HP80 Victor 1/50 scale

**chris190** · #1 08-26-2019, 04:33 AM

Photos of my my latest unfeasibly large model attached, of a subject which I can recall wanting a model of since the time when it was the latest thing in aviation technology! At the time, I think Airfix had a kit but probably pocket money at 3d a week wasn't going to make it happen and so, it's taken until now to get around to it.

It's a Wilhelmshaven kit, probably quite an old one (the date on it is 2002) of the second prototype WB775 which is considerably different from the last Victors; it's shorter (there were problems with c of g which were rectified by lengthening the fuselage forward of the wings on the production models) and obviously no distinctive refuelling probe, but from what I can gather from the relatively few photos available online, the kit is quite accurate and certainly well designed, with the exception of the cockpit glazing which is very strange indeed.

Printed on quite thick card and in silver, I had the whole kit copied onto 200 gsm card because I didn't think I could a) make too good a job of it on such thick material and b) I foresaw many screw ups ahead would would need spare parts; however, thicker card would have been beneficial in some places (the wing spars especially) and the copy process wouldn't, as I foresaw, give silver but a sort of blue grey. This was ok and I had a few extras printed from time to time to replace dodgy elements but then, the copy shop replaced its machine and the colours came out quite differently. I'm sure you can spot where I had to use what I could get - that was a bad period in construction!

The fit was pretty good, except for one rear fuselage section whose diameter was about 2mm too small and I had to create a new larger part from areas of colour from one of the reprints and the unacceptable canopy glazing was redrawn on the computer, cut out in separate sections and glued onto spare coloured card; I then thinned this down by rubbing most of the back off and glued it over the offending area.

The air intakes were another tricky area; I made up the kit parts but couldn't live with the resulting completely un-prototypical thin edges around the intakes when I did a dry run. The solution was to reduce the intake inners by copying at 90% and then add layers of card strip around the front edges and sanding down to get a rounded profile. Not really very satisfactory but it's all I could come up with; the problem always is matching watercolour/gouache colour to the printed shades and clearly I didn't quite get it right (again!).

If anyone wants to have a go at this kit, I now have an untouched copy of it, since I copied all that I needed, plus I can supply the cockpit glazing overlay.

All the best

Chris

**rifleman** · #2 08-26-2019, 07:27 AM

nice to see a victor model and a dam fine build well done big thumbs up

**Kevin WS** · #3 08-26-2019, 11:48 AM

That is a beautiful piece of work. And those tricky intakes are absolutely stunning - well done there!

**chaparral2d** · #4 08-26-2019, 02:42 PM

That is beautiful!!! The victor has always bee a favorite of mine since I received a book with a picture of it in it back in the 50's. Well done !

Dave