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Vintage Vickers Valiant - FINISHED


Adam Poultney

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This group build idea started out in 2019 as a V Force group build and although it was too late to make it to the 2020 Bunfight, it did make it in 2021. However the V Force group build finished about halfway down the group builds that fell short of the line. 

So, with the poor performance of 2021 in mind I relaunched the group build proposal with a few changes, so it became the Big and British group build. This time around, we made it.

 

I will of course be building a V Bomber, a Valiant rather than my usual choice of a Vulcan. The kit is an old one by Kader 1/148 (not 1/144). I bought it incomplete from KingKit. Based on the one poor quality photo they put up, I only saw the stand missing. I hadn't realised that one of the wings was from a FROG Gannet. So onto eBay I went to look for another one to get a new wing, eventually I found a set of old very poorly built models which included one of these Valiants. After a bit of hacking and sawing I managed to free the wing part I need to complete this one.

The detail in the kit is well.... basic. Even in this scale it at least some improvement. The canopy and bomb aiming blister are the prototype and early production style. I would like to do it in silver, but this is dependent on finding the right decals for it. If not, it'll be white. 

 

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Taped and dryfitted 

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Edited by Adam Poultney
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Just now, Maginot said:

You must be reassured to know that it is quick easy to build, no cutting and no sanding. OK. Should be done in no time. 🤓

haha I'm sure many of these kits suffered such a fate! 

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With this group build off to a great start with plenty of Big British aircraft, ships, tanks and even cars being build I think it's about time I make a start on my first build for this GB. I'm still just in the planning phase though so I'll run through my thoughts here

 

Obviously it's got to be a gear up build because well... there is no gear. 

Upon further inspection, I found that the gear doors moulded closed into the wings are the style of the prototypes, so this would make a very good WB215. There was a build doing just this last year

However, I won't be building WB215. My plan at the moment is to build an early silver Valiant. I have serial decals in the relevant sizes for those, but I'd have to go home and print some off for WB215. I would like to reuse the same sheet of serial decals for my Victor B1 I'm building in another group build so I'd preferred to make sure not use any characters that I need for that (XA935 I think).

I can live with the prototype style gear doors on this model. 

 

WP200 could work but I would need to source some extra zeroes. WP201 is the subject of a stalled WIP in 1/72. WP199 could work if I didn't need the 9s/6s for XA935. I might end up buying more serial decals, but I already need to buy more roundels for this anyway so it's not a big deal. 

I specially want one of these very early ones because they use the same bomb aimers blister as the second prototype, which I quite like. They also lack the eyebrow windows on the canopy.

Alternatively I could go with one of the ones in this image:

vickers-valiant-ec24e34c-e541-48a8-a19e-

I have decals for these as well but would prefer the early canopies (which are in keeping with what the original kit depicts). WP216 is the fourth aircraft back and doesn't cause any clashes with XA935, so that is a strong contender.

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An interesting mix of recessed panel lines and raised decal placement marks, Adam.  At least the latter will be easier to remove that way :thumbsup2:

I made the Lincoln International/Kader Canberra a few years back, which was the same.

 

Cheers

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IMG_20220308_135904747_HDR

and now onto the plastic. nothing too interesting so far I'm afraid. I need to sort out a stand for this. The kit stand is incomplete, missing the base. I could adapt the base of another stand to take it but I'd rather fit a new stand which will match the ones on my Vulcans. I've got a couple of spare GWH stands so one of those will be used. The current slot is far too big but with a bit of plastic card I can probably achieve a tight enough fit for it to work. 

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This gives an idea as to what it will look like but there's still a fair bit of work to get a good secure fit. 

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A bit more plastic added and sanded back and now I've got something the stand will fit in tightly.

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The fuselage is sealed up and it sits on the stand just fine. On the box it says "No sanding" which to be fair, is true... if you're building this as a kid would when it was first released. Everything will fit together without any sanding but everything will have gaps without what I imagine to be a fair bit of work.

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On 14/03/2022 at 17:19, Graham Boak said:

Yes, but remember that when it says "no sanding" it is comparing itself to pre-formed balsa kits which were still around at the time this was released.

Ah yes of course, now those kits really were basic....

Picture quality isn't great, the lighting in here is awful. But anyway, fuselage is sealed up and seams filled. I also filled the panel lines because they're far too heavy, these should still be visible but just much reduced.

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Next thing to mention is that I've started work on the intakes. I've decided that I'm not going to go all out on improving these, if I want a Valiant up to more modern standards I'll build an Airfix one or repaint another diecast. This Valiant will retain its vintage look.

So anyway, all I've done is add a plastic strip down the middle and a smalller strip next to it for the quite prominent intake vane. I think it looks the part well enough in the context of the detail levels of this kit. Now I've just got to do the same on the other side then I can seal up the wings and attach them properly to the fuselage.

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You can see here how the intake should look. We're lucky to have a surviving Valiant today, although I have some strong opinions about how the hangar they built for it and the other cold war aircraft has been designed and the layout of the exhibits. Not brilliant. 

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13 hours ago, Mike N said:

Coming along nicely, Adam. Those intake vanes improve the look quite a bit.

 

Mike 

thanks Mike I'm quite pleased with them.

I've got the second one done now but it didn't quite go as smoothly as the first, I'll put some pictures up of that later.

 

In other news, I visited Duxford yesterday with other members of the university gliding club. Since this is a V Bomber thread, here's their Victor and Vulcan.

Unfortunately the Victor was all masked up for painting so I couldn't get any good photos, but it does mean that it is nearing completion (I was told some time in April or maybe early May by people at the museum). 

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I had quite a good chat with someone from the Vulcan Restoration Trust (the organisation looking after XL426) about Duxford's Vulcan. I had some questions about the originality of some parts and although he couldn't give me a definitive answer I do now have a good lead to follow up on that. 

Also heard about future plans for got the Airspace hangar and some of its exhibits. From what I was told, the Victor will be moving into the adjacent currently empty room where it was dissembled in 2016, and will remain there for the immediate future. The hanging exhibits need to be removed from the ceiling for inspections. At the same time they plan to rearrange this hangar, some aircraft will be moving into this hangar and some will be moving into other hangars. Apparently the idea is that they may go for a Cold War theme in this hangar, hopefully that means that the Victor and Vulcan will be displayed alongside each other. And on the topic of that Vulcan, it will be repainted at some point around that time; the paintwork is pretty worn, although I think it looks fine as it looks like it's been in service rather than fresh from the paintshop. There are definitely some restorations that look almost too good.... Hopefully they nail the repaint of this one. I also heard that the Shackleton may be next in the restoration queue, so I hope that will also be displayed in the same hangar.

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Taped together the wings so I could fit the pitots for these photos. Second intake is improved. There should be some holes at the wing roots, these will be added at some point soonish.

If you're wondering what is in the background, that's a not -to-scale sketch of the wing of a model glider I have to build next week for a uni project. 

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Done some work on the left wing last night

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The raised details are sanded down, but they still show up. They're smooth, I guess it's just an odd quirk of the metallic coloured plastic.

 

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One detail I'm not happy with though is the wing fence. It's not that it's too thick- which is is- but that it extends almost symmetrically above and below the wing. In reality the wing fence should extend far less on the underside than the top surface. This image of XD816 shows this well:

800px-Vickers_Valiant_BK.1_XD816_214_Sqn

At the same time as modifying the wing fence, I added some Mr Surfacer into all the panel lines because they're far too heavy. As with the raised serials and roundels, you can clearly see where the wing fence was but it is smooth now up to the point where there is a bit of left over Mr Surfacer.

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Next up: the right wing.

 

 

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with the second wing now similarly prepared, the wings can now be mounted to the fuselage.

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quite a bit of filler has been applied. I'm also dealing with the canopy now, I decided to hold off until I had the wings on so I can deal with the filler all at once.

The canopy will be done with a decal, the same as my previous small scale Valiant.

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  • 2 weeks later...

There's quite a lot of work to cover since the last post! It's almost ready for some paint. I haven't had time for that much modelling though this week as I've got a lot of uni deadlines, so most of this work was from last week during project week, where we built a model plane to fly. I've about given up with CATIA, the CAD software we use, as it's currently crashing for about the sixth time today. While it's doing that I'll write this update.

 

Firstly, I've smoothed out the filling of the canopy. As previously mentioned, a decal will represent that.

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I added the small intakes on the wing root. They're not perfect but they'll do. I had to build back up the left side leading edge at the root because I'd saved it back too far trying to get rid of a seam... oops. Oh well, easily fixed.

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The wing root required a moderate amount of filler. I've dry fitted a could of the jetpipes to show here, they're crude but this whole kit is so I'm not overly bothered. These have already been thinned a bit and I'll probably do some more thinning yet. One of them has a nasty sink mark that I'm going to have to deal with. 

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The tail is on and has received its share of filler. I probably need to do another pass with Mr Surfacer yet but it's almost done.

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Wait holdup.... That's not a Valiant! Last week at uni was the last project week of first year, where we built and flew aircraft that we've been working on since November. It's a model of a sort, so I figured I'd share it on BM.

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This is the design my group came up with... I say group but it really could have done with a bit not design input from a couple of members, but such is the nature of group work. 

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It was constructed from laser cut balsa and plywood over the course of two afternoons, finishing within five minutes of the deadline.

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Due to the weights we had to attach to the nose making it look like a fish and the orange and white colour scheme, we named it Nemo. 

And here it is just after the deadline sitting on the launcher that would cause a lot of problems the next day...

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Although I didn't get a video of the first launch, it didn't go very well. It turns out that the launcher and adaptor provided don't work correctly. The nose of the aircraft usually hits the end of the ramp as it gets pitched downwards, which resulted in a few broken parts. Every group was the same so we gave up on the launcher and went with a launch by hand instead.

While other groups were launching we took it into the corridor to see how it would really fly. Then it flew straight into a wall and broke the motor. Thankfully there were some less broken spares, so we were able to repair one of those and fit it.

 

It flies! And pretty well compared to other groups' performance.

 

The aftermath of test flight day: a lot of broken planes, some still in one peice, some just about still flyable. On a later flight, mine nose dived right into this pile and broke its motor again. It survived though, until I dropped it and caught it by the tail which snapped off. Oh well, it was done flying anyway. I did glue it back on though before I left.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The old Lincoln/Kader kits are crude by today's standard but are very appealing probably due to the subjects they covered. Looks like you're well on the way with the Valiant and the glider looks like a fun project too.

 

Steve

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The Valiant is currently on hold due to increased uni work load and the decals I need not being in stock. Hopefully I will continue at the end of May when exams finish

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  • 2 weeks later...

Good news! The decals are back in stock and I've ordered some. I decided that I will continue now in whatever spare time I have between exams and gliding so that I can get straight onto building a Do215 in the Do17 STGB after exams finish

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finally, an update! I put on a layer of primer to check the surface, which while not perfect looks OK. I will paint it in silver soon. 

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I think my small improvements on the intakes worked quite nicely

 

 

Edited by Adam Poultney
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