A pretty straightforward build, this one, despite a few mishaps.  I managed to lose the gun-sight pretty early on, so I had to fashion a new one using a bit clear sprue and a tiny trimmed piece of clear plastic from some packaging.  Then I drilled the hole for the antenna pole in the wrong place after I had painted the a/c, so I had to fill, sand and paint that panel again.  Later on, I dropped the whole thing breaking off one of the wheel-well covers (is that what they’re called?)  And then prior to taking the pictures, I snapped the antenna line.  That’s about the standard number of cock-ups for one of my builds.

Painting was mainly Humbrol enamels.  Of course it was interesting to try and get some variation in the black, otherwise it would have been a very boring paint scheme.  I mixed quite a bit of white in the first coat to make sure it wasn’t too intensely black.  A few panels were later sectioned off with “post-it” notes and sprayed again, with a slightly darker shade.  After it had dried, been glossed, decaled and matt coated, I went over all the panel lines with straight black chalk pastel powder, applied with a fine brush.  Then the whole thing was again matt coated.  All in all I was pretty happy.

It was slightly problematic hiding the carrier film of decals on the black background; I just kept applying Solvaset again and again.  Under the final matt coat it's not too bad.

 I think the Beaufighter is an elegant aircraft and I am happy to have this one on my shelf.

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This a/c is from RAF 29^th squadron, a dedicated nightfighter unit which converted from Blenheims to Beaufighters over the winter of 1940-1941, flying from West Malling in Kent.  I am afraid I do not know anything about the this particular aircraft – but the nose art is cute! 

Richard