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1/72 Airfix Vulcan (Old kit)


Ravnos

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So... I promised this would be next so here goes 🤪 I had originally planned to do this and the Victor kit I have, one in this GB and the other in the Falklands GB but given how much they overlap I'm not going to have time to do both so doing the Vulcan here.

 

This is the old Airfix kit, not the shiny new one, I picked it up a couple of years before the new one was released for a steal in a local charity shop. The plan is to build it in its XM607 Black Buck configuration, I know the kit probably isn't particularly accurate but I'm not going to go mad with trying to fix it, (I know, Sorry Adam) if there are any easy modifications to be made along the way then I'll consider them but aside from that going to attempt mostly OOB on this one.

 

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Sprue shot, She's certainly a big girl! That's an A1 cutting mat if anyone needs a scale reference.

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Amazingly the kit still had all its original paint, 17 pots all together!

 

 

 

First step underway, seats glued onto the cockpit floor and a first coat of paint hand brushed, seeing as the paints from the kit are mostly good just in need of a decent mixing, I decided to use them for the small hand painted detail, I'll be airbrushing the exterior when the time comes.

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That's all for now, hopefully two months(ish) will be enough to get this one over the line 🤣

 

 

 

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Good to see another Tin Triangle joining the GB! Actually, you're in luck with this kit! It's quite good for building a Black Buck Vulcan. You wouldn't need to make the millions of pedantic corrections I love to make if you wanted to build it to that accuracy standard, maybe a few improved details, but the old kit really wasn't bad for its time other than very tired molds, and with some effort will look not at all out of place next to more modern kits. I might in fact look for another one when the Flightpath B1 conversion is reissued for both the old tool and new tool kits, maybe a side by side build.

 

I think I mentioned on my thread in the Falkands GB that the pylons were positioned too far back on the old Airfix kit, which is where the Cyberhobby kit gets the same error from. This is about the only really worthwhile correction that could be made if you wanted to and it's pretty easy. But up to you of course what you do with it.

 

607 is a good choice, the famous one of course. With CliffB's XM598 and my XM597 in the Falkands 40th GB, and now your XM607 in this GB, collectively that's almost the full set of Black Buck Vulcans! Just need someone to do XM612 and XL391 now..... and maybe a fleet of Victors! 

Edited by Adam Poultney
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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks @Adam Poultney! Good to know the kit won't need too much modification to get something reasonable, I noticed the instructions call for cutting slots for the pylons, are these the ones that need to be moved forwards?

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Not much progress yet, mainly cleaning up some parts and painting the rest of the cockpit.... such as it is, looking at some of the cockpit detail in the new kit in other peoples builds does make this one look a little pathetic 😄

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Should be able to close up the main fuselage soon, although I need to figure out the air intakes first, I've no idea how im going to fill that gap on the inside of it and still get a nice finish. Open to any suggestions!

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That's all for now folks, hopefully there'll be some bigger bits assembled the next time.

 

 

 

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Hi do love a Vulcan built a few over the years how do you plan to attach the wings ? The last one I built I glued the wings to the fuselage halfs first then glued the two big halfs together that way I got a flush top and bottom 

Any enjoy will follow your build

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24 minutes ago, Ravnos said:

Thanks @Adam Poultney! Good to know the kit won't need too much modification to get something reasonable, I noticed the instructions call for cutting slots for the pylons, are these the ones that need to be moved forwards?

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Yes those are the ones. The way I would approach it is simple,  just don't cut holes. Sand off the two teardrop shaped blisters on the wing and line the front edge of the pylon up with the remaining dome shaped blister just in front. Also remove the larger dome shaped blister about where the pylon's rear edge is. If you glue it in place there it will be correctly positioned, with the necessary hardpoint covers removed.

 

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2 hours ago, ed-209 said:

 how do you plan to attach the wings ? The last one I built I glued the wings to the fuselage halfs first then glued the two big halfs together that way I got a flush top and bottom

Honestly.... I hadn't thought that far ahead yet, that does sound like a good plan though, glad you suggested it before I glued the fuselage together without thinking about wing attachment 🤣

 

2 hours ago, Adam Poultney said:

Yes those are the ones. The way I would approach it is simple,  just don't cut holes. Sand off the two teardrop shaped blisters on the wing and line the front edge of the pylon up with the remaining dome shaped blister just in front. Also remove the larger dome shaped blister about where the pylon's rear edge is. If you glue it in place there it will be correctly positioned, with the necessary hardpoint covers removed.

Thanks for the tip, I'll probably have a look at that next once ive got the air intakes in place.

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Some bigger progress this time after a few hours this afternoon,

 

Cockpit blacked out, canopy masked and glued in place with PVA.

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Wings off the sprues and cleaned up.

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Following the suggestion from @Ed 209 I attached the wings to the fuselage halves before putting the top and bottom together.

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Then glueing a section at a time and clamping as I went the top and bottom were glued together, the edges are going to need a bit more clean up but its not bad for an initial fit.

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It was about now I realised I'd forgotten the hardpoint modifications, which I should really have done before I put it together but I managed to get them trimmed and sanded down anyway, How do these look @Adam Poultney? ;)

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I realise there's one of the domes still to be removed in the picture, forgot about it till now ><

 

And finally, the tail sections were attached, which really makes her look right.

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That's all for the moment, shouldn't be too long till I'm on paint!

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hi chaps, apologies for the long silence on this one, life and the good weather has got in the way of modelling for the most part, I had hoped to get it over the line this weekend with the extended deadline but sadly I've been feeling awful for the last few days with something that feels a lot like the dreaded covid despite several negative tests.

 

That being said some progress has been made so here's an update to take everything up to date.

 

following the assembly of the main parts, the next step was to go over the whole model with putty filling all the gaps, this is the bit I was worried about as the thought of trying to sand these air intakes has been haunting me.

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I applied as smoothly as possible using cotton buds and wet fingers to try and minimise the sanding needed.

 

after it was dry I used a combination of the sanding drum on my rotary tool and sandpaper rolled into a tube and passed through the engines and needle files.

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It's not perfect but its as good as its going to get, hopefully with some paint it'll be less obvious.

 

After that I took the whole thing outside and hit it with Tamiya Fine primer.

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Next up I sprayed some white into the intakes, attempting to coat as far down into them as possible. The colour difference is more obvious in person, I decided to go with the Vallejo Insignia white I've got on the shelf, it seemed the closest to the real thing out of my current stash.

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Once that was dry I painted the engine turbines silver and glued them in place through the still open bomb bay.

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As this is going to hung from the ceiling I dont need to go overboard with nose weighting but I wanted to add a little to make it hang nicely, so I filled the front gear well with fishing weights

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Then to make sure they don't rattle around I filled the rest of the space with PVA glue.

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Then I used the PVA to "float" the two sections of the gear doors, and ran styrene cement around the edges to fix everything in place.

 

Once that and the bomb bay doors were in place I went over the underside with filler.

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After that I gave the whole thing another two coats of primer. at which point I realised I'd made a mistake and forgotten to mask the bomb aimers window. I had one attempt at cleaning the paint off with IPA but while it was starting to work I nearly pushed the window in, just barely managed to save it and get it glued back in place. once the main paint job is done I'll see if I can hand paint it to look like a dark window.

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pitot tubes and refuelling probe attached. sadly one of the pitot tubes was missing from the kit, and while I did have it in place the small fin on the underside of the bomb aimers compartment got caught and snapped off while I was doing something else, so it was lost to the carpet monster. I was going to try and scratch build replacements but given how much time was left decided not to.

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Next was the first of the masking, using tape to get a hard edge then blue tac to fill in the middle.

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And finally this morning I got the first coat of white on the underside, its had a second coat since then and its looking good and I'm going to see how much I can get done before the deadline tomorrow but I'm not sure I'll be able to get the cammo done in the time available 🤣

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Thanks for reading guys and some of the other builds are looking spectacular, see you all at the finish line!

 

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6 hours ago, ed-209 said:

The way you painted the intakes very clever looking good must resist the temptation of an other Vulcan 

 

Thanks, I'll try and pretend I'm not just making it up as I go along 😁

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So after double checking the paint scheme before starting to mask off the underside, I realise I've sealed my fate in not being able to get this finished in time. for some reason I had it in my head that the underside was white when it is in fact.... grey. Oh well, I'll fix that and finish the rest in the next week or two but I've no chance getting it done today 🤣

 

I'll update the thread with the final results when it is eventually finished. thanks for having me guys, it was a fun GB and I'm glad I managed to get my TB2 build into the gallery if nothing else.

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  • 4 months later...

Hey chaps,

 

Apologies if its a serious Faux Pas to ressurect an old GB thread but I thought I owed it an ending. Unfortunately life got in the way of this one and not only did I miss the deadline for this build but I also missed about 4 other GB's I wanted to take part in entierly. I finally got some time this week to sit and finish it, I haven't documented the rest of the build and I certainly wont be boring you with progress shots, however as one final post here she is completed.

 

It's not my best work, and the paint job suffered from sitting around for so long in between sessions, but from 6 feet away when she's hanging from the ceiling I'm still relatively pleased. maybe next year I'll do the Victor to go with it.

 

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For anyone thinking about doing this kit, I would strongly advise getting some after market decals, the one's that came with the kit are wildly out of scale in places to the point where I had to leave some of them off because they were so huge, and the instructions were almost unreadable. I have it on fairly good authority that the Xtradecal's are the best but by the time I figured that out it was too late for this one.

 

Thanks for reading, and thanks Adam for putting on a cracking GB! (And thanks for the help with the decals)

 

 

Edited by Ravnos
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