Shackleton in progress

Looks superb!
I have a 1/72 Revell shackleton which was fun to build.
Shackletons are just beautiful 😀

More pics

OK, here we are nearly done – just rudders and elevators to add, all the little aerials, dipoles, actuators and whatnot, then a little weathering.

shame most of the interior wont be visible. Have you considered doing half fusleage with interior to show your work?

Maybe in the future, but the work wasn’t that good! I did a lot of work on the interior whilst under the misapprehension that you would be able to see bits and pieces of it, and eventually just did it all. Sadly there’s so little light in there that you can’t really see anything, though if you peer very closely you can see the cockpit and the area behind this including the navigator’s table and the engineer’s station, which few kits get right.

I vaguely considered trying to rig up a battery and torch bulb inside so you can see things but it seemed a bit complicated. Again, I may try this in the future.

Hope you don’t mind my asking, but what made you choose the vac-formed Contrail kit over the Frog/Revell injection moulded one?

A number of reasons, none of them all that good. I bought my Dad a Modelcraft Shackleton, which I believe to be a reboxing of the Frog/Revell (though I’m not 100% sure of that) and was very disappointed at the quality (or lack thereof) of the moulding and the hideous rivet detail, and felt that a lot of work would be needed to bring the kit up to an acceptable level. Also I wanted to model the Phase 3 version with the different outer nacelles to house the Viper jet engines, and no kit exists with this mod.

So starting from the basis that I would need to do a lot of work, I thought I might as well have a crack at a vacform, which I had not attempted before. Silly though it sounds, the Contrail shack is not a bad vacform to start off with. Consider: on a 1/72 Spit, you make an error of around 1mm – this gives you a fuselage looking like a banana already. A much bigger aircraft gives more room for error and potential to be rescued… Plus the plastic is nice and thick on a kit this size which makes it easier to work. The four engine nacelles make things a bit trickier, but not hugely so – plus I was going to be reworking the outer ones extensively anyway.

Anyway, more pics later today.

Hope you don’t mind my asking, but what made you choose the vac-formed Contrail kit over the Frog/Revell injection moulded one?

shame most of the interior wont be visible. Have you considered doing half fusleage with interior to show your work?

Thanks! It’s a bit further advanced now and more photos will be available after the weekend. However, I’ve been a bit caught up with kits for magazine reviews recently. The kit includes a lot of scratchbuilding (entire interior, glazings and modified outer nacelles to represent a phase 3 MR3 with Bristol Siddeley Vipers) and home-made decals to boot.

Looks great so far!