugly Westland Wyvern S4 which is depicted as deployed on HMS Eagle to the Suez Conflict in 1956. The contra-rotating propellors turn which is a neat gimmick and I displayed the kit with lowered flaps, rocket boosters and the guided torpedo it used to carry - although I dont think was ever actually used in anger. I made this kit in around 2015.
A great friend of mine's father used to own a Tiger Moth which he kept in a barn at their farm in Kent. He had flown in the RAF in WW2 and had bought his aeroplane shortly afterwards. My friend was young when her father died but she remembers being taken for flights in her father's Tiger Moth and even learning to fly it in her teens!
She has kept a couple of photographs of the Tiger Moth in question as her father used to race it in handicap events in the late 1950s and early 1960s. From these photos I was able to build up a clear idea of what his plane would have looked like.
When Airfix's new moulding of the DH82 was released a couple of years ago, I resolved to build it and present it to my friend for Christmas 2020. I got in a little muddle with the rigging to the tailplane but otherwise it came together really well. My friend was delighted with it - which put the icing on the cake!
I made this kit in about 2006 and it was one of my earliest 1/48 aviation subjects. I was inspired by the looks of this ill-fated plane but also its sheer size. What an amazing sight it would have been if the project had been continued rather than cancelled in 1965.
Over the years it has suffered somewhat. The wheel units which are meant to lean outwards a little have started to lean rather more dramatically! One of the cockpit canopies snapped off and has been secured with a globule of super glue. I used a resin cockpit insert which was one of my earliest of these conversiions and was probably not done terribly well. Still the kit passes the 6 feet test, even if not the 6 inch test...
In 2021, Airfix released this new kit of the diminutive Chipmunk. I actually flew a Chipmunk for about 5 minutes when I was a RAF cadet at school from RAF Benson near Oxford. When I saw some photographs of the Air Cadet Air Experience flight machine at Benson in 1979, I decided to make this kit and produce my own lettering and codes to imitate the precise machine I must have flown!
I used Kitmaster replacement instrument panels and seatbelts as well as home made decals and left the plane "open" for inspection. Sadly the fit was poor and the end-result is not very impressive. Still, thre arent many planes in the world I can claim to have actually flown - and this is one of them!!
This is a Gulf War colour scheme re-boxing of a kit that had originally been issued in the 1980s. The fuselage split horizontally and fit issues abounded. Still I enjoyed this rather basic build in 2013 and opened the airbrakes at the back so as to shorten the kit a little for display purposes.
In 2022, Airfix have issued a completely new version of the Buccaneer in 1/48 scale and I will build this in due course and replace this rather drab item in my collection when I do so.
This is the Airfix kit of the Canberra in an "End of an Era" Retirement colour scheme from RAF Marham in 2006. I completed this kit in 2012 and displayed the plans with characteristic "drooped" flaps and a special artwork for the tail. Sadly one of the last operational PR9s had crashed only a year or so earlier at Marham killing all aboard and so I was thinking of those poor people as I was building this.
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