Alleycat vs Trumpeter DH Vampire FB9 build-off, calling bloodsucker fans! Now with added Trumpeter-ness!

[David H]

AAGH!! Holy Reflectance and Specularity, Batman!!

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

AAGH!! Holy Reflectance and Specularity, Batman!!

Send for the Bat-de-speculariser Robin!!!

So here's how we stand today , pre DrWho , and Thai meal night out with friends.

Trumpeter - decals all on and brown oil wash applied and wiped off.

That blue camo works!!

Alleycat - most decals on, but need a stencil session tomorrow.

Tomorrow - under cart, and modding the Trumpeter wheel bay doors.....

cheers & Happy Easter

Jonners

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

Cor that tomorrow was a long time coming!!!

Right first up here are pics of both kits undercart doors, Trumpy on the left. Notice that Trumpys ones are bigger overall.

Both feature very nice detail, with Alleycats winning on finesse in my book. However Trumpy's main gear doors are of course shaped to fit their fictitious circular wheel wells, which I had previously modified. So what to do?

Well I thought of cutting new doors from card, and detailing them, but I want this build to provide easy fixes, so out with the sanding sticks.....

The shape of the outer doors is simple sanded to a more vampire like shape - using the Alleycat parts as reference. This means you'll loose the very fine lip on the outer edges of the Trumpy doors, but hey ho - thats life. At least when you see them hanging down from the wings they will resemble the proper shape. I've also cut off a little of the inside UC door from the top of the leg upright ( approx through where the bottom locating pin is). This is because Ive already fixed the main legs into place, and a test fit showed this bit would foul the leg/boom area. So check you fit here!!

By no means an elegant fix, but it does the job....

cheers

Jonners

[Norman]

Looking great Jon

i'm glad the colour scheme on the ali-cat kit worked out...i was going cross-eyed trying to see demarcations in those black and white pics

Cheers

[Marcus.Q1000859]

The blue does look quite a treat, never thought of a vampire in that service, would look pretty neat next to a Bearcat.

Marcus

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

And here's where we are today....almost there.

Jonners

[John Laidlaw]

That's some wonderfully clean work there, Jonners! I do like the blue as well .

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

Right. Just to say final construction has now been completed on both models. The UC gear doors fit fine on both models, thought they both need some sprue locaters adding for the upper attachment points for the nose gear fron door, to get the characteristic pushed out and up look.

For builders of the Alleycat kit, the etched intake strakes are a tricky fit because they are tiny. However - take some advice and keep the bottom locating slots free of paint, and it will be a lot simpler. I didn't which probably made the fiddle factor worse!!

Before I added them I cut some ovals from black decal sheet and installed these at the back of the deep intakes to give the impression of the intake entrance into the engine compressor.

Make sure the holes for the underside elevator mass balances are drilled clean on the Alleycat kit too. The Trumpy ones, which are bigger, fit into shallow depressions. So make sure you have a nice clean cut from the sprue to maximise the surface area.

Final details include adding the fin pitot tubes form fine brass tube and the aerial on the port boom from sprue. On the Alleycat kit, the shoulder PE seat belts were bent into a drooped shape and fiddled into place to hang over the cockpit sides, in a casual fashion ( the kind of thing that most probably got you put on a charge in the real RAF in the '50s!!).

Next stop will be RFI for both models, with a conclusion that I'll add here too.

To all those who have looked - thank you, and to all those that have looked and commented - thank you for the constructive posts. A very big thank you to John Adams for his plans and help too. Hopefully this build will let you decide how you want to spend your money, and how you can improve the Trumpeter model, should you so choose to.

Cheers

Jonners

[keefr22]

Good work Jonners, another excellent thread!

keef

[James P M]

I am glad I bought the Alleycat FB9 at Cosford to be honest.

I to have a slight miscasting of the right wing trailing edge in that there are a couple of minor air bubbles and very slightly depressed.But nothing that can not be solved.

[Julien]

Nice job Jonners.

As I have 4 AC Vampires I think I will stick with them.

Julien

[pinky coffeeboat]

Nice work Jonners, nice to see someone using their skill to modify a kit to make it a bit more accurate.

This is a bit too late to add to the colour debate, however to my eyes in the colour picture of the four Vampires in formation over Egypt, WX207 (the closer of the camouflaged aircraft) clearly has a continuation of the starbord side dark green over nose that comes round to the left hand side. It's not shadow as the two aircraft either side of it don't have the same darker area and neither does the furthest (camo) aircraft.

Also in the picture of the Vampires lined up (the one Bill Clark posted) the lighter area referred to as being MSG is light reflected off the green paint, not grey paint.

That's what I see...

Jeff

[Screech]

Looking at the two builds now with paint, the Trump kit looks quite stout in the fuselage compared to the Alleycat (apologizes if this was noted earlier), but the blue really makes it stand out.

Cheers,

[AndyC]

Wonderful stuff - I'll refrain from either but was worth the read from front to back Jonners

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

Nice work Jonners, nice to see someone using their skill to modify a kit to make it a bit more accurate.

This is a bit too late to add to the colour debate, however to my eyes in the colour picture of the four Vampires in formation over Egypt, WX207 (the closer of the camouflaged aircraft) clearly has a continuation of the starbord side dark green over nose that comes round to the left hand side. It's not shadow as the two aircraft either side of it don't have the same darker area and neither does the furthest (camo) aircraft.

Also in the picture of the Vampires lined up (the one Bill Clark posted) the lighter area referred to as being MSG is light reflected off the green paint, not grey paint.

That's what I see...

Jeff

Never too late Jeff!

Having looked again I see what you mean - I get the nose green, though the aircraft at the rear of the 4 ship formation doesn't seem to show this ( angle perhaps?) or maybe the scheme was a little loose in its application?

Jonners, happy to always add to the info pot

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

I felt I needed to do a modelling conclusion to this, so here it is.

In terms of accurizing the Trumpeter model, there a several things that you can do - as you can see from this build. However 'Im going to split them into 3 categories: Easy, Medium and You-must-be-mad

All require you to be confident with the use of modelling tools, but the easy ones would be suitable for someone looking to a first not-OOB build.

So,

Easy: ( n.b. this wil improve the look of your Vampire but not correct some of its inherent inaccuracies).

Correct the wing tips. Correct the rudder shape. Both are just sanding stick jobs.

Correct the shape of the outer main gear doors. Again a sanding stick job. You can leave the wheel well shape, but if you plan on a Vampire with no wing tanks- at least the doors will look better this way.

Correct the shape of the wing tanks. Slightly more aggressive sanding required, but the plastic will take it.

Correct the shape of the rear canopy. Another sanding stick job, but protect the clear part with some masking tape first. If you do this you'll have to pose the canopy open as otherwise you'll have a gap at the rear of the cockpit opening, unless you move onto...

Medium: Definite improvements to the look and sit of the model with these.

Redo the wheel well shapes. Not hard but you need to confident in cutting and finishing plasticard, and blending it into the kit.

Redo the rear cockpit opening shape. As above, and required if you do the canopy fix above and want to show it closed.

Narrow the chord on the tailplane. Again confidence required in cutting a major part into sections and rejoining them.

Fill the weird panel lines on the rudders, and rescribe the trim tabs, and rescribe the bottom rudder line (missing on kit)

Sand the upper nose profile to a better shape, and re-scribe the panel lines. I've put this in medium as you will go very close to going through the plastic, and it may be advisable to back it up from inside with something like milliput first. But it will improve the nose profile.

Shorten the UC legs. This will improve the sit of the model, but requires some confident scalpel and filing work.

Fix the engine exhaust - hopefully my idea wil give you some confidence to do this.

You-must-be-mad. Serious butchery required

Correct the nose shape - full on cut, pinch, shut and make good madness here. But as you can see its doable.

Redo the intake shape. Again its a confidence issue.

Redo the rear gun troughs. filling require and some tight redrilling and finishing needed ( possibly a "medium" to do if you are in the mood)

I did all of the above, to prove to myself they could be done; but now here are some of the crazier things I considered ...

Narrow the fuselage and reposition the wings. I did think about this, but it basically involves cutting the main parts into sections and realigning everything: Have fun!

Deepen the intakes a little, and add some ducting.

Narrow the cockpit opening width and either mould or find a new canopy and windscreen.

These last three basically involve a total rebuild, and as such I considered this impractical. You might as well buy the AlleyCat model.

Is there anything on the Alleycat model that could be improved?

Yes! - I didn't do this, but it would not have been hard. The wing chord is a fraction wide. Sanding back the leading edge a little would improve the look here, I think, but you would need some experience in working resin and re-finishing it.

So there you go.

You can of course just build the Trumpeter model, enjoy its fine fit and not worry about the shape problems. But if you fancy a go - then try some of the above. Just doing the wing tips and rudder will improve the model's look.

Cheers - and a big thanks to John Adams for his plans, and to all that contributed.

Jonners

[John Laidlaw]

Thank you again, Jon, for this - a right scholarly piece of work. I suspect that Ali will now be receiving some of the hard-earned for his version of this aircraft having seen what can be done .

[mike romeo]

John,

Great build thread. The Vamp's not my subject, but the thread was very informative and I may even have learnt some things to try elsewhere.

Many thanks.

regards,

Martin

[gingerbob]

Public Service Announcement: Here's the link for the finished products.

Congrats, Jon!

bob