Vimy Trainer (Jaguar) At Abu Sueier, 4 F.T.S. 1/72, Maquette, Ex-Frog FINISHED

[Old Man]

This boxing, with a conversion fuselage and other bits for a Vernon/Commercial type, contains the entire Vimy kit, handed down to us from Frog's original series of pioneering aircraft. I intend to build this as a Vimy Trainer in service in Egypt in the late-twenties/early-thirties, with the extended nose of the 'school' version, dual control, and Eagle engines replaced with uncowled Armstrong-Siddeley Jaguar twin-row radials.

This aeroplane, JR7444, rebuilt early in 1928, will serve to illustrate the goal (it may be the final subject, but there are a couple of other photographed candidates).

These pieces are the heart of the kit, and will have to be worked over in a major way. On the wings, the 'starved cow' must be addressed, as must certain odd 'puddlings' on the under-surfaces, mostly around the locator holes. In addition 'rib-lets' must be added at the leading edges. On the fuselage pieces, the profile must be corrected from the camel-back of the Transatlantic Vimy (which the kit replicates faithfully enough, as originally intended), the rear gunner's ring and windows must be filled (they are far too far aft), and the nose must be corrected (it is not tall enough for a service machine), and then extended to the 'school' standard. For the motors, I have acquired a pair of old Match-box Siskins, which will donate their Jaguar radials.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Old Man

[CliffB]

Having done battle with this kit last year (in the Bomber GB), all I can say is 'good luck'!

Seriously though, what a great project - I can't wait to see how you get on

Cliff

[Old Man]

Having done battle with this kit last year (in the Bomber GB), all I can say is 'good luck'!

Seriously though, what a great project - I can't wait to see how you get on

Cliff

You did a very good job on your build, Sir: I looked into it when planning this. One problem you had I will not; the plastic on this Maquette product is middling soft and quite workable.

[Old Man]

Starting with the wings....

The first thing, after assembly of the upper wing, and ailerons to all wings, is to put in the short ribs at the leading edge. Two must be between each full rib. I have tried a new technique here, using a photo-etched saw to cut in grooves that will receive short lengths of .01"/.25mm rod.

Here are both wings, with the lengths of thin rod glued down into the grooves (with CA gel).....

Next step will be dealing with the exaggerated moulding of the ribs.

[CliffB]

A very impressive start! How did you apply the CA gel so finely?

Cliff

[Old Man]

A very impressive start! How did you apply the CA gel so finely?

Cliff

Thank you, Sir.

I use toothpicks. Stout round ones. Always work with a jumble of them near to hand, and frequently sharpen the points on a sanding stick. Lay a little on the rod, press it in the groove. Anything that squeezes out gets cleaned away on the spot with the other end of the toothpick. Anything over-looked gets scraped or cut away later with the curved edge of a #10 blade.

The pieces of rod for this are, of course, cut over-length, and trimmed to fit after being glued in. The ends get sanded in to blend with a thin sanding stick.

As I said, this is a new technique for me, for doing rib-lets, but I think I like it. It gives a fair match for what is there, and while certainly laborious, is less so than putting in small grooves to leave raised ridgings, and easier to correct when one goes a bit wrong.

Edited September 3, 2012 by Old Man

[Old Man]

Wings are pretty much in order now.

Here are the undersides of the lower wings. To smooth out the various irregularities, I went over the undersurfaces of both wings with a coarse cutting grit sand-paper taped (with double-face tape) to an large pill-bottle. This preserves the camber and makes fairly quick work of the task. Rib-tapes are represented by parallel scribed lines, roughly 1/16" apart.

Here is the upper surface of the upper wing at the half-way point. In my view, 'starved cow' is best dealt with not just by sanding down, but by leveling up. If you simply sand down, you can wind up with a wing that is a bit skinny, and/or rib evidences that are far too wide, and irregular. So what I have done here is give the surface a very heavy coat of Tamiya Grey Primer, and then sanded down until the rib locations show bare plastic. This treatment has been repeated to a total of three such coats. I have also added (in a groove with .5mm square rod) the extra rib on the inner face of the outer wing panels.

After this, the surface is given a coat of the fine White primer, and sanded till the the plastic shows through at rib locations in a strip, again about 1/16" wide. These are given 'edges' with scribed parallel lines, then sprayed again with the white primer, and sanded again with a fine grit sanding stick, moving both along the ribs, and span-wise along the wing. Imperfections in the surface are addressed with a knife's edge or bits of sand-paper. This will receive a further spray of primer.

[Old Man]

Working on the fuselage now. the surgery is fairly major.

The major element is removing the camel-back of the 'Transatlantic Vimy'. The rear vertical line of moulded lacing is where the replacement elements should be flat and continue the rest of the rear fuselage. The remainder should be pretty much a straight line in profile back from the rear of the main cockpit, starting off rounded in front and ending flat in back. I do not much like working with putty, and did not feel like taking the time to sand the shape down from a solid (or laminate) plastic block, and so I employed three strips of 0.30"/.75mm sheet (on each fuselage piece), the first laid to match the line of the mating surface of the fuselage, the second trimmed to a triangle and laid on the outside of the fuselage, and the final one trimmed to match the gap between the first two. The whole thing is slathered in CA gel, and then sanded to its basic shape.

The pieces as shown have the correct nose for a standard service Vimy (it seemed best, to make sense of the drawings, if I started making the Trainer nose by first correcting the nose to standard).The top of the nose is cut off, and new pieces carved from thick sheet, hollowed on the inside as well. Once this was done, the extended nose was built up.

Here is a picture of the inside of the fuselage halves, with the extended Trainer nose, and with basic side-wall framing and appropriate bulk-heads added, and all painted. The kit rear windows have been replaced, and new ones cut into the proper positions.

[CliffB]

This is coming on beautifully Old Man - some serious work being done, with great results .

I'm particularly enjoying seeing a fresh approach to a kit that I know well - this opportunity doesn't happen very often for me, as my interests are not particularly main stream!

Cheers

Cliff

[AndyC]

Great work on the wing ribs...excellent techniques

[Old Man]

This is coming on beautifully Old Man - some serious work being done, with great results .

I'm particularly enjoying seeing a fresh approach to a kit that I know well - this opportunity doesn't happen very often for me, as my interests are not particularly main stream!

Cheers

Cliff

Many thanks, Sir, from another devotee of the out of the way and the odd duck....

[Old Man]

Great work on the wing ribs...excellent techniques

Thank you, Sir.

Here is a large picture of the upper surfaces of the wings under their final primer coat. At this point I am expecting to use a rattle-can spray silver for basic coverage (a first for me), and then go over this with brushed silver thinned with Future for variation.

But that will wait a bit while I do some more interior work.

On edit: don't know how I missed putting the picture in, but it's here now....

Edited September 10, 2012 by Old Man

[Pin]

"Level up" instead of "Sand down" is an interesting approach, but how do you solve the problem with trailing edge thickness?

[Old Man]

"Level up" instead of "Sand down" is an interesting approach, but how do you solve the problem with trailing edge thickness?

Two tacks, Sir.

One, employed here, is to do the thinning from the bottom of the wing, which usually should be flat in any case.

The other,trickier, is to thin within the channels, with a mix of trimming by knife and sanding by coils or folds of sandpaper (or better still,sandpaper fastened to lengths of thin dowel.

[Pin]

I see - sanding from bottom will do indeed.

As for sanding "channels" ,may I suggest the following technique -

mask with vinyl based tape

sand the gap, move the mask

sand again

Edited September 11, 2012 by Pin

[Old Man]

I see - sanding from bottom will do indeed.

As for sanding "channels" ,may I suggest the following technique -

mask with vinyl based tape

sand the gap, move the mask

sand again

I see - sanding from bottom will do indeed.

As for sanding "channels" ,may I suggest the following technique -

mask with vinyl based tape

sand the gap, move the mask

sand again

That is a good way to do it, Sir. I tend to do a lot free-hand that could probably be improved with masking and such....

[Old Man]

I have gotten back onto this, gentlemen, after a hiatus enforced by flu, and catching up on heavy housework once more or less well.

First, a minor bit: I have got transparent panels in the clear portions of the rear gunner's position.

The picture unfortunately does not really show much change, but the clear is in there. I used 15 thou clear sheet, and have sanded it pretty heavily to get it smooth to the outside surface. I have polished them down, but do not mind if they wind up a bit cloudy, as these were not glass but aged celluloid sheet, in actuality.

I have begun on the motors, using the engines from two old Matchbox Siskin kits. Here are some pictures showing the fuel intake pipes and the exhaust manifolds, as well as few other things....

The original kit parts are blue plastic, the additions are white. The Siskin kit motor makes a decent starting point, though it is not wholly accurate. The crank-case diameter is too great, and the dome in front too prominent; the cylinders are a bit short. I left the diameter as is, since 'fixing' it would require essentially building new , and motors from scratch, but O took down the dome a bit, and added a seat for the push-rods. The moulded push-rods had to be trimmed off the cylinder fronts, and the the finning restored. The cylinder all have two ridges, doubtless meant to represent covers for the rocker valves (these usually were removed in service), and since the cylinders are short, they had to go anyway. I cut bits 2mm tube, glued them on, and filed them down to proper size, checking against a circle template. The various pipings are made from .6mm rod, with thciker rod for the central portions of the manifolds. The triangular bits on the manifolds are where the long exhaust pipes will be added later. The various bits at the rear of the crank-case put together from thicker rod and crap sheet. Since these motors where completely uncowled, all this sort of thing has to be replicated, as it will show. Next step on these will be valves and push-rods, and some bits on the front of the motor....

[CliffB]

Glad to see this one moving again - I was beginning to miss my daily 'Vimy fix'!

Glad that you are feeling better too.

Cheers

Cliff

[stevehed]

Excellent work Old Man. Very impressed with the engines. And now thanks to yourself, Cliff B and Stevef I now know of three ways to correct the fuselage upper decking.

Regards, Steve

[Old Man]

Further work on this, gentlemen: it has moved to the front of the queue with completion of a scratch-built Breguet AG-4.

Interior detailing is just about complete, and I expect to be closing the fuselage on the next pass. Interior rigging, floors for the rear area, and fuel controls (duplicated for trainee and instructor) are all in.

Here are the cockpit components, all scratch-built.

[Old Man]

Detailing the engines is pretty much complete; one or two small items remain, but the great bulk of the work is done. Four valves are needed on the cylinder heads, with lifters and push-rods.

Here are two 'in progress' pictures, with one engine ready for push-rods and the other still receiving its valves:

Here are both motors with push-rods added.

[Doug Rogers]

That's some really nice work, They'e going to look fantastic painted up.

[Old Man]

Getting set for the final sprint to the dead-line....

With the fuselage closed, the lower wing was added, and the tail elements asembled, some surface detail added, and the the thing went in for an under-coat of Tamiya spray silver:

Here are a couple more views:

Spray silver is an unforgiving finish, and showed up some imperfections in the surface. Despite the press of time, I am going to leave this cure for a couple of days at least, to be sure the silver is immune to fingerprints and such while I do the little bits of extra work attending to these requires.

Here is a picture showing a bit of the interiors; the buff stripe visible through the forward ring is the masked clear panel at the nose of this machine...

[Old Man]

Mostly finishing progress here, although the undercarriage legs have been added, and aileron control horns, as well as bit of extra detail in the front cockpit, and a seat (folded up) in the rear cockpit.

After surface flaws showed up by the spray silver were tended to, and areas re-sprayed where necessary, I put on several coats of craft acrylic silvers, heavily cut with Future, and here and there tinted with some grey or white. I expect this is the way I will always be doing aluminum dope finishes now (previously I used a white primer undercoat; this is better).

I will be doing, as it turns out, JR-7444, the machine pictured at the head of this thread. This is mostly in concession to markings availability. Most Vimys had full-chord roundels, and I had assumed something big enough would be readily found on a larger-scale sheet of generic roundels. However, on the XtraDecal 1/48 roundel sheet, they neatly bracket the needed size, with one roundel size too small and one just a bit too large. However, JR-7444 is clearly shown in the printed copy of the header picture in the Windsock Vimy Special to have roundels that do not reach to the ailerons, and further, that these roundels have 'Siskin' proportions. While non-standard, this was not unique; I have seen several other photographs of Egypt-based Vimys with such roundels. Appropriately sized 'D-type' roundels I had on hand.

Next leap o' the critter should see the upper wing on, as well as the upper tail-plane and the verticals, and then I can get to work on the struts supporting the engines, and the engine-bearers, and associated components.

Wife will do up some home-made decals for the serials for me.

Edited December 2, 2012 by Old Man

[CliffB]

And so on to the most 'exciting' bit !

Cheers

Cliff