Fernando N's Trumpeter 1/48 RA-5C Vigilante

[Fernando N]

Hi everyone,

A late starter here for the GB, but I put my name down and revealed some about the intended victim so here goes…

Firstly thanks for Ron for this GB and the added incentive to build this critter that has lurked in a dark corner of the stash for the past few years.

Instructions and not to use decals:

The sprues:



Many are for the spares box as the W-41 and W-43 nukes are not wanted for my recon variant, the flash pods were only used for night ops and those were rare.
Other bits like office and wheels wells and burner cans too as those will be replaced by the Aires goodies.
AM bits:

More colourful decals for a big bird in Light gull grey and White:

Made a start last weekend on the wheel wells and building up the office, great stuff that Aires resin.
Easy to cut, so less sanding involved and only needing some wire as extra material to complete the whole lot.

Lost some bits of the first bang seat so replacement were made...shades on:

The frosting looks more worse than it is:

Love that detail:

Big bird in the making:

Thanks for looking in.
Fernando

 

[Si Benson]

Evening Fernando,
wow, this looks like a lovely kit and you’ve got some nice bits to go with it.

The bang seats look excellent with their belts and buckles, the cockpit dials look sweet and and all the extras this is gonna be a good one

 

[Fernando N]

Evening everyone, a posting backlog to fill here too…

Thanks Si, the extras are certainly worth the effort in the end.

Carefully painting and weathering the office with bang-seats has taken its sweet time especially with modifications involved for a good fit of the AM bits.
Found some decent pics online to help in painting the interior as the instructions don’t even give a hint to which colour to use, used the info I found as a guideline so I might be wrong on some parts:

Getting the resin to stay in place was a little challenge to overcome too, first tacked it in place with the recently acquired Rocket glue (neat stuff btw).
When dry and suitably happy with how things sat, they were finally glued on using a two-part epoxy glue:

The extra strips on the inside were to make sure the fuselage halves could be glued as straight as possible.

Also started to modify the leading edges on the wings as the version I’m building is an earlier RA-5C which has its wings starting a bit to the back.
This site has some good pics showing the difference in the various models of Vigilante:
http://www.detailandscale.com/a-5_ra-5c_vigilantet_general_photo_set.html
Making one is easy, having the other looking just like it is the hard part:


Started to putty the seams on top, bottom and some odd mould streaks on the spine too, hope I have enough of the stuff left as this one will take up way more than usual…

Thanks for looking in and have a great week!
Fernando

 

[papa 695]

Nice one Fernando great work so far.

 

[JR]

Love the effort you put in to your builds Fernando, good research pays dividends.
As to the office, an exercise in how to do it right ! Well done mate .

 

[colin m]

This is looking rather nice.

 

[rtfoe]

Hi Fernando, I thought I let this slip under the radar but looking at the dates missed just the introduction...phew

The office is well equiped with fax machine and lovely armchairs that go bang.

Cheers,
Richard

 

[yak face]

Fantastic looking cockpit fernando , cheers tony

 

[Fernando N]

Evening all,

Ian, John, Colin, Richard and Tony thanks guys.

Regarding the research John, yes looking the right things up makes the model look right but I missed some colour in my office when looking at other pics for the canopy mechanism on the net…
Should buy a detailed walk-around first before starting or build kits that match my library.

Seems it was almost two months since the last update, with a slow but steady progress I fell a bit short in updating sorry…

The burner cans were a simple and great upgrade from the kit parts, especially the added detail on the exhaust will add to the final look.
Sprayed them with Alclad paints as I wanted to test some I had laying for some time now:

Managed to drill a hole in one of them when enlarging the hole for the port stabiliser, so last weeks dumbass prize goes to me , luckily it’s an easy fix.

Starting to look the part now here:

But almost every major part needs a proper inspection, clean-up and filler:


On the bright side, this one is a good test case of re-scribing and rebuilding rivets lost after the putty routine.

Added some tube in the canoe’s holes to represent camera’s, a tint to the glass will cover up the simpleness a bit:

Some ex-bling for the insides of the canopies, almost a perfect fit by Aires only the lower sides needed to go as they couldn’t fit at all:

With such a clean airframe, details in the office and wheel wells I naturally had to dress up the legs with some rod and wire:


Thanks for looking, will take a little break from his one as more detail or sanding work will send me to a padded room…
Fernando

 

[flyjoe180]

Looking good Fernando

 

[Fernando N]

Evening everyone,

Thanks Joe .

With reinvigorated mojo from another build, the landing gear got their last details:


Some lumps on the underside got replaced by 0.8mm brass tube too, although I couldn’t find them on any pics on the net, they looked like vents from the intakes so the upgrade seemed plausible.

Even the last big part to go on needed some filler to look a part of the airframe and a couple of sharp shiny bits found their way too:

Really like the Master tubes and probes like this 48-080 set, easy to install and adding a lot of detail to the nose section.
Just need to be careful not to stab myself with the tip…

Replaced the fueldump nozzle (I think) with a 1mm brass tube one, once painted it’ll look much better than the kits solid plastic rod:

With everything primed in Vallejo grey primer it was finally paint time and the first bits were the metal shielding of the central bomb bay in 71.072 gunmetal and the leading edges in 71.073 metallic black:

The Trumpeter instructions only tell of the later and say Burnt iron, looking at pics Black/Dark grey or Metallic black seemed all plausible, so I went for the latter.
Pics on the specific plane I’m building are pretty scarce on the net…

Thanks for looking in.
Fernando

 

[JR]

Wow, some neat work there Fernando, that landing gear brass pipe work looks great .

 

[boatman]

HI Fernando sorry just caught up with your build an im enjoyin it nice to see another wingy thing on here an in real she sure was a big aircraft when Ithink i saw one
i'll follow your build
chris

 

[colin m]

Moving on nicely. This aircraft has quite a graceful look about it.

 

[Fernando N]

Evening all,

John, thanks going to be quite prominent hydraulic lines, much appreciated.
Chris, thank you and don’t be sorry its always quite busy with treads on the site so it’s easy to miss a thing or two.
She’s bigger than the S-3 and A-6 models I got, guess her only adversaries in size on deck were the C2/E2 or A-3 types.
Colin, thanks, she sure has that fast dart like look.

Since last’s start with the colours, a pre-shade has been made on all the surfaces.
I used VJ 71.097 medium gunship grey for the underside and VJ 71.057 black for the top so the it takes less effort for the base colour to cover.

Still too many more passes than I could count of thinned VJ 71.279 insignia white to get the used but not too used look:


Fun part is to get all the separate pieces looking the same in the end…
Going to let this dry and if it passes inspection tomorrow, masking time and on to the gull grey.

Thanks for looking in and have a great weekend.
Fernando.

 

[yak face]

Looking great fernando, its a beautiful shaped beast. Ive just realised - put twin tails on it and youve got a MiG 25 ! Cheers tony

 

[Fernando N]

Evening all,

Thanks Tony, think I heard that before in a Wings of Russia episode about interceptors.
Remember the commentator dismissing the whole thing as coincidence, yeah right…

Been too long since I’ve posted some progress on this big one, sat in the corner of the bench for some time too as the mojo was otherwise occupied.

One more pic of the underside after the last coat:

Finished the light gull grey in a series of thin coats, slowly building up the coverage to get the pre-shade at the wanted level:



(It shows better in real )

After two coats of gloss, the decals were put on.
Even though they are thin and conform with a little help to the surfaces, the insignia and the intake warning markings are out of register, with a bit of white showing on the lower parts.
Carefully removed that and some touch-ups were required for the tail bits, but all in all a lot more colourful than the box versions:

Added some bling to the landing-gears, the chrome parts were done with a chrome pen:

First proper usage since I bought it and very happy of the result.
Almost finished with the weathering, will show that in the next update.

Thanks for looking in.
Fernando

 

[Steven000]

That's looking awesome Fernando!
Steven

 

[scottie3158]

Hi Fernando,
Apologies mate I have just caught up with this. You are making a cracking job of this

 

[boatman]

Wow, some neat work there Fernando, that landing gear brass pipe work looks great .

WOW Fernando what J/R said
chris