Sorry for the late response here.
Wow, so, really enjoyed the process in the end, despite my perceived concerns with the poll system. Seems the Chonky ol' Lightning did way better than I ever expected, in spite of the many great entries here. Congrats to all, and thank you especially to the people who provided extensive feedback, as I feel this covered a much needed gap, and on the whole improved the challenge for all.
Looking back at it, I would do some things differently, such as the wings; I feel they can be better represented in the front, and side view especially. I would also like to sort out once and for all my colour palette. I was using a perfectly linear colour palette, with 9 shades!
; Granted, 3 of them make up 90% of the drawing, highlight, base, and shade, with the rest for varying degrees of panel lines and edges ect. Though I would very much like to rely on less shades, and if possible, maintain a linear gradient between colours, as I do love how the colouring turned out in the end. I could ramble about this for some time, so I shall digress.
I also forgot to mention Blackbuck in the main post, for his broad contributions of very obscure references, he was an invaluable help to my conceptual efforts; Thank you sir! I am in envy of your extensive collection of books
. With some of the data also provided by Blackbuck, I was able to do a mixture of extrapolation and calculation for the various specifications listed on the main post; Some of the more specific data sets, such as fuel capacity, saved me a great deal of time in research, as I was in the initial stages of modelling the fuel tanks in 3D to obtain volume at the time! Which coincidentally, was also how I obtained a rough volume for the bullet RADAR house.
Other data sets, such as those for the RB.106, which as far as I know do not exist, were simulated roughly; While others were estimated and not included in the end, such as rate of turn extrapolated from the standard Lightnings coefficient of lift. I shall leave a link here for those interested, the graph shows minimum radius of turn capability vs. speed and altitude, upto rated G load +9 (R2) and infinite G load (R1):
https://i.imgur.com/1Pp3cwY.png. As one can see, it's a very manoeuvrable aircraft, and paraphrasing an ex-Lightning pilot; "I think it would've made an excellent dogfighter."
Okay, rambling over
. New year is almost here, so happy new year all!