Falklands War 40th Anniversary GB

Made qute a bit of progress on the Victor over the last couple of weks. Got the interior all together and ready to fit.

And got that into the fuselage alogn with the forward landing gear.

And then the fuselage closed up without to many issues.

As you can see, i have added the cover over the bomb bay. This is sooner than the instructions indicate and may have been an error.

I started on the intakes and it looks as though thise has been designed in a way to ease cleaning upseams and painting. The opening in the sides has a panel that goes over it late, ancd i did that after painting.

I paintedc the veins beforefitting, once everything was dry, they were fitted and the side panels added.

Wit that doen i got to getting the wings together and fitted. There is a point in the Airfix instructions which confused me a bit. If you want the flaps raised, and as Victors always seem to have them raised on the ground that what i am doing, you are told to cut off the outser fairing (the one on the left in this photo).

But that did not make sense to me, i was looking in the instructions for a point where that part was re-attached. Fortunatly this was cleared up on Brit Modeller. This seems to have been an error on the original bomber kit that Airfix have not correct. The correct procedure is to sand down the ridge on the outer fairing and remove part of the inner one thats attached to the bottom wing secion, so you are left with this.

I think think others have found this out the hard way, so i am grateful for it being passed on.

With the wings on all all the panels and flaps fitted i also got the tail on, this beast is really coming together.

You can see that quite a bit of filler wasneeeded along the wing/fuselage join. I believe this was caused by me adding the doors to the bomb bay to early. I had not noticed at the time, but the door overlaps the bay along the middle, and this is where the gap is. Without the doors, the fuselage could have been pressed out to meet the wing and once in place the doors would have fitted better. By the time i realised it was to late. That wil teach me for thinking i know better and jumping through the instructions.

Thats all for now. Still a bit more to do before she hits the spray booth (assuming she fits). But at least now i can meassure up the board and start getting that together.

That looks like quite a jet there.  Well done so far!

Thanks Robert. It is a bit of a handfull now.

Looks good, Martin.  I'll build my Victor first, but I got a Vulcan in today.

Thanks John. Is that the new Airfix Vulcan. I am holding out in hope of a re-release next year with the falklands war fit. From a post i saw on Britmodeller a few months back it sounds like its been made with that in mind.

That thing is super cool, Bish. Looks really menicing. Can't wait to see that in paint.

BK

Thanks BK.

A non-photo update: my attempts at printing a custom flag decal have resulted in several failures, the ink is shattering while I soak the paper.  Further research says that I need to treat it with some kind of Microscale product to prevent this, but I am going to try Future and a quick spray with clear coat instead.  I can't justify $4 for a bottle of something I will use 2 drops of.  Fortunately I printed a number of sets of Argentinian flags on the white decal paper just in case.

Worst case, I will just grab a light blue Crayola marker from my nieces coloring box and trim some copier paper to size!

I had hoped to have a bigger update this weekend as i thought the painting would be done. But i had some issues getting the white underside done. I used Humbrol Gloss white but it can out with a yellow tint and i had some runs on the fuselage. I ended up stripping off the white from the fuselage undersid and goin over the whole underneath with Tamiya white. I got the second coat on this morning, so its going to be a while yet before the top side is done what with all the masking and leaving paint to dry. So this is how it loked last weekend ready for primer.

Not much of an update, but after 3 weeks i finally have the painting done so thougt i better post somthing. After getting the white sorted, i got onto the top side. This took a lot of masking, it took 3 evenings to mask up the grey before adding the green. I then had to do some touching up but now i can finaly get the decals on.

I've spent the last few nights adding decals to the Typhoon, so now thats done i can get onto this.

Nicely done, Martin.

For the 30th Anniversary GB, I did a Sea Harrier and the HMS Sheffield. I can't believe thats 10 years ago. Anyway, most of my stash is inaccessible due to being packed away for a recent house move. I have managed to get my hands on an Airfix Skyhawk, so an Argentine Skyhawk will be my entry please Bish.

Cheers

Tony

Will do Tony.

I am still plugging away at the decals on the Victor, its taking longer than i had expected. The top and sides are done for stencils, i just need to finish the undersides and then get the national and aircraft codes on.

excided to see her finished Bish.

You and me both. I had hoped to get some work in on the U-Boat before i start next years builds, but don't look like i will at this rate.

No worries, take your time.

Bish,

That Victor is shaping up quite nicely!  Will it feature day-glo orange markings below, or were they not applied to the tankers used in the conflict?

Bish, that Victor is a very impressive project. I'm looking forward to the finished model. I'm just getting parts off the sprue with mine, so no photos yet.

Regards

Tony

Thanks guys.

G, yes, this has those panels. They have them for both tanker options in the kit, but the falklands one includes them on the underwing pods as well, which the Gulf War version doesn't.

It is going to be a large dio. But i am still awaiting the release of a couple of ground vehicles so i might have to add them later. I have left room for them. I just hope i can find enough decent figures.

Well, hmmm. This Tamiya kit is not good. In fact if it weren't in a Tamiya box I'd swear this is an old Monogram kit. It has crap fit and poor details. This one is gonna be fight all the way I can see that clearly already.

I've already had bad fit issues with some of the first bits. The thrust vector nozzles look like garbage and are very prominant. So, I will have to spend some decent time to get them looking far better. This is a shock after coming off such a wonderful Tamiya kit. Oh well, that's modeling.

Fortunately it has a low parts count so I only have to fuss over so many bits. I will whip it into shape, but I will up against it all the way. More to come.

BK

BK, after reading your comments i woundered if this might be a re-box of somone elses kit i.e. Italeri. Buts it not. Its based on a 1971 GR.1 which was re-released in 79 also as a GR.1. The Shar was produced in 82 and given thats the same year as the Falklands war i wounder if this was not rushed out onto the market. Either thats or thats normal for 1970's tamiya aircraft.

Brandon,

The Tamiya Shar is a product if its time, so yes it is not up to modern standards.  It is their own molds; I built their Gr.1 Back in the late 1970s.

I've made a start, at least, on my Airfix Skyhawk.

Cheers

Tony

I've done a great deal of thinking about this old kit. It was probably nice for the day but it's really dated now. The fit is decent, but details are super soft and all raised. Since the seam will need work to make disappear and it has a proud or raised profiled it will require some work. Since all the details are raised and almost imperseptable in some places I am going to rescribe the kit. With that I will be able to make corrections where I need to and still be able to have a wash hold. As it stands now there is no way for that. The cockpit too is very bare. Only a tub, seat and pilot, no detials whatsoever. I'll leave that as this will be closed and I think I will display it hovering somehow. Anyway, off to work on it somemore.

BK

Finally able to post something on the Victor. It took over a week to get the decals on. There didn't seem to be that many of them compared to some other Airfix kits, but there were a lt of small stencils and some tricky decals.

The decals for the underwing pods were a bt tricky. A few of them stuck in one spot, after the first one broke up and had to be pieced together, i was more careful with the rest and managed to tease them off.

I gave the whole things 2 coats of flory aqua gloss before some flory wash. It left some stains in a few places, especially underneath around some of the stencils. So i had to do quite a bit of touching up. But i was finally able to add the flat coat and fit the undercarrage, pods and some other parts.

Still got a few bits to finsh and add before i can attach to the base and finish off some ground equipment.

I wish I could get started on my Victor, Martin.  Too many projects on the deck.  Yours has that professional look.

Wow, it's amazing what some stencils and decals can do to a kit. It's really starting to look the part.

BK

Thanks guys. Its now done as far as i can go at the minute. Pics at the weekend.

Time to get the finalpics up and wrap up this years modelling. The Victor was finished off by fitting al the wheels, tok a bit of fiddiling to get them all to touch down, but they do now,and got the side door fitted.

And then to attach it to the base. I added the ladder and some wheel chocks from Flightpath. The Land Rover is the Airfix 76th offering. I've had that a while, was meant for another build, but i thought it would work nicely here. I recently noticed that a UK company called Air Graphic has a range of 72nd resin Series III Lanny's in different configirations, so i've alreday bought a couple of those.

The tow bar is from Aircraft in Miniature, another UK company that sells through Hannants. I am still waiting for them to re-release their MD 3000 tractor and 60Kv GPU bother of which i will add once i get them. So the Lanny and tow bar are not secured to the base yet as i may need to re-position those. And as you can see, once again figures are the real issue, i can't find any that work for this. But hopefully i can source or modify somthing that will work. But for now, its done. And as you can see, its to big to fit in my photo booth properly, so sorry for the pics.

Just going to spend the week working on a bust, and i'll be starting on the Harrier GR.3 at the weekend.

Bravo, Martin.  The fat lady has sung and she has a wonderful voice!