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Vulcan B2 in White - only my 12th one!


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Having had some recent disasters with modelling on other kits, I’ve decided to build a 1:144 scale GWH Vulcan as a mojo booster. I’m going to do this as close to out of the box as I’ll probably ever go on a vulcan kit, with only a few mods and unnecessary complications..... except that I’m going to use Trumpeter Vulcan jetpipes on the Great Wall Hobby kit because I want Olympus 301s and the GWH ones are currently attached to my most recent Vulcan, XH561, which is based on a Trumpeter kit.
I ordered a decal set for this from Hannants, despite my large collection of Vulcan decals I never seem to have the right roundels in the right scales. The set I’ve ordered is Printscale’s 1:144 Anti Flash Vulcan sheet with markings for a B1, a B1a and three B2s. I only need this for he roundels and I could do with some more serials in pale blue, I don’t plan to go with any of the schemes provided in the decal set. Link here

Some rather nice box art, although this is the box from the previous GWH Vulcan I butchered to make a B1a

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This is the one from this kit, same plastic just an extra frame of plastic and more decals. K2 parts stashed for future plans
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First thing for an anti flash Vulcan is to get rid of the RWR fairing on the tail. Very simple to do that. Some filler around the joint between the halves of the tail may be required. 

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Edited by Adam Poultney
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Following the disappointing news of the new tool 72nd scale Vulcan being delayed until next year, I’m glad I started this! On the bright side of things, at least I have an excuse to buy who knows how many 1:144 v bombers! 
Annoyingly I’d started buying the aftermarket decals for the new tool kit already, so they’ll just be sitting in a box for a while unless I see an old tool and Flightpath B1 conversion set going at a good price. I’m not sure if there will be any sanity left in me at the end of doing a project like that but it sounds fun!


I have clipped together the kit, a nice feature of this one because you can find anywhere where the fit isn’t perfect very easily. I’m used to having the wings in pieces by this point on the build of this kit, and having a thing halfway to a Vulcan B1 on my desk, so just dealing with the kit’s normal gals is quite nice for a change.

 

The decals arrived, along with a bunch of other stuff for other projects, today. They look pretty good, I might have an excuse to build a few more white Vulcans now... I’m not complaining!

 

I’ve also been thinking about which airframe I will make this, and I like to have a photo to go off for all my Vulcans. It seems the majority of the white painted 301 powered Vulcans were blue steel aircraft, but I’m doing one in the same configuration as Woodford’s XM603 which I visited a month ago. I’m not doing 603 as I want that in 1/72 so I will wait for a new tool one. 607 which there is a good picture of in white I’m not doing either as I already have 607 in the black buck scheme. 605 and 606 served with I think 35 Sqn and would have been in white, but no photos I can find, but I can make a good guess at what they looked like, but I’ll have to check the source for which Sqn it was again... XM599 and XM600 are options also, but again, it seems photos of the relevant scheme aren’t easy to come by for certain airframes. The one the is suitable on the decal sheet is XM604, which crashed in Rutland in 1968, which is about an hour drive from where I live. The pilots got out but the rear crew was killed, as was all too common on Vulcans. I usually don’t like to build crash aircraft but 604 is a bit of not quite local history, and I like the scheme. 
 

Other thing I need to do is pick up some more primer, with the Covid situation looking a little grim I wouldn’t be surprised to have a lot of time to work on models soon.... I do not want to run out of primer, and I’m out of white anyway.

 

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Right so update time! In between a lot of chemistry A Level work, I managed to get some of the Vulcan done. Plenty of filler and I also ended up messing with the panel lines of the radome a bit (it's not perfect but it is the least bad set of Vulcan radome panel lines on any kit currently available, at least until the Airfix new tool- now delayed- releases). I didn't take any close ups of my slight alterations but it was limited to pretty much just correcting the front part where it goes back at the top but shouldn't.

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EDIT : accidentally submitted more coming in a few minutes

 

Edited by Adam Poultney
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The jetpipes from the Trumpeter kit with a few alterations to make them into more acceptable 301s don't quite fit... Not nearly as well as the 201s from this kit do on the Trumpeter. I should be able to improve this but it doesn't have to be perfect

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Trumpeter kit with GWH jetpipes and the K2 HDU (below)

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As you may have gathered from the previous post the canopy has been added. I also glued the fin in place, but filler will be required around both sides at the bottom.

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Nothing a bit of PPP can't sort out

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Also added at this point were the pitots and the aerial on top of the fuselage. Feels weird adding the pitots to this model as both my previous GWH Vulcans have been chopped up for B1as which didn't have them there, with wingtip ones instead. Once these were on and the I was happy with the last few bits of filler, time to add primer. Off I went to fetch my nice new can of Citadel Corax White which I bought last Friday and........

Anyone spot the problem?

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I ended up transplanting the top of the old empty can to the top of this..... well, almost empty can as I found out getting some primer on my hands. The surgery to the can was a success and I got on with priming the kit.

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A familiar shape in the sky! I miss XH558's displays..... Someone give me a time machine please! I'd probably go back a bit further back than VTTS all the way to the Farnborough Airshows of the 1950s, where you might see some very triangular Vulcans and mini-vulcans or a Blue Victor or who knows what else that has been lost now to the scrapman......

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Woah, holdup that is XH558! Last time I saw her in 2015.....

 

And I'll finish this update with this: A Vulcan mother and her young

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I realised I made a mistake with this model. XM604 should have the IFR probe. Oh well, there's a few I can still model.

This image has four Vulcans which are XM604, 601, 602 and 603. I'm fairly sure they are in that order, nearest to farthest. The two without probes are 601 and 602 (seems Airfix got that wrong on the schemes for the upcoming vulcan kit, xm602 in that has a refueling probe shown to be fitted).

Of course I could still do 603 as she is today, but I want to save that airframe for 1:72.

I also used a method of using inversed colours to get a clearer look at the registrations which I found in another thread here on Britmodeller

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eFu7rd3nhycYzT9jWRMWxMVwCt1NpuzX/view?usp=drivesdk

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-FVzRX0wGWD_fONdDeaBKSrfbEwDC-jO/view?usp=drivesdk

 

 

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3 hours ago, Adam Poultney said:

It looks like these links are still set to Private, says "You need access"

 

Dan

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That's a fair collection you're building up. 

 

I didn't know the new tool Airfix Vulcan had been delayed, I was going to ask for that for Xmas! Thanks for the head's up. 

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With the priming done now I can move on to the painting. A simple preshade was done, only doing some of the panels as I don’t want to overdo the effect. I used Tamiya Ocean Grey to do this.
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After that, straight onto the Tamiya Flat White. Until now I’ve mostly used Halfords Appliance White and then Tamiya Gloss White, so this is the first V Bomber in anti flash I’ll be doing from a Matt colour.

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Update!

Once the white was done, which took a few layers to do because the preshading was heavier then I thought, I needed to add the black painted areas. I made a mistake here and on the ecm plate, which I based in black to layer paint silver, I painted the whole thing, I should only have painted the flat area (not the curved font part). This would require some cleaning up later but the area around that is one of the dirtiest parts of the Vulcan once it’s weathered, so even though it will end up darker once I apply white over it again, it won’t really matter.

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After the black details came the dielectric panels and jetpipes. I had only done one set of jetpipes by this point, which were painted with citadel leadbelcher, but I did the other one later after the photos here.
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Final update:

 

With everything ready for decals, I added a gloss coat, and then the roundels and fin flashes. The decals are the ones I showed previously in the thread by Printscale, and they have worked very well in combination with some Microsol and Microset.

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After this, 9 Sqn markings were added from another decal sheet by Fundekal. They have to be my absolute favourite Anti Flash Sqn markings for any Vulcan. I decided to go with XM601, which crashed with the loss of all five crew less than a year after being delivered. Only a few details were left now, stencil markings (which I will keep to a bare minimum) one tan colour patch at the top which I forgot, removing the masking and then weathering.

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This was cut from a discarded Victor masking set as it turned out at roughly the correct diameter, at least measuring with the Mk1 eyeball

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With the last few details finished, I have a completed model of XM601. Weathering was minimal, only doing the dirt underneath from the engines. 11 (12 including a cockpit section) Vulcans down, 125(/124) to go.

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More on RFI soon

 

 

 

Edited by Adam Poultney
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