Pete's Heller 1/72 Vampire

[stillp]

The upper and lower wing surfaces have no locating pins, so I used the fuselage to align the root end, clamped the tip then removed it from the fuselage and added more clamps.

The intakes, such a prominent feature of the Vampire, need quite a lot of cleaning up. The one in the photo has been partly done.
Pete

[colin m]

If I was a woman, I'd be saying, 'typical bloke, never reads instructions' However, I'm not a woman, but am very guilty of not always reading instructions. Maybe the women folk have a point.

[stillp]

Plodding on... wing sand intakes are now attached, canopy is on and masked, first round of fill/sand started:

The fuselage centre seam looks awful in these photos, but actually isn't bad, but sanding this silver plastic leaves a black line.
Heller seem to think it was a good idea to mould half the pitot on each half of the LH tailboom fin, splitting the sub-millimetre pitot along it's length. Of course the two halves don't line up, so I've tried to coax them together with some Extra Thin.

Not entirely successful, but it's too thin and flexible to sand smooth. I'll try to scrape it when fully dry.
The main wheels are separate, but the nosewheel is part of the leg, so I think after the tailboom assembly is attached I'll fit the main gear legs and doors, and the nosewheel bay doors, then get some paint on, and paint the nose leg separately. As far as I can tell the wheels bays and legs are painted silver, to match the airframe, so no masking needed! Just need to decide which silver paint to use - Vallejo Aluminium looks a bit too bright, so I might use thier Steel.

thanks for watching.
Pete

[Lee Drennen]

Looking good so for Peter the wet stuff is very near looks like

[Guest]

Coming along.

[colin m]

That silver plastic is taking me right back to the days of weekend builds and over powering smelly glue. I think I might need some silver plastic in my life soon.

[stillp]

I got bored with filling and sanding, so I threw some paint at it:

The tail boom joints weren't as bad as I'd feared after Dave's kind warning, just need a bit of sanding to square them off and a drop of primer.
I need to paint the fins and wingtips in 112 squadron's green - described as "Nile Green" by Heller, but nothing like eau-de-nil. Tamiya XF4 looks the nearest, so I changed my mind about using Vallejo aluminium for the main paintwork, and used Tamiya Flat Aluminium instead, as Tamiya paints don't work well over Vallejo. Of course I haven't got XF4, so I'll have to find a shop with some.
Pete

[Guest]

You can tell it’s painted because the dark lines have disappeared

[Guest]

Nice finish on that Peter, well done.
Looking forward to seeing this finished.

[stillp]

Well, I bought some XF4, and it's much too yellow. I'll try to get some XF5 tomorrow. If that isn't close I'll have to mix something. Conversion charts seem to give Sky as an equivalent to Heller 7021, but there are decals that should match the tail fins, and they're nothing like Sky - much stronger green.
Pete

[Guest]

Looking good :smiling3:.

[flyjoe180]

Nice work Pete. The flat aluminium finish is appropriate for the type.

[stillp]

I gave up trying to match the Heller colour for the tail fins, and just chose Tamiya XF5 Flat Green. I couldn't find a good colour photo of a 112 squadron Vampire with the green fins, and found several profiles, among which the green varies a lot. Couldn't be bothered masking, so I'm brushing the green. Might have over-thinned it though, I'm on the 4th coat with at least one more to go.
Pete

[Guest]

No swearing Peter :smiling:, thin coats better than obliterating everything .

[stillp]

After 6 coats the green is not too bad, so a clear coat went on last night, and I've started the decals:

They're behaving quite well considering their age, though they did have a dose of Liquid Decal Film just in case. The underside decals are a bit tricky, as the serials extend over the main u/c doors, and the 112 squadron sharkmouth has to go over the guns and the nosewheel door. I'll let the upper ones dry before I try the underside. I managed to knock the 'eye' off the port side when applying the lightning flash, but after 10 minutes searching I found it on the floor and stuck it back on with Micro Set. Lucky or what!
Pete