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Airfix Valiant


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My second furlough build.  Pretty painless too!  The Valiant was quite a simple aircraft & this is amply reflected in the Airfix kit, nowhere near as complex as say the Victor!  The only AM used was the Eduard etched cockpit set but to be frank it's hardly necessary as there's really nothing to see through the cockpit transparencies.  Anyway, the kit goes together with no issues - a couple of old bolts in the nose to prevent tail sitting & the jobs a good'n.  I chickened out of the over all white scheme due to my inability to get good coverage with that colour (although ironically, the underside white came out pretty good when I applied it - should have kept going!), Medium Sea Grey sprayed on the uppers followed by a brushed application (again, I bottled the idea of masking & spraying it!) of Dark Green.  It's a LONG time since I tried this & to be frank it could be better when viewing close up but although I'll try to do better in the future, I'm fairly happy with the result.  All paints are Xtracolour & decals from the kit for a 207 squadron machine.  Decals are great & the only issue was getting the fin flashes to settle over the tail fin vortex generators but a bit of judicious cutting with a sharp blade & touching up with Post Office Red & the result is improved.  One thing to watch is to make sure that you paint the cockpit instrument panel & the area in front of it in the recommended black, otherwise, you'll end up with small areas of bare grey plastic when you remove the cockpit transparency masks, just like I did :hanging:!!  Finished with Alclad gloss coat for the first time & it's recommended - nice, fast drying.  The high gloss finish was quite a noticeable feature.  The base is from Coastal kits & I printed out a small squadron crest & stuck it over a bit of damage on the card surface!  Thanks for looking.

 

20200507_100448 20200507_100328 20200507_100554 20200507_100355 20200507_100308 20200507_100316 20200507_100508

 

 

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To me, the Valiant is an elegant workhorse. I know, those two don't seem to go together but that's the best I can do. Your build is wonderful. Outstanding finish. And thanks for letting us know it's not a hard build. With Airfix having produced the Victor, and a Vulcan on the way, do you think they'll do a new Valiant kit too?

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38 minutes ago, SAT69 said:

With Airfix having produced the Victor, and a Vulcan on the way, do you think they'll do a new Valiant kit too?

They just need to reissue it, it's only about 10 years old and a very respectable modern kit. The kits are scarce now on the second hand market, and I can't quite bring myself to build mine because it feels too precious. Silly of course, the world needs more Valiants, so this build gets a big like from me! 

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53 minutes ago, Bangseat said:

They just need to reissue it, it's only about 10 years old and a very respectable modern kit. The kits are scarce now on the second hand market, and I can't quite bring myself to build mine because it feels too precious. Silly of course, the world needs more Valiants, so this build gets a big like from me! 

Yea, I thought long & hard about building mine; they go for stupid money on bay when they do crop up.  Of course, now I want one with the PR kit!

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Great... just great! You gotta love the Valiant and your model does it justice. 👍 Nice to see a camouflage version instead of white. Shame that this change in colour heralded the end of the aircraft in bomber service 🙁

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1 hour ago, Graham T said:

Of course, now I want one with the PR kit!

Beautiful work Graham! It is really nice to see a camouflaged example as they seem to be somewhat rare. And your paintwork looks excellent.

 

I built mine when the kit was originally released. Converted it to PR version (my former boss was a navigator with 543 Squadron flying in Valiants) and painted it with white. Not so easy using a paint brush and Humbrol enamels. The final satin coat turned into yellow within few weeks. I wasn't happy...

 

Cheers,

Antti

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Very nice indeed,...... I`m thinking of repainting one of my white Valiants in camouflage and seeing your lovely model may just have made my mind up!

Cheers

           Tony

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Oh wow! Amazing build! I love V Bombers, this is certainly a good one. You've captured the look of the later Vickers Valiants by well. I absolutely adore the Camouflage Valiants, I really should build one in that scheme... 

Shame there's only one left so no chance we can have all the schemes on display in 1/1 scale on complete aircraft.

 

I have two of this kit, just moved one temporarily to the spot my Airfix Vulcan used to take while that's getting a repaint, and I'm having a bit of intake trouble on the other which I'm still building. The halves are slightly misaligned and it's causing no end of problems. 

After building my first one which I had the same trouble getting the fin flashes on as you did, I decided to deal with the Vortex generators on the second by simply removing them and modelling an earlier aircraft, the first few were built without them. 

6 hours ago, tonyot said:

Very nice indeed,...... I`m thinking of repainting one of my white Valiants in camouflage and seeing your lovely model may just have made my mind up!

Cheers

           Tony

I'm mid way through a Vulcan repaint, it's a tedious process to strip a model...

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9 hours ago, Bangseat said:

They just need to reissue it, it's only about 10 years old and a very respectable modern kit. The kits are scarce now on the second hand market, and I can't quite bring myself to build mine because it feels too precious. Silly of course, the world needs more Valiants, so this build gets a big like from me! 

They really do.... I'm lucky enough to have gotten two in the past year and a bit at reasonable prices. But if I said I wouldn't buy two more on a reissue, I'd be lying. I need a camo one and a white one with full shade Roundels.... perhaps a B2.....

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On 08/05/2020 at 03:44, Adam Poultney said:

They really do.... I'm lucky enough to have gotten two in the past year and a bit at reasonable prices. But if I said I wouldn't buy two more on a reissue, I'd be lying. I need a camo one and a white one with full shade Roundels.... perhaps a B2.....

When I bought mine it was in a model shop in Berwick upon Tweed. The owner actually had 3 in, selling for 30 quid. He was a bit of a lad, and reckon he would have done a deal...ah, regrets...

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