1/32 Fleet Air Arm Sea Vampire F20

[monthebiff]

Very nice work Thierry, you are making some serious progress with the issue's this kit is throwing up.

 

Regards. Andy 

[thierry laurent]

Hi,

 

I got those two good books.

 

 

Not absolutely required to make Brit vampires but they give some good TM views I had not seen. They also give some weathering hints that will be useful later. The French book is the first volume but I did not get volume two as it only gives pictures of planes deployed in some other units (e.g. Algeria) and discusses some small scale model kits. The history and technical part are in this first volume.

 

However, no picture of the F1 type belly lights in the books!

 

Otherwise, nothing fancy to show about the plastic part. I finalized the work related to the cockpit sides (more putty, surfacer and sanding) and cleaned close to all the small parts. I also had a look at the future Infinity photoetched sets and was somewhat disappointed. I hoped they would give the external tanks filling caps but they are simply replacing cockpit parts (that look OK to me!). So, I've something else to add on my list.

 

Next steps will be: going on the fuselage tail shaping, using magic sculpt to have clean seams in the LG bays and starting the addition of interior details.

 

Last, I'm still wondering about that nose shape! Something is also weird on the sides as there is an angled panel line on each side and it should end close to the front of the rear gun muzzle hole. If you correct the external hole location (as I did), that panel line location is not correct anymore. Not terrible but still annoying. However, I think I can live with that if the gun holes 'look correct'! I still need to double check that.

 

Thierry

[thierry laurent]

Actually my explanation is not fully correct. That picture shows the correct panel location and where it arrives in comparison with the corrected gun holes. However, this is not necessarily the actual location on the kit side. This still needs to be checked more closely. In any case, this is another way to confirm something is incorrect in the nose area.

 

 

 

[r0t0rdr1ver]

Great work so far, nice and clean, well thought out approach. I like your simple fix to address the potential seams, gaps and holes inside the cockpit area. I’m taking notes!

 

I have to commend you on your research and the attention to detail on your builds. You always make it easy for guys like me to get things right when it comes to doing similar builds. I really appreciate you sharing all your ‘tweaks’!

[thierry laurent]

Hi again,

 

I had a look at the photoetched sets and started the build of the seat belts.

 

Take your time to assemble the belts as the parts are very tiny and the assembly not very obvious.

 

Four important remarks need to be made:

 

1. For whatever reason the fret has two useless belts. I did not succeed in finding where the parts PE2 had to be used!

 

2. It is not possible to position correctly the belt parts PE3 without sanding them to decrease a little bit their width. If you do not do that you will not be able to put them through the buckle parts. Moreover, the buckles PE14 are too thin to be enlarged. So the work need to be done on the belts.

 

3. The instructions tell you to glue the lap belts on the horizontal sides of the seat. This is incorrect. The attachment points were actually on the vertical sides on the seat back. They were fixed on triangular plates close to the middle of the back edge. You will have to scratchbuild that. I will not blame specifically Infinity for that as for whatever reason this is a very common issue in close to all kits without ejection seats!?! Producers give you the seats and the belts but typically forget something is required to fix the latter on the former!

 

4. The shoulder belts were actually fixed to a tensioned rope/string fixed above the seat and going through a hole in the bottom of the head protection plate located over the rear bulkhead. Both belts were joined together by a kind of rigid metal plate. So, you see the two belts going out of the bottom of that plate and the rope/string fixed on its top. So, as shown in the instructions, the shoulder belts joining together to make a single one fixed on the rear of the top of the seat back is also incorrect! Hence a little bit of work will be required and this is where the leftover parts and the photoetched fret may be useful. You can recycle them to reproduce the accurate configuration. Note there were variations of such a plate. I found pictures showing a simple one with two slots in which the belts were put and probably fixed behind the plate and others showing a plane with rivets fixing permanently the belts to the plate.

 

I will post pictures when I will have worked on the seat belts parts to be created.

 

Hth

 

Thierry

 

 

[thierry laurent]

Hi,

 

Sorry for the crappy pics but I took them very quickly when I had some available minutes today. I assembled the rear fuselage booms yesterday evening. They are only intended to show that the assembly of the major parts is quite good. As far as the parts are correctly cleaned, a very small amount of filler is required! I'm waiting for the assembly to be 100% dry before finalizing that step.

 

 

Joining them to the wings will ask for some work but dry assemblies show this should not be terrible! It looks some sanding will be required on the internal side of the boom section molded with the upper wings. This looks to be the only challenge. Hopefully, that area is devoid of any panel line and rivet!

 

I really have a lot of fun with that kit!!!This is not a shake and bake kit for sure. You need to take time to clean all the parts and dry fit many times but if you do it correctly, the problems are not that difficult to solve.

[thierry laurent]

I also made a new pitot tube out of Albion aluminium ones.

 

 

For whatever reason linked to the picture, it does not look straigth.

 

Hopefully it is!

[fab]

."..whatever reason linked to the picture, it does not look straigth."

 

It is straigth, Thierry, but belgian beer are strong...

 

I am admirative on your work, when I saw the kit, i thank...garbage...

 

Bien à toi

 

Fab

[Landrotten Highlander]

2 hours ago, thierry laurent said:

For whatever reason linked to the picture, it does not look straigth.

It is straigth, what makes it look croocked is the raster lines on your mat - the picture shows you took the picture at an angle in respect to the raster lines, making them look like parallelograms rather than the squares they realy are.

 

 

 

.... OR it could be as our friend @fab has said: Belgian Beer...

[thierry laurent]

This shows one type of plate fixing the shoulder belts.

https://www.airliners.net/photo/New-Zealand-Air-Force/De-Havilland-DH-100-Vampire-FB5/1022765

[thierry laurent]

Hi again,

 

The instructions tell you to glue part B8 behind the cockpit bulkhead first. To me, it is easier to glue it under the upper fuselage and then assess how to add the bulkheads and floor later, more particularly after having added the plastic card to fill the cockpit gaps (go back to page 1 of the thread).

 

By the way the picture hereunder shows that there is a large gap to fill between the part and the fuselage top and this is far easier to fill without the head protection part I have already added on the bulkhead. If I had to do that again, I would add part D010 later, after the full assembly of the bulkheads/floor/rear deck parts.

 

 

Last, having added the plastic strips to fill the gap creates a basic issue: the bulkhead is going down and this creates a seam between its upper edge and the rear deck part. To minimize that, I used a Trumpetet scraping tool to remove plastic out of the plastic strips I added, close to the top of the cockpit.

 

Here's the result. You can still see a gap but keep in mind nothing is glued. I believe I will possibly have to add a thin strip of plastic but this will not be that difficult.

 

 

The picture hereunder shows the contact point between the bulkhead and plasticard (where a little bit of plastic should be scraped).

 

[thierry laurent]

The last picture made me think I should show how the intake is mating the fuselage halves. Actually, it is better than I thought! To me, the instructions correctly recommend to add them on the upper fuselage. As you can see, if you're cautious, you can align it correctly with the front engine bulkhead:

 

 

Look at that. Not too bad I think!

 

 

With the lower fuselage. A little bit of clamping will be required but this is a quite classic trivial issue to consider!

 

 

A view of the other side. Quite acceptable!

 

[thierry laurent]

Yesterday, I looked at the front landing gear bay. It is not very easy to assemble if - again- a lot of care is not injected in the process.

 

I did not used clamps but quick setting Tamiya glue and firmly hold the parts in my hands for some minutes to counterbalance the springy nature of the assembly! This was actually easier as it would not have been easy to locate clamps!

 

When put under the floor, a small gap is revealed, close to the cockpit front cockpit bottom.

 

 

From the other side:

 

 

I filled it but realized soon I had done it in an overenthusiastic way!

 

 

This is better to be sure the LG bay is correctly located!

 

 

Not a big deal but another issue was revealed when I mated all parts together...

[Ali62]

Thank you for the pictures and update Thierry. I for the first time had a few hours to pull my kit out the box yesterday, after having it for the past 3 weeks or so.

I know and saw what you did to the gun troughs, but both you and Iain mentioned the nose profile, I am not sure that it is correct at all, I had a few sets of drawings out, some done by John Adams, the new 1/48 kit by Airfix and few other sources. All told I cannot really determine if it is not too bad or if it is quite off, but that maybe in two or three different planes? 
I am really glad you are doing the pioneering work it helps me get a better understanding of what to look out for, as I get time I will do further investigation.

 

[thierry laurent]

Have a look here. Ouch!

 

 

I checked at least ten times but no, there is no way to avoid such a gap if you want to locate correctly the bay under the floor...

 

Hopefully, this is not very difficult to solve. I did not want to use epoxy putty after having assembled the full fuselage. Indeed, the front sides of the bay are not glued against anything and I wanted to get a stronger assembly. So, I went back to Evergreen plastic strips.

 

 

Not very pretty but this will change quickly!

 

Measure - sand - dry fit / measure - sand-dry fit ... and so on up to that result:

 

 

 

Not the other side has not the same dimensions! This is why you need to dry fit a lot!

 

 

And here's the result:

 

 

And the other side:

 

 

The final seam will be easily managed! Another problem solved!