1/48 Hobbycraft DH.100 Vampire F.1

[Stikpusher]

Stuart, your daughter has good taste in aircraft. I suspect that it comes from her father.

And now, as requested by Bruce, AKA speedgraflex, the sprue shots...









Actual progress coming soon...

[Duke Maddog]

Looking forward to this one Carlos. I think I built two or three of these in 1/72 scale. They are fun little planes to build.

[Stikpusher]

This a completely new type to build for me. And I am looking forward to that as well.

[speedgraflex]

Carlos,

Thank you so much for the sprue shots, which I am studying. For me and I suspect for others, sprue shots are a most welcome source of additional details. The plastic looks great! I am excited to see what you do next, what your first moves are.

[KSaarni]

- Kari

[Stikpusher]

Well of course I am starting with the cockpit. I have begun cutting and gluing. But nothing yet worth taking photos of for here.

And a bit of work on the lower fuselage as well, getting an idea of where to put the weight. As well as drilling out the gun ports.

[Stikpusher]

And we are off and running! I have finished adding the PE for the cockpit interior aside from the seat harness, which is from a pre painted set and will add after painting. So far, so good...



here are the drilled out gun ports



And the birdshot added inside for nose weight.... hopefully this should be sufficient....



Tomorrow I will get it primed. I will likely work on other areas over the next few days such as the wings, tail booms, etc.

[Stikpusher]

Some more progress this afternoon. Now the biggest problem with the kit is here on the rear booms...



If you look closely, you can see that the mounting holes for the stabilizer is not centered, but set too low between the upper and lower portions of the rudders...



so I made some new holes about 1mm higher and set on the midline



I’ll fill in the old lower holes in a bit... and lastly I built up the wings, in addition to the tail booms...



This kit really does build up quick and easy so far. If I wasn’t using PE, and building straight OOB, I’d be already painting the cockpit and perhaps have the fuselage together at this point. Not to mention having the wingtips on.

So far, so good here....

[speedgraflex]

Always such a pleasure to see your work in the bench, and the methods and techniques you use are always quite — I feel like Spock here — fascinating! The cockpit details look spot on, adding a bit of real fine details within the cockpit itself is really a question of artistic judgment and historical accuracy. Your decisions are... hm... again I’m fascinated. You just know how to make the kit start to reveal the nature of the aircraft. I think this has been instrumental (puns!) in a way. I also need to ask how you glue the shot in place. Is that done using CA? What adhesive do you use for the styrene? Thanks in advance.

[Stikpusher]

Thank you Bruce. I’m glad that you’re enjoying this build of mine. Aside from paint, the only things I really need to add or change now in the cockpit are the control column grip- the kit provides the two seater stick grip, while the single seaters had the typical RAF spade grip, and perhaps add some rudder pedals. In photos they are buried under and behind the IP and are barely visible... to answer your questions, I used gel CA to glue the birdshot in place, and I am using Humbrol liquid cement for the styrene. I also used CA to attach the PE in the cockpit. But I’d like to get some Gator Glue to attach some of the rest of the PE. The slow setting time of that stuff gives time to adjust placement and/or alignment. Some of the cockpit PE is a little off due to the CA setting so rapidly.

Well, these are my last updates for tonite on this. ...

first up, wingtips on!!!




The separate wingtips are a legacy of multiple variants from the same basic molds. The F.1 and F.3 had rounded wingtips, while most later versions had clipped squared off wingtips.

And aside from the fuselage not yet being assembled due to needing to paint the cockpit, here is how it all looks now layer out. This is a compact aircraft.





I am really enjoying this project more than I thought that I would. I had read so many negative things about this kit, and really I wonder if some of those guys are as hot shot of modelers as they are supposed to be, or if they are merely spoiled from building easy shake and bake kits. Really I have yet to come across anything terrible. This kit is not perfect, but it is no dog either.

More to come tomorrow.