Hi Steve, thanks for your post.

>I am the complete opposite to yourself, as I come from a background of using nurbs packages.

My background is Autocad and Inventor which I use all day, everyday at work for past 15 and 5yrs. Both those programs would be totally unsuitable for a project like this or to model up a car. Both are great for architectural and mechanical type work though.
As I have a interest in aviation and creating digital aviation art I decided to search for the best tool for the job. At first I tried Rhino V2 and V3 but found getting a a good clean mesh from that program problematical. The problems are mostly bad mesh at the joints between the surfaces which creates shading errors when rendering the model. I hoped V4 would address this area but they have done little to no work in this area and may tackle it in V5. I then decided to learn poly modelling and found that much more suited to creating a nice smooth seamless mesh that renders beautifully from all angles. It also has the added benefit of being able to continually tweak the model until I am satisfied it looks pretty close to the original. This of course is all done by eye using photo reference as I do not have the original construction drawings of the aircraft, just some blueprints aimed at scale modellers to correct their models.

I will be most interested to see your attempt at the model and I appreciate you taking the time to have a go.