Jump to content

Vildebeest Mk. IV – Special Hobby 1/72 - restored links


Patrik

Recommended Posts

On ‎2016‎-‎03‎-‎08 at 8:25 AM, k5054nz said:

Idiot that I am, I completely forgot to check in to see your answer before I left! I'll see if I can get in touch with owner Don in the hope he can help you out...in the meantime:

Do not worry too much, I survive, I am pretty sure about it :). As you can see, I am also unable to check here every day, especially during the working days. Thanks a lot for the photos. There is not much progress on the Vincent to be seen when compared to the photos from 2011, is it right?

And then the frame (the arrow is pointing to) on the picture below. It looks rather suspicious. Wouldn't it in fact hamper the gun operation quite significantly? Do you think it is really part of the original construction or just some contemporary add-on?

 

vincent3.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eureka! I finally dug out the right book, Armament of British Aircraft 1909-1939 by H. F. King. And there, on page 404, the author writes clearly:

“It has been noted that early Vildebeests had the Scarff ring-mounting, and this, it may be added, was associated with fire-steps to permit firing vertically downward. During 1933 the Air Ministry announced that the Vildebeest Mk.III then under construction had an ‘altered rear cockpit and gun mounting’. The mounting was, in fact, of the Fairey ‘High-Speed’ type.

The Vildebeest Mk.IV was armed as the Mk.III, and an installation of an Aldis sight has been identified with this mark, though this was not standard.”

So I have no doubt anymore. Unfortunately this means also that the Special Hobby SH72243 boxing of Vildebeest IV and Azur-Frrom FR017 Vildebeest III and FR019 Vincent are all wrong in their rear cockpit area, unless you wanted to build Vildebeest I or II.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well done Patrik,.....great detective work and I`m looking forward to seeing your latest member of this family when it is finished.

Cheers

Tony

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

My Vildebeest build has lost momentum for some time, but I am back and gathering speed again. Below is my best guess on the rear cockpit based on available photography, new parts in white plastic. Probably not 100% correct, but quite close. The rest of the Fairey mount will be added later.

 

P4220269.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Occa. The pictures John has posted are the Vildebeest that the Air Force Museum at Wigram in Christchurch, New Zealand are re-building.

The Vincent is the one at Dairy Flat here in Auckland that is being re-built by the Subritsky family. I thought I'd posted a series of photos of it here on Britmodeller, but can't find it in the walkarounds section.

Check out my Photobucket collection starting from http://s63.photobucket.com/user/trx850_2006/media/Inst-panel-1.jpg.html then go backwards from there!

I have a later series that I don't appear to have uploaded to Photobucket. I'll do so in the weekend, and add a notification to this thread.

Cheers,

Pete M. :winkgrin:

Thank you Pete, sorry I only just saw your response

I've bookmarked your photo collection, there are some awesome pics there.

Cheers,

Martin :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very interesting - especially for someone like me who has two Vildebeests in stash (radial and Spanish) :).

I will look carefully

Keep on posting, pls

Regards

J-W

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The gun mounting may be a best guess but it certainly looks the part and I defy anyone to do better with the information available to you. :goodjob:

Martin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Posting after a while. Interior finished, below some photos before the fuselage halves were closed. The interior fit was really very good, even when gluing the fuselage halves together later on – of course if you do not forget that it is always three times dry fit before you cut or glue some part. I added only the missing inner frame over the bigger port window, looks cool from the outside. The position of the instrument panel was estimated from the position of the daylight porthole in front of the cockpit.

Patrik

 

P5300283.jpg

 

P5300291.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I completed a few more subassemblies while painting the interior, including the wheel spats. As you might have guessed already, I am doing the silver doped machine. The red arrow decals are on both sides of the wheel spats and the ones on the inside must be applied before the undercarriage assembly – the undercarriage struts cannot be assembled without the spats in place.

 

P6050313.jpg

 

The tailwheel mounting hole had very suspicious shape, so I inserted plastic card on the inside, the hole will be filled and newly drilled. In general the fit of the parts (including the fuselage halves) is quite fine for a short run, however the kit is plagued by countless mould seams that are not that easy to remove because of the hard plastic.

 

P6050320.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looking real good, but could you please tone down the shiny brassy colour of the exhaust collector ring? The real units were heat stained steel, not bronze or copper.

Chris

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎2016‎-‎06‎-‎05 at 11:05 PM, dogsbody said:

Looking real good, but could you please tone down the shiny brassy colour of the exhaust collector ring? The real units were heat stained steel, not bronze or copper.

Chris

Thanks for advising me Chris, I am going to tone down the exhaust collector ring later.

On ‎2016‎-‎06‎-‎05 at 11:11 PM, John Aero said:

Fairey Hi speed gun mount. This is on a III.F but the layout is the same. Also look at the Swordfish one. Again it's the same.

John

Thanks a lot for the references John, they will for sure help me with the gun mount construction. Regarding the gun fuselage slot - it seems like Vickers had different approach than Fairey. See below the two pictures, sadly none of them of Vildebeest IV, but explicit enough. There was no aperture for the magazine (like on IIIIF, Swordfish or Seafox) and also no flap covering the slot when not in use (IIIF or Seafox).

Vincent - Aeroplane Monthly March 1995 (By Day and Night)

 

vincent4.jpg

 

Vildebeest III - K File p. 376

 

vildebeest5.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Engine installed. Contrary to the kit instructions I used only three (out of four) etched exhaust collector ring struts as this configuration is in my opinion more consistent with the references.

 

P6110322.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

The first half of this summer was not exactly abundant in modelling time for me, however I managed some good progress in last two weeks that I am happy to share with you. The gun mounting was scratch-built, the photo-etched details came with the kit.

 

P8050086.jpg

 

P8050092.jpg

 

P8050094.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Painting started and I also added a few detail parts after returning from my vacation. Just about time to convert the mono-beest to biplane.

Patrik

 

P1010008.jpg

 

P1010007.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The torpedo assembly for your inspection. I added four small locating pins to the PE rack and drilled four holes on the fuselage underside to make the attachment easier later on.

Patrik

 

P9090005.jpg

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Biplane at last. Looked easy at the beginning, became more complicated later.

1. The starboard lower wing outer section has quite markedly greater angle of incidence than the port one. Not that easy to recognize because of the considerable wing dihedral, however the front starboard wingtip is about 1.5 mm higher from "the ground" than the port one, whereas the rear wingtips of both lower wings are in the same height. Checked the same on all SH Vildebeest kits I was able to hoard up and it is always there. So next time I build one I will try to correct the warped lower wing first.

2. Because of this I had to shorten the front starboard interplane strut about 1+ mm in order to be able to fit the upper wing correctly. By the way, I strongly recommend to keep good track of the interplane strut numbering. They might look the same on the first sight, but they are all of slightly different length.

3. And then I had to shorten all central plane struts more than 3 mm. This step required a lot of repeated shortening and dry fitting and shortening and dry fitting and so forth, This was the first part of the kit had to be so dramatically altered to provide good fit, otherwise the build has been quite fine in this matter so far - I mean for a short-run.

 

Patrik

 

P9160003.jpg

 

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

The rest of the painting and detailing goes quite well, though I decided to fit the two etched aerial wire posts and the two fuel tank vents onto the upper wing before painting and managed to knock off each of them at least once in the meantime.

 

The only part which gave me considerable headache was the pilot's ring and bead sight support construction. It is photo-etched in one piece and clearly tailored for the uncowled Pegasus versions. So with the Mk. IV the Perseus cowling was pretty much in the way if the etched part was to be fitted according to the instructions.

 

PA060004.jpg

 

After one evening spent by rehearsing my swear word vocabulary I came with a solution where I split the part in two, fitted the horizontal bar first and then carefully trimmed the V support strut until it was short enough to fit behind the cowling in a plausible way.

 

PA060008.jpg

 

PA070021.jpg

 

Edited by Patrik
  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...