Last Christmas, my daughter, sorry Santa Claus, surprised me with a very nice Vickers Wellington Mk.Ic from Trumpeter in 1/72 scale.

The nicest thing about unpacking these presents is that you have to unpack twice, first the gift paper and secondly the box to get to the plastic. The plastic looks very nice, pretty detailed although the geodetic structure is a bit too visible. Maybe it can be toned down with polishing.

Transparant parts and decals do look promising as well.

Schemes to choose from are the No.149 squadron or the No.301 Polish squadron. My daughter has always the tendency to seek something in the codings of my models which refer to something in Formula 1. For this reason I will build the No.301 squadron aircraft, GRoH (where GR refers to George Russell). Provided scheme layout is nicely colored and the back/white instructions are very clear.

It will be the first 1/72 scale model since I returned to this hobby, so let's see if my eyes and coordination is still sufficient to get this done. Help to make this build look perfect is done with the aid of some aftermarket sets, an PE set from Eduard and a masking set from Montex.

It might be a longer build because of the smaller than my known 1/48 parts, and the number of parts is clearly more than a 1/48 single engine aircraft.

John, @johnb
This looks like a wonderful gift you received. I have been tempted to get one of these but in 1/48 scale. My eyes are not what they once were, so I quit building 1/72 anymore. I will definitely be looking for updates. Thanks !

@eb801, @lgardner, @fiveten, some hints were indeed given to my daughter. Nevertheless it was great that she wanted to suprise me with this gift. Seems like I'm not a bad dad after all 😉

Just had a better look at the PE set from Eduard. Three nicely detailed frames with a lot of PE parts of which one contains pre-painted parts for the instrumentation. Also the provided instructions are nicely detailed.

First steps made on this iconic bomber from the RAF at the beginning of WWII.

It has been a long time that I worked on a 1/72 scale aircraft.

The parts seem much smaller than I remembered when I built this scale while I was a kid.

Started with the pilot seat which gets a replacement of PE parts.

The part below the plastic seat had to be removed and used for the PE seat according the instructions.

A sharp blade was an absolute requirement.

Although small, the PE parts from Eduard were quite easy to bend into the correct shape.

Have fun with this.

Looking at your photos and then looking in my Airfix Wellington kit, I think Airfix wins the battle of the surface detail (much more restrained). I'm awaiting some items from Eduard for detail. I never thought I would ever see the Wellington II (Merlin-powered) done as an injection kit.

No! Don't try anything - you'll wreck it! It's just one of those things you have to put up with and your next Wellington will be in a nice red box. 🙂

Great job on that seat, my friend @johnb!

@tcinla, @eb801, @fiveten, @airbum, thanks a lot for the feedback. Although I'm a bit in doubt what to do. Leaving it as is, is ofcourse the most safe approach, but the overdone surface detail on the wings and fuselage might be too distractive once the aircraft is finished. I think I will do some trials and see if I can find a good way to reduce those details.

In the meantime I finished the pilot'sseat. Since the seat is balc painted leather, I tried to give it a bit of worn effect by adding some brown streaks which should represent the original leather color. Armrests were metal so some metal scratches are added as well.