Airfix De Havilland Vampire T.11

[Caesar Alexius]

Hi all.

Been visiting this site for years now and have received a lot of useful information from the forums but I've never actually posted any of my own work. I intend to change that now. I also figured that if I'm posting in a public forum then that will create an incentive to actually finish something for once. So, here it is. Airfix's 1/72 scale De Havilland Vampire T.11.

I'm going to do this mostly OOB. Instead of building a T.11, I'll be doing this as a T.35. What's the difference? None, apart from the fact that T.35s were manufactured here in Australia. Not certain about exactly what markings I'll be doing but every photo of a T.35 that I've seen is painted in silver and usually has orange stripes. Besides, I don't have to worry about decals until the very end of this build.

I must say, I'm very impressed with this kit. A decent amount of detail and good fit (so far) for a kit that only costs $15. There's a reasonable amount of cockpit detail as well. Naturally, the first step is to glue the joysticks in.

Then onto the seats.

I could almost hear the ejection seats whispering in my ear, telling me to drill out those holes and add some handles in them. However, my quick attempt to make some out of brass wire failed miserably so I decided to leave it at that. Instead, I continued on by painting them flat black, painting the cushion desert yellow and then adding my own seat belts. I did this by painting a small piece of paper French blue, cutting in into strips, super gluing the strips into the seat and painting the buckles chrome silver.

There was a bit of a mess made with the chrome silver paint but this was easily fixed with some more flat black. I could gone for a PE set but that would have taken more time and money.

The cockpit itself was sprayed flat black and the joystick handles were pained gold. Probably not exactly the right colour but it was the closest I could get to what my reference photos depict. Then is was simply a matter of gluing the seats into the cockpit.

As per usual, silvering on the instrument panel decal can be problematic. Micro Set and Micro Sol got the decal in place and I didn't have too much difficulty cutting off the flash with a scalpel blade.

I've just glued the gunsights onto the instrument panel and have begun painting them flat black. More photos to come once I've made more progress.

Alex.

[Caesar Alexius]

More progress has been made. I glued the gunsights on and painted them black like the rest of the cockpit. There's a bit of flash on top of the sights that I attempted to take off but considering the scale and the fact thay they're behind another layer of glass I'm not worrying too much about that.

Next step, add the cockpit to the fuselage. I decided to do this before gluing in the instrument panel so I could avoid any potential misalignment issues it may have had with the fuselage. Yes, I know there's a lot of flash in the photo, that's why I try to take my photos on black backgrounds and with natural sunlight where possible.

Once the cockpit was secure it was time to add the instrument panel. Like the rest of the kit so far, the fit was fine.

Many years ago I built Airfix's old FB.5 Vampire. This was from the era of minute raised panel lines and sparse internal detail. As has already been seen from the cockpit, this new T.11 kit does have a good amount of internal detail, detail which often disappears once the kit is finished. Such is the case with the "engine". The fan detail was airbrushed flat black and drybrushed with Humbrol 11 silver.

Next up was the air duct which was also painted flat black. I'm not sure exactly how Vampire ducts were painted but I'm not going to worry about it for this build.

The two were then glued together. Seeing the fan detail through the ducts was difficult here, so it was pretty obvious that nothing but blackness would be seen once the fuselage was glued together. But hey, I appreciate the effort that Airfix has gone to to put it there.

Now comes the most challenging part of the build so far, the twin booms. Somewhere in my too hard basket is the Classic Airframes NF.10 Vampire. It's mostly done now (has been for over a year)but making those booms fit into the wings and align with each other was an absolute nightmare. A bit of dryfitting proved that this Airfix one would be a lot easier. First the halves were glued together...

...then came the usual filling and sanding. A razor saw was used to put back in some of the panel line detail.

By now, the fuselage halves had been glued together. The next step was to glue in the air intakes, but not before some ejector pin marks were removed (photo taken before their removal).

[skystreak80]

Nice build so far mate will be watching. Im new to arc also

[Pete]

Cool, don't see Aussie Vampires a lot here on ARC.

[Caesar Alexius]

Hi guys.

Thanks for the feedback! If all goes to plan I hope to submit this into the Queensland Model Hobby Expo (QMHE) competition this year. It's not really award-winning material but I'd definitely like the experience of having my work judges by others.

Well, a lot has happened since I last updated this. Unfortunately, I've suffered quite a lot of setbacks with this build. However, as I always do with these projects, I shall continue. Here's what's happened.

After I glued on the air intakes I found that there was a gap between them and the air ducts. However, one of the perks of working in 72 scale is that these things aren't that noticable, especially in such a confined space. However, I did encounter a problem when dry fitting the top half of the wing on.

I then filed away at the part of the wing right behind the air intake as well as a part that was too tight to fit around the booms.

After gluing the wings on the next step was the most painstaking - gluing the booms on. However, Airfix have made this a much easier job than Classic Airframes did. Once the airframe was together, it was time to get to that oh so beloved past-time of filling and sanding. When that was done, I had something resembling a Vampire!

At this angle you can see a seam between the wing root and the fuselage. I came to the conclusion that the gap was too wide for putty to work (the wings can bend too much) and seeing as it was the underside, I decided to leave it be.

Same putty treatment was given to the external fuel tanks.

As can be seen from this photo, the external fuel tanks had a distinct outward lean to them. This would have to solved by filing the connecting struts to an angle that was more flush with the wing.

I then glued on the canopy, using PVA glue. Also seen in these photos are the puttying on the flaps. This was necessary due to sink marks.

The putty was sanded back and Tamiya liquid mask applied to the canopy.

Edited July 1, 2014 by Caesar Alexius

[Caesar Alexius]

Coat of glass black (Humbrol 21) was then done before the application of silver. I'm not sure if gloss black has any advantages over other colours. I just use it before applying metallic paints because of what I've read about Alclad II. Works fine enough for me.

And that was when the problems started. I decided to use Humbrol 11 thinned with mineral turpentine. I stopped fairly quickly once I saw how the paint was turning out. It had the texture of a really bad skin disease. :(/>

Seeing this I decided to take the heartbreaking move of stripping all the paint off with oven cleaner. The next day I went to my LHS and asked for their advice. According to them, the problem was most likely that I hadn't cleaned my airbrush properly. So I soaked the nozzle in paint thinner, used a brush to clean it out completely the sprayed a lot of said thinner through. Gloss black was re-applied and when it came to do the silver, THE SAME THING HAPPENED! GAAAHHH!

After spending a while pondering what the heck went wrong, I came to two possible conclusions. The first was that the thinner I was using was the problem. Granted, that bottle of turpentine had been left out in the sun for a while and had turned a vague amber colour (I've thinned my other enamel paints with that bottle a few months earlier and had no problem...). The second was that Humbrol have changed how they make 11 paint. Regardless, I elected to switch to a different paint, this being Model Master Aluminium (1781). So, after redoing the whole putty job (oven cleaner eats away at putty as well), I went for third time lucky. Sprayed the gloss black on and, lo and behold...

It worked!

There's still some puttying evident just ahead of the canopy but I'm willing to let that one slide. I've had enough paint stripping for this build. Now that that ordeal's over, I'm hoping that I do't overcome any more hurdles like that.

Edited July 1, 2014 by Caesar Alexius