Echelon English Electric Lightning F.6 1:32 – step-by-step build guide

Feature Article with Geoff Coughlin

The background…

I have decided that 2026 is going to be a bit different for me – a space to get off the treadmill and review where I’m at as far as my build projects go…

First off, I am determined to build at least:

• One motorcycle kit (Tamiya Honda CB-750F – now completed in the Vehicles section of SMN)
• One car kit
• One ship model AND
• Complete my Echelon vac-form English Electric Lightning F.6 started just after I bought it from Frank Brown (the designer and manufacturer) back in 1992! What am I like? (This is next on the list as you can see)

And so this is my BIG project for 2026, in so many ways. I can’t believe it has taken so long to get my ar-e in gear and get on and finish what was, and is, a great kit with more on this below. It will take many weeks to complete and I can’t wait to get started! Finally, LOL!

(Photo: Trumpeter box art for their F.6 EE Lightning release)

There has only ever been one other offering in 1:32 of the incredible English Electric Lightning and that was from Trumpeter back in 2002 (I think) and what a huge missed opportunity and disappointment that kit was, and is, as it’s widely available as I type in February 2026. I built their F.3 release way back and you can also find that in Aircraft-Finished Now-Trumpeter. I made some significant corrections and additions to that kit but not all and that’s really bugged me ever since (such as the belly tank and rear end profiles; pathetic canopy that bears no resemblance to the real thing; spindly undercarriage look), missing ducts and scoops around the airframe etc etc).

There is hope on the horizon…

Scale Craft Studios is promoting an all-new-tool release of the Lightning F.6 in 1:32 in collaboration with Red Fox (Item 32001) and I for one will be building that as soon as it’s out. However, as much as I hope we will see it soon, it will be many months away – they are promising an all-new-tool 1:48 EE Lightning first and that too will be built as soon as it’s available.

The Echelon English Electric Lightning F.6

The Echelon Lightning kits are excellent in terms of accuracy and look very good when completed well. They were painstakingly created by Frank Brown, Mike Reynolds, Richard Caruana and others at the time and if you can get one and have some experience with the medium – vac-forms, have a go! Who am I to talk!!!?

(Photo: I thought you might like to see the personal letter sent by Frank Brown when I purchased the kit all those years ago – it has a run down of the contents and features highlighted by the kit’s creator)

Not only was the Lightning available in 1:32 from Echelon, the two-seat Hawker Hunter T.7 was too and I have that also somewhere. We await Revell’s T.7/8 in 1:32 due towards the end of this year.

The Echelon kit as you can see is a true multi-media product that mostly features white vac-formed styrene for the main airframe with white metal detailed parts for the cockpit, jet pipes and undercarriage. A few other additions are included and I will cover these during this build.

The main airframe parts have finely recessed panel line detail and this is very fine, benefiting from enhancing in some areas to help the eventual look of the model.

I suspect that many of you will never have built a vac-form kit before and although I have over the years, it’s been over 30 years since I last tackled one and so this will be a learning curve for us all :)

First off, I would urge you not to be put off by the fact that this is a vac-form kit – in other words, the main parts are moulded into a sheet, meaning you have to remove the parts and clean the edges up before assembling them (in fact, not all, mostly just those that have mating surfaces to other parts). There is a knack to this and although a bit messy, the end result will be worth it, I promise.

When you look at the sheet in the adjacent photo you’ll see that the Firestreaks come as vac-formed parts and I for one, would not waste time trying to get a good result with these parts – some outstanding resin and 3-D printed aftermarket parts are available now from Reskit and I’ll use them. The same goes for things like the ejection seat – below you can see a full run down on all the aftermarket items I am using with this build. The hobby is unrecognizable from the one we all enjoyed in 1992 and I’m sure you don’t need me to remind you of that (only if you are of a certain age of course – LOL).

Don’t forget too that there are some very interesting subjects available as vac-forms that are unlikely ever to be produced as injection-moulded kits, so they are worth a look at least. A word of caution though, some vac-formed kits are very basic, requiring a great deal of work that may be simply too far off your enjoyment scale, so it’s always worth taking a good look at any vac-form kit before you buy one.

As far as this Echelon Lightning F.6 is concerned though, I remember back in the day seeing several builds by the late Ted Taylor and he always said, follow Frank’s written instructions and it goes together really well. The fact that he finished at least four of these kits over just a few months speaks for itself.

This kit also comes with an incredible decal sheet that allows you to build just about every RAF squadron that flew the F.2A/F.6 form silver-painted to grey/green and the later grey painted Lightnings…

The sheet isn’t in too good a condition now and so I have chosen a new decal sheet from Xtradecal – more of this shortly.

Read on…