As you might have guessed by now - the English Electric Lightning is a real favourite of mine! This is a long-term build of the stunning Echelon kit. The kit was no ordinary vac-form nightmare - rather a highly refined piece of engineering. Lots of white metal, strong vac-formed sections and an awesome decal sheet. Frank Brown did a stunning job when he designed and created it way back - I think in the 1980s. I have no idea why its taken so long to get started, but it's well underway now.

I plan to fit other projects in around it - hence the long-term build, but I hope you like the first images of the emerging storm!!


The main parts come on a decent sheet of styrene that is plenty thick enough to be easy to work with once the parts are removed.


Just look at that fuselage...superb! can't wait to get it all together - a 1:32nd scale EE Lightning - Wow! It still amazes me that there is one. Note the crystal claer vac-form canopy.


Assembling the intake trunking and nose cone for the Airpass radar is straightforward enough. The separate halves are separated from the backing sheet and attached here using liquid poly.


When removing the parts a tip is to use a very fine fibre tip pen and draw around the part to be removed. Then cut close to this line using scissors, scalpel and razor saw - whatever is most appropriate. When the part is out, all you need to do is hold it gently, flat on a sanding sheet and sand back until you see the dark pen line appear and the excess falls away. Do use water on the paper as this helps keep the dust down! Another tip is to use a sanding stick / file to do the initial sanding. This can be much quicker and then revert to the sheet method for the final stages and to ensure that the part edges are perfectly flat. They should then be able to be joined to other parts with liquid poly or cyano in the normal way.




The cockpit tub is neat - onto which are added all the white metal consoles and of course, later, the MB seat.


Good reference photographs are essential for the Lightning in this scale. Some of those are found in the Useful Links are of my site.


The tub takes shape.


Plenty of small items from the spares box here - tiny bits of etched brass, fuse wire and plasticard, all help to make the rear decking / bulkhead pretty authentic.


The white metal seat is a good basis for additional detailing. The harness and belts will be scratched using lead foil and some old Reheat etched brass buckles. I'll leave the seat out until much nearer ccompletion to avoid unnecessary damage. The white metal seat is useful in that its extra weight will be necessary to keep the nose gear on the deck!


The tub gets the pre-shading treatment. I've used Tamiya German Grey here, but any dark grey will do. The Lightning has quite a light grey over much of the interior - instrument panel and side walls etc. US Interior Grey is a good match and this will be ghosted on in light coats next.


The decal instrument dials are stuck to thin white plasticard. The dials will later be cut away as one and attached to the back of the main instrument panel.


I use BluTac blobs as handles when sanding the smaller parts such as the instrument panel you can see here.


The instrument panel is nice and thin now, and ready to be pained in pre-shade dark grey.



Here are some cockpit images of F6 XR773 before it went off to South Africa and its new home at Thunder City







Now that's what I call busy! Note the overall light grey colour and set colours.

Three more moving aft - including the martin baker Mk 4B seat