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A rescue project from humble beginnings. For some reason I decided to go with the most difficult finish possible and it bit me. I'm glad it's all over now.

You would have thought I'd learned my lesson: ... but here we are again! A few months after I bought the Victor a friend "kindly" offered me this kit in need of a refurb, I think he might have picked it up somewhere and made a start but gave up. The kit as I got it had one wing attach IIRC, removed the other at the time and stashed it in the loft. As you can see it has a few issues 😜 The only things missing I believe are the pitot tubes and exhaust cans, which I would replace anyway. Firstly it did a couple of rounds in bag with some oven cleaner so I could see what was what. There was a lot of black paint under the green and silver and, in the recessed (yes) panel lines, white too. So I think this particular has seen many guises; first in anti-flash white B1, then maybe a pseudo B2 "black bomber" and finally on it's way to a camouflaged ground hugger. The port side wing root was missing a big chunk of plastic and the attempt to repair it with card and filler was still attached to the wing after I separate them. The nose had also suffered a knock and I guess the model hit the ground hard at some point. I removed all the filler and some of the plastic infill with a micro chisel. I wanted to get down to bare plastic and affect my own repairs. The filler had also been softened by the oven cleaner and leaving it was not an option. The chisel made swift work of things to get me to this: At this point I broke out the references and decided what I was going to do with it. My initial though was to model the first prototype with the narrow intakes and lots of guide vanes, but this would have required removing all the intake trunking bulges from the wing undersides. Instead I'm going to go for the second prototype WP215 which had the larger "spectacle" intakes. Oh, yeah and I want to do it in the initial polished aluminium finish! 😮 https://www.airteamimages.com/vickers-valiant_WB215_united-kingdom---royal-air-force_115157.html

The MikroMir Victor B1 was a bit to much of project to start now with builds for CBK SIGs display underway so I zigged instead of zagging and threw this down from the loft when I was up there. I had always had this down to build as one of the prototypes. Initially intention was to do it OOB and get to the painting ASAP. Of course things have started to spiral rapidly. The intakes and exhausts are horrid see below and the kit is B1 ish and lacks the intake and fillet at the base of the tail that the prototypes had ( this differs from the chunkier version on the B2) and then once into the build I found that the nose needed to be 5mm shorter - I was still trying to talk myself out of it when I found a saw in my hand and a headless fuselage on the desk. I suspect foul play! First a quick overview: Well actually it's a Hendley Page Victor according to the small slim box that was standard for all Lincoln/Kader releases. Like the rest this is box scale. I reckon, assuming it has a B1 wing span, that it's about 1/149 scale, so won't look out of place next to my 1/144 Welsh Model kit. The most glaring issue is the intakes and very blunt wing roots. Extending these and reshaping them would make it even more apparently a prototype as the wing roots were pretty close to the crew door. The other gross simplification is the exhausts as there are none are such and drilling these out and adding some tube will enhance things greatly. The good new is that the parts fit together well. I trimmed of the sprue attachment marks and taped it all together. I got the fuselage together without issue and proceeded to fill a number of sink marks. The raised roundels and serials were removed, the silver plastic still clearly shows their position afterwards. The control surfaces were a bit lumpy and got flatten too. The plastic is hard but sands very nicely. The intakes have been cut out from the side rather than straight on! Someone was evidently not at their best that day. These were reshaped and elongated. The insides will be built up later with Milliput. The exhausts are no better being complete blanks, concave at that with no tail pipe. I start to ream them out when I realised that one set of was ~1.5mm thinner than the other! I've started to set about how to pad this one out the match. I saw mention elsewhere that the nose of the prototype is even shorter, ~5mm. It would have been easier and more accurate to cut the separate fuselage halves hence my need to add a shim of card after correcting my mistakes. All looks good now it's sanded back though. I've built the tail spine up with card laminations and some plastic tube for the intake. These and been secured in place with "gloop" and needs to be set aside for a couple of days to cure. I really know how to pick'em ... or do they pick me?

So this was yet another of those, hey lets do something quick and simple. I've got more fingers than this kit had parts! This is an vaguely accurate 'desk' model of the prototype. The kit as a B1 is not just inaccurate it is plain wrong with the intakes being incised 90degrees to the body! A lot of body work was required to bring it somewhere close to acceptable. the kit is box scale ~1/160 I believe. Thanks to dwomby and Adam Poultney for resources. Build here

About thirty five years ago while looking around a model kit trader's tent at the RAF Finningley airshow I picked up a small box with a very comical painting of a banana-shaped Sunderland on the front. The box looked like it should contain a jig saw puzzle or chocolates instead of a model kit. I was amazed though when I opened the box, inside was a miniature replica almost piece for piece of the AIRFIX Sunderland moulded in a hard silver grey plastic. The manufacturer was a Hong Kong company named Kader. In the intervening years I have come across a number of other Kader models which seem to be scaled down copies of other kits, such as the FROG Britannia and they are all to odd scales to fit inside a standard box size. About twenty years ago I decided to build this model but to convert it into a Mk1 instead of the kit Mk III. I blanked off the top turret opening and cut out the earlier beam gunners hatches. I then had to alter the hull step from streamlined to stepped. I altered the engine exhausts and did the props in spinning mode. I originally brush painted the model in Humbrol Silver H11 to represent a pre war overall silver aircraft and it stayed in this colour scheme for many years. Then recently I decided to repaint it in the early camouflage scheme of Slate Grey and Sea Grey. That inspiring box artwork Replicated old style AIRFIX instructions and decal sheet. Even the silver grey plastic seems to be AIRFIX. One of my only photos showing my Kader Sunderland in its original silver finish on display with a selection of my other maritime aircraft. And here we are in my model room with references and paints to hand. The 1970 Short Sunderland Profile proved invaluable for the camouflage pattern. First brush painted coat of Humbrol M31 Slate Grey enamel over the Humbrol G11 Silver. First application of Humbrol Satin 164 Dark Sea Grey enamel. I found it a real challenge to try and paint the camouflage pattern to scale on such a small complex model. After both colours had been applied I then decided to try and replicate the worn and chipped paint effect illustrated in the Profile. I carefully scraped the top paint layers away from the underlying silver with a modelling knife. The trick was to try not to get carried away so I carefully scraped away only the areas I could see in the photos. I have also applied the white of the fin flash with Vallejo White. TO BE CONTINUED