Xtrakit vampire

[Paul A H]

If your going to start comparing every kit to plans and photo's you first have to find photo's that

show what you want and reliable plan's.

"Reliable" plans be the hard bit as most of those floating about for a great many aeroplanes are not,

as noted by most independent observers, reliable at all. the recent threads about Trumpies Whirlwind being a good example.

The review I did of the Cyberhobby abomination...... sorry thing that vaguely resembled a Sea Venom, has been noted by some as

an example of the so called "perfect" review. I did compare it to reliable plans, cross referenced with photo's to point out the many errors and

checked back with references to the manuals and airframe. Everything the "must be perfect" builder could have wished for.

And guess what? it was a total pain in the bum to write, took half of forever to do and was probably utterly worthless to anyone not half as rabid

about the aircraft as I am (though I have been told I'm responsible for the woeful sales of it in Oz)

I agree that reviewers should give an honest appraisal of a kit without fear nor favour but to demand that every review be a rivet counters delight is

pointless, uneconomical (in the case of printed publications) and once again over inflates the idea of the "perfect builder"

Perfect builders, rivet counters JMN's or whatever name we have this week are a very very small percentage of this hobby and not a lot of the great unwashed give a fat rats what we think.

Well said Danni. On this site we try to ensure our reviews are honest, but we don't always have access to plans (which might be terrible anyway) or have the level of in-depth knowledge that some of the members if this site have. It's also worth remembering that most sites with a large membership like BM will have members like Danni that have an encyclopaedic knowledge of certain types. The result is that there will always be some members that know more about a given type than the reviewer, who often has to handle a huge range of subjects and scales.

Please don't think for one minute that we believe that our reviews are the last word on a given kit. That's one of the reasons why we leave them open for you all to comment on (even if it is to say something unkind about us! )

[pivokrevnik]

Back to the topic. Here I am now. I cut out the splitters and widened the intake as much as possible. I used a round needle file to make the intake wall adhering to the fuselage more curved.

And here I would like to get. This is just quickly drawn in Paint.net. I will further adjust the outward end with a bit of some putty, drill a new proper pitot tube hole (?) and glue in new splitters from evergreen. Btw also please note the layer of putty on the wing root, where it meets the fuselage. Real thing is almost seamless, here it forms a prominent step. I will lose all the nice riveting, but a realistic shape is more important to me.

compared to the real thing...

...this starts to look passable I think.

(I reversed the photo to loosely match the angle of photos above)

Lastly, here I found a nice photo of Vampire gun panels.

Similar to the intakes, shape is quite different and again it's a mystery, how MPM came up with it..

I will deal with it later, compared to the intakes it shouldn't be that hard. I will drill them out (I already started on one of them) and try to reshape the holes with milliput.

[NAVY870]

I have an ex RAAF FB.31 in my care at the museum, if the readership is interested I will

take to it with the DSLR next visit and put up comparisons between the aircraft, this kit and possibly

the Heller and Frog kits.

[cvrle]

That would be wonderful!

[Duncan B]

Are the CMR kits that nice? I'm probably only going to do one 1/72 Vampire/Venom, and CMR has the most options available, including the Sea Vampire.

I am no expert on DH Vampires but I have the CMR T11 (which is from an earlier generation of mouldings by CMR than the later single seaters and has a different approach to construction) and I also have the single seat Vampire and a two seat Venom which are both real gems of kits. How accurate they are I cannot say but as I am from the "if it looks like a.... then its good enough" school of model making but the CMR single seat Vampire and two seat Venoms look like great to me.

Astoundingly well detailed, and they nailed the differences between the variants.

My will stay in the box for a while longer, they are so nice I dont want to bollock them up.

I'm in the same position, I'll wait until I've got a few more simple resin kits under my belt before tackling the CMR Vampire and Venom.

Duncan B

[gingerbob]

... it could do with being 0.5mm taller by having a slightly more pronounced bulge at its apex just behind the windscreen.

I originally read this as "I could do with...", which I found rather puzzling!

Astoundingly well detailed, and they nailed the differences between the variants.

My will stay in the box for a while longer, they are so nice I dont want to bollock them up.

I've still got a Monogram Bearcat waiting on the "too nice to bugger up" shelf. Is 40 years long enough?

You know Danni, I think some of us (ok "I") would do well to build some of these "not good enough" kits, so that we're (I'm) up to speed on the skills, and worthy of the kits I actually imagine creating masterpieces with! (that's me ready for doing battle with some styrene.)

And Graham, hate to break it to you, but the Monogram Bearcat has a fatal flaw- the fin is halfway between the -1 and -2 heights, or something like that. Not quite 40 years ago- more like 30- I cut down the fin to backdate it to an XF8F-1, and was completely flummoxed because the fin now looked far too stubby! It wasn't until recent years that, thanks to the internet, I finally found out why! Recently I've been wrestling with 1/48 Bearcats, which are really no better off (and I've got a couple of Trumpeter 1/32 ones in the stash for when I want to really do it up).

Beyond that, it is the shape and accuracy that matter. Fit I can usually cope with myself, but it's nice to know if there might be a struggle. Given that very few kits are now of subjects that are not otherwise available, this becomes a matter this kit being better or not than the others on the market (or sitting on my shelf already). If the reviewer is unable or unwilling to include facts or comparisons that make this clear, then the review is of little use to me.

I'm of a similar mind (no surprise, eh Graham?) I should add, though, that sometimes I find myself wanting to get the various kits, partly to do some side-by-side comparing, and sometimes in order to do a bit of cross-pollination.

bob

bob

[StephenMG]

Back to the topic. Here I am now. I cut out the splitters and widened the intake as much as possible. I used a round needle file to make the intake wall adhering to the fuselage more curved.

pivokrevnik, that's excellent!

I don't know what all the fuss was about!

[StephenMG]

I am no expert on DH Vampires but I have the CMR T11 (which is from an earlier generation of mouldings by CMR than the later single seaters and has a different approach to construction) and I also have the single seat Vampire and a two seat Venom which are both real gems of kits. How accurate they are I cannot say but as I am from the "if it looks like a.... then its good enough" school of model making but the CMR single seat Vampire and two seat Venoms look like great to me.

Duncan, the CMR T.11 is not up to much at all IMO. The pod on a T.11 has some very subtle shapes which Airfix absolutely nailed with their kit, but CMR have got very wrong. The nose is the wrong shape, the canopy sits too high and is the wrong shape, the rear pod/engine cowling shape is too narrow and tapered. From what I've seen of the single seaters though, they look very much better.

[Duncan B]

Reading my post back through I see that I didn't really make it clear that I didn't rate the CMR Vampire T11 while really liking the later vampire kits from CMR. I also forgot to mention the CMR NF10 that I have too which is also one of the newer generation of kits from them.

Duncan B

[pivokrevnik]

Remodelled gun ports.

Kudos to Jakub Vilingr for the syringe tip.

[venomvixen]

The covers for the gun bay door locking clips need a good seeing to with the sanding stick

They sit flush with the surface on the prototype not sticking up like the kit has them.

[pivokrevnik]

well, all the details are overdone, but that's the fashion nowadays

[SeaVenom]

I've started building mine. My impressions at the moment are that the nose isn't quite the right shape (still much better than the Trumpeter disaster though) and it's maybe slightly too pointy and pinched in the centre. Also I don't know if it's me and I should have pushed the main body onto the lower body more but there's an annoying lip around where the nose fits on to the main body even though it's a panel line.

[Murph]

Any complaints about the lack of a tail pipe in the kit? Granted it's not very visible, and they include the engine exhaust face, but it seems odd.

Regards,

Murph

[Meatbox8]

I've still got a Monogram Bearcat waiting on the "too nice to bugger up" shelf. Is 40 years long enough?

Yes, I've got the Eduard 72nd DH2 in the same category. Only ten years in my case though. Must attempt rigging on something relatively simple first.

[Procopius]

Yes, I've got the Eduard 72nd DH2 in the same category. Only ten years in my case though. Must attempt rigging on something relatively simple first.

Same kit, same story!

[Meatbox8]

Same kit, same story!

Ha ha. I have got the Revell kit too to experiment on though. Poor thing.

[Work In Progress]

Ha ha. I have got the Revell kit too to experiment on though. Poor thing.

We are well off topic now but yes, that's the ideal solution. If you have never rigged any biplane in 1/72 of any description probably the easiest to start with is the Revell SE5a. It slams together easily enough and though a bit crude by modern standards makes a perfectly acceptable quick-and-direct project for some rigging practice, and the rigging itself is very straighforward. Do the Revell DH2 next for a stab at something more complex, and then you'll be ready for the Eduard kit.

[Jacarre]

On 12-04-2014 at 6:05 PM, StephenMG said:

Just done some comparing of my own. I have access to some good Vampire reference material (I am restoring a T.11 pod so have collected some useful stuff on Vampires in general). I also have some Vampire drawings from John Adams which are, as you'd expect from John, superb and very accurately drawn.

My observations are,

• MPM/Xtrakit fuselage length is just about right. Cockpit placement is spot on. Engine panels are right too. The Heller kit is too short.
• MPM/Xtrakit wings are OK (just) at the tips but are too long in chord at the roots. The trailing edge is fine, but there's a little too much angle on the leading edge making the chord at the root about 1 - 1.5mm too great. Span appears OK. Heller wings are spot on.
• MPM/Xtrakit tailplane is too long in chord by about 1mm. Again, Heller is spot on.
• MPM/Xtrakit intakes are a little on the small side as Andreas says.
• MPM/Xtrakit booms are about 1mm too short. Easily fixed with a plug at the wing/boom joint.

I don't personally think the issues with the MPM kit are too bad. They won't stop me building it in preference to the Heller kit anyway. Now, a fusion of the MPM fuselage with slightly lengthened booms and Airfix T.11 wings and tailplane would be excellent!

Mark

 

Sorry for bring of the tomb this old topic... But i want to know if Heller Vampire's flaw is fixable or not? How short is the fuselage? Where, in which section? Thanks a lot in advance.

 

Javier

[Jacarre]

I have some numbers measuring one of our examples here in Museo Nacional Aeronáutico in Santiago, Chile, and compared to Heller and Airfix kits:

 

 

Wing chord on the outer sides of the boom fairings:

Real Deal: 270 cm

1/72: 37.5 mm

Heller FB.5: 36 mm

Airfix T.11: 36.5

 

Wing chord at the wing tips:

Real deal: 99 cm

1/72: 13.75 mm

Heller FB.5: 13 mm

Airfix T.11: 13.8 mm

 

Horizontal tail surfaces chord:

Real deal: 120 cm
1/72: 16.67 mm

Heller FB.5: 16.5 mm
Airfix T.11 16 mm

 

Anyone has the measurement of wings, tail and intakes of the MPM/Xtrakit one?

 

Regards.,

Javier