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Hi all good britmodeller folk welcome to this the first of my multibuild on th WIP section.

It has been fun and long and its no were near finished yet so if you want to follow the rest here is the link:

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234936632-1st-one-finished-dragon-vulcan-b1a-2-b1-big-surgery-for-3-small-kits/

This model is a holy grail for me with special significance and a funny ironic link that makes me smile.

For when I was a kid I had bought for me a video called the vulcan story in the middle was full colour footage of very pretty white vulcans that looked somewhat different to the vulcans I'd seen. My dad told me "there're b1s",,,, I said "b1s?" He replied "yes b1s they were before the b2s and a totally different aeroplane much smaller" he then said "get your grandad to take you to raf cosford they have a white vulcan and victor there from what I remember"

From there the fascination started and me and grandad went vulcan hunting at cosford. We walked around and found no white vulcan or victor but we did find camo ones outside along with a trident argosy vc10 and Belfast oh and a javelin and blue steel missile all rotting away.

Me and my grandad were best mates went to cosford alot and other places he loved aircraft and my models he give me tools and taught me much.

It was only about 10 years later through the Internet I learned there was indeed once a vulcan b1 and victor b1 at cosford as late as 1986 and they scraped them (great british preservation in action) the vulcan was xa900 the last of its type and a totally different to the b2.

I see the comet that was displayed with them survived.

Later on last year I made a model of xh533 I modded the back end to the b1 tail my grandad said I should do a b1 so I did and decided to do a WIP and ended up ironically getting invited to bring it any others to cosford show by britmodeller friends general melchet, cliffb, Canberrakid and others

Ironic cosford will be my first model show were I will bring a b1 vulcan and were my fascination for the type started and were me and my grandad used to go. Were the last vulcan b1 was and my grandad would have been proud I was doing this. So I decided to finish ths one as b1 XA900 and I guess I finally hunted her down in the end lol.

It's funny how these little links happen in life

Ironic indeed and I'm really looking forward to going along to the show.

Special thanks go to fellow britmodeller's pigsty for donating the cross of Lincoln badges from his airfix nimrod and to Doug rogers for his vc10 landing gear to make the exhausts

Thanks for looking comments welcome good and bad. Hope you like this

Cheers Rob

7772D3CB-68AC-4D4F-B741-3160BDAC8490-202

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And here is the last raf b2 xh558 with the last intact b1

Xa900

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0CE92EFB-AF14-4606-835F-0890362117F2-202

Thanks Rob ;)

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-I didn't figur there was such a difference between a B1 and a B2 , at which scale are your models ?

-In your very nice introducing text you are speaking of the " great British preservation acts," Happy man you don't know the French counter part........

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Great models Rob,

I agree 100% with your 'Great British Preservation' comment,

Its very sad that more Historic air frames were not kept for future generations - if I remember right, several Dam Buster Aircraft - including Gibsons - were not Struck off charge until 1946/7.

What price glory?

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Hi yes that was a bit of sarcasm on my part i find it hard to get my head around a museum destroying the last examples of our own aircraft yet preserving aircraft that are numerous still.

The vulcans are all 1/200th scale and are from the dragon mold.

cheers rob

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cheers paul. yes it is a shame i guess we cant keep everything. but one of each is not to much to ask. ive not had a chance to go back to look around cosford properly and see what has survived since the new building. i think the trident has gone and probably the vc10.

with all the planes they have from the 50s like the lightening prototype and fd2 etc you think a vulcan b1 and victor would be on there list for saving back then with all the others. they could have had a 50s jet revolution hanger.

i guess there was a different mindset back then in the 80s.

I actually wondered about the possibility of getting some organisation set up at somepoint to make a full size wooden replica of a vulcan b1 how possible that would be i have no idea but it could be fun.

like replica steam engines have been made like rocket etc

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I also never realised that there was such a difference, I knew that there was different Marks but not how large a difference there was.

Your story reminds me of when we lived in Australia, we had bought our grandson a replica flight suit for Christmas which he refused to wear until we came home on leave and took him to Cosford, which we did, this was probably 2003.

Cheers

Dennis

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A great looking trio and shameful when you consider what has been discarded over the past couple of decades.

yes indeed jim. we have lost alot in favour of things like car parks etal

glad you like them

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Hi spitfire yes not so obvious at first but a huge difference when you notice. Deceptive isn't it.

Some angles it don't look as obvious others its crystal clear. The fact that as far as I'm aware there are very few photos of the two types together is probably why alot of people don't realise how very different they was.

I hear it was a secret meeting between designers of avro vulcan and the handley page victor that helped with the redesign of the b2 wing hence the pronounced 3 stage kink similar to the 3 stage crescent wing of the victor.

I heard something to that effect on a documentary somewere but not sure how accurate that is

Cheers rob

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Lovely model Rob, really nice to see a B1 in this scale and it looks just right along side the B2's. Just shows what can be done if you put your mind and enthusiasm to it. Look forward to seeing it on Sunday. I'm sorely tempted to bring my part built 1/72nd B1A but I don't think the table would take the weight of too many V-Bombers !! we have a distinct lack of Vulcan B1's so I'd better get my finger out.

Great job mate....

Melchie..

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