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Showing results for tags 'trumppeter'.
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Morning sports fans. It a cold icy day here at the Jonnerstad, but there'll be partying on the streets of Oxford this evening if all goes to plan... Anyway in prep for the arrival of the much discussed Trumpeter vampire FB9, as I suggested I'm going to do a double build with Alleycat's resin kit of said Nosferatic di-boomer. It will be a compare and contrast job, and with luck we'll see how the Trumpy kit shapes up. First up though, the current 1/48th "Champeen" ( cue Rocky music....) The kit comes in a sturdy pizza box type carton, and with excellent well printed decals, some canopy masks, and very nice instructions including a stencil placement guide. My FB9 boxing has markings for 213 sqn ( both camo & High Speed Silver), plus another HSS one from 60 Sqn. Parts all come bagged, with clear cast bits, and white metal parts in separate packets. The main body of the Vamp is cast as one piece with separate front fuselage, booms and tailplane The main body has a little casting flash on the very fine & thin wing trailing edges, and the other main components have fairly large casting stubs, BUT they are easy to remove as the connecting edges are well defined and pretty thin. I used a heavy scriber tool to score these or a razor saw. The main body has a plug on the engine exhaust area, which needs removing, and the hole for the separate jet exhaust needs enlarging for this to fit. I used a new scalpel blade to shave it wider, then a piece of coarse foam backed sanding pad rolled into a cone shape to do this. Easy. The stubs on the booms run along the botton edge, and this needs a bit of a sand down after to smooth out the area ( Note- if you have never worked with resin, ALWAYS sand with a mask or outside, or wet sand. While the dust isn't toxic per se, its very fine and you DONT want to inhale it) On my castings there was an area on the tailplane underside where a small area of resin had delaminated - this needed filling with Mr Dissolved Putty and sanding smooth; as did a small blemish on the starboard upper rear inner wing. Nothing too arduous, and do bear in mind that these kits are hand made, so occasionally you will get the odd glitch. Theres a complete lack of any bubbles in the resin surface, and the detail is finely recessed much like a modern IM plastic kit, if not better. As far as I can see all the parts seem to not suffer from any warpage at all- which is testimony to the caster's art indeed. The perfectly cast clear parts are also formed from a transparent resin, and need careful removal from their stubs. I cut them with some stub spare and then sanded this back to the frames. Be warned the clear resin is pretty tough, so take your time. If I were to do this again I'd mask the parts with tape and use a very fine saw to cut much closer. However, as long as you are careful some nice parts emerge, though I think they'll benefit from a dip in Klear/Quick Shine to bring out their clarity. White metal UC legs and elevator balances are finely cast, with the nose wheel fork supplied as a separate part. 3 white metal weights which fit inside the forward fuselage are also included - a thoughtful and much appreciated touch Finally a PE fret provides seat belts, rudder pedals, UC door retraction links, Intake strakes and cockpit levers. Suffice to say that Alleycat's resin model is an excellent kit. If you've used resin conversions parts before, or just fancy a resin kit- then this would be a great introduction. At £45 it isnt cheap, but I would say that this price seems to be about par for resin kits nowadays, so I don't think we can accuse Alleycat of wanton profiteering either! As you can see I need to remove a few more parts form their stubs and clean them up. Then we'll hold for the Trumpy kit to arrive, so we can start to examine the parts against each other, and some plans from a source that I think we can all trust. TBC..... Jonners