Airfix 1:72 Vulcan B.2

[dr_gn]

eccles said:

Found another picture of a Blue Steel trolley from a book about RAF ground equipment (yes, someone actually wrote a book about it! ). Looks to be a transit or maintenance type of trolley rather than a loading type.

Thanks for that - another type of trolley. I think as well as there being several for the missile, depending on whether it was for transport and fitting to the aircraft or just moving around a hangar or factory, there were more versions for other types of aircraft. There were also inert missiles and live missiles, so I guess there may have been trolleys that were more or less robust depending on that as well.

[dr_gn]

RacingPete said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Just to say, as an RAF child who grew up a couple of doors down from Martin Withers at Finningley, I am enjoying the anecdotes alongside the build.

I've got three Vulcan books, and I keep coming across Martin Withers' signature at various points. I must have taken them to the RAeS talk he gave at work a few years back, and got him to sign the whole lot, plus a photo of him in the main body of the Haynes manual

[IJWS15]

Photos from McClelland's book as requested

[dr_gn]

IJWS15 said:

Photos from McClelland's book as requested

Thanks for those. Shows (as assumed) that the shoulder features on the wings were hollow, so I’ve drilled the fronts out:



Not sure if the backs were also hollow, like some kind of Venturi, or whether they’re intakes. I’d assume they should be through-drilled, otherwise the rear would be streamlined?

[dr_gn]

Instructions call for 40g of ballast in the nose, so I’ve cut some lead strip up:



and PVA’d it into the nose pod:



I rarely say ‘not worth doing’ regarding models, but in this case it’s not worth painting all the cockpit components separately, then putting them together in order to give some shade variation, so I went ahead and assembled the cockpit structure:



The seats, fire extinguishers and ladder parts are a bit different because they need detail painting, so I’ll fit them later with PVA.

Then fitted the ballast pod:



Also sprayed the u/c and bomb bays with Tamiya white primer:



It’s showed a few gaps up that I need to fill, but apart from that, they’ll be getting a coat of Vallejo Off-White, detail painting and weathering.

Also made some sanding sponges for the intakes:



Time will tell how much work they will need. The airbrush is hors de combat at the moment, so I’m a bit stuck for doing and detail work until a seal kit arrives next week.

[dr_gn]

Airfix sent me a new canopy; this one seems spot-on:



So I gave it a coat of Klear to shiny it up a bit:



I guess fully detailed front and rear cockpits could be worthwhile if the fairing was separated from the windscreens. It would have to be displayed as ‘maintenance’, but of course the fairing could be put back in place as and when. Anyway, not for this one.

Made a start on painting the wheel wells and bomb bay in “off-white”:



I sliced off the small domes, which I think (hope) are lights. I’ll dot some silver on the remaining pads, followed by canopy PVA to form the transparent domes.

[dr_gn]

Made a bit more progress with this one.Test fitting the seats showed that their sockets were either too tight, or the spigots too long, so I shortened them:



A test fit showed that the canopy still wouldn’t fit, even with the seats fully located. Swapping the seats round seemed to solve it - I assumed they were identical rather than handed:



Then on to the cockpit structure. I know from experience that airbrushing things with lots of nooks and crannies gives ‘dead spots’ where the spray can’t get to, so I brush painted those areas:



Then sprayed tyre black, and got on with detail painting the other stuff:



Then applied the instrument decals. Not sure why they’re usually bright white circles and lines - they never look like real instrument panels:



Anyway a few coats of Tamiya Smoke reduced the contrast a bit:



Then on to fitting the rear cockpit portholes. They come with small tags that makes location easy:



And the bomb sighting window:



On to the pilot’s seats, after detail painting, I fitted the harnesses with PVA:



I noticed the ejection handle loops were missing, so just for something to try, made some out of painted 0.2mm lead wire:



Twisted together:



And formed to shape using a simple jig:





OK so they’re out of scale and a bit sketchy, but they were never going to be photo-etch standard, and they’re barely visible…

So here are the assembled ejector seats and fire extinguishers:







And with the other cockpit furniture completed:



Ready for assembly:



Cockpit inner pod finished:





In place in the forward fuselage halves:





I’m glad at least some of the seat detail will be visible…if you look hard enough:



Then on to the wheels. I sprayed the hubs aluminium, Kleared them, then used my usual technique of gradually building up very thin black paint, capillaried around the hub grooves:



It’s then a simple matter of hand painting up to the defined edge, which is far enough away from the aluminium to avoid the risk of smudges. That’s for tomorrow though.

[StonedRollin]

You've said that this won't be to your usual attention to detail but still absolutely different class and thanks for taking the time and effort to share. It's a joy to see the updates.

[dr_gn]

StonedRollin said:

You've said that this won't be to your usual attention to detail but still absolutely different class and thanks for taking the time and effort to share. It's a joy to see the updates.

Thanks very much.

I’ll still be paying attention to construction/finishing detail as much as any other model, but I won’t be adding anything to the base kit, apart from some simple things like the seat harnesses and perhaps the odd drilled-out pipe and undercarriage brake line (in other words, stuff that would still class it as a “standard kit” in an an IPMS competition).

Luckily it’s a fairly featureless airframe in real life, and most of the small stuff like antennae and some pretty small undercarriage details are already provided in the kit.

[dr_gn]

Continued with the 16 main wheels - added a dark wash:



Tyre slippage marks are included in the decals, maybe a bit long, but a nice touch:



Glued the pairs together:



Then a final coat of Matt:



The engraved detail on the wheels is a bit soft, and I needed to mask the nose wheels, because there wasn’t enough of a groove to wick the tyre black into. Luckily one of my hole punches was just the right diameter:



All done:

[dr_gn]

Made a start on filling the 1000 lb bomb seams. They’re not too bad, but a bead of Mr.Surfacer will get them perfect.



The airframe upper and lower halves must be the biggest individual kit parts I’ve ever seen, possibly with the exception of an old Revell Cutty Sark hull.



I was hoping this one would go together fairly quickly, but a closer look at the main airframe pieces revealed some significant sink marks that need dealing with:









The airframe halves locate with tabs and pockets, some of which are in the vicinity of the bomb-bay roof detail. After trial fitting, it became clear that a lot of work is going to be needed to get these to fit neatly. It seems like the pockets are much too shallow for the thickness of the tabs:

[dr_gn]

Got the bombs flatted and primed, and the intakes. Also did a guide coat on the rear fairing, just a bit of re-scribing to do on that:



A few pinholes to deal with in the bombs, but the intakes will need a lot more work before all the joins are smooth.

[dr_gn]

Got the u/c and bomb bay areas painted and Kleared, and began the weathering process with a dark wash:



Plenty to go at and still a lot of refining to do on the wash. I find it easily gets very grainy in the books and crannies unless it’s thinned down a lot:

[dr_gn]

I wasn’t too happy with the bomb bay/spar assembly weathering, so I’ve stripped it back to bare plastic and will have another go.

Also today, painted the 1000lb bombs in two-tone green, one for the bomb, one for the tail cone and fins:





Took a lot of tedious masking, and the off-white structures are still to be done. I hope I’ve not used the same green on both parts…

[dr_gn]

More masking, painting and re-masking of bombs today:



And de-masked:



Next are the nose band decals, and finally some weathering of the white bomb carriers to match the bomb arches.

[dr_gn]

Applying the nose bands went better than expected:



Although getting them at the right distance behind the noses was a bit of a hassle:





Eventually got them done, they need a bit of weathering and a Matt coat:

[RacingPete]

That is excellent - is that a water transfer too? Amazing to get it to meet up correctly.

[dr_gn]

Thanks, yes they are water slide decals. They overlapped at the ends by a few mm, so it took some coaxing with the scalpel, tweezers and a cocktail stick to get them to overlap perfectly. It would have been nice if they were printed to the exact length, because - in theory - if you then get the ends to butt up to each other, that would have automatically placed them at the right distance behind the nose.

[wolfracesonic]

I watched ‘Thunderball’ on Saturday night and thought of this thread; you’re ejection handle loops are very accurate!

[dr_gn]

wolfracesonic said:

I watched ‘Thunderball’ on Saturday night and thought of this thread; you’re ejection handle loops are very accurate!

Ha ha - we watched it too on Saturday night! I got the dvd because for some reason as an 8 or 9 year old, my son was obsessed with it. I thought we’d watch it one more time, just for the Vulcan bits. The skyhook scene at the end is pretty cool too.

That was a good 1:1 mock-up they made for the sea bed scenes (apart from the bomb-bay door, as mentioned previously on here).