Airfix 1/72 RA-5C Vigilante - Completed

[Natter]

Hi All, this is another attempt at the model I built in about 1973.  It was a Christmas present and I built it with tube glue and tried to brush paint it with Humbrol gloss white and light grey.  Humbrol gloss white never covers when brush painted (not for me anyway) and it just looked rubbish.  I wasn't in to jets at that time either.  Let's face it, in 1973 WW2 was ten years closer to current history then than the Falklans War is to current history now.  It didn't have British roundels or German crosses, and I had never even heard of the Vigilante.  Of course there was no internet way back then so it would have been a bit of a challenge to get any decent data on the aircraft.  Even the reference section of the local library probably wouldn't have had anything on this aircraft.  There's another look back to the past - do you remember libraries?

 

A few years ago I picked this up in the Kit Swap at Telford, in a plastic bag marked 'complete' and for the princely sum of £2.50.  It had photocopied instructions and the decals were a little yellowed, but heck; it was only £2.50!  I have an aftermarket decal set for it, but that is the only extra it is going to get.  It will be wheels up and the raised panel lines will remain unmolested.  In a nod to modernity it will get an airbrushed finish with more modern paints.  If there was ever an aircraft that looks as though it was a nod to the paper darts we made in school this has to be it.  I pushed the big pieces together as a dry fit and it looks like a Vigilante already.  The glue will follow:

 

[modelling minion]

A great choice Dave.

The Vigilante is a great looking aircraft and the Airfix is a classic.

[Dansk]

Cool Dave, a great intro. The Vigilante is such a fabulous looking aircraft isn't it. good luck with the build.

 

[PeterB]

Hi

 

My Airfix Vigilante is currently in bits awaiting a refurb and the fitting of an Aeroclub undercarriage I bought quite a few years ago. It is an impressive looking machine, but I have always thought that compared with other makes the Airfix one looks a bit "angular" - the Trumpeter one I have seen looks a bit more rounded at the edges.

 

I will watch with interest as it has been in bits so long I have forgotten where some of them go - assuming I can still find them!

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited June 8, 2020 by PeterB

[TonyW]

One sleek looking plane! Landing it on a carrier deck must have been a heart stopper.

I've not built the Airfix version, the Revell one got built when it was current but that really was a long time ago. I'll be following here with much interest.

 

Tony.

[PeterB]

Hi Tony,

 

Not just landing it but taxing it to the deck park apparently - bit like Concorde with the nose wheel way back behind the cockpit. I seem to remember reading that at times the nose was well out over the deck edge which was a bit unsettling for the crew until they got used to it.

 

Pete

 

PS I have an hour long episode of the documentary series Seawings on the A5 with lots of useful detail,  but I have no idea how I could post it.

Edited June 8, 2020 by PeterB

[stevej60]

Great to see this one getting done I have it in the stash.

[modelling minion]

1 hour ago, stevej60 said:

I have it in the stash.

There's a surprise!

You must have more Airfix kits than Hornby do!  

[Natter]

Oh lord, the memories that building this brings back.  The problems with fit that I had back when I was nine-ish are all there once again.  Well first off the kit wasn't quite complete, it was missing the parts to model the main wheel wells closed.  No problem, I'll use the open doors - I thought.  The open doors have 'detail' moulded on the inside and they are actually too big to fit in the spaces for the closed doors, so the scalpel and 600 grade wet had dry had their first work out:

 

 

That fit issue, well one of them.  There is an old adage that the old Airfix kits fit where they touch.  Well the underside of the fuselage doesn't touch in many places:

 

 

 

That young lad in the 70s just didn't have the skills and the experience to close up and fill that sort of a gap with Humbrol tube glue and zero patience.  Back then this was a new mould kit too!  Oh how lucky we are these days.  I'll show some photos in a later post of how I am going to deal with this gap along with others along the way.

 

The underside of the wings have been dealt with in a different way from the original model as well.  The underside of the top wing is shaped with an aerofoil section.  The insert for the bottom is moulded flat.  Put the two together and they spring in the middle, and they don't line up properly around the edge either.  Little Dave didn't have access to plasticard in various thicknesses nor the skills to shim and scrape and sand to make bits fit.  My current skills are nowhere near those of many of our friends here on the Forum, but they are better than Little Dave's were.  Wing inserts were duly fitted:

 

 

 

   

Oh those gaps!  To be dealt with later.  These days manufacturers give you the option to fit pylons and loads or not where appropriate, but not so back in the hallowed halls of Airfix in the seventies.  Apparently the underwing tanks for the Vigilante added so much drag that the aircraft burned all the fuel in the tanks to overcome that drug, so the range was the same with them fitted or not.  Therefore they were rarely fitted.  Again, apparently, the tank shape is inaccurate so they are to be omitted from this build.  Those slots for the pylons have to filled, so I pared off the section of the pylon that would fit in to the slot, pushed this removed part in to the slot and ran in some liquid glue.  These will have a few days to dry before I sand, refill, sand, refill; repeat:

 

 

 

I have no intention of detailing the cockpit as the canopy (canopies) will be closed, but the cockpit as Airfix moulded is just a floor and a couple of seats with big gaps at the side.  A happy half-hour was spent making up some sides and sanding a couple of 'console tops' to fit when the fuselage sides were closed up.  There's a rubbish instrument panel come front console to fit as well, but out of the box (ish) it will be so that will go into place in due time:

 

 

Thank you for stopping by to look, and more to follow.

[Dansk]

You’re doing a sterling job turning this 70s era kit into something great Dave, those undercarriage doors look beautiful.

with the warped fuselage will the red hot then dead cold water trick work?

[AdrianMF]

Nice bit of Airfix wrangling going on. Well, if you didn’t learn the first time...

 

Looking forward to the next round!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[modelling minion]

Looks like she's going to put up quite  a fight, but it also looks like you will be able to master it.

[Natter]

Right then, on to the next update.  Remember that mahoosive gap along the underside of the fuselage?  Well the hot water trick may well have worked, but I went about it a different way.  In the photo below you can see two big alignment tabs that I added to the port side of the fuselage at the front, just behind the cockpit where the gap was at its worst, and also on the top side of the fuselage forward of the fin in the flat area because when the underside gap was closed up, a big gap opened up in this area:

 

 

When the fuselage sides were closed up I clampled them together and before applying glue I drilled a hole on each side of the fuselage, through the big alignment tabs, and I inserted two plastic rod pins to hold the two sides of the fuselage together.  The fuselage sides were then glued with Roket Hot thin superglue.  The cyano has strong tensile strength (remember the advert back in the seventies or eighties where the gymnast cut a rubber hoop, glues it with 'superglue', put it around the end of the parallel bars and then bounced up and down on it?) so it should hold the sides together.  In the forward photo below that isn't a gap, it's a step in the join made worse by the 'alignment' tab:

 

 

The rear pins:

 

 

The step in the join at the rear fuselage is actually going to be harder to match up because it is a wide flat area.  Oh, the joy.

 

I wasn't doing anything fancy with the cockpit, but the crew deserved a bit of attention.  To be honest painting the RSO (talking ballast) was a waste of time as you can't see a thing through the tiny canopy windows.  You can just about make out a shape if you line the window up, but there is no chance of seeing any sort of detail.  Before closing them up in the fuselage they looked like this:

 

 

The helmets are just imagination but the figures represent LCdr A.H. Agnew, Pilot and Lt. M.F. Haifley.  This may give you an idea of the final markings.  Respect 

 

Although generally out of the box there are some things that are worth adding.  Again imaginary, but I added some 'camera lenses' for the recce pod under the fuselage.  I removed the silver backing from some 'Little Lenses' and popped them in to some short pieces of plastic tube.  The fuselage inside the recce pod was painted black and the lenses are held in place with some Klear:

 

 

When the pod is fitted the lenses fill the windows so you're not left with empty black squares:

 

 

I won't be using an Airfix stand, there isn't one with the kit anyway, so how will it be mounted in flight?  Well somewhere here on the Forum one of our colleagues has used neodymium magnets inside the fuselage and on scratch built stands so there are no holes in the model and it can still be mounted.  I have epoxied some magnets inside the recce pod:

 

 

... so that a magnet mounted outside on a stand will hold the model in place:

 

 

Finally for this evening, the exhausts have to be fitted before the rear sections of the fuselage are closed up.  This makes painting, masking and joint tidying up very difficult.  I have removed the flanges on the exhausts and hope I can slide them in to place at the end of the build.  For now the flanges have been hacked off with a scalpel, and refinement so they can slide in to place at the end will follow.:

 

 

That's it for now folks.  See you soon...

[Jinxman]

Lovely work - it's progressing very nicely indeed.

[modelling minion]

That is some excellent work Dave.

I like the idea with the magnets, very interesting.

The camera lenses you have made look really good and they're properly aligned too which they wouldn't be if I tried to do it!

[Dansk]

Wow Dave great job all round

The crew look phenominal shame they wont be seen so much.

Camera lenses look awesome too.

 

[Natter]

The idea for the magnets comes from azurglo's posts from about June 2019.  Credit where credit is due, we modellers learn from each other.  Thank you azureglo.

[theplasticsurgeon]

On 6/7/2020 at 10:27 PM, Natter said:

Hi All, this is another attempt at the model I built in about 1973.  It was a Christmas present and I built it with tube glue and tried to brush paint it with Humbrol gloss white and light grey.

I received that kit, probably the same Christmas.  You're doing a great job on it!

I've never seen that pegging idea for distorted parts - so will add that to my toolset.

 

Fortunately, I've not got this kit - so I'll have to enjoy your build to the full.

I built the Hasegawa Vigilante recently, that's my lot now.

 

[Natter]

Good afternoon All, a quick update to prove I am still engaged with the GB.  Fill, sand, repeat doesn't make for interesting posts so I have just been getting on really.  I had done quite a bit before realising I still hadn't fitted the intakes.  A quick dry fit revealed that they were much like the fuselage joins; they fitted where they touched and they didn't touch much:

 

 

I couldn't just push the gap closed as the outer part of the intakes lined up reasonably well with the fuselage on both the upper and lower surfaces.  I trimmed a couple of bits of plasticard to fill the gap and superglued them in to place.  In the photo below there is still a small gap, but the superglue meant I could hold it closed and the glue held it shut, job done:

 

 

This is the airfix pitot - to be bid farewell.  I gave in and purchased the Master pitot which is incredibly fine and beautifully made, but the base is much finer than the Airfix offering so I fitted the original to help shape the nose in readiness for its replacement:

 

 

Most of the assembly has been done with Rocket's 'Hot' cyano, which is incredibly thin and bonds in what seems like milliseconds.  The thicker 'Rapid' cyano was used to make up a cyano/talc filler mix.  This was added to the obvious gaps and then oversprayed with black so I could see when I was sanding the plastic rather than the filler.  This also helped to show up areas that weren't filled properly as they stayed black when the filler was sanded back to the plastic.  Lots of fill, spray black, sand, repeat followed until I am reasonable satisfied with the result.  This method does leave some areas of black showing where they have been covered by subsequent layers of filler, but let's be honest, it's never going to look Tamiya or Eduard so anything that closes up the chasms of gaps is an improvement that Little Dave couldn't do all those years ago.

 

 

 

Now then; what of the stand I have mentioned briefly already?  Phil Flory has done a great Youtube video about bending clear acrylic rod by heating it in the oven, and while searching for it I found another video about heating and bending clear acrylic rod with a heat gun.  Well I happen to have a heat gun so thought I would try it.  Result.  I bent some 10mm clear acrylic rod to shape, recessed the top end for a small neodymium magnet, fitted the other end of the rod to a small wood base and voila:

 

 

 

Just a small tip if you try this method of using small magnets to mount your models.  Check that you have the magnet poles correctly oriented before securing the outer magnet to the stand, otherwise the inner and outer magnets will repel rather than attract...

 

The fin is just dry fitted at the moment as leaving it separate will make painting easier.  With it all masked up now the primer can go on, which will be done this coming week.  More soon.

 

[Dansk]

superb work, cant wait to see it in primer.

i guess if one was really clever, repelling strong magnets could get a finished kit to ‘hover’

[Jinxman]

That's already looking mighty fine - I have had to spend 15 minutes watching these operate from carriers - amazing stuff.

[modelling minion]

She really does look very good indeed and your bent acrylic rod is fantastic and helps to show off your model a treat.

[PeterB]

On 6/21/2020 at 1:42 PM, Natter said:

 

 

Now then; what of the stand I have mentioned briefly already?  Phil Flory has done a great Youtube video about bending clear acrylic rod by heating it in the oven, and while searching for it I found another video about heating and bending clear acrylic rod with a heat gun.  Well I happen to have a heat gun so thought I would try it.  Result.  I bent some 10mm clear acrylic rod to shape, recessed the top end for a small neodymium magnet, fitted the other end of the rod to a small wood base and voila:

 

 

 

 

Just a small tip if you try this method of using small magnets to mount your models.  Check that you have the magnet poles correctly oriented before securing the outer magnet to the stand, otherwise the inner and outer magnets will repel rather than attract...

 

The fin is just dry fitted at the moment as leaving it separate will make painting easier.  With it all masked up now the primer can go on, which will be done this coming week.  More soon.

 

I fiirst came across the magnet trick a few years back in a modelling mag, where somebody was using them to hold the various underwing loads on a 1/48 Hornet. I now have a selection of circular magnets from 1mm to 6mm wide and they do work pretty well. However, as you say the trick is to make sure you know which pole is which as they are remarkably powerful and come in strips which are not always that easy to seperate. The nice thing about them is that I can use a normal drill to create a hole for them, and a layer of paint has little or no effect on their power, so I can countersink them into pylons, bombs, rockets etc and paint over them so they are invisible. I have done a few test runs but so far not actually used them on a kit, but when I start on some modern jets I should be able to have "swoppable" underwing loads. Given the wide range of weapons now available in such sets as those from Hasegawa. I should be able to juggle tanks, bombs and rockets to my heart's content - can't be bad! I suspect the first kit I will try them on will be my "Wif" Airfix 1/72 TSR2 as I have quite a selection of things that might have been carried at various stages, such as the Freightdog streamlined tank, Tornado "Hindenburg"  tanks with Sidewinder pylons etc..

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Edited June 22, 2020 by PeterB

[Dansk]

21 hours ago, PeterB said:

I fiirst came across the magnet trick a few years back in a modelling mag, where somebody was using them to hold the various underwing loads on a 1/48 Hornet. I now have a selection of circular magnets from 1mm to 6mm wide and they do work pretty well. However, as you say the trick is to make sure you know which pole is which as they are remarkably powerful and come in strips which are not always that easy to seperate. The nice thing about them is that I can use a normal drill to create a hole for them, and a layer of paint has little or no effect on their power, so I can countersink them into pylons, bombs, rockets etc and paint over them so they are invisible. I have done a few test runs but so far not actually used them on a kit, but when I start on some modern jets I should be able to have "swoppable" underwing loads. Given the wide range of weapons now available in such sets as those from Hasegawa. I should be able to juggle tanks, bombs and rockets to my heart's content - can't be bad! I suspect the first kit I will try them on will be my "Wif" Airfix 1/72 TSR2 as I have quite a selection of things that might have been carried at various stages, such as the Freightdog streamlined tank, Tornado "Hindenburg"  tanks with Sidewinder pylons etc..

 

Cheers

 

Pete

Where does one buy those mini magnets Pete? Sounds like a great idea with weapons

[PeterB]

Hi Paul,

 

Got mine from Amazon - they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Mine are all small circular ones as I model in 1/72, and like I said, it is easier to drill circular holes!

 

Pete

Edited June 22, 2020 by PeterB