SJPONeill Posted August 16, 2008 Author Share Posted August 16, 2008 We are going overseas in search of the sun for the next couple of weeks so all the prelim admin etc etc has been seriously eating into modelling time, hence the lack of any progress pics recently. The Warbird Tech book on the Vulcan arrived the other day and it has some useful interior shots that have re-affirmed that this Vulcan will be built as a B.2, possibly this one RNZAF Vulcan however, I still want to build the bomb bay etc + weapon loads - am grappling with this at the moment and may go as suggested by someone else and display the various weapon fits out of the aircraft (not sure yet about the proposed Folland Gnat atomic kamikaze that is mentioned in the WarbirdTech book). I don't suppose if anyone knows if the Kiwi zap on XH562 was just on the fuselage roundel shown or on all the roundels? I have also run into the same conceptual problem as Lee with the cockpit. It is unlikely that I will build more than one 1/32 Vulcan but do want to be able to show the cockpit somehow and so am thinking of either a cutaway panel on one side of the fuselage, or possibly building part of the fuselage in clear plastic which would then keep the dust out. Have roundly cursed the Avro designers for not incorporating a ram to lift the canopy as an alternate ingress/egress point as this would then provide a good view into the cockpit. We are away from tomorrow until 29 August so the lack of posts is due to lack of access (to model and web) and not resignation or ceding victory to the kit... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian t 2 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 Progress so far... Have spent a large part of the weekend, separating the resin parts from their pouring stubs...have done the intakes and jet pipes, the front and rear radar fairings (leading to a comment from my wife "What? You spent all that money on a plane with a pimple on its nose and a boil on its butt!") ; working on the gear bay doors now... Have also been working on the internal bulkheads, using the SMI plans blown up to scale. This has pretty well confirmed that the kit is OK for length but has some shape issues with the fuselage: the under-fuselage channels for the engines are too close together and not circular enough in profile...easily fixed; the nose from the wing forward seems to be deeper than the original and more elongated than the original as well...not insurmoutanble but will be something I work on a bit further down the track. The ways it's working out at the moment is that the first sub-assemblies to be developed will be the bomb bay and wheel bays...hope to have some pics tomorrow (left the camera run down again and have to wait til the batteries recharge again...). My biggest probvlem at the moment is where we are living at the moment is pretty 'cosy' and doesn't have much space to lay put the plans so I can mark out on the fuselage where the internal bulkheads go...really need to wait til we get home to do this - or have a day when it's not snowing or blowing so I can work outside... be aware that blowing up plans magnifies the smallest innacuracies, as weve found in the past the real thing and photos are a must....very few plans arre accurate. nice build though rgds ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJPONeill Posted August 17, 2008 Author Share Posted August 17, 2008 Hi Ian You are so right, especially since some of the plans were oroginally in 1/144 and enlarging to 1/32 means that even the width of some of what were originally quite fine lines becomes an issue. Started drawing some of my own templates this afternoon, drawing on the photos that I have (fortunately the Vulcan was super-photogenic from Day 1 of VX770 and there are a kazillion images around) and reverting back to time-honoured tools like a set of dividers to work out measurements and relationships. Have to admit that I am enjoying the challenge and my only real regret is that it is domestically untenable to build a range of Vulcans in this scale... Simon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian t 2 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 Hi Ian You are so right, especially since some of the plans were oroginally in 1/144 and enlarging to 1/32 means that even the width of some of what were originally quite fine lines becomes an issue. Started drawing some of my own templates this afternoon, drawing on the photos that I have (fortunately the Vulcan was super-photogenic from Day 1 of VX770 and there are a kazillion images around) and reverting back to time-honoured tools like a set of dividers to work out measurements and relationships. Have to admit that I am enjoying the challenge and my only real regret is that it is domestically untenable to build a range of Vulcans in this scale... Simon nice to see youre having so much fun... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJPONeill Posted September 28, 2008 Author Share Posted September 28, 2008 Sanding and tidy-up of resin parts continues - warmer weather helps as all sanding activity has now been banned from the little house we are staying in...have also now completed all the wing formers off the SMI plans. Can't too much more here until we move back home next weekend I have a workspace big enough to lay out the plans (our dining table at home is bigger than the available floor space here!!) and start to assemble the skeleton. Will also be able to post pics of progress once we get home... Edit: just finished sanding the pouring backing off the intrument panel...not sure if this was from a differnet resin mix or if this part was just misunderstood as a child and it was very crumbly and broke into a number of small pieces as I was sanding it - strange as all the other resin parts have been pretty robust. Not too much of a worry as it is a simple shape and easy to remake from card. I've found that the jet pipes molded into the bottom of the fuselage are OK for size but based on both sets of SMI plans seem to be slightly too inboard and closer to each other - shouldn't be a major operation to relocate them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian t 2 Posted September 28, 2008 Share Posted September 28, 2008 Sanding and tidy-up of resin parts continues - warmer weather helps as all sanding activity has now been banned from the little house we are staying in...have also now completed all the wing formers off the SMI plans. Can't too much more here until we move back home next weekend I have a workspace big enough to lay out the plans (our dining table at home is bigger than the available floor space here!!) and start to assemble the skeleton. Will also be able to post pics of progress once we get home... Edit: just finished sanding the pouring backing off the intrument panel...not sure if this was from a differnet resin mix or if this part was just misunderstood as a child and it was very crumbly and broke into a number of small pieces as I was sanding it - strange as all the other resin parts have been pretty robust. Not too much of a worry as it is a simple shape and easy to remake from card. I've found that the jet pipes molded into the bottom of the fuselage are OK for size but based on both sets of SMI plans seem to be slightly too inboard and closer to each other - shouldn't be a major operation to relocate them. NEED ANOTHER PANEL? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJPONeill Posted September 29, 2008 Author Share Posted September 29, 2008 Thanks, Ian but I've already done another out of card: it's quite a simple shape as there was enough left of the original part. Thought the resin might have been affected by the cold here but pretty sure it was a one off as I have checked all the other resin parts and they are solid as...Simon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJPONeill Posted November 17, 2008 Author Share Posted November 17, 2008 Yep...still alive down here...the whole house moving things has taken way longer thna expected (doesn't it always) but we're now well into unpacking and the Vulcan has resurfaced...it's also spring here and the lawns are taking off and that also has eaten into my modelling time (it's a big-as lawn!) but every little inches us towards completion. Have been using balsa for the longer formers purely because it is easy to get here in metre lengths - had hoped to have gotten all these piece together into a skeleton by now but will have get to that in a couple of weekends...have another build in teeny-weeny scale on UAMF to finish this weekend if it wasn't for online builds, I'm not sure I'd get anything completed! I borrowed a card Model Vulcan in 1:33 scale (did you know these guys have Me-323s, B-52s, Tu-160s in 1/33? Massive!!) to check out the plans (once I blow them up by 103%) and that will give me a good comparison with the SMI plans to make sure I am on track... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJPONeill Posted May 16, 2010 Author Share Posted May 16, 2010 Just when you thought it was safe...I hauled this beast in from the garage where it has been keeping dust off a shelf for the last 18 months...once I started working on all the formers, I realised that it wasn't going to be much different from building a B.2 from scratch so I have had it up for sale on TradeMe for the last couple of months with no takers...lots of watchers, but no bidders...so after going back over my research notes again, I've decided to have at it and build the damn thing! It will be as an early Vulcan with the non-RWR tailcone and either: XH498 that collapsed a main gear leg while landing at RNZAF Ohakea in 1959, with the left main gear leg collapsed and the canopy jettisoned to provide a decent look into the cockpit - the kicker here will be whether I can divine how to get the kinked leading edge right; or XA892 which was the third production aircraft and assigned as the armaments trial aircraft. My preference is for XA892 as this was originally delivered with the unkinked wing, double lower airbrakes and overall silver colour scheme i.e. somewhat different from the more common white or camo Vulcans. As the armament trial aircraft, I figure I still have the option for being able to build a bomb-bay full of nice shiny 1000lbers to contrast the matter silver exterior... This will be quite a long build as I expect to be travelling quite a bit with work but I aim to her her done by next year's Scale Model Expo in Wellington (NZ)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJPONeill Posted May 17, 2010 Author Share Posted May 17, 2010 Right then, it's going to be one of the first Vulcans with the straight wing, most likely XA892...much like this shot of XA899 after it has been retrofitted with the kinked wing... The first surgeries will be to a. correct the shoulder join where the wing meets the fuselage just aft of the intakes which is too blended; and b. to remove this ugly growth on the tail in favour of the far more aesthetic non-ECM tail cone. The shaded areas indicate what needs to go... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richter111 Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 Beautiful work. ANyone who can build a vacuform is a legend in my book! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJPONeill Posted May 18, 2010 Author Share Posted May 18, 2010 Beautiful work. ANyone who can build a vacuform is a legend in my book! Got to build it yet...don't forget that this beast has just emerged from eighteen months in the modelling 'time out' box after my first crack at it...so afr all I've really done is a bunch of research, assembled plans, references etc and removing the vac and resin parts from their backing... I have to say I'd probably prefer a top of the line vacform like the Echelon Lightning or the 1/48 Dynavector kits over the injected equivalents from the likes for Tamigawa...sitting out of the deck on a nice day, sanding down parts is quite relaxing and once you have all the parts prepared, it's really just like a limited run injection model without alignment pins or screeds of detail parts - except, of course, for the aforementioned Echelon and Dynavector kits... I think it's quite sad that the large scale vac kit market has pretty well dried up except for Roberts Combat Models - so many of those models have yet to be done in injected form e.g. Wyvern, E-2C, Vulcan, B-58, etc that ID Models churned out in the 80s and early 90s... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hubert Boillot Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 I'll continue following this one with interest. The kinked wing Vulcan was (and still is) an impressive machine to watch, but the clean lines of the early "pure" delta are absolutely fantastic. Btw, the kink is not that difficult, for it was just that : an add-on to the original wing, with a very visible under-camber blending into the old wing leading edge... Hubert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJPONeill Posted May 20, 2010 Author Share Posted May 20, 2010 Plastic has been cut!! I made up a couple of mirror image templates based on Lee White's pictures of his work in this area and removed the errant shoulder where the wing fuses into the fuselage above the intakes. I used the same templates to make two plates (about 5mm broader in all directions) to back the resulting hole and provide a backing for the filler. I opted to used proper plastic filler as the epoxy filler I normally use for larger filling jobs does not stick very well to plastic and I am very aware of just how flexible the fuselage is at the moment - don't want the new shoulder cracking or popping out further along in the build. This sucked up a tube of Tamiya putty just like that: the scale of this thing is quite incredible and I had to use my DIY plastering spatula as I had nothing in my modelling tool box big enough for the size of the gap. I'd also forgotten - being used to filling only small gaps for a few years - just how much this solvent based filler shrinks while curing so will be off to the hardware store on my next trip into civilisation to find some Bondo or equivalent for the rest of it... I'll need to add at least a couple more layers of filler before the new shape is even close to what it should be and I can start sanding it to the final shape... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lancman Posted May 20, 2010 Share Posted May 20, 2010 Hey now that's impressive, I don't know if you have seen this build over on Britmodeller but his Vulcan is nearly finished. To gauge how big this beastie is go to page 10. http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.p...8478&st=180 Graham. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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