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So long Miss Velma... and well hello there Contrary Mary! What a stunner, exciting to see a 78th FG painted pony back at Duxford.

Dont have any old ones but here is the bulk of present kits, Phantoms fury SE5a curtis tomahawk spitfire V trop gladiator swordfish hurricanes mosqueto spitfires sea fury spitfire Me109s harriers F5s harriers tornado typhoon A-10 I have some helicopters and some 1/72 upstairs as well

Nice one Chris, they bring back some memory's, seem to remember you getting your mum to take you over to Modelworld after school to get yet another one. By the time i got home from work it was built painted, decals applied and had already been on numerous sorties

As I descended over Dungeness late this morning, returning from our holiday in Menorca I looked out at the familiar shape of Kent from 14,000 ft with two distinct thoughts... The first and most obvious, is of our virtual dogfights in these very skies during CloD evenings, this quickly progressed to imagining it for real all those years ago accompanied by William Walton's 'Battle in the Air'. Enter the inevitable recollections of the Battle of Britain movie and my earliest memories of play dogfighting with my Airfix kits and my second thought was an overwhelming urge to go up in the loft as soon as I got home, un-box my childhood models, dust them down and have a little sentimental play. I thought perhaps we could put a thread together documenting the plastic kits of our childhood, if any of you have pictures to share too. Here are the majority of mine, all 1/72 scale from the 90s, apologies in advance to the general quality of the build, paint finish, markings etc... I was young and nowhere near the perfectionist and purist I am today! As PapaBear will recall, I was a tad impatient when it came to finishing model kits, inasmuch as using a heat gun to dry the paint as quickly as possible so I could apply the decals, or in some cases painting after applying the decals...? Cockpits and internal details? Adding undercarriage? All seemed like a waste of time to a whippersnapper BluBear. Airfix Spitfire I, Vb, IX and XVI Airfix Defiant, Typhoon and Hurricane II/XII Airfix Stuka, 109E and G6 I think Airfix 190A8, D9 and A6M2 Airfix RAF twins, Mosquito FBVI and Blenheim IV Little friends, Airfix P-51B, D and P-38F Memories of Great Warbirds air display at West Malling probably prompted the need for this Airfix B-17G and Matchbox B-25, the latter of which is presented unpainted in the colour plastic as supplied (epitome of lazy!). I did jets too (sorry FT). Airfix Jaguar, Hawk, F5, F-16, F-15 and F-18, most of which have seen better days after hanging from and falling off the ceiling many times... The Hawk in fact started life respectably finished by PapaBear in Red Arrows livery, but for some reason I decided to camo over it... Also a rather nice Desert Storm Tornado GR1 from I believe an Italeri kit, completed when I was a little older with a little more patience (look Pa, I painted the pilot and everything!) - along with an Airfix Harrier GR3 That's most of mine, I have a Vulcan and Ju-88 somewhere too... Show us yours ?

Sad to admit, but models from my childhood came to inglorious end as targets to a new 22 caliber rifle. From age 10 to 18 I must have built 100s..no professional work like what y'all do, but they got better over time. Stacked on a 4ft wide, 8ft high, 2ft deep, 6 shelf metal monster. As I approached my time to leave home and go in the Air Force, my mom said to "move them out". Well a friend and I decided to take my models (even a quite nice floating, working, 24" long model of my dad's fishing boat) and his new rifle to a deserted beach (this was the early 60s in rural Texas) and "blow them up". Well 20 boxes of 50 each 22 long rifle ammo, we had a pile of plastic and a sunk boat(we cleaned up our mess). That was the end of my model building era?! My friend later on ended up in the Army in a rifle squad and credits coming home from 2 tours in Vietnam (to a small degree) to that target practice at the beach. Oh, and he built models to the quality level of y'alls work when he came home.