Retired Bob Posted November 27, 2018 Share Posted November 27, 2018 2 hours ago, general melchett said: I think it was five Dave, XM714 through to XM718, the last production B2. (XM706-12 never existed). But you're quite right, it is possible to build these aircraft straight from the kit. Indeed general thank you for your invaluable advice, I have a picture of XM718 in white and low viz markings including a 100 Sqn badge (in pink?), unfortunately it is from the rear side so does not show the intakes or lack of oil coolers, but another picture of XM716 does, but as usual with most photo's someone always puts their head where you need to see, ie there are no oil coolers. I will break out the filler immediately Sah!. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retired Bob Posted November 27, 2018 Share Posted November 27, 2018 6 hours ago, Timmas said: Good question lol! I don't know the finite detail of the Victor's development, and when I bought the kit it was the only way I could see of getting a B1. I love the purity of its lines. Things weren't going too badly until I fitted the bomb bay; putting it in at this stage has made cleaning up really awkward. But I've got this far and there's no turning back. I have a mental picture of how the finished thing will look and I want to see if I can achieve it. If I can, I'll be really pleased. If I can't well, I'll have learnt a lot along the way and will be better equipped to make a better job of the next one. I can understand the reasoning, it just seemed a painful way to go. Having worked on the K.2 tankers I always wanted a model or six of the impressive machines, as an armourer my part was limited to work on the ejection seats, canopy hatch's and the underwing tanks. I actually bought my matchbox victor at RAF Marham, matchbox were making a big deal about the launch of the kit but whilst tempted to make one as Clint Eastwood would say, "you've got to know your limitations". 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
general melchett Posted November 27, 2018 Share Posted November 27, 2018 No problem Dave, yes the 100 sqn fin badge was in low viz pink. Here's an excellent shot of the early B2 (possibly XL191) in all it's glory. Victor B2 Interim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Swindell Posted November 27, 2018 Share Posted November 27, 2018 3 hours ago, general melchett said: I think it was five Dave, XM714 through to XM718, the last production B2. (XM706-12 never existed). But you're quite right, it is possible to build these aircraft straight from the kit. I'm sure you're right, the brain is currently addled with jetlag, hence the question marks in my original post. I've been looking into doing an early B2 and trying to decide whether to man up and do the leading edge flaps or wimp out and keep the kit fixed droop. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retired Bob Posted November 27, 2018 Share Posted November 27, 2018 17 minutes ago, general melchett said: No problem Dave, yes the 100 sqn fin badge was in low viz pink. Here's an excellent shot of the early B2 (possibly XL191) in all it's glory. Victor B2 Interim Looks like 139 Sqn, thank you a much better picture of the intakes et al. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
general melchett Posted November 27, 2018 Share Posted November 27, 2018 Quote 'm sure you're right, the brain is currently addled with jetlag, hence the question marks in my original post. I've been looking into doing an early B2 and trying to decide whether to man up and do the leading edge flaps or wimp out and keep the kit fixed droop. No problem Dave, I 'work' from home so it's a lot easier to get the gen here. You could do the extra work but it would probably be as well to chose one of the last airframes, (I will be as I've got enough going on as it is) Quote Looks like 139 Sqn, thank you a much better picture of the intakes et al. Pleasure Bob, yep, 139 Jamaica, the photo was taken at Middleton St George BoB day in September 1962, as far as I'm aware the only B2 in the static park was '191 so I'm assuming it was her. The union jack on the nose is slightly unusual, (nice to see the all blue 60Kva Houchin parked nearby too). 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retired Bob Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 20 hours ago, general melchett said: Pleasure Bob, yep, 139 Jamaica, the photo was taken at Middleton St George BoB day in September 1962, as far as I'm aware the only B2 in the static park was '191 so I'm assuming it was her. The union jack on the nose is slightly unusual, (nice to see the all blue 60Kva Houchin parked nearby too). Thanks again Andy, I thought it was Middleton St George when I saw it was a Stockton archive photo, blue ground equipment dates it, everything was going yellow just after I joined up in 72. As for the Victor, two intake vanes, no oil coolers, but I will leave the leading edge flaps and number her XM178, the last B.2 Bob 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
general melchett Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 Pleasure Bob, yep, all blue GE, then went blue/yellow, yellow and finally drab green. The early stuff looked as good as the aircraft! Good idea leaving the nose flaps alone. Just one thing...I think you meant XM718. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retired Bob Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 3 hours ago, general melchett said: Just one thing...I think you meant XM718. Sorry ,yes. Damn, first dementia, then vertigo and high blood pressure and now dyslexia. Must be all the reminiscing of Frog kits and £.s.d. on a F101 thread. Bob 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
general melchett Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 Quote first dementia, then vertigo and high blood pressure and now dyslexia. Ah, you must have been aircrew then... 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retired Bob Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 1 minute ago, general melchett said: Ah, you must have been aircrew then... No, I was....... A I'm an armourer, B I'm an Armourer, C I'm an armourer too. With a tool box full of hammers. . 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmas Posted November 28, 2018 Author Share Posted November 28, 2018 Flippin' 'eck...this looks much better than I thought it might. Having put some primer on, I feel so much happier about his now. There are several bits to tidy up, especially along the lower fuselage seam and where the intakes join, but I'm pretty happy generally. The bomb bay looks much neater than I'd feared it might and the repair to the resin intake doesn't look bad either. A ghost of it is still visible but I’m confident that I can lose that. My worries about the top seam were largely groundless too it seems... Who was it that initially suggested putting the primer on? It was @Magua87 Thanks for that…I might have blundered on without that word of advice. And also thanks to all you guys; @At Sea @Learstang @Dave Swindell @Harry_the_Spider and @Retired Bob for the cajoling, encouragement and support during the past couple of weeks. Of course massive thanks are also due to @general melchett for the inspirational images and the insight into the Victor’s history and development. I never know a huge amount about the planes I make models of, so to read this stuff, and to see the modelling inspiration is absolutely terrific. Sincere thanks Andy. So, thanks to all of you for helping me through a sticky patch. I’m raring to get on with it now… 10 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Learstang Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 You're welcome, and she's coming together, mate! Although priming can reveal some unpleasant surprises, it can also allay some fears. Especially with heavy conversions where you have different materials of different colours, the priming brings it all together. And it eliminates those nasty 'ghost' lines, rivets, etc. They just magically disappear. Regards, Jason 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martian Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 This is looking highly promising! Martian 👽 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGA Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 Nice one! I'll keep a very interested eye on your build, maybe it can help with my own (rather foolish) attempt! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmas Posted March 1, 2019 Author Share Posted March 1, 2019 Work on the Victor came to a grinding halt towards the end of last year. This was down to a number of things involving friends and family, not least something that happened to my 92 year old mum. She was rushed into hospital at the end of November after being found unconscious on her hall floor by the young supermarket delivery driver who arrived with the grocery order I’d made for her when I was with her the day before. She was discharged at the end of January and she now has vascular dementia. It’s very mild, she’s back in her home and coping pretty well, albeit with a bit of help, but there’s going to be a change in our domestic setup because she is coming to live with us. We know there will be challenges ahead if the dementia accelerates but we don’t know how long she has left, and we want her to spend her remaining years with us. The good thing is, she wants it too. So to acknowledge the lull in my modelling activity I thought I’d post this. It’s one of the short ‘Interlude’ films that the BBC made in the 1950s. it’s unmistakably British (well English really) and it’s from the same decade that the Victor B1 first flew and when I was born. I love the serenity… Now that life is settling down again, and decisions have been made, I’ve picked up where I left off,. And look, Victor has wings…and they’re stuck on. Hooray!.. I’m pleased to note too that despite all the unscientific faffing around I did with them, they actually appear to be straight…and the distances between each wingtip and the table top are within a millimetre of each other. So I’m very happy with that. Mind you, it very nearly didn’t happen. For some time now I’ve employed the services of a rather engaging blonde modelling assistant; European (Belgian to be precise) and with a feisty character. She's also quite beguiling and does strange things to my head if I stay in her company for too long… Despite all that, I noticed this. The shapes don't match on each side… …I’m sure I hadn’t damaged that bit, and looking at it closely, there seemed to be a glitch in the moulding but I filled it with some Milliput which I’ve not used before, so I hope it turns out ok. After getting the wings on I decided to tackle the tail assembly. I decided to straighten out the skewiff angle of it. General Melchett had previously said it was a simple fix to make, and I scoffed, thinking ‘yeah right, it’s easy for you to say mate, coz you know what you’re doin’, but actually he was right (as is usually the case in these matters) and it turned out ok. After that, I re-shaped the fairing into something more representative of a bullet... I can see why people rave about Milliput, it really is fantastic stuff. I’ve not done anything complicated or particularly challenging with it unlike this guy, who does some really nice work with it… My original plan was to leave the ECM pod off the back end of the fuselage so that I could stick something up the rear end of it to give support while painting, and then glue it on afterwards. But after test-fitting the assembly I realised that so much of it rests on the pod itself, and there would inevitably be some gaps to fill (which I didn’t fancy doing after the rest of the paintwork was complete) I abandoned that idea and stuck it all on. I’ll have to worry about the painting later. This is when cockup number two happened. Or is it number three? Or four? I don’t know, I’ve lost count. Having spent time straightening the tail and getting it all looking as good as I could, I glued it to the fuselage with epoxy because the locating tab is small and I wanted a good strong bond. I spent ages making sure it was straight and vertical and supported it while the glue set. I went to bed anticipating a smart result in the morning but woke up to find the whole bloody thing had moved overnight and was pointing towards the starboard intakes. Not by much, but enough to be noticeable. By this time the glue had been on for about 18 hours and was set pretty hard, so I had to cut the damned thing off and stick it on again. The air in our house went a deep shade of blue for a while. Anyway, I managed it, eventually, and then went to the opposite end to look at the canopy again. I’d already decided to use the kit part instead of the PE because, despite the beautiful detail in the metal piece, the framework seems wrong. I did some preliminary masking and realised that the raised pane edges were not symmetrical and the step in the central pane (which was done to cover the filled hole that was there for the refuelling probe) looked terrible... The only way around it that I could see, was to replace it, so I cut the panel out altogether and substituted it with a clear piece taken from a cd case. I cut along the framework and I’m hoping the joint will be hidden after I’ve neatened it up with tiny amounts of filler. It needed a lot of sanding to blend the two pieces together, and I took off all of the raised detail in the process, but I have a plan for re-masking it. I have no idea how this will turn out. I had a real problem bringing the clearness back after sanding it, but the inside is nice and clear now and I know what I need to do to get the outside the same. There's a slight touch of fogging on the bottom edge and I'm hoping I can lose that by polishing once it's glued in place.There’s bound to be more sanding to blend it in with the fuselage… So, that’s where I’m at so far. Not huge progress, but some. There’s a way to go yet but at least it’s beginning to look like a proper Victor now. More later… 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Poultney Posted March 17, 2019 Share Posted March 17, 2019 Any progress on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmas Posted March 18, 2019 Author Share Posted March 18, 2019 20 hours ago, Adam Poultney said: Any progress on this? Yes, a bit, but it's slow. And challenging! Update follows... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmas Posted March 18, 2019 Author Share Posted March 18, 2019 (edited) Things are slowly edging forward. I glued the canopy in place and had to exert a bit of downward pressure to get it to sit in place...and the central pane fell out grrrr (I didn't take a pic). So I took it off, glued the pane back in place and had another go. This time it all stayed put so I set about blending it in again. I drew a few feint pencil lines at what I hoped were the right angles, used thin strips of insulation tape to denote the frame edges and filled the spaces with strips of masking tape... Once the black tape was taken off, I painted some Pledge over the canopy framing to help keep it in place. I did some more blending and created quite a bit of dust.. The bomb aimer's finally got his windows in too... Edited March 18, 2019 by Timmas 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry1954 Posted March 18, 2019 Share Posted March 18, 2019 Good to see this back and sorry to hear about your Mum, but it sounds like life has settled down with a solution going forward. It's great to hear of people like yourself taking such steps to look after the elderly. Champion stuff 👍 I've not looked in on this thread for a while, and I am glad to see that the Victor is looking very well progressed. An impressive build indeed. Terry 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Poultney Posted March 18, 2019 Share Posted March 18, 2019 Wonder if the Airfix kit would be a better starting point for a conversion of this scale...... I just glued the wings in my Blue Steel B2 like 5 minutes ago. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmas Posted March 18, 2019 Author Share Posted March 18, 2019 5 hours ago, Terry1954 said: Good to see this back and sorry to hear about your Mum, but it sounds like life has settled down with a solution going forward. It's great to hear of people like yourself taking such steps to look after the elderly. Champion stuff 👍 I've not looked in on this thread for a while, and I am glad to see that the Victor is looking very well progressed. An impressive build indeed. Terry Thanks Terry. My mum is doing ok so far. She's recaptured a fair bit of her independence although she has some daily help and is back in her own flat for the time being while we sort out the house...we're going to have to buy a bigger one so that's going to be a complication. Progress on the Vic is slow, but steady. Next jobs are to do the nose probe then the wing pitot tubes. Once they're done it'll be time for a rub down and polish, then another coat of primer. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmas Posted March 18, 2019 Author Share Posted March 18, 2019 4 hours ago, Adam Poultney said: Wonder if the Airfix kit would be a better starting point for a conversion of this scale...... I don't know to be honest because the intakes will be an issue with that too I imagine. When I bought this one, Airfix hadn't announced their's so it was the only one I was aware of at the time. Still, I'm learning a lot by doing it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmas Posted March 22, 2019 Author Share Posted March 22, 2019 Right. Next job was to fit the nose tube. Drill hole... Fit tube... At this point I realised that if I had a brain I'd be very dangerous. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have put the brass tube in before glueing the bomb aimer's windows in place so that the piece of shiny tube inside the plane could be disguised with black paint. But I didn't do that, and as the clear piece is now firmly attached with epoxy, because it wasn't a great fit, it isn't going to come off. Consequently, there's a lovely length of brass tube running above the top of the bomb aimer's head . And you can see it if you look upwards from below . Still, at least it didn't smack him straight in the face when it went in, so that's something I suppose. There's nothing I can do about it now so I'll just pretend it isn't there, or I'll imagine it's a vital piece of top secret bomb-aiming equipment. Or something. Anyway, pitot tubes for the wingtips. These are the lead ones that came with the Flightpath kit... I'm assuming they're the right length, and they've got nice little recessed dimples on each end, but they look a bit heavy to me and I don't know whether to replace them with something else. I've seen these brass aftermarket ones (on the left) but neither they, nor the lead ones above match the faired-in effect on the drawing on the right... I'll give it some thought but I'm definitely not buying any more aftermarket stuff for this, so I might try and replicate them myself. If I ignore the fairing-in I don't think they'll look bad at this scale (it is 1/72 after all) and I'm wondering about using sewing needles and alloy tube... ...the needles fit inside the tube quite nicely and I could cut them to the right length. Anyway, whichever route I take, they're going on last as I know they'll be easily snapped off otherwise. Next step is to extend the ailerons out to the wingtips then give the whole thing another coat of primer to see how the rest of the joins look. Then I'll have to think about whether to rescribe or not. Comments welcome. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmas Posted October 20, 2019 Author Share Posted October 20, 2019 (edited) I've finally finished it. Phew. It's been quite a challenge and I got to the point where I was glad to see the end of it . I only took a couple of final bench shots before I hung it from the ceiling in my home office (display and storage space is a bit limited in our house) although I intend taking it down and doing a few more detail pics of it at some point in the future. This is the only decent shot have of how it looked before being suspended (the accompanying Revell Hunter FGA.9 was a joy to build and that's now hanging from the ceiling too)... What am I happy with? Well, I'm pleased with the way the resin and metal pieces have blended in with the rest. I'm particularly happy that there's no visible seam where the canopy joins the fuselage either and the transparent part is still nice and clear despite all the sanding that took place (I was worried about dust getting trapped inside). The pilots are both visible in their seats, and so is the bomb aimer underneath, which is nice. I'm pretty happy with the central windscreen pane that I cut in to remove the refuelling probe's attachment hole. The decals have gone on nicely without any silvering and I'm reasonably happy with the panel lines, which I added with a hard pencil although some of them seem to be a bit on the heavy side. Things I'm not particularly happy about are; the canopy framing is a bit heavy and the edges aren't as crisp as they should be. Paint seems to have crept under the masks, or has built up along their edges in a couple of places and I can't tidy them up because the paint is too hard. The paint job itself could be better too, and the pitot tube on the starboard wing snapped off and I've forgotten to replace it. Anyway, here it is hanging from the ceiling. I usually use ultra fine 1lb 10 oz fishing line because it's practically invisible to the naked eye, but this one is so heavy due to the resin parts, I've used 5lb line. It's still hard to see however. The model is suspended above and to the right hand side of my computer away from the window and is fairly close to a wall. There's not a huge amount of light, but you get the idea I hope. It's pointing back towards the window (the same orientation as the rest of my models) as if it's heading towards the outdoors. I have the rather weird notion of them all having a kind of Toy Story characteristic and leaving the room when I'm not there to fly around outside. Yep, weird I know, but hey ho... And here's one I montaged in Photoshop... Anyway, that's it. Thanks to everyone who has contributed with advice and comments. I've really appreciated them all. 😉 Now onto something else. Whatever it is, I'm going to give major surgery a miss!.. Edited October 20, 2019 by Timmas 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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