Airfix 1/72 RA-5C Vigilante - Completed

[stevej60]

Coming together beautifully !

[Natter]

3 hours ago, Dansk said:

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

I have no connection, so this is not advertising, but www.guysmagnets.com has a very good selection.  If nothing else you can see what sizes are available and then go hunting for better bargains.  Neodymium magnets are the strong ones that I use.

[Richard E]

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:

Have heat gun - will create very stylish stand.  Your Vigilante now looks like its in its natural environment, travelling at Mach 2 with its tail on fire..  

[Natter]

Hi again All, I have been rather slack in posting updates as I have done a few bits since my last post.  I primed it black, trying black basing again.  Black basing for white?  Well there's a video showing just that on YouTube, so I tried it with Alclad's black primer; simply because I have a bottle of it and I want to use it up!  I can definitely see the point of the black basing for white if you want a worn, well used and weathered finish, but for an early 70s US Navy jet I am not sure that would be right.  The on-line photos show them pretty clean and well looked after, and with the Vigilante's apparent reputation as a hangar queen they are likely to have stayed clean.

 

I tried Xtracrylix white which is rather nice but it just wasn't covering, so I reverted to a thin coat of Halfords' white primer.  Thinned cleulose/lacquer over acrylic?  No problems encountered.  I final whizz over with the Xtracrylix and I took a chance on that being good enough.  The on-line photos show the demarcation between the white underside and the light grey uppers as sharp; or blurred.  Or irregular.  Oh good grief.  Pictures of USS Enterprise RA5-Cs of the time show the demarcation as slightly blurred, so I gave that a try by masking with a strip of paper held in place by white-tack.  I'm not really happy with the result but it is what it is and it will stay that way.  It is a whole lot better than Little Dave managed in the seventies.

 

The light grey uppers are Mr Color H11 Light Gull Grey and I am really happy with the finish over the black base and the white overspray.  The whole model has been sprayed Mr Color GX100 Gloss in preparation for the decals and the wing leading edges are sprayed Vallejo Metl Colour Aluminium and these will stay masked as the whole thing will get a coat of Satin varnish to seal the decals once they're on and dry.

 

If anyone wants to tell me that the deck of USS Enterprise several thousand feet below the Vigilante is the wrong shape, please feel free.  I know.  And it is what it is - a representation.

 

More soon... if I remember I need to take photos to post!

 

 

[Ozzy]

Just catching up Dave looks fantastic, never built this kit even though I did like the paint scheme on the box.

[modelling minion]

Looks really good Dave, I like the touch of the tiny USS Enterprise on the stand, very nice.

[JosephLalor]

Nice to see this one coming along in good style.  I had this kit in the mid '70s myself and thought it was magnificent.  It was how I learned that there was an aircraft called the Vigilante and that the US Navy had a carrier called USS John F Kennedy.

[Dansk]

Ooooh this looks ace! And the carrier is a superb idea.

 

i think thats how big the vigilante felt trying to land it on the carrier.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Dansk

[Natter]

Hi All, just a tiddly update.  The gloss had overnight to dry so today has been a decalling session.  I started with a degree of trepidation as there is a recent post on here somewhere where one of our colleagues said they were unimpressed with the Print Scale decals.  So far I haven't had a problem with them.  If they go and silver on me then that would be the only problem, but so far they have performed superbly.  They have a thin carrier film and were able to stand up to my hamfisted prodding around to get them where I wanted, and on the single base colours the white was opaque enough to stay white when they went on to the model.  They released from the backing paper in about five seconds - yes that quickly.  If left in the water for ten seconds they would just float off.  There aren't as many decals as on some of the Phantoms on here at a total of 69 but it looks OK to me so far.  Here it is so far:

 

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Well thats turning out to be quite a good looking build, really like the in-flight mount. 

[modelling minion]

Very nice Dave, the decals look to be performing perfectly.

[Jinxman]

That looks very sharp indeed.

[Hewy]

Great job,and on the stand, the vigilante does look good in flight

[Natter]

A little short of fifty years on, another Airfix RA5-C Vigilante is completed by Dave.  Big Dave has done a slightly better job that little Dave did all those years ago.  It's not great, but I am quite please with it and I have learned a little more on this build.  I am getting to really like the black basing technique and will probably continue to use it in future builds, though with caution for a white finish unless I was going to weather it quite hard.

 

The white is Xtracrylix, the Light Gull Grey is Mr Color, the radome is a mix of Tamiya Buff with Model Color white to lighten it.  The base was a 10p bargain bucket piece bought at Telford yonks ago, the 'USS Enterprise' is a 1/13500 (approx) bit of stuff just for interest, with the sea a mix of artists' ultramarine and cadmium yellow acrylics applied roughly to simulate waves with a dry brush of white for the wave caps and the wake of the carrier.  Decals are Print Scale's 72-061 sheet which offers one set of national markings with three options for RA5-Cs.  One of the options offered was this one.

 

There is an old Air Force adage that it is unwise to eject over somewhere you have just bombed, but the Vigilante crews used to fly fast but low over target areas in Vietnam that their colleagues had just bombed to obtain damage assessment photographs.  By the time they got there the anti aircraft crews were well and truly ready for them, causing the highest loss rate of any Naval aircraft used during the Vietnam War.  BuNo 156633 was flown on a pre-strike recce mission on 28 December 1972, the crew's second mission of the day, and was shot down by a Mig-21's air to air missile.  LtCdr Al Agnew ejected but the RSO, Lt Mike Haifley, did not eject and was killed.  This is my rendition of 156633.

 

As well as the aftermarket decals I used Master's pitot which comes with an AOA sensor which you can see below the starboard side of the cockpit.  I am sure I wil jab myself with this before too long:

 

 

I added the fuel dump pipe from Albion Alloys 0.7mm NiSi tube, much better than the plastic piece in the kit:

 

 

Airfix's exhausts are just hollow tubes with no internal detail, so I used a trick from Mike Grants's Circuits and Bumps series a few years ago.  I found a video of a J79 engine and snipped an image of the afterburner.  This was resized and printed and the images cut out and fitted in the exhausts to represent the burner tubes:

 

 

Finished and mounted it looks like this, with some more photos in the Gallery pages:

 

 

Out of the loft, over the bench and into the dislay cabinet - job done.  Thank you for the great GB and a personal thanks to Ozzy for his Pe-2 which inspired me to get this one moving.

[Richard E]

Another excellent example of an oft-overlooked type, it's been a pleasure to follow your build Dave

 

First rate figure painting, I think if you presented this picture in isolation you could easily claim that it is from a 1/48th or even 1/32nd scale build.

 

1 hour ago, Natter said:

[stevej60]

What a cracking job all round,that's just moved mine up the build list!

[modelling minion]

What an absolutely fantastic result Dave.

She looks fantastic and those printed out rear engine faces really do look very good indeed, and your painting of the pilots face is brilliant.

A fitting tribute to the crew of 156633.

Very well done and thanks for joining us in the GB.

[Ozzy]

Fantastic build Dave, I'm happy i spurred you on. We've both got a unlikely quality build to find some shelf space.

[Dansk]

amazing result well done. That crew member shot is phenominal! Hope you enjoyed it all.

[AdrianMF]

Beautiful model, great base and superb figure painting. I like it!

Nice tip for the afterburners too!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[TonyW]

Magnificent.

 

The carrier is icing on the cake.

 

Tony.

[froggy]

Very nice build of a classic Airfix kit with clever home-made improvements. I discovered this kit back in 1973, at the age of 7, when I started to build models. He was sold in the library facing my school and I was very impressed by the box art and the clean lines of this jet.

 

Two critics (made with a constructive spirit) :

 

- The tail code : I think you inverted the left and right decals. It should read « NK » (code of CVW-14) from left to right

 

- Airfix kit depicts an early RA-5C with rounded shape air intakes and no LEX. The one you chose was a late model with squared shaped air intakes and LEX extending up to the start of the air intakes. The late models Viggie have BuAer numbers in the 156XXX serie....

 

This having been said, I will largely inspire me from your step by step to build mine !

Edited June 3, 2021 by froggy

[Natter]

Tail code: The decals are as provided in Print Scale set and applied as per the instructions, being handed for port and stbd so I assumed them to be correct. Photos of the port side of NK coded aircraft seem to be rare, but I did find one which confirmed your observation. The stbd NK tail code is correct, but as you note the port code should slope down from left to right exactly the same as the stbd side; not up from left to right as per the decal. Several other models shown on t'internet have the same decals, applied the same way, so I claim this as a Print Scale error, not mine.

 

Intakes and LEX: Busted! I was aware of this but built the model as it came; it's something I can live with.

 

Despite its imperfections I love this model, and in the display cabinet it towers over the diminutive Airfix Skyhawk I built for the recent Blitzbuild GB.