You left the hack in the snow Yoong Sung

[Modelling_Mushi]

Ok, I think this makes it two builds this year  , sort of better than zero.

Anyway.

I had an old Rare-Planes vac form Fairey Firefly I got in a swap about a decade or so ago that was languishing on the shelf of doom, plus some old South Korean AF decals from a T-6, so I decided to finish them both off.

First, to anyone who makes vac-forms on a regular basis, my hat's off to you. The airscrew, wheels, canopy, interior fittings, u/c components and ... well, most of it really ... were either useless or worse on this one, so if you do these and win you are a crazy AND talented.

Me, being only the first of the two, I decided to make this one an old South Korean Airforce hack used for rough-field snow touch and goes on jury rigged skis. Only trouble is that flight Lieutenant Yoong Sung left the thing out in the open when the first dusting of snow came around, so he's in the bad books and I get a chance to play around with some Windsor and Newton oil paints (and cover the yellowed canopy with some snow - I tried to put it in the sun to bleach it out but, after a week here in Brisbane it made no difference).



The skis are scratch built and replace the ridiculous button wheels, and hide plate iron wheel-well covers and spaghetti oleos.



The canopy was awful, the interior yawning (especially the rear position), so a light white dusting over the grime and grot underneath was welcomed.



Finally the spares box gave an aircrew and hub that nearly look ok, and the old Academy decals gave no trouble at all.



Colour scheme is (of course) just spurious, trying to use up some dregs at the bottom of Tamiya and Mr Color bottles I had hanging around.

And that's it for me and vac-forms for a long time.

[Rick Lowe]

Yeah, vacforms are almost a black art - certainly becoming an uncommon one these days.

IIRC most of those who made them on a frequent basis, regularly dipped into their spares for airscrews, wheels, most of the stuff you had trouble with.

Nice you could salvage something. 

[zenrat]

 

[PR19_Kit]

Yeah, vacforms are almost a black art - certainly becoming an uncommon one these days.

IIRC most of those who made them on a frequent basis, regularly dipped into their spares for airscrews, wheels, most of the stuff you had trouble with.

Very true, but in their time vacforms were the only way of getting the rarer looking aircraft on your shelf. Nowadays that's been taken over by resin and low pressure injection stuff of course.

I've still got a pretty large number of vacforms just crying out to be built, a Rareplanes NA Savage and Martin Mariner to kick off, plus a real biggie, a Nova C-141B! I'm not sure I HAVE a shelf big enough for the latter one though. 

Vacform landing gears were generally disastrous, even the best moulders rarely produced usable stuff, and the 'Spares Box' was an essential item in the model room. Still is for Whiffgeneers of course. 

[Dizzyfugu]

Nice, it's looking pretty good! 

[chrisonord]

That  certainly looks well, and  I  too am a member of the  the runaway from vacform kits  ensemble.  I am only just  tackling  canopies and they are  bad enough for  me.
Chris

[NARSES2]

That's come out really well 

[Rick Lowe]

Very true, but in their time vacforms were the only way of getting the rarer looking aircraft on your shelf. Nowadays that's been taken over by resin and low pressure injection stuff of course.

I've still got a pretty large number of vacforms just crying out to be built,

True. And in some cases, the vacforms are *still* the only game in town - though that's getting rarer.

Yeah, I still have the Falcon MB5 to build, which I will use in preference to the AZ, as 1. I already have one, and 2. it's a whole lot cheaper!
And the Falcon Mistel nose is still there awaiting my attention.

[Tophe]

Congratulations!

[The Rat]

That looks great!