ChrisL

Thanks for the link, that article has quite a bit more information than the ones I'd previously seen. It's good to hear that from you. Thanks for your help on my original thread, and for the decals.

Thanks again! :-) Good luck with your build, HP42! I have become a real fan of the EDSG upper, white or sky lower FAA aircraft, the Sea Fury has become probably my favourite piston engined fighter and the Sea Hawk that evolved from it is a beautiful little jet.

Thanks everyone.

Finally completed...

A few of you may dimly recall this thread, about the Royal Navy Historic Flight's Sea Fury T.20. Not quite two years later I have finally finished my attempt at a 1/72 model of the same, made with minor adaptions from the PM T.20 kit: It's more an, umm, homage to VX281 than a real scale replica, and not just because of the various inadequacies that I gather are attributed to the PM kit. In particular I couldn't get correct decals for the white lettering on the sides of the fuselage and the tail and the exhaust pipes I added are too few in number and too large, but they're something that has always caught my eye on Sea Furies so I wanted something there. The PM kit was of a plane with a fixed tail wheel so I scratch built a well for it. I also had a go representing VX281's non-standard wheel hubs and I raised the cockpit floor by 4mm so the seats are slightly visible through the cockpit canopies. I added or modified some of the more obvious panel lines. This kit also saw my first proper attempts to add a bit of weathering. Not much as VX281 is kept in good condition but there are noticeable exhaust stains in several pictures and I also used washes in the wheel wells to try and disguise how shallow they are. Paints used were mostly Humbrol, with Xtracolor providing the Sky and Alclad the metallics. Decals were a wide mix, some from Xtradecal, some from Ventura, some from ModelDecal (the only ones I could find who did the squared-off underwing serial numbers, and they were on a sheet of interwar serial numbers!) and some from the decal stash of this forum's Miggers - thanks!. It is unfortunate timing that I've finally finished this kit not long after the real VX281's unfortunate crash landing.

I made one as a kid, it was a Christmas present I think and must have been a fairly new kit at the time. From that point on the Victor was "my" V bomber - my dad was welcome to the Vulcan. :-) I have one of the Revell boxings in my spare room just now and I've slowly been filling the box with aftermarket bits - the Aviation Workshop bomber conversion, the Flightpath details set, some weighted wheels and decals. It's waiting for that mythical day when I reckon my skills are good enough to do a good job of it. I would however be delighted if Airfix rendered the whole thing moot by bringing out a well engineered, modern tooling which just fell together!

Revell do a set of 1/72 NATO pilots: http://www.revell.com/germany/figures/80-2402.html The set is split approximately 50-50 between seated and standing pilots. More generally though I'd prefer it if more kits came with pilots. I often prefer to depict an aircraft in flight rather than on the ground. Airfix should be commended for generally including a pilot in with their kits, though there have been some exceptions.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I'm still very much in a stage where every kit I work on is chock full of learning experiences. Even beyond the main nightmare of the varnish, this kit also saw my first attempts at: Using bare metal foil to mask a canopy. As mentioned this caused me to learn how to remove sticky residue from a canopy without eating into a coat of Future. Using Alclad primers rather than a Halfords rattle can. From this I learnt that it's quite easy to flood surface detail if you're using one of the primers with micro filler and aren't paying enough attention. Using Alclad metallics. This, remarkably, seemed to go reasonably well, though I wasn't going for any of the really shiny finishes. Using Humbrol Decalfix rather than Micro Sol/Set. Airbrushing acrylic paint rather than enamels. I did actually do this a while back with my original airbrush but this is the first time I managed to do it without making a completely hopeless mess. While learning is nice, I am looking forward to the day when I have a finished model in front of me and can think to myself "that was a nice, simple build"!

That looks great, the sense of movement is brilliant. In their haste to abandon ship the flight crew forgot to turn the engines off...

Yeah, umm, weathering. It was all part of a cunning plan, obviously. Thanks go to Hockeyboy for the spare decals, Tony for the offer of the same and Rob for the hints about how to minimise the varnish problems.

Be careful what you wish for! OK, I've taken about as much of a beating from it as I can take so I guess this is it finished:

I would expect that the Vulcan to the Sky web site gives Vulcan to the Sky's take on the issue, which I would not immediately take as the objective truth of the matter, much as I would not take anything RIAT had to say about it as gospel either. It does however seem undignified to me when one side of a dispute like this publicly tries to paint the other side as the unambiguous bad guys. It's a pity that I won't see the Vulcan at RIAT but I've seen it flying at almost every airshow I've been to so I'm not too shook up by it. There's things I've never seen before (or haven't seen for some time) at RIAT this year so hopefully I'll still enjoy it.

I didn't try lighter fluid - I have a can of WD40 at home, but don't have any lighter fluid.

WD40 worked for me and my Blackbird.

Indeed, I have definitely used ammonia to remove Future/Klear from kits before.

Maskol and I think latex based masking fluids in general use ammonia as a thinner. Ammonia definitely eats into Future/Klear so that's why Maskol (and Winsor and Newtons masking fluid and others I expect) messes up Kleared parts. I will keep an eye out for Copydex. Apparently while it is latex based it uses water where others use ammonia, so it should play well with Future/Klear. I've seen a lot of build reviews which talk about dipping canopies in Future/Klear, so that's what I've generally done too. I may change to only applying it to the inside of the canopy until the clear-coat/decalling stage in future.

Thanks for the warnings! I will try WD40 and see how I get on. If that doesn't work I'll look into Goo Gone.

I was wondering something similar, except I was masking with bare metal foil and the canopy had been dipped in Future. I'll try WD40 but will other solvents, such as IPA attack the Future? I know that ammonia does.

A week or two ago I received a spare decal sheet, so many thanks to Hockeyboy for that (and to Tony for offering what was sadly a sheet on the wrong side of the Atlantic). The missing decal got applied at the start of last week and yesterday I finally hit upon the magical trinity of dry and warm weather on a day I could actually do some modelling... ... The end result is that Rob's advice of applying a couple more thin coats of the varnish has done a lot to clear up the fogging. It's not gone and my egg plane is always going to look like a very well worn Blackbird but at least under most lights it generally looks black! So my next question: As I mentioned earlier, the bare metal foil I used to mask the canopy has been on too long. I've managed to pick it off but it's left a lot of sticky residue behind. Before I reach for various chemicals to try and remove the residue, are there any I should avoid to prevent damage to the kit's finish? The canopy was dipped in Future before assembly and the canopy framing will be covered by the Humbrol rattlecan varnish. I know that ammonia will eat at Future but is IPA OK to use? Once I've cleaned up the canopy I've also got to touch up the exhausts. These were masked but got a bit scratched during the main painting and varnishing process. I did dry fit the undercarriage this evening so for now it is sitting on its own wheels and combined with its exposed (if murky) canopy it is beginning to look like the end is in sight!

It's also my understanding of the Revell kit's instructions that you paint the thing silver then apply transparent orange over it, rather than mixing the two together.

Quick update. The olive oil removed the effect but left the model oily and glossy. I managed to remove enough of the oil to mostly matt it back down but removing it entirely caused the fogging to return, so it hadn't done anything permanent to the surface of the varnish. This does imply that the effect is on the surface of the varnish though, offering hope that another treatment (e.g. Rob's) will work. Anyway, I don't think that a greasy final model is really an answer, especially considering that a black model will gather dust easily enough that it doesn't need an oil coat helping it! With the oil removed I have just sprayed over the area that got coated in Klear. This was under one wing and there aren't many decals on the underside so this wasn't hard to mask up and sort out. I'll now leave it to dry for several days. A Britmodeller has offered me their spare Blackbird egg plane decal sheet - thanks Tony! This will enable me to re-apply the one decal that never made it onto my kit (it was far more interested in sticking itself to a finger), and generally re-apply decals if I can't recover the upper surface finish. After that's gone on I'll start waiting for a warm, dry day and try Rob's suggestion of re-applying the same varnish, after shaking the can for longer than before.

Aw, shucks. Thanks all!

Thanks for the compliments, they are particularly nice to hear people who aren't obliged to provide such due to familial bonds. My dad is indeed very chuffed with it, though I think he's also doing his best to keep quiet about his despair about how much space it takes while I'm in earshot!

Given the woes I've documented in my first ever work in progress thread, I feel compelled to demonstrate that occasionally I do complete some kits and they can even end up appearing adequate. So here's the Vulcan I did for my dad a few years ago. I originally bought this kit for my dad in the late 80s, back when Airfix kits came in boxes with a built model sitting on blueprints on the lid. When I was little my dad had made several model kits and they'd looked far better than my own childish attempts at modelling had achieved. I knew that the Vulcan was his favourite aircraft so I hoped that getting him the kit would get him modelling again. Sadly life (not least being a parent) prevented my dad from ever building the kit so it languished in my parents' loft until I came back to modelling as an adult a few years ago. I offered to build the kit for my dad in return for it taking up display space in their house rather than my flat. I originally indended to have the Vulcan ready for my dad's 70th birthday in March 2011, but in the end my slow pace of work and the amount of work involved (particularly with the intakes and the tail join) meant I only just got it to him in time for Christmas that year. He was still very happy with it though - obviously he hadn't been looking on this site to see what a properly skilful modeller may have achieved! Anyway, as described this is a 1980s-vintage boxing of the Airfix Vulcan, with decals taken from the box. They generally went on fairly well, except for one hook stencil that got lost and some cracking of the port roundel and tail flash, so not bad for decals over 20 years old. The Flightpath detail set was purchased mainly for the tail pipes, though a few of its PE details (such as the canopy framing) were used too. My dad wanted the model displayed in flight so a lot of the PE fret, including the undercarriage detail and the air brakes was not required. The main colours came from Humbrol rattlecans, with detail painting largely being done with Humbrol enamels. Unfortunately the colour balance of these photos seems a bit off, leaving the green parts of the camouflage in particular looking a bit more blue than they are in real life: There's also a few work in progress photos on flickr, showing the tailpipes being added and the camo pattern being masked.

Oops, too late... I live in Scotland! I will store that away in case of future errors, particularly the warnings about temperature and humidity. I have however had a go with macregor's olive oil recommendation... I must admit I'm surprised but this seems to be showing some promising signs! As you predicted though the bit onto which I experimentally sprayed Klear wasn't responding to treatment so there I've had to resort to ammonia and sanding. Steve - thank you for your motivational words. The recently completed bare metal A-12 in the Ready for Inspection forum is quite an inspiration but I also like the sound of an RAF Blackbird. Even if this one is recovered those sound like very tempting ideas, which may be revisited if I see another one of these in a shop in the future. In response to Dean - can was maybe 1/2 to 2/3 used. I shook it for about a minute I think but it wasn't particularly warm when I sprayed it. I probably sprayed it too close though and presumably applied too thick a coat at once. Frustrating but hopefully a valuable learning experience.