danielwood5

That's a great photo, I don't think I've seen a picture of a 'grubby' white Vulcan yet! When you say the strengthening plate needs to be removed in front of the undercarriage bay, is that the arrowed part in the picture below? If so is it both of the 'rivetted' sections or just the slightly raised part?

Thank you, this is exactly the information I was after, really helpful. Can I ask a couple of follow up questions please? Is this part the X Band Jammer? If so is this the single emitter? And is part 15 the double emitter x band jammer? When you say use the "refuelling probe with no TFR (blend in the circular cap around the front)", is this part number 8 in the picture below with the join lines to the nose removed and blended in? For the early aerials, are they the swept ones in this picture, parts 19 - 23? I'm guessing they are as the two kit options use these parts and they're both 1960s schemes but then the Black Buck boxing uses the same parts which I thought was pretty much the end of the Vulcan's lifespan. My last question is whether I should remove the Skybolt hardpoints for XM603 too? Thanks for your advice on the decals and books too, I've ordered the two different 26 Decals sheets for this project and have Craig Bulman's book on the way too. I also ordered the "50 Years of Vulcan XH558" book, I'm hoping that will give me a bit more information and some period photos so I can make an accurate model of her as she would have appeared at some point in her career, although, it does look to me like most of the optional parts to build her are included in the Airfix box apart from the MMR fittings so I may possibly give it a go and build a model of the display version at some point.

Hi all, I'm looking to build three of the new 1/72 Airfix Vulcans (not the Black Buck one) and I want to make three different versions of it. My plan is to build three of them showcasing the different paint schemes (anti-flash white, camouflage upper and wraparound camouflage) along with the different armament options (Blue Steel missile, bombs and bomb bay closed up). So far so easy, however, I want to build three specific aircraft, all ones that I've seen and have a connection with. I want to build XM603, on display at the Avro Museum, XL318 on display at the RAF Museum London and XH558 as that's the only one I've ever seen fly. Is this combination of aircraft/paint schemes/armaments possible does anyone know? I've searched online and in books but I've been getting conflicting information and image search isn't helping as these are all preserved aircraft so finding period photos is proving difficult. I have the Kits World Warbirds Avro Vulcan B.2 Early to Late Schemes decal sheet for this project which should help. I also know that there are differences between airframes in different periods so if anyone could let me know if I need to be aware of any of these that would be great, please bear in mind though that I'm more of a model builder and don't have a huge amount of aircraft knowledge or vocabulary, I mean I can point out a Spitfire, Vulcan or whatever but don't know the differences and details between different marks or things like that. Thanks

I've got more work done on the Gripen but if I'm being honest this one has been a real mojo killer for me. The next step is to fit the completed nose section the lower wing and the previously built up rear fuselage. These parts went together OK and the fit is reasonably good with just a small gap at the port wing training edge; but rather big gaps on both sides where the leading edge joins the intakes on the fuselage; These shouldn't be too difficult to fill so I'm not too concerned about them. Once the three main assemblies were fixed together there's a small panel to add to the spine behind the cockpit, the fit on this was really bad. I've had to add a length of sprue inside the piece to spread the front out to the correct width and I used styrene strip shims to raise it's height as it sat too low. There's been quite a bit of sanding in this area too to try and get it blended in together but it's quite a complex shape so I a bit concerned I may have a lopsided profile I this area. It looks kind of OK now but I'll see where I'm at with it once some primer is on there. Before we're near the paint/clean up stage though I've got to get the upper wings fitted, if the rest of the fit is anything to go by this will probably involve more fettling followed by filling and scribing unfortunately.

I'm going to join in here with this rather nice KA Models F-14A. My understanding is that KA Models are primarily an aftermarket company and that this is essentially a rebox of the Fujimi kit from the 80s bundled together with KA's aftermarket additions. Here's a closer look at the extras included; Plain brass parts; Coloured etch, turned brass pitot and canopy masks; There's also two sets of new wheels with the kit that are a different style to the ones included on the Fujimi sprue. I'm guessing these are correct for the included decal schemes but I've got no idea why there's two identical wheel sprues included. Normally I'd assume it's a mistake but the back of the box makes it clear that there's two included so I'm not sure of their thinking there. They're really nicely moulded though so I'll put them in the spares box for use on one of the other Tomcat kits I've got from other manufacturers. The decals are marked KA Models so I'm guessing they're printed in-house. They look like they're fantastic quality, perfect register with good colour density and minimal carrier film. They look very much like Cartograf decals so I'm hoping they behave in the same way. The only slight concern I have is that the fin decals for the Gunfighter scheme look a bit 'odd'. I think it's just because the black isn't printed on them but the detail on the missile looks a bit lacking to me. There's no way of telling how they will look without putting them on the kit so that may be a bit of a risk though, I'll have a think about that before starting though. The instructions are a single A3 sheet and are frankly anxiety inducing looking at them, no nice clearly laid out step by step booklet here! Here's the decal guide showing the marking scheme I'm going to attempt, I think this scheme great with the black detailing. One thing I really like about the decal guide is that it doesn't just give you a number for the decal, it also shows an image of each stencil showing it's orientation. This is such a user friendly way of doing this and I can't believe more companies don't do the same thing. This is the very best part of the decals though, glow in the dark formation lights! Amazing! I'll probably make a start on this over the weekend I guess, I have to admit I'm really looking forward to this one. I've recently completed the new Academy Tomcat and thoroughly enjoyed it so I'm hoping this will be just as much fun.

More slow but steady progress with the Gripen. I've added belts to the seats and have now put the front section of the aircraft together. I put the intakes on before joining the two halves or adding the interior as this seemed the best way to avoid any damage due to the inevitable sanding and fettling involved in getting them in place. The fit of the intakes was actually pretty good and just needed some neatening of the seams for a good fit. There is an insert on the port intake where the refuelling probe is located, an insert is used here as the probe can be posed either open or closed. I've gone for closed but the insert for the closed panel is another poor fit so required some more filling, sanding and rescribing. Once the refuelling panel was looking OK I added the completed cockpit insert. Then I closed the two halves up. The fit here was again pretty good and required only minimal seam clean up. I'm pretty pleased with how the seats with their homemade belts came out. They may not be completely accurate but I think the overall look of the interior is perfectly acceptable for a closed canopy 1/72 model. I made an attempt at fixing the mirrored detail on the underside of the wing and have drilled and scribed new vents. There's a long thin piece of trunking with a vent on the end that is moulded on the wrong side of the piece (on the right hand side of the cut out for the rear fuselage in the photo below) that I attempted to recreate using styrene strip in the correct position. These attempts didn't go well though, basically the styrene I have is too thick and too wide and my attempts to cut and sand it to the right size were pretty poor. I decided to remove my attempt and have repaired the damage I made to the plastic. I felt that I'd prefer to have neatly moulded detail in the wrong place than keep my scruffy effort in the right position. I thought it was worth pointing these errors out for anyone else that fancies building this kit. I've also been working on the speed brakes, there's been a lot of filling, sanding, filling, sanding, scribing, fulling, sanding, etc, etc, etc with these but I think they're looking OK now. I need to give them a quick coat of primer to see how they look but they're getting there thanks to the advice of @Dave Swindell and @trickyrich.

Thanks for the advice @Dave Swindell it's good to know that I was thinking along the right lines. I've read my way through your build thread and picked up lots of tips, lots of extra work too looking at all the upgrades and corrections you made! Can I ask how you added the removed mirrored trunking on the lower wing? I'm not sure whether to leave it or not, but as I joined this build as a way to stretch myself and try new things I think I'll have a go at fixing the error.

While I've been weathering and finishing off the seats I put together the rear fuselage. The fit was really good and involved very minimal seam clean up, the biggest issue was a self inflicted scar from the cutters on a sprue attachment point but a dob of sprue-goo and a few sanding stick swipes and the problem was gone. There's a tiny tiny aerial moulded onto the bottom of the fuselage that I can pretty much guarantee won't be there towards the end of the build, hopefully the photo below will remind me to check it after painting and decaling and will give me a reference of where the replacement should go. Once the rear fuselage was built I was going to fit the speed brakes in the closed position. Th instructions have an error here and they tell you to cut off the opening jack if you want to pose them open when it should be the other way round. This is fairly obvious when you look at the parts though so shouldn't be an issue really. The biggest issue with the speed brakes is that the fit is terrible in the cut outs for them; They sit too deep and there are gaps around the edges, this shouldn't be too difficult to fix using plasticard shims but the gaps around the curved fairing are a different matter, the gaps are huge and part of a pretty complicated shape. These should be completely flush but there are huge holes on both sides of both speed brakes, I think they're moulded like this so that the brakes can be posed open but it isn't helpful if you want them closed. Here's how it should look closed; I'm really not sure what to do with this, I'm thinking of adding some thin plasticard packing and then using Milliput to add the missing fairing section as I believe that can be moulded and shaped while it is still wet. At this point in my modelling career though I haven't really had to deal with anything like this and have never used Milliput so this could be either a useful learning experience or a terrible mistake that kills this kit off!

Thanks both, it's coming along slowly but surely! Thanks for the top tip there, I don't tend to put dummy/training munitions on my builds so I'll definitely try my best to remember this.

Progress on the Gripen has ben slow but steady, I've been putting in 20 -30 minutes in every day on the Gripen while I'm finishing off a couple of other projects. First off I put the seats together, these are little odd as they have moulded on belts on the headbox but not on the rest of the seat. They're also hollow on the back but looking at the instructions it looks like you would be able to see this as the backs of the seats don't sit against a bulkhead. I used styrene strip to fill these gap. I then painted them with Vallejo Nato Black and have started the detail painting in them. I'm going to make up belts with tape and will attempt to make them look OK using detail painting. it's amazing how rough these look when zoomed in so much, they look fine to the naked eye though, honestly! I've also painted, assembled and decalled the cockpit section, there's some very delicate throttle levers to add in here that I managed to get in place without mishap. The control sticks were both covered in flash though which took some careful clean up to get them looking acceptable. Overall though it looks perfectly acceptable to me as an out of the box effort. I'll do some minor weathering in there just to add a bit of life, just my handling of the rear bulkhead has added a little 'natural' weathering on there so I'll aim to get the rest of the 'pit looking similar. Lastly I've started putting together the armament, I'll be using the RB15s @Marlin and IRIS-T @Christer A as they're not the usual Sidewinders or whatever, it will have Sparrows on there though along with a central fuel tank. I'll do bits of work on these while the rest of the build is progressing, I recently made the 1/72 Academy F-14 (wonderful kit by the way) and left the weapons till last, finishing them off when the rest of the model was finished felt tedious in the extreme.

I'm going to stick with the kit colour scheme, this is the first modern jet I've made so I want to test myself and have a good go at making a fairly plain grey scheme look visually interesting. I prefer to make the standard 'everyday' colour schemes too although that Czech one does look fantastic.

You piqued my curiosity there @Bertie Psmith so I did a bit of a Google search and came up with nothing so I'm glad @Christer A shared his knowledge there, it's an interesting way of detonating the canopy that's for sure.

Sprues have been washed and all ready to start the build now. Here's the the obligatory sprue shots; Sprues look good overall with only minor flash on some of the smaller parts, the breakdown of the airframe means that the fit of the parts is going to need to be good to get it to go together well. No issues with the clear sprues either, after a quick Google search I can see that the seam down the middle canopy is there on the real aircraft so that means there's no messing about with scraping and polishing. Nice picture of the completed model on the front of the instructions, the weatherings a bit heavy for my tastes though. Only one scheme included in the box and it's very grey! Decals look good though, as they're marked 'Printed in Italy' I'm guessing they're Cartograf which means they should be no bother to use. Mercifully there's only a few stencils so decaling won't take over the majority of the time spent on the build. Next step is to take a look at the cockpit and get some paint stuck to plastic.

Thanks Christer, I do use an airbrush but I have to stick to acrylics. I'm set up in a shared space without the ventilation to get away with lacquers unfortunately. I'm sure I'll be able to find equivalents though. Cheers Rich, I've had my first look at the plastic and looking at the sprues it looks quite promising, there's some rather meaty stores too as you say! "Isn't awful" is all I ask for from a kit to be honest! I'm looking forward to seeing how this one will go together.

Hi everyone, I thought I'd jump in with this Gripen that I've had kicking about for a few years now. I picked it up cheap in a Hobbycraft sale and this GB has given me the shove to get it built. This isn't an aircraft I know a thing about so my first step will be to get a bit of research done, mainly into colours as Revell are obviously not the best with their colour callouts.

Thanks for all the great replies everyone, they really helped.

This will be a really easy answer for those in the know but is the rudder on the Gnat connected to the front wheel when it's being steered on the ground like on some WW2 tail draggers? I'm building Airfix's 1/48 Gnat (great kit by the way) and have modelled the rudder offset so now I'm wondering if I have to turn the nose wheel too. I haven't been able to find any photos online of a Gnat taxiing or information about how the steering mechanism works so I'm a bit stumped. Thanks.

Just wanted to say thanks for these replies. I decided to try and make an approximation of this turret by 'frankensteining' together the two different sets of glazing that come with the kit, after I pretty much destroyed the backup turret trying to remove parts of the glazing I gave up on that idea and just used the turret that the kit recommends. I haven't found any photos of the turret used on the particular aircraft modelled so who's to say it didn't have the standard fit? After all, the Lancaster's in the squadron had different bomb bay doors fitted to various aircraft so we know they weren't all the exact same spec. That's my reasoning anyway!

I don't know if it helps but for that build I used Humbrol 189 Insignia Blue for the dark blue colour, 157 Azure Blue for the light blue and 47 Sea Blue for the rudder. I think the camouflage colours came out well and the finished model looks close enough to the old colour photos for me, I'm very much a 'that's close enough' modeller though! I'd use a different colour for the rudder if I made this kit again, the match to the serial number isn't very good. It's a nice little kit though and I'm sure you'll enjoy putting it together, mine isn't my finest modelling effort but it takes pride of place in the cabinet purely because of the colour scheme.

Hi all, I've been working on the Airfix 1/72 Lancaster and have decided to do it in the 35 Sqn Tiger Force colour scheme and have discovered some discrepancies that have really confused me, which isn't difficult to be fair! I know that there are issues around this kit being listed as a Mk.1 (F.E) due to the missing cabin heater, larger radiators etc but that doesn't really bother me too much, I tend to just make the kits as supplied and don't bother too much about historical accuracy. Having said that though, I have discovered that the rear turret of this kit is giving me some real headaches and my head is now swimming after reading up too much on FN82s, Rose Turrets, etc without finding any answers to my problem. To start with I bought the Eduard masking set for the kit and when I put the masks on the rear turret it looked a bit 'odd'. There didn't seem to be enough framework and too much glazing if that makes sense. I searched the web for images of the rear turret for these 35 Sqn F.E.s and found a really informative website with lots of information about 35 Sqns FEs and their goodwill tour to the US in 1946, there are plenty of great shots of the various aircraft and period newspaper articles about the tour. The website is here; https://masterbombercraig.wordpress.com/post-war-raf-career/operation-lancaster-46/ There is an article from a newspaper on there stating that the Lancaster's all have the Fraser-Nash FN82 turret fitted as well as showing which aircraft have bulged bomb bay doors fitted which is interesting. The only thing is, looking at the photos none of the Lancaster's appear to have the same FN82 turret as supplied in the kit or as is fitted to the Lancaster 'Just Jane' as shown here; The 35 Sqn Lanc's have this turret; After looking at the instructions for the Tamiya 1/48 Lancaster on Scalemates that kit seems to come with the correct rear turret, it's the same kind that is fitted to the Lancaster NX622 based in Australia. After reading a bit on this forum; https://www.key.aero/forum/historic-aviation/77922-boulton-paul-type-d-gun-turrets there appears to be some discussion about what turret this is exactly but as far as I can see there is no answer to the question so I thought I'd ask here. Does anyone know type of turret this is and is there any easily and cheaply available kit I could get hold of to pinch one out of for this build? Thanks for reading and hopefully this info may be of interest to some of you.

Here's my finished Special Hobby 1/72 Boulton Paul Sea Balliol T.21. It was finished using Hataka acrylics for the fuselage colours and Vallejo and Humbrol acrylics for the interior and detail painting. The build thread can be found here; Thanks to everyone who dropped by my thread and I just wanted to say how inspired and impressed I have been by the builds on here, I've picked up plenty of tips and will be revisiting many of them again when I break out various kits from the stash. Well done all.

I'm at the stage now where I'm finally ready to call this one done and put it on the shelf. All the remaining parts have been added and a bit of final paint touch ups have done, particularly on the wingtip lights. Speaking of the lights, the wingtip ones were a perfect fit and went on easily enough, the mid wing spotlights were a different matter though and required a fair bit of fettling to get anywhere close to an acceptable fit. There were a couple of last pieces of P.E. that needed applying, the first of which is a pair of windscreen wipers that are no bigger than an eyelash, predictably one of them disappeared without trace almost instantly so I left them both off unfortunately. The second pieces of P.E were a pair of aerials that sit on the top and bottom of the fuselage, however, although they're shown in the instructions they don't appear on the paint guides for the aircraft or on the box art. They weren't shown on any photos of the Sea Balliol I could find either so I left them off. I found the following photo online of the exact aircraft I was modelling and used that as a guide for the final finishing of the model. https://www.airliners.net/photo/UK-Navy/Boulton-Paul-P-108-Sea-Balliol-T21/1641296/L With all the painting done and everything sealed I did a very, very small amount of weathering to get a similar finish to the aircraft shown. It looks like the photo was taken at an airshow so it's very clean which made the final weathering very easy! Overall, I have to say that this kit turned into a bit of a chore but I am really pleased with the finished result. It's a handsome little aircraft and looks particularly good in this bright colour scheme, in a lot of ways I think this kit deserved someone with better modelling skills than me. This was my first short run kit and the first time using resin parts though so it was definitely a learning experience for me, I do feel slightly more confident about tackling the Special Hobby Fulmar I have in the stash though so that's good. I would definitely recommend this kit to anyone who fancies building something a bit different and I can also highly recommend the Peewit masks, they fit perfectly and saved a huge amount of time with all the glazing on this kit. The Hataka paints I used were also excellent, I can't speak on the authenticity of the shades but they went down easily and the colours look really nice and crisp without obscuring any of the very fine panel line details, the orange is particularly bright and rich. I'll post some more of the finished pics in the gallery thread and thank you all for dropping in.

The decals are now on and settled in place, although, as has been typical of this build so far it wasn't without it's difficulties. The decals are EXTREMELY thin, I can't see any carrier film on them at all. I used MicroSet at first when placing them but using this made them instantly soften up and settle in place really quickly. I got rid of the MicroSet and just used water and that made them slightly more manageable. Unfortunately, as they were so thein it meant they're not very opaque and the roundels were particularly useless in this regard with the orange on the wings showing through the white of the roundel almost completely. I did away with the kit roundels and replaced them with spares from some Airfix Gnat sets and these worked much better. I don't think the decals are particularly great to be honest, the type on the 'Royal Navy' on the side of the aircraft looks a bit chunky to me with a not very uniform spacing between the letters, the smaller stencils don't actually say anything legible either, they just have squiggly lines to denote text. The serials on the lower wing were difficult to get in place too as they are quite large but extremely fragile. The one on the port wing was particularly tricky where it goes over the hole for the light, it got a bit screwed up here and i had to remove half of the number '8' and replace it with half of a '3' I cut off one of the spare decals for a different colour scheme. There are also four decals for the propeller blades which are just a white dot over a white line, one of them broke up when I placed it so I painted this one on instead. I didn't like how it looked with these dots on the blades so after looking at the pictures of the walkaround on here (which has been invaluable for this build) I added a bit of paint to give them a bot of life. This looks better to me and I'm quite pleased with how they came out. Now there's just the final assembly and I'm almost ready to call this one done.

I've just realised that I should probably give an update as to where I'm up to with this kit. It feels like it's been a fight every step of the way and that progress has been incredibly slow, however, I am now at the decal stage so things are moving forwards at least. I closed the fuselage up easily enough by gluing the two halves in small sections doing my best to make sure there were no steps. There were obviously some seams that needed sanding but overall it went ok, the bottom of the fuselage was worse than the top and needed a bit more work to remove the seam, which is a shame as there was a lot of nice detail lost. I tried to keep as much as possible and rescribed what was lost in my rather shaky amateurish way. As you can see I also added the inside portions of the wings. These went on well and had a really good fit. I painted up the resin radiator and glued that into place under the chin. The fairing around it wasn't the easiest to get to fit but after a fair bit of sanding and dry fitting I managed to get a pretty good fit in the end (which I don't have any pictures of). The outer wing went on next and this is where I went a little 'off piste'. There is a resin insert that goes in the ends of the inner and outer wing halves of the wing so that the aircraft can be modelled with the wings folded, I elected not to use this as it looked like it would be a nightmare to get it in place and I suspected that getting everything to line up properly would be nigh on impossible. Instead I added plasticard tabs to the top and bottom of the inboard wing to give me something to attach the outer part to. I then glued the lower outer wing in place and once dry added the upper portion. This worked ok on the port wing as the fit was excellent but there was a large gap on the starboard that I had to fill. I also used tiny pieces of plastic strip to fill the rectangular holes of the hinge on the top of the wing. These would have been filled by the resin inserts had I used them. I also painted the silver behind the cockpit where it will be covered by the canopy. I next attached the horizontal stabilisers which required a fair bit of filler and added the small pieces of P.E. around the tail area. There is meant to be another piece of P.E. here, a small plate that stops the arrestor hook from hitting the underside of the aircraft but this pinged off somewhere never to be seen again. Next up was the canopy which has a notoriously poor fit. The rear of the canopy sits proud of the rear fuselage if it's just put into place so to get round this I clamped in place using my Berna clamps and used Tamiya Extra Thin to glue it down. I used a Peewit masking set for this to save a lot of time. An inelegant solution but it did work so I'm OK with that, although the sides of the canopy overhang the sides of the fuselage a little (a lot!). After giving the half completed model a good wash I gave it a layer of Halfords rattle can white primer. I used white as I had decided to do this kit in the markings shown on the front of the box and wanted a good base for the yellow and orange sections. I tried painting the interior of the chin fairing using Humbrol paints, I gave it a coat of 18 Orange Gloss and then went over it with 209 Fluorescent Fire Orange. This didn't work out very well as it became obvious that it would take a LOT of coats to get decent coverage and I have yet to master spraying Humbrol enamels through my airbrush. I decided to take the plunge and splashed out on this acrylic set from Hataka as I have a fairly large collection of RAF trainers in the stash (11 1/32 Revell Hawks and counting!) so I knew I would get plenty of use out of the colours provided. I painted the yellow areas first and then masked them up and got the orange down. The Hataka paints behaved perfectly and gave a lovely smooth finish, the orange required a multiple of thin coats as you'd expect but the rather subtle panel line detail wasn't lost at all. I masked this up and then sprayed on the silver, this coat wasn't nearly as nice as the other colours though and dried with a rather 'bitty' finish as can be vaguely seen in this picture. It's probably more to do with my relative inexperience with the airbrush than the paint I suspect, it maybe something as simple as I should have shook the bottle to mix it more than I did. I gave it a bit of a rub down and it looks OK now though. After touching up a little over spray I've given it a gloss coat in preparation for the decals which I'm hoping will go on over the next day or two. Annoyingly the silver paint has shown that there is a rather prominent seam on the bottom of the fuselage that wasn't obvious under the white primer, as I said at the start of this post though, this kit seems to have been fighting me every step of the way so I'm just going to live with it. Hopefully there'll be a decalled update in this thread in the next day or two. thanks for looking in.

Looks really good, great work.