As I mentioned above, this model was to be built as an in-flight model to be refuelling from a VC-10, therefore early on in the construction I started to look at the gear doors and ways of filling the small recessed for the gear bays. The nose bay was filled by inserting a thick sheet of plastic and adding filler to blend this in, whereas the main gears bays were a more complex shape and therefore more difficult to fill. I trimmed off the struts and supports from the provided white metal undercarriage doors and found these fitted quite nicely, so these were glues in place with CA and plenty of filler applied to get them blended in with the wing underside. At this stage I was still unsure which version to build however I added the nose cone with CA glue as this is common to all variants.
The next area that got my attention were the intakes, and after dry fitting the intake "bottoms" (see picture above) I realised the intakes simply were too short and when view from front on you could easily see the end of the intake. The only solution I could see to this was get out a motor tool and grind away at the resin to make the intakes longer and taper into a point so their termination was less visible. The image below shows the result of this work on one side of the aircraft.
Also you can see the intake bottoms were filled with Miliput and then ground out to make the intake symmetrical. You can also see in this image that I have added the metal wingtip pods and MAD boom (I had decided on the MR.2 at this point!), however adding the wingtip pods was a mistake as they broke off several times during the build. In retrospect and having finished the kit, it would have been more logical for these items to have been cast in resin, as its easier to shape and also tends to bond better with other resin than a metal to resin join. Anyhow, these pods were attached and filler applied to the join. I then went back to working on the intake and main gear wells, and plenty of filler was required here to blend everything together.
The effort spent on this area was immense and I think I applied about 10 or so layers of filler before I was happy and possibly two more after the primer coat had revealed a few "issues". The next area of interest was the intakes, and these are provided in white metal castings that are a little rough. I figured the best way to clean them up was the chuck them in a drill and turn them slowly while I worked on them with a file and emery paper. The intakes turned out much nicer than I had expected and once done I drilled out the four holes to accept the intakes and popped them in, figuring I would paint them afterwards by hand.
After showing a friend in the RAF who worked with Nimrods this work he essentially said "all very nice, but they don't look like that". So I dug up some pictures and took some of my own at the 2003 Waddington Air Show and indeed, he was correct! I left the exhausts as they were until painting had been completed and then pulled them out with pliers to be replaced with home made units. At this stage I was close to painting the aircraft but still had some metal fixtures to attach, namely the IFR probe and the finlets on the horizontal tail surfaces. I also had to fit the resin tail pieces. The tail was added first and I drilled out a hole in the fuselage and the tail piece to accept a strengthening pin.
The metal finlets and IFR probe already had small locating pins cast with them, so again small holes were drilled for these in the appropriate locations. The IFR probe once attached need two small supports adding just above the cockpit. These were added with small brass rod as seen below:
With all the smaller parts attached I was now ready for primer. I applied several coats then ended up sanding through them a few times to removed both blemishes in my filling/sanding and also previously unseen marks from the moulding process.
I also wished to make a slight enhancement on the kits searchlight mounted in the aircraft's right wing pod. The kit has this moulded in resin along with the rest of the wing and fuselage, however in reality it is a clear dome housing a large and powerful light. To add this I used a fine saw to remove the resin forward section of the pod. I then obtained a large square chunk of acrylic by sawing up a clear novelty peg found in a Christmas cracker! I chucked this in a drill, and rotated it while sanding and filing. Once I go the approximate shape correct I used CA glue to attach this to the wing pod. I then filled the gap with more CA and polished the clear plastic to a high shine again. I then masked the clear portion for the painting process. The result can be seen below:
At this stage the model was ready for painting, and I decided to paint the underside first with Light Aircraft Grey from Xtracolor. This was airbrushed on with my Badger 100. 
After this had dried, I masked off the underside with Tamiya tape, and sprayed the topside with Xtracolor Hemp. However this looked way too dark, especially for this scale so I lightened the mix with Xtracolor white and put down a second coat. This was a great improvement in my opinion. Here is the aircraft shortly after the second coat:
The underside demarcation lines are hard edged in real life and came out as below:
The model was given two coats of Future/Klear, applied with a wide, soft and expensive artist's brush. I got this from a craft store and while expensive I think its worth the cost for this particular application. After the Klear had dried, I was ready to apply the decals. I used three sheets for this:
- Welsh Models Sheet No.6 for the D.H comet airliner. From this sheet I was using the cockpit and side window decals only.
- Xtradecal X041-72 RAF D Type Roundels and Low Viz Roundels and Fin Flashes.
- Modeldecal 48A British Post War White Letters and Numerals.
As I mentioned in the Preview section, the seller now states this kit has decals on his eBay auctions; however these were not available at the time of my build. I selected a subject (XV260) and cut the relavant numerals and letters for the serials. These were applied over 4 decal sessions. I then applied the cockpit windows and low-viz roundels. After letting these dry, I added the cabin windows. These were originally for the Comet on which the Nimrod is based, however the window arrangement was very different with the early airliner having many more windows that the Nimrod. I therefore had to mark out a straight line on the Nimrod fuselage with Tamiya tape to act as a reference for adding the individual windows I had cut out from the Welsh Models sheet. Finally, the Nimrod features three observation windows, which are round and bubble like unlike the flush and oval shaped "regular" windows. I had no decals for these so decided to paint them on. I used Xtracolor Gunship Grey as this was a close match to the colour of the decal windows I had already applied. I drilled an appropriate sized hole in a piece of plasticard and used this as a mask to spray the windows. 
The model was close to finishing at this point, however building was interrupted by a 6 month trip abroad. On my return I was eager to finish a kit, so the Nimrod was on the bench again. A coat of Future/Klear was used to seal in the decals before the weathering process could start. Weathering consisted of a thin enamel wash of very dark grey, however I applied this with a brush as there was little point in an overall wash due to the limited amount of panel lines. This was complimented by adding some streaking on the skin of the aircraft using artists oils in both dark grey and a brown colour. Finally all was sealed in with another coat of Future/Klear and finally a coat of Humbrol matt varnish. To finish off I added all of the aerials on top of the fuselage from plastic card for the blade aerials, card and rod for the "towel rack" aerial and stretched sprue for the wire aerials. I still have to add the three aerials on the under fuselage, however not until the aircraft is mounted on its base. Here are images of the finished kit:
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