Vulcan, God of War!

[Gondor]

Thought I would start a thread to cover my builds of both the old and new Airfix Vulcan kits.

I have three kits of each and multiple ideas for what to do with almost all of them, even down to serial numbers of some of those that will be real world builds.

At the moment I have started to work on a r/w Blue Steel aircraft and a whiff conventional bomber version. The intent is to use as much of the bomb bay from the new kit and to replace what I can with blank plastic card to help keep everything nice and neat and in order.

So far



The two side pieces of the bay, on the left, will not have the lower notches cut out as those are where the open bomb bay doors locate and that's not necessary where they are going. The front and rear of the bay, on the right, will have to be detailed as I do not intend to try and swap out the front and rear of the bomb bay from their spars, way to difficult to get right and to stay rigid so its scratch building replacement parts.

Gondor

[Gondor]

Getting there, but slowly. Realised that to use the home made bomb bay structure I needed to make sure that it would fit the kit, so out comes a second New Vulcan so I can build the structure and fit the upper and lower parts of the wing together so that when I fit the hand made parts I can check for fit.
Realised that the arches for the structures inside the bomb bay had lightening holes in them so will I need to modify the kit parts or will the bombs hide the holes or lack of, we shall see. The bombs go together very nicly though.

Gondor

[Gondor]

More odds and ends done. Now kind of working on parts of three Vulcans just to do one old one with upgraded parts from one new kit. Getting there even if slowly. Hope to have something to show for it soon.

Gondor

[Gondor]

I've been tinkering away with this so I thought I better show a few pictures.

First off, one slightly out of focus picture of the bombs from the new kit. Two fully assembled clips on the left and the two half's on the right. The full clips are help in place by a mixture of gravity and friction so I can paint them more easily.



Next is the old upper fuselage with rough pen marks for where the wing spars are which also form the front and rear of the bomb bay. As you can see I cut a big chunk out of the locating slot for the tail fin as it would have protruded into the bomb bay.





The tail fin was suitably modified as well



And here it is with the frame from the new kit placed onto the the old kit



I'm not going to be adding all of the frame, just the sides and the arches of the bomb bay, the front and rear of the bay will be scratch built.

The blanking plates for Blue Steel provided with the old kit were fitted. The rear part fits reasonably well, the front one is a horrible shape for what it's doing and is far, far better handled in the new kit.



Some sanding has taken place on the rear Blue Steel fillet but will require some filler to fully blend it in, the front one will need a lot of filler. Thankfully this build will have the bomb bay doors open and the wheels down so if the shape isn't correct it won't be so noticeable.

Gondor

[Gondor]

Second update for today 

The exhausts are all together, or at least as far as they will be for now



301's at the top and the 202's at the bottom. The 202's can easily be made into 201's by removing the squarish lumps on the top and lower sides.

202 set up for the Starboard side



301 set up for the Starboard side



and a view from the rear of the assembly



The 200 series exhausts, while in the kit are not in the instructions as the two aircraft depicted had 300 series engines. It's a fairly simple matter to assemble the parts though which have engine numbers, 1-4, on the inside of the trailing edge part. Hope that makes sense.
For engines 1 and 2 of the 200 series exhausts are on part 23. Engine 1 then uses parts 20 with parts 24 and 25 going around part 20 and fitting to part 23, just like the parts in the instructions. Engine 2 uses part 21 with parts 26 and 27 fitting around part 21 and fitting to part 23. I didn't make notes for engines 3 and 4 unfortunately but it should be easy to work out as each exhaust part is keyed. I have also ended up with slight seams which should be easy to sort out.

As the 200 series exhausts are for my Blue Steel new Vulcan, the 301 exhausts will be going onto my old Vulcan. I am already working on a way to replicate the rear of the engine and the exhaust tunnel which may be fiddly but in theory should work.

Gondor

[kitnut617]

I've been tinkering away with this so I thought I better show a few pictures.

First off, one slightly out of focus picture of the bombs from the new kit. Two fully assembled clips on the left and the two half's on the right. The full clips are help in place by a mixture of gravity and friction so I can paint them more easily.



Gondor

There's a video on YT called Vulcan Bomb Loading Procedure.  At the end of it there's film of a 10-Bomb clip/rack being loaded.

[McColm]

Florey Models are building the new Airfix kit,  there's some footage on YouTube.

[Gondor]

Thanks guys but I am not interested in watching video's of someone building a model, I can manage to do that on my own, finnishing them is a different problem that no video can help with.
There is also no point in following a video when I am not building the kit Out Of the Box which is what they would be doing in the video and it's not what I am doing with this build!

Gondor the grumpy

[kitnut617]

Alastair, what are the part numbers for the bomb parts please. I've written to Airfix to see if they are contemplating having an accessory pack of them so they could be used in the Victor. The message I got back today said my query had been forwarded to the 'development' department but I could get the bits from the 'spares' department if I could give them the part numbers. Seems a bit of a waste of three kits though, I'd need nine clips --- and I'm thinking of the Valiant kit too --

[NARSES2]

Danger miniature engineer at work 

Looking good sir 

[Gondor]

Alastair, what are the part numbers for the bomb parts please. I've written to Airfix to see if they are contemplating having an accessory pack of them so they could be used in the Victor. The message I got back today said my query had been forwarded to the 'development' department but I could get the bits from the 'spares' department if I could give them the part numbers. Seems a bit of a waste of three kits though, I'd need nine clips --- and I'm thinking of the Valiant kit too --

The Valiant kit comes with an optional bomb load, normal and instant sunshine veriaties.

The new Vulcan kit has the bombs on Sprue L while the frame/walls etc are on Sprue D.

Danger miniature engineer at work 

Looking good sir 

Nope, I'm 1:1 scale 

Gondor

[NARSES2]

 

[kitnut617]

Alastair, what are the part numbers for the bomb parts please. I've written to Airfix to see if they are contemplating having an accessory pack of them so they could be used in the Victor. The message I got back today said my query had been forwarded to the 'development' department but I could get the bits from the 'spares' department if I could give them the part numbers. Seems a bit of a waste of three kits though, I'd need nine clips --- and I'm thinking of the Valiant kit too --

The Valiant kit comes with an optional bomb load, normal and instant sunshine veriaties.

The new Vulcan kit has the bombs on Sprue L while the frame/walls etc are on Sprue D.

Gondor

Thanks Alastair, is Sprue L a stand alone sprue or are there other bits on it ? 
I can strike off the Valiant then, thanks for that bit of info.

[Gondor]

Thanks Alastair, is Sprue L a stand alone sprue or are there other bits on it ? 
I can strike off the Valiant then, thanks for that bit of info.

Sprue L has the bombs and the bomb bay door in both open and closed positions.

Sprue D has a lot more than a chunk of the frames and walls of the bomb bay as it also includes the undercarriage bays and the Blue Steel Fairing which replaces the doors on Sprue L.

Hope this helps

Gondor

[Pellson]

Alastair, what are the part numbers for the bomb parts please. I've written to Airfix to see if they are contemplating having an accessory pack of them so they could be used in the Victor. The message I got back today said my query had been forwarded to the 'development' department but I could get the bits from the 'spares' department if I could give them the part numbers. Seems a bit of a waste of three kits though, I'd need nine clips --- and I'm thinking of the Valiant kit too --

The Valiant kit comes with an optional bomb load, normal and instant sunshine veriaties.

The new Vulcan kit has the bombs on Sprue L while the frame/walls etc are on Sprue D.

Gondor

Thanks Alastair, is Sprue L a stand alone sprue or are there other bits on it ? 
I can strike off the Valiant then, thanks for that bit of info.

I have two full Valiant sets of bombs on clips (2 x 21 bombs) I am quite happy to send you, if you want them. Of my two Valiants, one is a tanker and the other one has closed bomb doors anyway.