Jump to content

1/48 Airfix Vampire: 442 City of Vancouver Squadron


Recommended Posts

On 3/7/2022 at 3:57 AM, Inquisitor said:

If you take decisions based on a single opinion, then you'd pass on a lot of good things.

Tamiya kits, specially some of their higher end car kits have very tight tolerances. Dryfitting every thing looks nice, add a few layers of primer, paint and so on and each micrometer adds up to make things not fit.

If the opinion of a single person was all that mattered then according to Doctor MIG/Dragan Cvetic the ICM MiG-25 and Zvezda Mi-24, both 1/72 scale, would be the worst fitting kits in the world. They aren't perfect and not the worst either, I've built both and as experienced modellers do, just changing the assembly order or paying attention to some parts helps solving some fit issues. The MiG-25 in both 1/48 and 1/72 the firewall that separates the front and rear fuselage has a tab that can be a problem depending on when you glue the front to rear fuselage, and even if you follow the instruction's order that tab gets in the way. The Mi-24 just gluing the front and rear of each halves separately and then gluing the whole halves solves a lot of fit problems, same with the KH Su-17 that each fuselage half was split in 3 sections.

As ALF18 said and from his photos there are places where complex assemlby and small user errors add up to big fit issues. For example in this photo just the tip of Part D18 is sticking out and fouling the fit.

 

JZVueTq.jpg

Aha! You found my problem. My failing eyesight was at fault this time. Too late for me, but at least the filler fixed the problem. It's true that there are some very bad kits out there (the 1/48 Classic Airframes F-5A is a great example). This one is very nice, but takes a lot of effort to make sure it's perfect.

ALF

Link to post
Share on other sites

Starting to apply decals. Above/Below Graphics sent me a test sheet, as I mentioned, for a future release. The person who runs that company bought the rights to all of CanMilAir's decals, and has started to produce more options. He is based in Victoria, BC. One particularity of the printer he uses is that the whole sheet is printed on one carrier, so each decal must be trimmed very close to the edge.

Here's how I approach that. I cut the two roundels off the main sheet, then carefully trimmed around each roundel (doesn't have to be a perfect circle, just make it smaller).

GuYYONl.jpg

 

Then, after dipping in water, I can remove the excess, leaving the roundels on the paper.

Apologies to EMVAR for my gross thumbnail - I was eating barbecue peanuts.

vabrzxY.jpg

 

Decal in place.

ClK5bHX.jpg

 

I'm finding that these decals are quite easy to work with. They don't tear or fragment, even when I didn't quite cut all the way through around one of them, I could 'recklessly' pull it away without cutting it. 

ALF

Link to post
Share on other sites
On 3/8/2022 at 10:45 AM, ALF18 said:

Starting to apply decals. Above/Below Graphics sent me a test sheet, as I mentioned, for a future release. The person who runs that company bought the rights to all of CanMilAir's decals, and has started to produce more options. He is based in Victoria, BC. One particularity of the printer he uses is that the whole sheet is printed on one carrier, so each decal must be trimmed very close to the edge.

Here's how I approach that. I cut the two roundels off the main sheet, then carefully trimmed around each roundel (doesn't have to be a perfect circle, just make it smaller).

GuYYONl.jpg

 

Then, after dipping in water, I can remove the excess, leaving the roundels on the paper.

Apologies to EMVAR for my gross thumbnail - I was eating barbecue peanuts.

vabrzxY.jpg

 

Decal in place.

ClK5bHX.jpg

 

I'm finding that these decals are quite easy to work with. They don't tear or fragment, even when I didn't quite cut all the way through around one of them, I could 'recklessly' pull it away without cutting it. 

ALF

At least you trimmed them. 😜

Link to post
Share on other sites

Done! Decals are superb, and I'm happy to have a 3-footer that represents an aircraft from my father's past.

zhcm0ff.jpg

 

pCwfffT.jpg

 

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

ALF

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks guys! Now to figure out what to do next...

I'm leaning toward a 1/48 Airfix Mustang, with aluminum foil. Other options are a 1/48 Tropical Hurricane, or maybe an Italeri 1/32 CF-104D with aluminum foil...

Mulling it over.

ALF

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...