East Kent Scale Modellers February club night (1) - Keith's Invicta Airways airliners

There were a host of superlative scale models on display at our second club night of 2026 - none more so than Keith's Invicta Airways airliners. The Valom Vickers Viking was accompanied on the table by a fantastic build of the Revell C-54/DC-4 Skymaster. Invicta Airways (later Invicta International Airlines) was based at Manston in the 1960s. Founded by Hugh Kennard, the company was a noted user of the Vickers VC.1 Viking (including registrations G-AOVF, G-ANCF, G-AHOY, G-AHPL, and G-AHOW) alongside Douglas DC-4s..

The Manston-based Invicta Airways fleet flew passenger and cargo charters between 1965 and 1968 both within the UK and to Europe and was the last British operator of the Vickers Viking, a type derived from the Wellington bomber. This particular aircraft, G-AHOY - registered to Invicta Airways during 1966 as G-AIVF - operated her final service on January 30 1968 when she flew from Liverpool to Manston. During 1968 Invicta Airways became an all-Skymaster operator.

Models built by Keith Jones

new-tool Airfix for 2026 at The Model Works show

 

January saw the second ever Airfix model show held at Airfix HQ in Margate, Kent. The show featured a table of Airfix new-tools for 2026 and participation from the local clubs, including East Kent, Gravesham and Shepway.  Here are the first views of the new Ju 52, Canberra and Jaguar T.2 on the Airfix stand including the 'new' Club Viggen kit, far left. The new Ju 52 with open doors, hatches and roof looks especially impressive - but then with a slated retail price of around £50 it certainly should be.

 

a tour around the RAF Museum Hendon, James Holland and Al Murray

 

James Holland and Al Murray take a tour around the RAF Museum Hendon in north London. Certainly one of the world's great aviation collections, but somewhat diminished in the view of this blogger since the move of key airframes both to Cosford and abroad. The twin-seat Fw 190 is in Germany, the Me 262 and 'black 6' are in Cosford. However since I was last there the Me 163 Komet has come down to London from Cosford at least. This video is well worth watching as the guys climb inside, inspect, and analyze with contemporary footage some of WW II's most legendary fighters and bombers. Subtitled 'beyond the ropes', the nice thing about Hendon is that there are so few ropes - as you can see from my photos below - and certainly no staff around to keep visitors the 'right' side of them! So many types  in the museum at Hendon that were not mentioned - eg, Bf 110 G, Ju 87 Stuka, He 111- lets hope there's another video soon.

A single click inside the red box to view here


00:00 - Intro: Behind the ropes at RAF Hendon
00:19 - The Avro Lancaster: Inside the heavy bomber
08:48 - Bristol Beaufighter: The Twin engined bruiser
14:30 - The Wooden Wonder: De Havilland Mosquito
20:10 - The Rocket: Me 163 Komet
31:06 - Spitfire Vs Hurricane
33:40 - Hawker Hurricane: The unsung hero
43:33 - Supermarine Spitfire
53:45 - The Bf 109

Some photos taken by this blog on our last visit of the types looked at in the video . Click on the image to get a bigger view.

  

new tool 1:72nd Airfix Wessex HC. 2 build review (2) - first completion of 2026

Still minus a few stencils and small parts but here are a few views of the new-tool Airfix Wessex HC 2. It is a lovely kit, very finely detailed over 86 build stages. Unfortunately not a very pleasurable build experience, possibly to do with the fact that you have to paint/decal the model before attaching most of the parts. One or two of these crucially don't fit too well, which is a pain and one or two disappeared who knows where. And I wish Airfix would identify some of the smaller parts too - what for example are the small 'jaw' like parts that go onto the bottom of the gear legs?  I left these off until the end and they were so much easier to deal with this way. The 'folding' tail rotor and main rotor blades are great options - just rather fiddly to get in position, while the main rotor head probably needs some brass rod or similar to 'stiffen' up the construction. Needless to say masking the canopy was several hours work too and I'm still not sure whether those upper panels should be 'tinted'. Geoff Coughlan's build has them, others don't. The exhausts are just a little clunky - comprising two halves the join is difficult to eradicate at the lip so I've hidden it with some foil covers. Camo was free-handed with AK Real Colors - that's how easy these paints are to work with..

Not only are the rotor blades rather tricky to position folded, the instructions don't exactly clarify the painting and finishing of them. Note on this image (below) how the dark green upper surfaces of the blades are only facing 'outwards' on the starboard fold. The black lower sufaces are 'outwards' on the port fold.

I'll give this kit  a good 8/10 and if we get a yellow one in a forthcoming release I'll definitely add it to the collection..

 

new tool 1:72nd Airfix Wessex HC. 2 build review (1)

Now that the replacement sprue has arrived from Airfix (yes, see above - an entire sprue was missing from the sealed, bagged kit!) I can get on with the build of my 'Walter'!

Note on the internal painting of the cabin - blue seats and pea green on the sound quilting. You could usefully add some belt detail, but I have not. Grime it up a bit with an oil wash and a bit of dry-brushing. Good details, including the interior frame and the heating duct, but 27 build stages before closing up the fuselage is probably asking for trouble. 

In the cockpit Airfix provide a choice of instrument panels, one with raised detail or a flat part with decal. Shame that the decal doesn't really look like the real thing. Colour call-outs for the cockpit parts are non-existent - I've done mine in a dark grey, but should probably be black. Note the prominent windscreen wiper motors on the framing behind the panel.

Fitting the cockpit and the cabin roof is fiddly and a very tight fit! A fair bit of fettling required ..and then - despite the okay-ish dry-fit - I couldn't get the fuselage halves together around the nose.  I had this issue on the 48th P-51. Despite this, the fit of the windscreen/canopy is not bad, but might need a little sanding to avoid a 'step'. The canopy will take some time to mask - but certainly no worse than a Ju 88! 

Sprue attachment points are very large and usually on the mating surfaces which makes clean-up a little tricky. Otherwise another notable point about the kit is the tremendous amount of surface detailing - hoist power feed sockets, power take-off points down the fuselage under the pilots door etc. The so-called 'beetle-back' is well done and the prominent cooling louvres are featured after a fashion. Airfix have also moulded the cutouts for those drain points at the forward edge. The representation of the mesh covers is pretty well done and there is a basic gearbox with torque links. 

Folded or flying options are available, folded looks neat with the cradle attachment in bright red.

More soon...

1:72 MPM Fw 189 C/V-6

Luftwaffe enthusiasts spend a lot of their time (I would imagine) lauding the brilliant designs and innovative engineering of much of the Third Reich's aeronautical output. Only there were a lot of 'duds' among them. And, despite the fearsome MPM box-top art, the Fw 189 C/V-6 was just one of these.

First flown in early 1940 the C/V-6 was the 'ground-attack' variant of the Fw 189 with the original fuselage nacelle replaced with an armour-plated 'nacelle-type' structure for a pilot and rear gunner. Both crew members had strictly limited views outside of the machine. The aircraft was powered by two Argus inverted V-12's of around 460 hp each. By way of comparison, the Hs 129 had two 691 hp Gnome-Rhone engines, while on the Allied side, for example, the Bristol Beaufighter and Douglas A-20 both had twin engines of 1600 hp. That the Germans would design aircraft around the Argus V-12s and French-made Gnome-Rhone radials obviously indicates the limitations of their aircraft engine production. The Germans did not have high-horsepower engines available in the quantities the Allies could produce. The smaller engines resulted in severely under-powered machines but did at least have the advantage of being of small profile. The Germans did of course have warehouses full of captured engine stocks that they wanted to use, some obviously state-of-the-art… in 1937. This resulted in many unsupportable design compromises..

The Fw 189 C/V-6 was entered into the competition for a new ground-attack/close-support aircraft that the Henschel Hs129 eventually won, the unconventional Blohm-und-Voss Bv 141 having already been eliminated due to its unproven asymmetrical form. Two prototypes of the -C were manufactured for testing, the V-1b and the V-6. The V-6 was designed to be armed with two MG FF 20mm cannon and four MG 17's firing forward and a twin MG 81Z for the rear gunner. The rear armament was optimistic at best given the gunner's restricted field of vision, especially when compared to the original Fw 189.

The kit was a straight forward build albeit rather lacking in detail - no gun barrels (I used Master), no bombs or racks - which I intend adding from an old Airfix Fw 190 kit. And the glazed parts of the cabin - except for the windscreen- were solid and had to be cut out.  The best part of the build for me was exhuming some old unused Aeromaster 'Warbirds' acrylics from the back of the paint 'stash' which I used for the 70/71 segmented finish - they went on beautifully, despite being, what, 30-40 years old?! Whatever happened to these paints and why has no-one kept the formula in production?

Build review of the Airfix 1:48th Jaguar - part 7 Finished!

 

The Airfix 1:48th Jaguar  is now finished in the markings of XZ 118 'Buster Gonad'. Difficult to photograph in this 'Granby' scheme as the flash obliterates the oil panel-line wash and the little bit of post-shading with Tamiya Smoke. Note that Airfix has given the modeller a bit of a 'mish-mash' with this machine as it wore a variety of markings and was seen in a number of different configurations especially post-Granby eg, the "FF" tail codes which are not present on the kit decal sheet  - although indicated on the decal placement diagram. While with 41 Sqd, XZ 118 also carried the recce pod in grey/green which I thought offered a neat contrast with the RAF Desert Pink (AK Real Colors lacquer). XZ 118 was the aircraft that ended its life upside down in the Tate Gallery..

Overall, a great kit, although the undercarriage is a little tricky and fitting the parts in and around the airbrake bays requires three hands. Some additional detail could have been provided in the cockpit perhaps. But then we modellers always seem to want more. A very good 9/10 from me.