Bjorn

Am I right if I think that all parts for a French version is included in this release?

Thanks! And you have taken this one step beyond my corrections. This looks great to me! I am really looking forward to follow your build and see it finished! I hope to start painting mine next week.

In fact, I did nothing more than removing the seam between the clear part and the body. To my no-Vampire-expert-at-all eyes, correcting the shape of the glass was all that was needed.

"Minimal effort" is exactly what it was. What almost noone has mentioned in this thread is that fit is so excellent that apart from these rather simple corrections, this one has been one of the easiest builds I have had for long. Much easier than Airfix Vampire, for instance. I recently finished Kinetic's Mirage IIIR. A modern kit, correct in shapes, but with a fit so bad that compared to building that one without any correction at all, building AND correcting the major issues on the PR Vampire was a walk in the park.

Thanks! Not this year, I am afraid. But certainly in the AIM Gothenburg in September. I hope to see you there!

Nice choice of subject! Note that the nose is more appropriate for a Flogger J (although not fully correct for that one either), there are correction sets for this one: https://coldwarstudio.com/MiG-27 Flogger D nose correction set for the Trumpeter kit in 1/48 scale (Updated) product/ This also corrects another error, the lower part of the canopy should be horizontal, not leaning forward (no continous line from the windshield to the rear part of the canopy). Boxart is more correct regarding these two issues.

The final (I hope) result compared to the Airfix model: Note that the angle are slightly different on the models below, but I hope that it can give at least a clue how they compare to each other: End of sanding, time for painting!

I added new masks, this photo better shows the modified shape of the front window.

Windshield in place. For some reason, PR have decided to split this area into two parts, the glazing and the body. Other builds that I have seen have left a visible seam here that affects the impression of this area, making the area below the windows smaller than it actually is. Removing this was perhaps the most difficult moment during this build. The rear part of the canopy on the other hand, did fit brilliantly. Seeing my own pictures above, I was not fully satisfied with the wing leading edge close to the intakes, so I have done some more sanding here. But now it is ready for painting.

My original plan was not to bother about the wing leading edge. But since the other corrections were easier than expected, I decided to give it a try. Could the problem - at least to some extent - be solved through just sanding? This is hard to show with pictures, but I have tried to illustrate the shape by drawing a line with a pencil. Before: After: Next step was the windshield which has slightly wrong shape. So I cut the mask into a more correct shape: I added some putty, and after a little sanding, here is the result (mask is new): I will sand this a little more after glueing the windshield to the body, which will be the next, and probably also final, step in this correcting process.

Thanks! However, the effort I have put into this build is not as much as it perhaps might seem. What I have not mentioned is that fit is excellent, which means that the work required so far is not so much more than many other kits. The difference is that this time, some work (less than it might seem) is reqiured to improve the kit instead of improving a kit where fit is bad. So the total amount of work here is in fact far less than many other kits that I have built recently.

For those that are interested, I have started a build trying to correct some of the errors and comparing it to the Airfix kit:

This kit has been hugely debated in the Rumourmonger forum. Some claim it to be pretty good, others that there are so many errors that it hardly is better than the Hobbycrap release. So, how bad is it? And can it be corrected? My aim here is NOT to judge what is wrong or right, my knowledge about the Vampire is too poor for that. Instead, I will compare it to the Airfix Vampire FB.5 and see if I can correct the most obvouis errors. (Since the Airfix one is LIDAR scanned, I suppose that it is correct in most aspects.) And, of course, being from Sweden, I am not neutral (as you might know, we used to be, but not anymore having joined NATO recently...), and I am also at least Facebook friend to the owner of Pilot Replicas. That said, I also have spotted obvious mistakes with this one. So this one is NOT sponsored, I am just curious if the errors are correctable. No sprue shots this time, just the box to show that I will build the Swedish AF release. The two most debated parts are the wings and the trailing edge fillet area. I started to compare those parts to my Airfix model. First the wing: The outer wing is quite different from the Airfix release. Not just the too-rounded wingtip, it is to wide and - as I think noone has pointed out yet - the ailerons are too large. After comparing the wings, I marked what should be removed. Luckily, this correction would make the aileron to be correct! Next step was to compare the trailing edge filler. Here the difference is quite huge: My first thought was that this would be difficult to correct. However, the plastic is very thick here, so i thought I would give it a try. So I marked the area that should be removed: After some carving I was happy to see that the plastic actually was thick enough: Having removed the marked parts from the wings as well, I started sanding and dry-fitting, comparing it to the Airfix model: Another debated area is the wing leading edge. Two pictures showing the shape if the inside of the wing, and comparing it to the Airfix model: The wing is thicker, and the leading edge too rounded. However, this is (at least to me) not as obvoius as the fillet and the outer wing shape. And regarding how difficult this would be to correct, I decided not to bother, apart from a little sanding on the front parts of the wings. Next step was to finish the cockpit and instrument panel. Since this project focuses on the exterior, I decided to build this part OOB. Details are good enough for me this time. After that, the main parts were glued together. I sanded the trailing edge sharper, both the OOB areas and at the removed areas. Wingtips are still to be sanded a bit more, and the fillet will get a final touch: Since a lot of sanding was done on the wings, I decided to sand down the rivets. Both since I do not recall any visible rivets on the real Vampires that I have seen, and since I am a little too lazy to restore them all. Besides that, it will look better parked beside the non-riveted Airfix FB.5. The instructions recommend 10 g noseweight, but having built too many tail-sitting Vampires, I added another 10 g. Wings and tail booms dit fit perfectly, the air intakes demanded a little sanding, probably due to all my sanding on the wings. And here we are now. Still, the rear part of the body between the wing and the exhaust is a little shorter than the Airfix kit, but not as much as it looks (I have measured them), and to me this is close enough. Next step is more sanding, priming, and - most likely - more sanding. Stay tuned for updates.

I discovered that while editing my post above, the first lines disappeared. So those of you that have seen it without them, might be interested in reading my introduction.

I Actually, I don't know why I try to contribute here... Although having built plenty of Vampire one-seaters, I am no Vampire Trainer expert at all, but well... Let's dive into it, so here we go! At least to me, Pilot Replica have captured the shape of the nose pretty well. Comparing the picture above with the sprue-shot below, at least I cannot spot any major difference. Maybe a little too flat. While Classic Airframe nose look a little too bully. Maybe none of them is spot on, but to my eyes the PR nose is more close to the original than CA. However, I just recieved the kit, and one note is that whether the windshield and canopy area (and the area just below the cockpit) is correct or not is hard to judge until the transparent parts are glued to the body. The division between parts on the body parts and the transparent parts is quite different from the CA kit and Airfix 1/72 kit. To me the area below the cockpit looks more correct on the PR kit than on the CA kit where it seems too large to me, however, none of them look absolutely perfect. If you draw a horizontal line from the bottom of this area to the nose, the third what-you-call-it-in-english-something-that-is-used-to-open-the-nose-hatch look to be more in a correct place (slightly below) than the CA kit where it - although it is hidden under the tape - seems to be almost in line with that line (gosh, how I want to be better in expressing myself in English right now!). But remember, my eyes are Swedish. So they probably have some kind of Pilot Replicas-are-great-kits filter. As pointed out by many in this thread, the front window has slightly wrong shape, but I think that is rather easy to correct. But after this I will go back to lurking mode in this debate, stop looking at pictures and start looking at plastic. So after Easter I will start a build thread in the WIP section where you all can judge for yourself whether this one is buildable or not, and if the obvious errors (wingtips, rear fuselage) are possible to correct in an acceptable way. Stay tuned, folks.

Exactly! Note that the olive green is more olive drab, almost brown. It is difficult to find the correct colours, since photos vary a lot. Besides that, when weathered, the blue turned almost turquoise and the olive drab sometimes turned a little more green. Early, fresh-painted examples (the olive drab was not that brown, but almost): Another photo of a fresh-painted example: As you can see, it is not easy to judge the exact colours from a photo: A weathered J 35J: Note that the nose was re-painted, so here you can spot the difference between fresh and weathered olive drab: Colours on a weathered example can be seen here: https://www.ipmsstockholm.se/home/saab-j-35f-draken/ Another well-weathered example can be found here: https://www.airliners.net/photo/Sweden-Air-Force/Saab-J35J-Draken/1177319

Yes, you nailed it there. The first ones were delivered in NMF, in fact the first ones of all versions, (except for the J 35J) were NMF. In the early sixties, a blue-greem camouflage was tested on a number of J 35A. Two were green with blue stripes, one was all-green and the fourth blue with green stripes. This camouflage was portrayed on the first release of the old Revell kit (although the exact colours are not correct): I built it once: More pictures: This was developed into the classic "Draken" camouflage pattern used on all versions except for the two-seater SK 35C that remained NMF: Finally, a number of the modified J 35J were painted two-tone grey in the 90s: The splinter camouflage mentioned above that was tested on one Draken in service and one scrapped one, was just a test for a camouflage that was meant to be used on Viggen. As far as i know, it was never intended to be used on Drakens too.

As Piotr points out, it flew many times in this camo, it was retained until the aircraft was taken out of service. Here are a few pictures of it in service: Here it is hanging from the roof in a shop in High Chaparral, a Swedish Wild West-city amusement park (!). I do not know if it is still on display, but it is owned by the Swedish Air Force museum, so it is surely preserved somewhere (if it is not till at High Chaparral). However, another individual, a scrapped one, was painted in a similar way but with another pattern. And that one never flew.

Well, if you are intrested in this, here is a suggestion: "Vi är tacksamma för att ni satsar både er fritid och era pengar på att ta fram plastmodeller av udda objekt som definitivt inte är några säkra investeringar. Men ni ska veta att ert arbete är uppskattat". Could be sung to any ABBA song, whilist eating meatballs and googling to find your nearest Volvo dealer.

The Caproni was a replica. Since then, the replica has been restored gradually, I think with a few remaining items from the real ones which, as you mentioned correctly, all were scrapped. The B 18 on the museum however, is a restored example that was found on the bottom of the Baltic Sea just outside Härnösand.

Wasn't that a B/S 16 Caproni Ca.313?

There should be two undercarriage sets in the box, if you mean the main landing gear. But maybe that was not the real question...?

The Xian H-6? According to Wikipedia, yes. First flight in 1952, but if you count it as a Tu-16, the construction is 72 years old and certainly one of the oldest of them all. We also have Aermacchi MB-326, first flight in 1957, 67 years old.

I totally agree! I had the same thoughts myself, being the same age as the MiG-23...

Has anyone mentioned the Aero L-29? It is still in service after 65 years.