Some of you may have seen some of these pictures in Plastic Pics a few months ago when I was fighting to get the model ready for Telford and Scale Modelworld. I managed to achieve my aim with a margin of one day and my Aircraft in Miniature vacform 1/72 scale Nimrod won its class, and also the British Aerospace Trophy for the best post war British aircraft.

There will be a feature article on this build in a future issue Model Aircraft Monthly from SAM Publications.

The kit is from the early nineties when AiM had got hold of the old Formaplane molds from the early eighties, and it is formed in 2 mm thick black plastic, a little bit softer than ordinary injection moulded styrene. There are good vacformed kits, and there are not so good kits, and this falls in the latter category, but it’s still the only kit in 1/72 scake, and to me it was a challenge.

The Nimrod kit is not easy to build; it’s about as far from the Tamiya Mustang as you can get without scratch building. The kit is fairly accurate in the overall dimensions, but it lacks in detail, to say the least. But, any motivated modeller will succeed, only remember to buy some sheets of Plasticard and a package of Milliput, locate your wood working tools and lots of wet sanding paper. It helps if you can find a correct drawing; I did not, so I had to work from photographs, my ruler and calculator.

Scratch built are: the bomb bay (yes, it can carry bombs) with sheet brass doors, the cockpit, air refuelling gear, nose gear bay, all moving surfaces (flaps and ailerons), air brakes, engine air intakes and exhausts, the complete tail end (fin, stabilators and tail boom) and all other details!

Anyway, after 250 hours the model was ready, but I really would like to add some Mk 44 torpedoes, if someone could show me how to hang them in the bomb bay!

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images: