I was intrigued by Fraxinus' post on his Victory V blog about the Britmodeller's Airfix starter set group build. http://fraxinus-victoryv.blogspot.com/2010/03/britmodeller-airfix-starter-set-fun.html
Whilst wandering around Hamley's this week I came across this Westland Whirlwind kit and immediately felt inspired to have a go, despite the fact that I haven't finished an aircraft construction kit for at least ten years (although I have started several!).
The Westland Whirlwind is a plane I had actually completely forgotten existed! It wasn't in front line service for very long (it was replaced by the Hawker Typhoon) but it has that great mid-Thirties twin engine look (like the De Havilland DH88 Comet racer).
The rules of this build mean you have to use the paints, glue and, worse still, the brushes from the set! The build runs from April 2nd to 1st May so let's hope I can get it done in time. At least I should have a bit of time over Easter!
It will have a wargames life eventually as I will be donating it to my son for his World War 2 "carpet wars" whch take up a large portion of our living room floor at any point in time!
Welcome to the 'fray' a level playing field... all those airbrush toting modellers brought down to a 10 year olds level ...it's fun and what it should be all about. the Whirlwind was a mighty fine design and its firepower concentrated in the nose awesome but it suffered with underpowered Rolls Royce Peregrine engines the Merlin being reserved for Spitfire & Hurricane production. equipped 2 squadrons I think..excellent choice & nice kit. Britmodeller is an excellent site & forum & I can recommend it to anyone with an interest building kits (planes/tanks/ships)largly from a british angle.I only joined by accidently seing this group build advertised on of all places facebook!
ReplyDeleteI actually flew a virtual Whirlwind recently courtesy of Combat Wings: Battle of Britain. I'm sure it isn't remotely a simulation of the real thing as the game is well on the arcade-ish end of the computer game scale, but it was enjoyable.
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