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Airfix Vampire & Eduard Upgrades 1:48


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After last year's zero builds, I've already got to the heady heights of three completed models so far this year :shocked: and I'm determined to keep up the impetus, despite the other pressures and the almost constant need to sleep :tired: After doing a review for a number of aftermarket sets from Eduard for this kit, it tempted me to start another build.  The seat especially was hugely tempting, as the detail on that is mind-blowing :tasty:

 

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You can see the full review and more pics here for the seat, and a full review of the kit itself, here.  I started nipping bits off the sprues Sunday (I think?) night while my mate @stringbag was over to talk :poop:about models, and I gradually built up a mass of sub-assemblies that are all going to be painted silver, as well as the cockpit, which will be "black".  I've given them all a coat of black primer, which will be a shadow coat for the silver and dark grey later, and I also used it to check the seams on the tail booms, which have a long visible seam running top and bottom, so they need to be just right and invisible as possible.  I've also glued together the wing tanks, which are three parts each, and I'll leave them to set up for at least 48 hours before I begin working on the seams.  To be fair to the designers, they fit pretty well considering they're in three pieces, so well done Airfix :)

 

The aftermarket I'll be using are the sets I've recently reviewed, like the seat above, the SPACE instrument panel, seatbelts, and I've also got the PE set on the way from Hannants, as I'm not happy with the oleo-scissor links on the gear legs, which is a minor weak-point of the kit.  They're moulded as overlapping triangular blocks, and let down an otherwise good-looking kit.  Sure, they won't be seen much once the stubby little thing is sitting on its legs and the bay doors are on, but I just couldn't leave them as-is. :shrug:

 

Here are a couple of pics of the various sub-assemblies I've made so far, covered in black primer:

 

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I'll be squirting some more MRP metallics on the majority of the parts shortly, after having some success with it on my Claude last month.

 

Now, does anyone know where I've put my lead shot for the noseweight? :hmmm:

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13 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Bloomin predictive text, sorry Mike should have said thanks for showing that😄

:lol: I kind of hoped that's what had happened.  Either that or it was some new lingo from East Kent that hasn't made its way oop north yet :nerd:

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Oooh, I've been looking forward to seeing one of these get built.  I built the 1/72 T.11 last year and really liked it, so I'll be interested to see how its older and bigger brother comes together.  What scheme will you be going for?

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1 minute ago, jackroadkill said:

What scheme will you be going for?

 

I've just built a BMF Claude, well, a silver coloured Claude, so I fancied a change, but can't seem to find one.  Guess I'm going to do a silver one then :(

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3 minutes ago, jackroadkill said:

 

To be fair, they do look very cool like that, so it could be worse, I suppose!

I'll see what sort of weathering if any they suffered while they were in service to try and stop it from looking like a diecast.  We shall see :)

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13 minutes ago, Mike said:

:lol: I kind of hoped that's what had happened.  Either that or it was some new lingo from East Kent that hasn't made its way oop north yet :nerd:

No your safe Mike, no new lingo from down south, 😉, got a couple of these in the stash too as want to do an F3 and when Ben does the elephant ears and nose blister a FB.31 with the eye-catching yellow and black TT scheme. 

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2 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Ben does the elephant ears and nose blister

Is this some new patois from darn sarf?  :hmmm:

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6 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

You got me Mike !!!  I should have added intakes after the elephant ears,  Ben AKA @wellsprop is I think (hoping) looking at 3D printing some.

Chris

That makes a little bit more sense now :yes:  Only a bit though :dunce: I understood the words "ben" and "3D Printing"

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28 minutes ago, Mike said:

That makes a little bit more sense now :yes:  Only a bit though :dunce: I understood the words "ben" and "3D Printing"

😄 the elephant ears are extra intakes initially on the upper engine cover and then put underneath to deliver extra air .  There's a cracking TT scheme with silver wings and tail booms if I recall correctly which is the scheme I will be doing, I do like yellow and black striped aircraft.  

Chris 

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7 hours ago, Mike said:

 my mate @stringbag was over to talk :poop:about models

 

The aftermarket I'll be using are the sets I've recently reviewed, like the seat above, the SPACE instrument panel, seatbelts, and I've also got the PE set on the way from Hannants,

 

Just ordered the same sets having seen your samples.

As for the lead shot.  It's probably buried under all the junk on your modelling bench.  :tease:

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22 minutes ago, stringbag said:

As for the lead shot.  It's probably buried under all the junk on your modelling bench.  :tease:

Nope.  try again :P

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I'm in the middle of painting the cockpit and all the silver bits like the gear bays and intakes, but decided to put some FOD guards on this one, to save me from doing any seam filling inside the intakes, although I doubt anyone will be able to see it, and because I made a bit of a poor job of painting the exhaust.  not terrible, I just wasn't keen.  I haven't done a kit with FODs for a long time now anyway, so why not?

 

I put a piece of tape over the intake, drew a rough shape on it and then cut that out, sticking it to some 0.5mm styrene sheet.  I cut that one out and trimmed it to shape so it would fit snugly behind the strakes.  I put some CA on the back of the finished shape and stuck it to another piece and cut that to the same shape.  A bit of trimming later and they both fit well enough, so I measured the exhaust and cut myself a blank to 8mm using my new(ish) DSPAIE circle-cutter, which worked out really rather well, so kudos to that :yes:

 

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After taking the pic I've made a little grab-handle for the exhaust blank, and the next job is to make a slightly tapered stand-off to go between the two strakes, then make up a turn-buckle, which is also tapered on most of the ones I've seen.  Then I'll paint them up and insert them after a bit of masking :)

 

I'll post up a few pics of the internals once I've matted it down and done a bit more detail painting.

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Got the seat finished, and it's a lovely piece of 3D printing :wub: Glued in the seatbelts and matted it and the rest of the cockpit down with some flat varnish, which was nice.  I've also assembled the SPACE instrument panel, although I've not yet glued it in so I can access the rest of it a little bit easier.  I've also finished off the FOD guards and painted them red.  It's really glowing in that pic :coolio:

 

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Thought I'd take a snap of some of the other bits and bobs while I had the camera out after failing miserably to take a shot of the upper half of the cockpit, which was almost impossible to get my lens into at the same time as photons.  There's detail in there of course, you'll just never see it :shrug:

 

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What's next?  Oh, I dipped the canopy parts in Klear in preparation for masking on both sides :shocked: I've also still got to put the acetate on the gunsight, which I'm going to leave off until I glue down the windscreen, or it'll get flicked off somewhere along the line :rolleyes:

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My mate @stringbag came over with a chunk of lead last night, as I seem to have mislaid my big jug of heavy bits of steel and a bag of lead shot somewhere along the line :doh: After much tea, coffee and jaffa cakes he departed and today I've got a sandwich of lead sheet cut up and glued together to fill the limited space in the nose as best I can without making fit issues for myself.  I'm guessing there's only about 12g in the nose, but I've supplemented it with two layers behind the rear bulkhead, and between them it gives it a distinctly nose-down attitude on the desk, rolling forward onto its nose with or without the lid on.

 

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You may just be able to see the lead peeping out from behind the bulkhead on the left, and the more observant amongst you will have also noticed that the tail booms and elevator are now glued in place.  The flying surface is angled slightly down, so is hiding in this pic, as is the exhaust FOD.  The next task is to paint the rear of the lead with some Musou Black so it won't be seen through the IP, and then I need to figure out the correct angles for the various IP panels, as they're not fitting too well at their current angle.  More news after the weather :)

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