Kader (Lincoln Int.) 1/144ish HP Victor Prototype conv

[JamesP]

The MikroMir Victor B1 was a bit to much of project to start now with builds for CBK SIGs display underway so I zigged instead of zagging and threw this down from the loft when I was up there. I had always had this down to build as one of the prototypes. Initially intention was to do it OOB and get to the painting ASAP. Of course things have started to spiral rapidly. The intakes and exhausts are horrid see below and the kit is B1 ish and lacks the intake and fillet at the base of the tail that the prototypes had ( this differs from the chunkier version on the B2) and then once into the build I found that the nose needed to be 5mm shorter - I was still trying to talk myself out of it when I found a saw in my hand and a headless fuselage on the desk. I suspect foul play!

 

First a quick overview:

 

Well actually it's a Hendley Page Victor according to the small slim box that was standard for all Lincoln/Kader releases. Like the rest this is box scale. I reckon, assuming it has a B1 wing span, that it's about 1/149 scale, so won't look out of place next to my 1/144 Welsh Model kit.

 

 

 

The most glaring issue is the intakes and very blunt wing roots. Extending these and reshaping them would make it even more apparently a prototype as the wing roots were pretty close to the crew door. The other gross simplification is the exhausts as there are none are such and drilling these out and adding some tube will enhance things greatly. 

 

 

The good new is that the parts fit together well. I trimmed of the sprue attachment marks and taped it all together.

 

 

I got the fuselage together without issue and proceeded to fill a number of sink marks. The raised roundels and serials were removed, the silver plastic still clearly shows their position afterwards. The control surfaces were a bit lumpy and got flatten too. The plastic is hard but sands very nicely.

 

The intakes have been cut out from the side rather than straight on! Someone was evidently not at their best that day. These were reshaped and elongated. The insides will be built up later with Milliput. 

 

 

The exhausts are no better being complete blanks, concave at that with no tail pipe. I start to ream them out when I realised that one set of was ~1.5mm thinner than the other! I've started to set about how to pad this one out the match.

 

 

 I saw mention elsewhere that the nose of the prototype is even shorter, ~5mm. It would have been easier and more accurate to cut the separate fuselage halves hence my need to add a shim of card after correcting my mistakes. All looks good now it's sanded back though.

 

 

I've built the tail spine up with card laminations and some plastic tube for the intake. These and been secured in place with "gloop" and needs to be set aside for a couple of days to cure.

 

 

I really know how to pick'em ... or do they pick me?

Edited July 22, 2019 by JamesP

[Adam Poultney]

Only just found this, have you done any more on the model since?

[JamesP]

I did very little modelling over the summer, but at the moment it's on hold while I finish a Bristol Boxkite for SMW. Next job will be to line the intakes with Milliput and reshape them though.

[gamevender]

I did their Valiant in all white anti-nuclear glare finish. Made a very nice "desk model". These were the only kits of these aircraft for a LONG time. 

[JamesP]

Back to work on this now.

The reshaping of the tail and inlet has been completed.

 

I've also made some progress with reshaping the intakes and exhausts. I've added blanking plates as a precursor to shaping the insides of the intakes with milliput. The undersized exhaust was cut either side and the spaced with some plastic card. I did that a while ago and completely forgot that only one was undersized and repeated the surgery to the healthy exhaust whoops!

 

[JamesP]

I got around to forming the inside of the intakes. I did this quickly and roughly with milliput; yeah, I didn't trim the crust off the grey half of the milliput but this won't be seen. A squared off paint brush handle to form the inner shape of the intake by following the lip. I then trimmed the milliput level with a wet scalpel knife to reduce the amount of sanding required. Once dry plenty of sanding and trimming was still required to get the wing halves to fit comfortably.
 

 

I then decided to glue the wings together so I could finish shaping the intakes and filling the seam. I've inserted them into the fuselage as they are a snug fit and it works perfectly as a clamp.

 

 

[JamesP]

Some minor progress between wrapping presents on an evening. Auxiliary intakes which were also mould 90degs to the direction of flight were plugged with some tapered sprue (the thicker bit left over from stretching sprue).

I pushed enlarging the exhausts as far as I dared and have got them to accept some 5mm Al tubing. I'll add this later after I finish sanding the repair work. The cuts were filling with shims of 5thou card left over from Airfix 54mm figures.

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by JamesP

[JamesP]

Looking at the profiles of the prototype something was bugging me. Oh yeah, the tails are a lot taller than the the production machines. Completely missed/forgot about it. Not to difficult to fix though. Couple of string of thick plastic bonding to the top of tail.

 

 

Once dry, this was roughed to shape with some 120 grit paper, I used some vinyl tape to protect the surface of the kit's tail. Then just a matter of shaping to match. The top of the rudder was filled and rescribed.

 

 

[Adam Poultney]

Very good so far, I'm absolutely falling in love with the Victor and am on my third one, with plans for a fourth, fifth and sixth. 

Looking at the canopy on WB771 reminded me of this thread (because looking at the window arrangement of Victor prototypes is what I find fun apparently). How are you going to approach getting the windows right on this?

[JamesP]

Frankly, I'm going with "close enough". The kit piece is quite basic, 4 (5?) vertical, and two horizontal panels, After polishing up the outside I've sprayed the inside of of the canopy black. Unfortunately my filler has gotten underneath the canopy and I think I going to have to remove it.

[Adam Poultney]

In 1/144 on such an old kit, close enough is good enough.  But either way, here's the real aircraft at two different points (both WB771) if you want to attempt to make it somewhat accurate. I forgot there aren't the top sideways panels on the prototypes...

[JamesP]

Progress at the pointy end.

I had sprayed in the inside of the windscreen black but I made a hash of gluing and filling the gaps which could be seen through the part so I decided to blend it in and will just paint the glazing (more accurately) gloss black. I then decided to fill the triangular recesses in the nose so they could be painted to match the cockpit glazing; they were also a bit to big. A nose probe from brass rod had been added beforehand.

The wings are a good fit and filling only involved going around with some Revell Contacta. I could then fix the blunt wing roots and fill the join in the intakes that I had formed. Again I reached for the Milliput and use a brush handle to work the insides and a scalpel as a palette knife along with a wet brush to form the tips of the roots. These still nice some final sanding to shape but that will be just about it, before giving is a first coat of primer. The edges to the lips were rounded over and the auxiliary intakes re-drilled at the correct angle.

 

 

[Adam Poultney]

Looking very good! Your wings and intake mods seem to have worked really well.

 

The nose shape is pretty basic and not exactly perfect in this kit, but for its age as scale it looks pretty decent. A suggestion I have is to just go forget the actual glazing and paint the whole canopy on, if you stick to the glazing I think it would end up too small. Doing this should improve the look of the shape, but it's up to you if you want to try anything like that. 

 

I'd like to see this next to a Mikromir kit, you said you have one in the first post. Do please @ me when you start that build so I don't miss it.

Must say I'm very tempted to get another mikromir and make a prototype out of it. Perhaps cast my mods in resin even if I do it...

Edited January 5, 2020 by Adam Poultney

[Adam Poultney]

You gotta be psychic! I was just browsing on ebay to see if any of these kits are around when you reacted to that lol

[JamesP]

Ha!

 

thanks for the comments. Yes i do intend to repaint the glazing in the correct size and location ( a bit further forwards ) if only ‘cos I messed up gluing the part in place.

 

Ready for a full coat of primer I’ve just dropped it while having a look on the way to bed and bent the nose probe aaarggghhhh! 

 

I’ve  just about had enough of kits that require copious filler and fettling for now so my next build will be a modern shake and bake. This was meant to be a quick build of a simple kit!  

 

...I’ve got the Kader Valiant too.  

[JamesP]

It's been a lot of priming, filling sanding over the last couple of weeks. I'm happy enough with the intakes. You'd need to a hell of lot of remoulding to get them accurate, I've gone for acceptable at a first glance 

 

A good coat of Alclad grey filler primer which always needs a good sanding back and so I've stopped using it on most builds, but due to the lack of surface detail I can use it up on builds such as this.

 

 

 

I've just got to scribe the door in relation to the new intakes and cut some airbrake strakes before slapping PRU blue all over it.

[Adam Poultney]

2 minutes ago, JamesP said:

It's been a lot of priming, filling sanding over the last couple of weeks. I'm happy enough with the intakes. You'd need to a hell of lot of remoulding to get them accurate, I've gone for acceptable at a first glance 

 

A good coat of Alclad grey filler primer which always needs a good sanding back and so I've stopped using it on most builds, but due to the lack of surface detail I can use it up on builds such as this.

 

 

 

I've just got to scribe the door in relation to the new intakes and cut some airbrake strakes before slapping PRU blue all over it.

Intakes aren't perfectly accurate like you say but I'd say they're pretty close, certainly close enough in this scale. Looking at how well your build is shaping up I'd like to take a crack at converting one of these to a more accurate model sooner or later...

Will you be adding wingtip pitots? Just the one detail on here which is missing now.

[JamesP]

21 minutes ago, Adam Poultney said:

Will you be adding wingtip pitots? Just the one detail on here which is missing now.

 

Probably, now that you've mentioned it!  

[JamesP]

Working up the decals for the cockpit. Adam is right they are quite different from the production models. They also seem to vary between the prototypes, with 3 or 5 smaller windows either side of the 5 long thin ones. The oval window near the wing root seems to be in a different place in every photo. I'm going for WB755 in the PRU blue finish I'm sticking with this https://abpic.co.uk/pictures/view/1678079. I've also noted the main doors are significantly different than shown in plans of the B.2 https://www.agefotostock.com/age/en/Stock-Images/Rights-Managed/MEV-11957127

[JamesP]

Not had much time or to model over the last few weeks. What time I did have was spent fiddling making the window decals for the cockpit. Dwomby sent me a scan of the PE for the 1/72 Victor but when I scaled it down I realized it was designed to fit the shape of the Matchbox kit part and wasn't strickly accurate or at least didn't match the proportions on this kit. Secondly the prototype and a different arrangement of windows around the main 5 long vertical ones. A lot of fiddling got me here:

 

 

I always print two sets for insurance though I decided to add a gradient to one set of windows to see how they would work. Of course this makes them translucent but the PRU Blue should be a good base colour.

[Adam Poultney]

Must say I do like that stand. If I see a copy of this kit going cheap I'll pick one up and do something similar to what you've done here.

Looking forward to seeing any further progress

[JamesP]

Finally got to throw PRU all over it care of Xtracrylic. This colour seems to behave better than over and and produced a lovely finish. Annoying it's shown all the flaws in the plastic and primer underneath. Note I found a good photo that clearly showed the tip of the tailplane bullet was light grey. I'm coming to the conclusion that only the final colour will show you the true state of your surface prep!   I've also made some jet exhausts from 5mm Al tubing, I've thinned and polished the ends and painted the insides steel.

 

 

 

[Adam Poultney]

Once again looking good, shame about the surface prep though. I see what you mean in places, but in the pictures I think in 1/148 it'll be good enough. 

Good to be seeing this getting nearer to completion anyway.

[JamesP]

Single coat of Xtracrylic PRU Blue, it dried so quickly I was able to hold the fuselage to spray the wings in one sitting. I sourced the roundels and bars from an Xtradecal 1/72 sheet to, 24" fuselage and 36" upperwings which of course double up in 1/144 scale. The underwings serials have been placed inboard as this appears to differ on the prototypes from the service aircraft. Pitots and aerials are from tapered brass rod. A coat of Xtracrylic gloss actually gives a nice scale satin finish after which I touched up the windows with some Klear. Exhausts push fitted in place. Better photos at the weekend, fingers crossed.

 

 

[Adam Poultney]

On 03/01/2020 at 03:00, Adam Poultney said:

 

Holdup a second.... Just realised... Where are the landing gear doors? Anyone know why they ain't there?