Hmmmm, what's the biggest things in my stash (rummage, rummage).......
I came up with the Vulcan and the B-29. A toss of a coin and it was Vulcan time!
Man, this thing is huge! You get 4 huge sprues in a huge box, but the parts breakdown is much like any other Airfix jet, it's just that each part is ten times bigger! If you've built, say, the Airfix Buccaneer, well this is much the same, ie. Horizontally split fuselage halves, top and bottom wing halves, tail cone etc. etc. It's just the each part is enormous and has the uncanny ability to knock everything off your modelling bench when you turn it around! (including a nice glass of 8 year aged scotch, Grrrrr.)
A quick look on the internet and there have been some really impressive builds of this kit, but it does come in for it's fair share of criticism. It's been labelled as a bit of a filler queen, the intakes have taken a bashing, plus other things more related to it's age, such as raised panel lines etc. But this one will be done straight out of the box, no mods, as quickly as possible. I've never done anything as big as this so we'll see how it goes.
I was a bit disappointed that there is no internal bomb bay detail at all. On a lot of Airfix big bombers you get a bomb bay and a chance to display it with bomb doors open, but not on this one. As pointed out to me by forum buddy Bluesteel, there is an after-market bomb bay available, but it's photo-etch and consists of about a million parts, so totally beyond my ability, a big resin cast one would have been do-able, but no such thing exists as far as I know. Just to add insult to injury Airfix have given us the bomb bay doors as a separate part, so you can pose them open, but with nothing to see inside except a huge void of empty fuselage. Somebody on the internet scratch built a bomb bay, very impressive but way beyond my skills, so my bomb doors will remain closed.
First up I decided to tackle those dreaded intakes. The first dilemma was colours. The Airfix instructions suggest that the intakes are coloured white right up to the intake lip on the leading edge of the wing root, but looking at photos of Vulcans it seems that the camouflage wraps quite a long way into the inside of the intakes before they change to white, so I decided to create a break from camouflage to white inside the intakes in what seemed to be about the right place. It's probably pure fiction and not accurate but it's a compromise based on a mix of photos and Airfix's painting suggestions. So, I sprayed inside each intake half with white, then masked up and sprayed the camouflage colours part way into the front of the intakes, like this:
Then I joined the halves together, but the joint was pretty bad, screamingly obvious when looking down the intakes. The parts I could get to, ie. the camouflaged area at the front, was dealt with in the conventional way, apply filler, rub down with a sanding stick and re-spray. But the white area, deep inside, I could not get to at all with convention methods and tools, and the join line was looking horrible. I scratched my head for a few minutes and then decided to thin down some PVA glue with water, brush it along the seams inside the intake pipes with a small long brush, and hold the assembly at a suitable angle so the PVA would (hopefully!) sort of 'Flow' into the join and fill the gap before it sets. I did this a couple of times before the joins started to disappear, but to be honest it was only partially successful. Yes, the join lines are now filled, but it's a little bit lumpy and bumpy in there if you look closely. Anyway, I decided I could live with that and re-sprayed the white and called the intakes done. They came out like this.
Cleaning the flash off, then painting and then assembling 18 wheels could test the patience of the mostly saintly of model-makers. I needed a stiff drink and a lie down after doing this lot!
First of all, please excuse the blurry photo and the chaotic workbench. The inside of the cockpit area and the inside of the tailpipes were sprayed matt black on both top and bottom fuselage halves and the intakes were glued into position in the lower fuselage half and clamped whilst drying. Additionally, the instructions called for 30 grams of weight in the nose, I erred on the side of caution and went for 50 grams of lead epoxied in the lower nose (there's loads of room!), painted black to hide it. I'm sure that chunky front undercarriage leg can take the strain!
Incidentally, if ever you are doing one of these, do not follow the Airfix instructions if you are closing up the bomb bay doors. They tell you to put them in right at the end, but don't, do it now whilst the fuselage is in two halves, because the fit is very poor and (more significantly) the only glue points are the four extreme corners, consequently, along the sides, it flaps about horribly and doesn't align with the fuselage. It definitely needs some internal bracing or similar, which would be impossible to do when the fuselage is closed up.
What I did was was put the doors in at this early stage whilst I had access to the inside, glued it at the four corners as per the instructions, then, once set, I bent it into the right position so the side edges lined up with the fuselage belly better, then added a couple of strategically places blobs of thick CA on the inside to hold it with correct curvature, followed by a bead of conventional styrene glue all the way around the inside to reinforce it. It seems to be OK so far and certainly lines up with the underneath better, requiring far less sanding on the outside.
The main flying surfaces went together quickly and easily, they are just two halves like any other typical Arifix kit, but you do need an awful lot of clamps all round the perimeter whilst the glue dries, or else they try to spring apart all over the place, probably slight warping of the parts causes this.
Whilst things were drying I decided to paint and assemble the undercarriage parts. Other than having to run a drill into the main wheels to get them to fit nice on the axles, it all went together painlessly, Airfix have engineered these bits very well.
Finally I was able to close up the two fuselage halves. First I assembled and added the cockpit interior which consists of a cockpit floor, two seats, two pilot figures, an instrument panel and two control columns. Frankly that's plenty because nothing will be seen through those tiny windows. I painted the flying suits of the pilots in an intentionally lighter shade of green than would be accurate in the hope that they might show up a bit inside that dingy cockpit when looking through those tiny windows. Erm, after a test fit of the canopy I can confidently report, no chance, you can't see a darned thing!
I then added the tail cone. I decided to do all the necessary filling and sanding on the fuselage before adding the wings, purely for ease of handling on the bench, because once the wings are on it becomes a bit of a monster!
The fuselage halves fitted together nicely, but extensive 'fill-sand-repeat' was required around the join with the tail cone to get it to blend in, also around the tail pipes to make them round and, worst off all, inside the intakes where the intake assembly meets the wing root lip, that area was a bit a nightmare, very difficult to get to, very difficult to see, it needed a lot of work with the filler and sanding stick to make it even passable, and the intakes now need painting, AGAIN!
That'll be the third time.......Incidentally, the tail pipes are a bit wrong, they are straight but should be tapered and slightly conical, but I'll live with that.
And that's as far as I've got at the moment, more updates soon, as I've got some bench time this evening. Thanks for looking!
Regards,
Zee28
