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Airfix 1/72nd Victor K.2 Op Black Buck


Bish

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Been looking forward to building this, as soon as it came out i knew what i was going to be doing with it. I've never done any of the V Bombers before, and i was recently pleased to see Airfix are re-releaseing the Valiant and am hoping for a Black Buck version of the Vulcan. But firstly, the Victor, there is a lot of kit in this box, and even without the bomber parts, its not going to be a quicky build. I am adding Eduard PE plus resin wheels and a few other AM parts. I am still awaiting the re-release of a couple of pieces of ground equipment from AIM, but if need be i wil add those later if they are not released before this is done.

 

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Starting out with the interior, from what i could find online i made a few changes to what Airfix recomends. Also, i noticed bthat the eduard interior set does not simply replace some of the consoles but it completly changes some. From what i could find the PE looked correct and so i checked the instructions for the previous bomber release which i found on scalemates. Airfix have not changed anything on the inside from their bomber boxing, and it does make sense that the 2 would be different. Once i worked all that out, i got going, the 2 front seats were painted, weathered and then the PE was added. The instructions said to paint the cushions yellow but this didn't seem right, the photo's seem to show grey, so thats what i went with.

 

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And the rear seats along with the rudder pedals.

 

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The cabin floor with some PE already added. One of the seat bases was removed as it seems the tanker has 3 in the back rather than 4.

 

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And the rear console with the desk painted for wood, coloured PE will go on the console face later.

 

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The instructions said the walls were all black. But the photo's i found of the Victor at RAF Cosford showed a light grey in the rear section and these seemed to match the Light Aircraft Grey that i had used on my Typhoon wheel wells, so i went with that.

 

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I've also done some work on the main whell wells. There is PE for the roof of the wel, but i left that out as the kit looked more accurate than the PE.

 

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And got the main undercarrage together.

 

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Got a bit of detail painting and weathering to do before i can flat coat the interior parts and get the fuselage together.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Made qute a bit of progress on the Victor over the last couple of weks. Got the interior all together and ready to fit.

 

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And got that into the fuselage alogn with the forward landing gear.

 

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And then the fuselage closed up without to many issues.

 

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As you can see, i have added the cover over the bomb bay. This is sooner than the instructions indicate and may have been an error.

 

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I started on the intakes and it looks as though this has been designed in a way to ease cleaning up seams and painting. The opening in the sides has a panel that goes over it, and i did that after painting.

 

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I painted the veins before fitting, once everything was dry, they were fitted and the side panels added.

 

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Wiht that done i got to getting the wings together and fitted. There is a point in the Airfix instructions which confused me a bit. If you want the flaps raised, and as Victors always seem to have them raised on the ground thats what i am doing, you are told to cut off the outer fairing (the one on the left in this photo).

 

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But that did not make sense to me, i was looking in the instructions for a point where that part was re-attached. Fortunatly this was cleared up when i found another build thread on here. This seems to have been an error on the original bomber kit that Airfix have not corrected. The correct procedure is to sand down the ridge on the outer fairing and remove part of the inner one thats attached to the bottom wing section, so you are left with this.

 

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I think others have found this out the hard way, so i am grateful for it being passed on.

With the wings on all all the panels and flaps fitted i also got the tail on, this beast is really coming together.

 

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You can see that quite a bit of filler was needed along the wing/fuselage join. I believe this was caused by me adding the doors to the bomb bay to early. I had not noticed at the time, but the door overlaps the bay along the middle, and this is where the gap is. Without the doors, the fuselage could have been pressed out to meet the wing and once in place the doors would have fitted better. By the time i realised it was to late. That wil teach me for thinking i know better and jumping through the instructions.

 

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Thats all for now. Still a bit more to do before she hits the spray booth (assuming she fits). But at least now i can meassure up the board and start getting that together.

Edited by Bish
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Thanks Riot. I learnt from someone else and then went and made a mistake of my own, its like one big circle.

 

I have a question i am sure some one here will know the answer to. the green on this is listed as BS 641. I prefer to use Xtracolor paints and they do not list that colour but they do have the WW2 BS241. I know they are both listed as Dark Green. Is there any real differance between the 2. I know Humbrol has 641 so would get that if need be (i have plenty of post war aircraft to use it on). But i'll stick with Xtracolor if there is no real differance.

 

Thanks guys.

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On 13/10/2021 at 09:46, Bish said:

Wiht that done i got to getting the wings together and fitted. There is a point in the Airfix instructions which confused me a bit. If you want the flaps raised, and as Victors always seem to have them raised on the ground thats what i am doing, you are told to cut off the outer fairing (the one on the left in this photo).

 

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But that did not make sense to me, i was looking in the instructions for a point where that part was re-attached. Fortunatly this was cleared up when i found another build thread on here. This seems to have been an error on the original bomber kit that Airfix have not corrected. The correct procedure is to sand down the ridge on the outer fairing and remove part of the inner one thats attached to the bottom wing section, so you are left with this.

 

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I think others have found this out the hard way, so i am grateful for it being passed on.

I have raised this issue with Airfix and asked them if they would issue a corrected instruction sheet before anyone else ruins their nearly £60 model. Airfix haven't yet done so.

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Anyway, great work so far, looking forward to seeing more. Following this now.

On 13/10/2021 at 11:17, Bish said:

Thanks Riot. I learnt from someone else and then went and made a mistake of my own, its like one big circle.

 

I have a question i am sure some one here will know the answer to. the green on this is listed as BS 641. I prefer to use Xtracolor paints and they do not list that colour but they do have the WW2 BS241. I know they are both listed as Dark Green. Is there any real differance between the 2. I know Humbrol has 641 so would get that if need be (i have plenty of post war aircraft to use it on). But i'll stick with Xtracolor if there is no real differance.

 

Thanks guys.

The Cold War one was different but it did fade so don't worry about exact shades. The WW2 one will be close enough for most. I'm not as knowledgeable on the Victor as the Vulcan, but I'd expect one from the blue steel era to be glossy and have soft edge camo applied until about early-mid 1967 or so if they're anything like Vulcans 

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Thanks Adam. I have been looking in on your Vulcan, i am hoping for a Black Buck version next year, and from the look of the instructions and what you said about the blind holes in the wings, i think there is a good chance.

 

David, i put some new shelves up last year and i added one extra wide one which i hope is long enough for 3 V Bombers and a Nimrod.

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1 minute ago, Bish said:

Thanks Adam. I have been looking in on your Vulcan, i am hoping for a Black Buck version next year, and from the look of the instructions and what you said about the blind holes in the wings, i think there is a good chance.

I think the chances are very good. Remember that the Vulcan was a November 2020 release originally until it was delayed so it would have been out for about a year and a half by the time of the 40th anniversary of black buck when it makes sense to release the black buck version. My bet is on a kit covering only XM607 and one of the others, probably XM597. I'd love to see it cover all four that went to Ascension Island given that they were essentially identical in configuration all being from the same late batch when they were quite standardised. Adding the spare and only one to not survive until today having met its fate at the hands of a Blackpool scrapman in 2006, XL391, wouldn't be too hard either as you'd just need a few decals and I think it didn't have the X Band jammer so just add a note not to add it. Easily could be a 5 scheme kit if Airfix want to do that, and most of the decals would be common between the schemes so just serials and any individual markings need changing. 

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I think your right in that it will cover 2 aircraft. I am sure Xtradecal or someone will cover the others but your right, would not be to hard for Airfix to cover them all.

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Sorry, but I am joining the party a little late.  In the early 1980s I was working in the MOD in Whitehall and I was invited up to RAF Marham to go flying with 55 Sqn on a tanking exercise.  After going through all the safety procedures I climbed aboard Victor K2 XL511 which was in all over camo, for my ride.  The flight deck was fitted with six seats, 2 ejector at the front, 3 plain at the back and one on the right side that was usually used by the crew-chief, for me.  This seat was mounted on rails that enabled it to slide forward to the front seats and rearward to the rear crew seats, in this way I was able to look out of the pilots windows to watch the Lightning and Phantom aircraft that we were to refuel as they 'checked in', before they peeled off to the rear to plug in.  In the rearward position I was able to look through periscope and see the aircraft plug in.  The Phantoms were in the 'new' light gray camo which had recently been introduced, a fantastic sight and an unforgettable experience.      Robin.

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Sounds like you had a great trip there. The kit did come with 6 seats, one of which was behind the 2 front seats in the middle. Photo's i found, i think its the cockpit section as Cosfird, did show only 5, and that might be where eduard got that from. It could be that the 6th seat was removed later or maybe it was just removed on the museum exhibit to make it easier to enter. To be honest, you can't see much past the front 2 seats and thats even before i put the canopy. Thanks for the heads up.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I seem to have missed a post at the end of last month, so before my latest update, here is the one i missed.

 

I had hoped to have a bigger update this weekend as i thought the painting would be done. But i had some issues getting the white underside done. I used Humbrol Gloss white but it can out with a yellow tint and i had some runs on the fuselage. I ended up stripping off the white from the fuselage undersid and goin over the whole underneath with Tamiya white. I got the second coat on this morning, so its going to be a while yet before the top side is done what with all the masking and leaving paint to dry. So this is how it looked last weekend ready for primer.

 

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Not much of an update, but after 3 weeks i finally have the painting done so thougt i better post somthing. After getting the white sorted, i got onto the top side. This took a lot of masking, it took 3 evenings to mask up the grey before adding the green. I then had to do some touching up but now i can finaly get the decals on.

 

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I've spent the last few nights adding decals to the Typhoon, so now thats done i can get onto this.

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The cockpit looks pretty impressive, which seems a shame because I doubt you will see much of it. The build and finish so far is very tidy. It is a good looking aircraft. Look forward to more progress.

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  • 1 month later...

Finally able to post something on the Victor. It took over a week to get the decals on. There didn't seem to be that many of them compared to some other Airfix kits, but there were a lt of small stencils and some tricky decals.

 

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The decals for the underwing pods were a bit tricky. A few of them stuck in one spot, after the first one broke up and had to be pieced together, i was more careful with the rest and managed to tease them off.

 

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I gave the whole things 2 coats of flory aqua gloss before some flory wash. It left some stains in a few places, especially underneath around some of the stencils. So i had to do quite a bit of touching up. But i was finally able to add the flat coat and fit the undercarrage, pods and some other parts.

 

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Still got a few bits to finsh and add before i can attach to the base and finish off some ground equipment.

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Time to get the final pics up and wrap up this years modelling. The Victor was finished off by fitting al the wheels, tok a bit of fiddiling to get them all to touch down, but they do now,and got the side door fitted.

 

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And then to attach it to the base. I added the ladder and some wheel chocks from Flightpath. The Land Rover is the Airfix 76th offering. I've had that a while, was meant for another build, but i thought it would work nicely here. I recently noticed that a UK company called Air Graphic has a range of 72nd resin Series III Lanny's in different configirations, so i've alreday bought a couple of those.

The tow bar is from Aircraft in Miniature, another UK company that sells through Hannants. I am still waiting for them to re-release their MD 3000 tractor and 60Kv GPU bother of which i will add once i get them. So the Lanny and tow bar are not secured to the base yet as i may need to re-position those. And as you can see, once again figures are the real issue, i can't find any that work for this. But hopefully i can source or modify somthing that will work. But for now, its done. And as you can see, its to big to fit in my photo booth properly, so sorry for the pics.

 

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Thanks for looking. I'll be following this up with another Airfix Falklands war 72nd aircraft starting this weekend, the Harrier GR.3.Hopefully it won't take as long as this one.

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That's a nice job, the V bombers are a great mix of interesting looking aircraft. Your Victor looks great, the cockpit is really impressive for the scale

 

 

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