Building the Airfix Valiant - Part 2
The Vickers Valiant - First of the V-Bombers
Building the Airfix 1/72 Vickers Valiant by Richard Farrar
Part 2
In this part of the build we will look at getting the main assembly section together.
There is a part to fit between the bomb bay doors and front undercarriage bay careful alignment of this part results in no filler being required when glued in place. Photo 11.
The wheel wells in each of the wings are a large one piece part, this does not detract from the quality of the moulding and again it fits into its tab slots very well. A run of liquid poly secures the wheel well in place. Photo 12. I took the opportunity to drill out the fuel vents on the wing tips at this time. Photo 15. The engine intakes were painted white before assembling, a run of thickish white paint was run down the slight joint seams. Photo 13 & 14. Once dry they were sprayed with white primer into the openings at both ends before the engine turbine disks were attached. The disks had been pre-painted steel Photo 19. The intakes were glued to the lower wings. Once dry they were added to the upper wing section. A small amount of filler was required where the engine intake located onto the upper wing.
The jet pipes have to be assembled with the wings as they slot into the fairing that then joins onto the wing. I would have preferred the option to be able to add them later as once they had been painted steel they had to be masked out whilst I continued with the build. Careful aligning of the fairing pieces, with lots of checking of the fit, will save he builder a lot of filling at a later stage. The modeller must also check the masking on the jet pipes hasn’t moved away from the fairings before painting otherwise it will spoil the look of the model. The separate ailerons were glued in place but I left the pitots off until later, to avoid damaging them.
The upper wing slots into the top of the fuselage. It interlocks with the roof of the bomb bay and makes for a very solid join. Photo 16. At this point I had to put a shim of 10 thou plastic card in at the rear of the wing to level the top of the fuselage up. I understand that this will have been corrected on the standard production kit. Photo 17.
Photo 18. Shows how good the wing to fuselage join is. The fit of the parts when assembled is exceptional. Unusually for me I used no filler after I had glued the wing/fuselage parts together using liquid poly. Canopies were dipped in Klear when dry they were masked out and attached to the fuselage with Formula 560. They were brush painted with a coat of Games Workshop Chaos Black.
The tail planes were assembled I added the elevators and then slotted the finished assembly into the slot on the rudder. The vortex generators on the tail planes should be on the under sides. The vortex generators on the side of the fin should be carefully cut off and saved as it makes it easier to apply the fin flash, when the transfers are applied. The whole assembly was undercoated in Halfords Primer Grey and left to dry. Photo 20.