It Bites! A Bat with Teeth!!!

[Wez]

A bat that bites?  Gotta be a Vampire right?

 

Having divested myself of my studies for the summer, got the garden under control (tomatoes, chillies, courgettes, green beens and lots of herbs on the way), and been on my holibobs, so what do I do with all of that spare time?  Join a GB of course!

 

I'm joining this GB with the Azur boxing of the Special Hobby Vampire, I'll be building FB.5 WA331 coded A-T as flown by the OC of 112 Sqn RAF, from 2TAF based at Fassberg in Germany during 1951.  I'll be using Modeldecal sheet 14 to provide the markings as it's the only one that has the correct colour sharkmouth.

 

Most profiles, the original Heller Vampire kit boxart and the restored Vampire VZ304 incorrectly show the mouth as having a red infill, it should be black!  Modeldecal themselves got this wrong when they first released this sheet in the 1970's, fortunately they corrected this when they reissued the set in the early 1980's, this time with photographic evidence and the testimony of one of the individuals who painted the sharkmouth on the aircraft.

 

Cold War Shield 2 has some photos of the subject aircraft along with some other jets from the Sqn, they too have the black infill on their sharkmouths!

 

I shall be building the kit mostly SFTB but with the addition of the FB.9 type starboard air intake which I've stolen from my Special Hobby Mistral kit.  WA331 was one of those FB.5's which received the modification introducing a cockpit cold air unit which was originally installed on the tropicalised FB.9's, this unit was housed in an extended fairing to the starboard air intake.  I shall be using Stuart's ( @Courageous  } build of the Special Hobby Vampire F.3 as it shows some of the quirks of the kit.

 

Right now Flikr is being in the words of my son, a butt head, it won't let me view the photo to copy the link to show you the kit, decals and a couple of books,  There are plenty of useful walkrounds on the web for the Vampire so I have enough gen to help me with the build.

 

I'll post the photo once Flikr learns to play nicely!

 

EDIT:  Flikr is behaving now, here's the picture!

 

 

Edited July 8, 2019 by Wez

[Courageous]

Mentioned in dispatches...

I'll tag along to see what you make of this.

 

Stuart

[Wez]

8 hours ago, Courageous said:

Mentioned in dispatches...

I'll tag along to see what you make of this.

 

Stuart

No pressure then!

[Biggles87]

Settling down in my comfy chair.🍿

 

John

[helios16v]

Watch out for the pylon fitting to the wings (if you plan on adding the drops).  Aside from that area my Vampii build was more or less straightforward with the rest of the kit having decent fit up.  It was an enjoyable little build.

 

Looking forward to seeing what you make of her.

[Wez]

5 hours ago, helios16v said:

Watch out for the pylon fitting to the wings (if you plan on adding the drops).

Thanks for the tip, I'm not planning on using them for this model, I've not seen a picture of this particular aircraft with them fitted, but it's useful to know for future Vampire projects.  It will be having rockets fitted though!

 

I've made some (slow) progress during the week, I'll give an update later this weekend.

[Basilisk]

Welcome in the pond and it is great to see a new type in the mix.

Cheers, Peter