1/48 Trumpeter Vickers Wellington IC

[Stephen Allen]

More incremental fettling of the transparencies. Here I’ve attached new runners for the side cockpit windows. The bottom runners on the kit sit a bit low and hence wouldn’t actually engage with the sliding windows, so I trimmed them off and replaced them. The top runners need to be extended on to the glazing - as provided in the kit you effectively only get the runner section that sits on the fuselage decking, not on the glazing. Its also important to keep the upper and lower runners parallel - the windows wouldn’t slide otherwise.  I painted the inside faces of the new runners so if you look into or through the cockpit so there shouldn’t be any white styrene bits apparent.  I’ve also attached a strip of aluminium foil to help blend in the top section of the glazing to the fuselage decking. It all looks a bit stark at present, but should become less obvious with a bit of sanding and once painted.

 

 

[Rob K.]

Really enjoying this build thread. Love what you are doing to this kit.

 

Will stay tuned for the next instalment.

 

Rgds,

 

 Rob 

[Stephen Allen]

All the transparencies are finished. The bomb-aimer’s screen benefited from a bit of sanding to better shape the corners to match the fuselage. Trumpeter clear plastic polishes up quite well using fine grades of wet and dry, used wet, followed by Tamiya polishing compound. Aluminium self adhesive foil tape provides sharper definition to the edge framing.

 

 

I also thinned out the camera window (top left) to bring it closer to flush with the fuselage. I think the kit designer interpreted the two fore and aft raised strakes as runners for a sliding window here standing proud of the fuselage. My own interpretation from photos is that its flush and  whatever the strakes are they are not runners.

 

The long side windows were attached with Gator’s grip, and needed some taping to conform while drying. Once dry, and with a bit of Mr Surfacer around the seams, they are a very good fit.

 

 

 

Yet more bits and pieces. I removed the wireless aerial lead-in moulded on the fuselage - just a  plastic rectangle -  and replaced it with one carved from a spare kit part. I’ve also inserted a small - 0.5mm OD - section of aluminium tube on the fixed vertical stabiliser and faired it in with a little surfacer. Which reminds me, I have to go back and make the diamond shaped plate surround for the lower ID light. After that comes some test fitting of the DF football and aerial mast, then it’s probably time for a cleanup, mask of the windows, and an undercoat/witness coat to check for flaws.

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

Some more fuselage ancillaries. I tried drilling the top of the aerial mast with an 80 size drill, but it was just too narrow. Instead I cut it off, grooved and spread the top, then glued in a piece of 0.5 mm aluminium tube as an anchor point for the eventual aerial wire.

 

 

i replaced the trailing aerial deployment tube on the rear fuselage with some brass tube - it’s bit crisper than the kit part and a lot stronger.

 

[Stephen Allen]

A test fit of the wings and horizontal tail.

 

 

The tailplane fits quite well. The wings are a wobbly fit, the starboard one more so, and both can be easily disengaged from the click tabs on the wing root support boxes. I think they are designed for removal, for storage or transport, but the loose fit and lack of wing ribs to set the dihedral make this an aspirational rather than realistic design feature. My plan is to use epoxy on the support boxes as the gluing surfaces are loose and need a glue that can fill the gaps, then follow up with liquid cement on the actual wing root/fuselage. One wing at a time, and carefully jigged for matching dihedral angles. I will do this before I paint as I want to clean up the joints beforehand. It will make masking a bit more tedious, and now I have to find or make a box big enough to keep it all out of the dust while it’s painted.

[Stephen Allen]

I started with the better fitting port wing. I used fifteen minute epoxy on the wing support box, then propped the aircraft up on my building board to let gravity help while the glue sets.

 

 

once the epoxy had set I moved the plane to sit on a base I had made for a previous ship build. I put in place with the wing gently supported, so that the top wing joint was firm against the fuselage. Tamiya thin liquid cement was brushed into the joint.

 

 

 

 

the top joint looks pretty good.

 

 

I’ll leave things overnight then figure out what will work best on the lower joint. It’s a little too much of a gap for Tamiya thin, so I am thinking either medium superglue or slow setting epoxy - the latter will allow a long clean up time to tidy the joint.

[Stephen Allen]

Okay, slow setting epoxy for the lower wing joint/gap. I used fifteen minute Bob Smith rather than 30 minute, as it sets better in a Canberra winter (-4 C this morning) and is, allegedly, a bit more flexible, which helps with a joint that will experience some minor flexing as the plane gets moved about. I used small amounts applied with a paintbrush, then smoothed the line out  and removed any excess with a cotton tip dipped in IPA. I think a lot of people get put off epoxy, as it can be a sticky, messy proposition, but I’ve been using it for years in ship modeling with various kinds of materials and joints and for applications like this it just creates less mess than either solvent type cements, or superglue. At least for a klutz like me. You can just see the glue shine along the joint. I will finish it up with some Mr Surfacer then on to wing number two. So far it’s been a pretty good ‘no sanding’ process.

 

 

[mark.au]

I’ve not used epoxy on a model yet, but you make a powerful case for its use. I can think of a couple occasions where it would definitely have helped me.

[Stephen Allen]

It’s another case of horses for courses. Building this model I have used classic Tamiya thin style solvent cements, solvent cements with more body like the Tamiya white cap, thin, medium and thick style superglues, easy sanding superglue for filling, and acrylic Gator white glue around some transparencies.

 

In this case the long narrow gap, which needs a a little gap filling ability, and the need to avoid damage to the surrounding detail said ‘epoxy’ to me. Most of the strength in the joint is carried by the wing box and the close fitting top surface, so I don’t think this line will be under too much stress, especially if I avoid high ‘G’ maneuvers!  In retrospect, I think I could have avoided the gap altogether by not gluing the top of the bomb bay assembly rigidly in place within the fuselage until after I had glued the wings on. That would have let the fuselage sides flex out a little more to meet the bottom of the wing. Live and learn.

 

cheers

 

Steve

[Stephen Allen]

On to the starboard wing. Where the port wing was a reasonably tight fit, the starboard wing was very loose indeed. The lip on the click tab of the wing box actually worked to push the wing away from a close fit, so I cut it off. The wing was also able to rock back to front, changing its relative incidence compared to the fuselage and port wing. I spent a day thinking about how best to deal with this, and in the end discovered that if the fuselage was suspended port wing down, the starboard wing could be gently placed to balance in the correct relationship on the fuselage. I drew pencil reference marks on the fuselage to indicate where the wing should sit to establish the correct incidence, measuring down from the edge of the side window seam at the rear, and from the centre joint of the wing at the front to a reference mark on the fuselage. I started by again gluing the wing support box with some slow setting epoxy. I also added a tiny drop of CA to the lower wing/ fuselage joint to fix the wing’s incidence while it dried. I went away for a while to let the rather wobbly assembly set.

 

 

 

after the glue had set I gingerly placed the airframe right side up on a flat surface. Success! Measurements at the wings and nacelles showed equal distances from the surface, with the tail and fuselage at 90 degrees.

 

 

I used Tamiya thin on the sections of the top wing joint that actually touch the fuselage. Which is not much. I will be using epoxy to fill and reinforce this joint as well as the underneath section. I could have forced the joint closer by taping the wingtips and forcing the whole wing in, but then I think there might have been problems both keeping the dihedral consistent and with excess glue. I’d rather fill.

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

I filled the gaps in the wing seam (seen in the last post) with epoxy smoothed out with a cotton bud dipped in IPA. This was done very carefully, as I didn’t mask the adjacent transparency in case the tape picked up and wicked either the glue or the IPA on to the clear surface.  I know it doesn’t look very different to the last photo, but you can just see the shine of the epoxy in the joint if you look closely.
 

 

Left to dry overnight, its on with the Mr Surfacer. The next two photos show this applied, but not yet cleaned up. So far so good.

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

And it’s on with the tail feathers. Here you can see the port tailplane supported to match the starboard while the glue dries. These seams were quite good, and will just need a bit of Mr Surfacer to even things out.

 

 

The Lion has Wings! I did all of this on my balanced building board, meant for ship model hull construction. It’s the only genuinely flat surface I have, and helps to ensure that any measurements I make for dihedral etc are drawn from a known point.

 

 

I’ve put it on the skinny kit wheels to avoid damaging the undercart while working on it. It rolls very well!

[Stephen Allen]

I have decided to depict the aircraft with bomb bay doors closed up. It might seem the easy choice, but the single part provided by Trumpeter looks like, well, a single part, with very shallow recessed lines for the numerous individual doors. I deepened the scribed lines, nearly to the point of scribing right through. Around the perimeter of the part I used a razor saw to notch each door so there is a small gap. I also refined the fit of the part to the fuselage, but not too much as photos show that the doors were not a terrific fit.

 

 

 

 

I have fitted the fuel dump pipes, with small spacers for the mounts on the flap area as photos show a small gap here. Bad photo I know!

 

 

Close to painting but still a few details to be installed. My chosen aircraft has the Blind Approach Beam rail antenna under the fuselage, so that can be made and installed - there isn’t one in the kit. After that, its mostly parts that might or might not be best left off until after painting is mostly completed - things like rudder balances, pitot tube, trim tab mechanisms etc. I like to attach anything that I can mask around or over, and avoid knocking off, only leaving really fragile parts till last. It just makes for a better finish.

 

[Stephen Allen]

There has been a slight delay in proceedings while I had a 1/1 scale cracked tooth temporarily repaired. Am I the only modeller who distracts himself in the dentist’s chair by thinking ‘It’s just like altering a kit part with a motortool’?
 

Standard Beam Approach antenna installed under the rear fuselage.

 

 

Trumpeter are enthusiastic about providing photo etch in their kits. Some of it is pretty awful, like the Rudder trim tab actuator below. They could quite easily have moulded a much better part in plastic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I built a new one from 0.3mm brass and 0.5mm Aluminium tube. The Aluminium tube is bent and flattened to form the arm sections, while the tips are left circular so that the brass tube can be inserted to form the arm.

 

With the rudder on the plane you can see that it looks a bit better than the flat photoetch part.

 

 

Finally for tonight, the cable cutter blades inserted into the wing leading edge. I still need to make the small triangular fairings at the wing roots, which complete the cable cutting/deflection system. Don’t know if this airframe actually had them fitted as in the photos available the positions are not visible.

 

[Stephen Allen]

Making and fitting the two triangular cable deflection strakes that are attached to the wingroots. I made them from suitable plastic strip. I tack glued this to a block of wood, to provide a rigid backing strip while I sanded them to a consistent taper. Thin strip needs backing or you usually end up with an inconsistent and often curved taper rather than a nice straight one.

 

 

I have a reversible bench sander, which makes it easy to get each end tapered consistently. You just switch it to run in the opposite direction, use the first taper as a template to reset the alignment, and away you go. Cut them to length and fit.

 

 

The deflection strakes fitted.

 

Faired in with some Mr Surfacer.

 

Yep, I should really open up the small ducts in the leading edge of each wing, but at this stage I might just leave it to paint. Enough of this building! Time to give the airframe a bit of a clean, mask the clear bits, and start painting!

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

On to the painting. Masking up the extensive transparencies turned into more of a pain than it should have been. The Eduard kabuki masks don’t fit well. Most of the masks for the side windows were too tall and too long. I cut some of them back, and simply used Tamiya tape in other places. The cockpit masks needed more fettling, particularly the segments just above the forward windows. Left as they were, the upper frames to the windows would have been too thick and too curved, so the masks were extended at the front and straightened out a bit. Others got nips, tucks and extensions as needed. Shouldn’t have bothered, would have been just as quick in the end to do all the masking strips myself.

 

Grey green first on the canopy, followed by Aluminium. This is in the hope that any small chips or edging as the masks are removed will be aluminium, so less fix ups. I just used Aluminium on the other transparencies as I think the grey green was largely confined to the cockpit. I will scrape down some of the sharper edges on the strips I have added then some primer on the fuselage to check and rectify seams. I’ve also been spending a lot of time looking at photos to settle my views on how the camouflage was applied to the chosen airframe. 149 Squadron seemed to have many variations of the high demarcation Special Night scheme on its Wellingtons in 40/41, presumably many had to be modified from the earlier low demarcation scheme painted at the factory. This aircraft, R1593, can also be seen in photos with or without the ‘Firefly’ ‘artwork’ on the port side forward. It’s so basic I have wondered if it was applied - even chalked on - for a photo, then rapidly removed. Vargas it ain’t!

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

The rectification coat/primer went well. The seams came up well, so its on with the real painting!

 

 

 

The markings are going to be painted, so I have prepared masks. I’ve used the Techmod decal sheet as a photocopied template to cut the Code Letters. I copied it onto adhesive label paper, then stuck this on top of Tamiya Kamoi tape (the wide yellow tape).

 

 

 

 

 

I’m using modified Crafting Well Type A1 masks for the fuselage roundels. I just scribed another circle to depict the reduced width Yellow circle used on this airframe. For the wings I cut my own Type B’s with a circle cutter. With the end of the priming stage I am switching from Lacquer-based paints to Colourcoat enamels.

[Stephen Allen]

Two pictures today. A mottled coat of medium sea grey forms the basis for the squadron code letters and the modified ‘Bomber Command’ roundel and fin flash - with medium sea grey substituting for white.  Mottled blue on the wings is the first step for the Type B roundels. I’m rubbish at tight mottling, so I spray the slightly lighter shades through an Aber brass etched mottling mask - highly useful piece of kit.

 

 

[Stephen Allen]

It has been a while since the last entry. Things were looking good last post for rapid progress on the markings, but the paint gremlins struck, and struck hard. Turns out the very nice-looking undercoat was not properly bedded into the plastic surface of the fuselage and removal of the first masks when painting the roundel also removed large chunks of paint right back to the plastic. These are very low tack. The Colourcoats  enamels were fine, adhering to the primer, but the primer let go from the surface. What went wrong? I think two things. The first is that the square bottle style Tamiya primer is not as hot as it could have been, not biting into the surface for a good grip. The second problem was that the plastic surface, in the area of the markings, was very, very smooth and glossy, offering no mechanical grip to the paint. I didn’t lose any paint from areas that had been sanded for seams etc.

 

Rectifying the problem was drastic, but quick and straightforward. I used Mr Color Leveller Thinner with shop rags and cotton buds to remove the primer (and top coats) from the affected areas. The Wellington’s fabric and frame surface detail helps here, as it was possible to create natural top, bottom, and front and rear end points for this work without creating unsightly ridges. I sanded the entire area with 600 grade film, cleaned it up, and sprayed Colourcoats medium sea grey over both sides of the fuselage, as it would be the base colour for the codes and markings. Once dry lots of poking and prodding it with various masking tape samples convinced me that this time it would stick. Total time lost, including remaking my squadron code and modified roundel masks was a night and subsequent day of modelwork, probably four or five hours in total.
 

I wish I had taken some shots of the problem and remedial work, but I was too busy fixing things. The wing surface was fine, as it had a long settled surface of a hotter primer - the Tamiya spray can primer which for some reason known only to Mr Tamiya has considerably more bite than the bottle stuff. Anyway, the following photos show the different stages of spraying the second set of markings.

 

 

 

 

Live and learn!

[Eivind Lunde]

On 18/05/2025 at 09:08, MikeC said:

Amen to that.  I try and vary the placement, but with PE it isn't easy, which is why I prefer the fabric-type harnesses such as HGW.

 

This is an interesting thread, look forward to seeing more in due course.

But wouldn't the ground crew usually put the belts back into the seat? 

[MikeC]

1 hour ago, Eivind Lunde said:

But wouldn't the ground crew usually put the belts back into the seat? 

Maybe, but unless the harnesses were at risk of fouling something, especially when moving the aircraft, I suspect it was not a priority.  In any case, a varied seat harness adds a bit of visiual interest imo.  YMMV. 

[Stephen Allen]

A quick check of the repainted roundels to make sure all is well.

 

 

So on to the first camouflage colour. After spending a lot of time considering whether the undersides should come first, or the disruptive camouflage, I decided on the latter. The wings, horizontal and vertical tailplanes need to be masked off for a sharp demarcation at their roots between top and lower colours. Masking a straight surface, eg, the wing root, is a lot easier than masking the curved section of fuselage it joins to. Ditto with the tail feathers. I started with an overall coat of Dark Earth to the topsides. I mottled this with a Dark Earth/Light Earth mix for a well-worn look, then oversprayed again with the Dark Earth.
 

 

Next comes some mask cutting for the dark green pattern. I am pretty sure that the pattern will need an ever so slightly blended edge, so raised masks will be the order of the day. The wavy demarcation between the disruptive top camouflage and the Special Night on the fuselage sides was also quite softly sprayed. It could be that this aircraft started out with the earlier, lower demarcation point, and had a Squadron or Maintenance Unit refinish to bring the demarcation further up the sides. Earlier 149 Squadron Wellingtons, identified as IA’s in photos, had the black joining up with the vertical tail at the rear of the fuselage and, conversely, left the disruptive camouflage in place to join with the wing scheme. Slightly latter airframes, such as this IC, retained the camouflaged top all the way back to the rear turret, and had a strip of Night separating the wing from the fuselage colours. There is also a shot of R1593 without the ‘Firefly’ art. In this photo the wavy demarcation in that area of the fuselage looks retouched, suggesting that officialdom, or possibly a latter crew, had this artwork removed. Given the change to the paint demarcation I think this photo probably post-dates the artwork - the plane looks pretty scruffy as well.

[pacificmustang]

What an annoyance with the peeling paint Stephen, but nicely recovered. If you haven’t already painted the dark green, I’m happy to send you the LF Models camouflage masks I used in mine . Sorry, should have thought of this sooner

Bruce 

[Stephen Allen]

Thanks for the offer Bruce. I’ve cut my own masks and already started on the green so no worries.

 

Steve

[Stephen Allen]

So step one of the camouflage is completed. Pretty happy with how things went. I did the wings/tailplanes first, let them dry, then did the fuselage top later. I’ve shown the the masks I use. Its a sandwich made up of a foam designed for mounting accessories to cars, with lower tack Tamiya tape on each side. The masks are flexible so they conform well to the curves of the fuselage.

 

 

 

Nice to see the wing roundels again!

 

 

 

 

Don’t worry - the only paint that separated was on the masks. All the rest stayed happily attached to airframe. Now for the black bits!