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Victor and some plastic butchery


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1/144 Victors, they are a right pain! 

I could have a well moulded GWH Victor B2 kit, but it has a configuration that was only used by one aircraft, XM717 as a B.Mk.2R with standard bomb bay. With a little effort I could convert it to XH670, the prototype for the B.Mk.2R conversion. The decals are for XM714 in camo, which crashed as a B.Mk.2 never being refitted to the B.Mk.2R version and was still painted in white. Other appropriate decals are included though, but the kit is still missing the entire blue steel missile and bomb bay to go with it.

I could try to build an SR2 from the GWH B2, but the underwing tanks might or might not be the right ones depending on which airframe, but the Sqn markings are a pain due to the total lack of appropriate aftermarket decals, and probably beyond my abilities to design myself. 
I could have the K2 from GWH, but the wings are all wrong, they forgot that K2s had the wings shortened, so plastic butchery is required.

I could have the micromir kit, well I have two of those now. It’s short run but at least the configuration is right for a K1a or whatever the proper designation was, Mk1 Victor variants are confusing.

The other options are vacuforms, resins or an ancient kit that looks only vaguely like a victor, so plastic butchery is once again required. Good job I enjoy that.

But all the other 1/144 ones I have are Mk1 Victors, that’s a bit dull so I did end up getting the GWH B2R which doesn’t have the missile. And I decided I want to have one with the missile. Plastic butchery followed.

 

I got the kit second hand, with the fuselage and intakes built, this ruled out the option of XH670 as the intakes need mods (or one of them does at least) and the tail wants some as well which I’d rather start with the fuselage unassembled. That’s how I decided in the end I wanted a blue steel missile victor. 
So to make a start, I traced out the approximate outline of where I would start cutting, I’m not going for rivet count accuracy just want the missile to sit about right.

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A few hours later and I had this. It’s certainly not accurate but the missile sits just about right in it 

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still work to do cleaning it up, but once the missile is glued in place it will look ok.
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A spare missile has been borrowed from the one of my Trumpeter Vulcans, a kit which itself has a number of issues including missing an entire fin on the Blue Steel Missile (hence why one is made from plastic card). I’m still waiting for a definitive kit in 1/144 for ANY of the V Bombers. They all have their fair share of issues. Hopefully someone gives us a nice accurate Mk1 Vulcan covering all three main sub variants of the Mk1 plus prototypes. A better valiant is desperately needed and an actually accurate Mk2 victor would be nice. At least the micromir Mk1 got most of it right.
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I also masked off canopy which took longer than expected.

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I will be doing this scheme from the airfix kit, I can get together enough decals in 1/144 to replicate this. Or I could change the serial if I find one that didn’t have the ecm tail with the six blisters that I’d rather not have to scratch build.

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This build was at least part of the inspiration to actually go ahead and butcher this kit up

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  • 4 weeks later...

Been a while since I worked in this but the other day I did quite a lot.

First, the thing I did ages ago was prime it. That was done not long

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So, back to this week, I did a presaged in the model with some colour in there, seemed to have had the intended effect on the underside at least when it was painted white. I then spent a day masking off the underside and wondering who on earth thought it was a good idea to have camo that extends under the wings and intakes. They even did one in a better version of the camo which would be far easier for us modellers to do (XL513)
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The camouflage was free handed. I knew it would end up with open overscale version of the soft edges effect. The consensus on a V Force models Facebook group I co-run is that it did indeed end up overscale. Oh well, I think it looks ok even if it isn’t quite right. 
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