Avro Vulcan B. Mk2 Fly 1:33

[shrike]

Skinning the inlets has proven to be just as much of a challenge as I had feared.

The interior skinning went pretty easily. Reasonably well supported, the inside is just a big flat sided cone. A few foibles but it went in ok. The central 'splitter' was easy and helped to locate and hold the shape of the inner skin.

The exterior skin, or rather the joint of lower skin and inlet inner skin was a pain. A lot of cursing involved. The biggest problems were the return curves at the inboard edges of the inlets. I'm really not happy with the way they shaped up, nor with the joint at the outboard edge. I may try to come up with an appliqué patch of some sort, but the kit, unlike many, provides no coloured scrap to make patches or replacement parts.

[dansls1]

Looks pretty good to me. That looks like a difficult part to use for inside and outside skinning both - I can see how it would become difficult to match everything.

[Royaloakmin]

Photo copy a green piece on a color copier. Should get a good color match. Great build, you are a brave man.

regards

[Don Boose]

Mark -- It looks good to me.

Fred -- The color copy solution seems to work for many people, especially those who are skilled at making color modifications (vide Glen [birder]'s recent Zero recolor). In my case, my Dell printer-scanner isn't up to the job -- I rarely get a close enough match. Some day, I hope to have the equipment and skill to be able to overcome this problem -- it drove me crazy when I was building the Hampden and could surely have used some spare color-matched card and paper.

Don

[dansls1]

Depending on the model, I've gone to using water-based hobby paints for edge coloring, and try to get as close as I can to a good color match - which would let me then use printer paper to patch and color the whole area with a matching color. I say depending on the model, because I do what I call 'lazy' models and then good models. The 'lazy' models (Beaufort and the current Corsair for examples) I use watercolor pencils and sharpee's for edge coloring. It may not be as good of a match, but will provide a good 'arm's length' match. On the Modelik BF109 and the Halinski Mustang (which is stalled, but far from gone or forgotten), I take the time to do the color match with paints. I even mixed colors for the interior on the BF109 because I couldn't find any colors in the hobby shop that matched close enough for me - with a 3-color mix between 2 greens and grey ultimately being used.
The other thing with using paints (and I give credit to GB for helping me with this idea) is that you can use it in some situations as a gap-filler. Either mixed with glue or painting over glue filler.

[shrike]

I may end up breaking out the acrylics before this is all over.

[bclemens]

Shrike, that's a hell of a complex shape...kudos to the designer for trying, and mucho kudo to you for how well you pulled it off!
Bruce

[shrike]

I got the other side intake done. It doesn't look any better (or worse for that matter) than the portside one. I still need to figure out what I might do as far as patches, so time to move as far away from it as I can for now.

Off to the tailcone. This is a keel and former structure, which makes it quite rigid and heavy. I may have to make one of the nose formers out of lead to get it to sit on it's nose right.

One minor problem that arose early on is that the pattern for the keel was cut off in printing. This wouldn't be an issue, except that the tailcone is a deceptively complex and subtly shaped item, bulged and wasp like to encompass the ECM bay added during operations, and the lead former sets the angle that ties it into the rudder and fin. Fortunately there are a pair of formers for the engine fairing/elevon structure that let me set the angle right.

[shrike]

Skinning the tail went well. Because of the tabs sticking out to lock into the formers mentioned in the previous post and the rudder, some of the skin sections had to be wrapped around the formers rather than formed first as cones. The only iffy fit will be hidden under the fin so that went well.

One of the neater features of airplanes that have a long service life is the collection of bulges and excrescences that appear over the years. Here we have the braking parachute cover (the big one) and the heat exchanger for the ECM equipment in the tail. No idea what the little centerline bulge on top is, but the bottom has a larger bulge for the tailscrape-ometer.

The radome has got to be one of the nicest petal form pieces I've ever come across. I haven't had a chance to make a petal former a la Gil, so it was formed the old fashioned way with a lot of alternating prayer and blasphemy.

[shrike]

XL426, the airplane depicted in the kit is still in existence;
Vulcan Restoration Trust