Avro Shackleton MR2 1:72 - A11004

[audikentman]

Estimated Arrival 01/12/2015 £39.99

http://www.airfix.com/uk-en/shop/new-for-2015/1-72...

[Eric Mc]

Looking forward to this. Their new Whitley looks good too (a build of a test shot is featured ion the latest Airfix magazine).

[lufbramatt]

http://www.airfix.com/uk-en/news/airfix-developmen...

^That's me sitting in the cabin of WR963, with Richw_82 on here

[audikentman]

I see they are doing a 1/48th Meteor F8 as well.

http://www.airfix.com/uk-en/shop/pre-orders/gloste...

I can see Christmas lists being written to include 1 or more of these.

[Eric Mc]

lufbramatt said:

http://www.airfix.com/uk-en/news/airfix-developmen...

^That's me sitting in the cabin of WR963, with Richw_82 on here

Any tips for cleaning dribble off my keyboard?

[richw_82]

Eric Mc said:

Any tips for cleaning dribble off my keyboard?

None, but you're more than welcome to come up to Coventry on a Saturday and have a look around and in the aircraft in person! We're preparing for a few taxy runs over the next month or so, and last Saturday's ground run saw all four engines at a pretty high power settings and the aircraft straining at the brakes... all very fun!

The artwork on the new kit matches the design work in thats it is fantastic, and my pre-order is already in.

Regards,

Rich

[lufbramatt]

I can only echo what Rich said- if you can get to Coventry the SPT guys are really friendly guys and have been unbelievably helpful in gathering the info needed to do the old girl justice in 1/72nd. It's a charismatic old beast and sounds fantastic with all 4 Griffons at full chat

For more info have a look on the new blog

http://www.airfix.com/uk-en/news/workbench

[perdu]

I enjoyed the Workbench Matt, thanks for the now bookmarked link.

From the pictures the Shackleton doesn't seem to be afflicted with rivetrash, hope that is so.

I'm glad you managed to get Les Whitehouse involved with the Defiant project too, probably no-one else around with the depth of subject knowledge as Les, anywhere.

[Yertis]

lufbramatt said:

I can only echo what Rich said- if you can get to Coventry the SPT guys are really friendly guys and have been unbelievably helpful in gathering the info needed to do the old girl justice in 1/72nd. It's a charismatic old beast and sounds fantastic with all 4 Griffons at full chat

For more info have a look on the new blog

http://www.airfix.com/uk-en/news/workbench

Obviously with aircraft like the Whitley you can't just get out and have a look at one – how/where do you do your research in those cases?

[lufbramatt]

For the Whitley it was unusual in that we couldn't go and see a real one, just the remains they have up at the Midland Air Museum. Aircraft servicing manuals often have lots of good info in, as the illustrations were usually traced from engineering drawings. A.P. documents, books, the archives at Hendon, Kew, Yeovilton etc. are all good sources of valuable info. It's just a case of piecing together as much info as you can get your hands on in the time frame. Often sources conflict and books are often wrong which makes it even more fun. A good one was the Length of a Sea Vixen- all the books give the length of the DH110 prototype, but a Sea Vixen is actually about 2 feet shorter due to the re-engineered fuselage and radar in the nose.

Usually someone has some original manufacturers drawings, but finding out who is the hard bit. In the USA it's just a case of emailing the Smithsonian or the USAF Museum in Dayton and they send us a big box of microfilm, however in the UK it's a different story. Many drawings were destroyed (for example when Handley Page was closed down, some of the drawings were taken to the Hendon archives, but the second lorry never turned up so they burnt the rest) and the rest are very poorly archived so you can turn up and they point you in the general direction and you have to sort through thousands of records to find the 20 or so that are useful.

We try to find a "tame expert" such as Les Whitehouse or Chris Thomas for each project to act as a consultant, guys like that are invaluable.

[Yertis]

Thanks Matt! I admire the Airfix team is doing – I'll certainly be buying a Shackleton.