1/48 Panda F-35

Gallery Article by Colin Whitehouse on Jan 4 2010

Silly Week 2010

 

The F-35 entered service 4 years before the first of the 2 Royal Navy Super Carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Charles IV were commissioned in 2020. The first of the new carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, took over her new air wing with number 800 and 801 squadrons with F-35s. Squadrons 899 and 892 being reserved for the Charles IV. To celebrate finally getting their carrier, a retro scheme was applied to the Squadron commanders aircraft number 100 for 801 squadron. This used the old extra dark sea grey over white scheme last seen on the harriers as they sailed for the Falklands. The jet is seen during catapult trials on the new Elizabeth and sports the old style E but for Elizabeth rather than the previous Eagle.

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The Panda kit is for one of the prototypes but was released quite early on, good to see the Chinese have good sources of data on western jets? The production version will be quite different so time to have some fun. The kit was very easy to build and includes the weapons bays and stores. A few mods were made to get the jet pipe pointing down as this option is not in the kit for some bizzare reason. The scheme was based on the supermarine scimitar with markings from and old Tamiya Harrier sheet and the spares bin.

Happy New Year to All ARC'ers.

Colin Whitehouse

Photos and text © by Colin Whitehouse