1/72nd Archives - Jets of the cold war

Airfix 1/72 de Havilland Vampire T.11(A02058A)

The completed Airfix 1/72 de Havilland Vampire T11

Aquired the Airfix 1/72 de Havilland Vampire T.11 as a Christmas gift one year, so has been sat in my stash for a while.

Another one built straight out of the box, but with the addition of some decals from the Xtradecl set “de Havilland Vampire T.55 Pt.1 X72173”.

So the scheme I went for is a Vampire J-28C-3 from the F5 squadron, Royal Swedish Air Force at Ljunbyhed, August 1967. The Xtradecal sheet contains markings for a Olive Green Swedish version. However I liked the high speed silver scheme.

Also on that sheet, there are markings’ for an Austrian, RAF, RNZAF, RAAF and South African Vampires. So plenty of choice for when I build some more.

Anyway, on with the build…

The box art

Box art of the Airfix 1/72 de Havilland Vampire T11

The attractive box art, with a very interesting RAF scheme.

However from what I have read, the dayglow decals supplied in the kit are very thick and take some work to get to sit as expected.

Kit contents

Kit parts of the Airfix 1/72 de Havilland Vampire T11

Kit contents, well the plastic parts anyway. Not too many parts, so should be quite a quick build.

Early paint stage

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 de Havilland Vampire T11

Various bits and bobs built and painted, plus a bit of a wash added in some areas.

Interesting note about the Swedish Vampire’s, they were not fitted with ejection seats!

Painting stages

OK, jumping ahead here, model primed (Halfords metal car primer), and some pre-shading.

One thing to note about this kit, is that you have to attach the landing gear legs during the build, and not after, which you can do with most builds.

Yes you guessed at, towards the end, one of the legs got snapped off.

Top half primed and pre-shaded.

Silver airbrushed on, in this instance Tamiya XF-16 Aluminium and a start made on the dayglow stripes. The stripes are a mixture of Hataka Luminous Orange (A194) and Hataka Signal Red (A276). These came from the Hataka Modern Royal Air Force Paint Set Vol.3.

The finished kit – Airfix 1/72 de Havilland Vampire T.11

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Products

During this build I used a number of products, that you also may find useful. To start with, fillers are something every model maker requires. The 2 that I find the best are Vallejo Plastic Putty and Standard Milliput Yellow-Grey.

For masking I use Tamiya 10mm tape and Tamiya 3mm tape plus when reuired standard decorating tape.

I always, well nearly always, take some of the stickiness from the tape by sticking it to my trousers before applying to the models painted surface.

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Quick update – 1/72 Airfix builds

Sorry, not been posting for a while, been busy with other projects that had to take priority over my model making. So here is a quick blog post about 2 1/72 Airfix builds I have on the go.

The Airfix 1/72nd Folland Gnat which will be finished as a Yellow Jacks aircraft (slowly building up my RAF aerobatic collection).

The other is a non-Cold War aircraft, and it is the Airfix 1/72nd Supermarine Spitfire Mk1a, I quite like taking a dip out off the Cold War builds as a break.

The Airfix 1/72 Spitfire Mk1a and the Airfix 1/72 Gnat, both work in progress.

Surprising how small the Folland Gnat is compared to the Spitfire.

Anyway, will post some updates when I get the opportunity, still have lots of non model maing projects to work on.

Airfix 1/72 builds – updates

Folland Gnat

So a week or so later and I’ve managed to move on with both builds.

With the Gnat, I have used Vallejo 71.408 PRU pink as a 2nd undercoat (over Vallejo Grey Primer) and then spraying the yellow, in this case Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow.

The reason I did this, is that yellow can be a pain to paint, as it is very transparent. So the pink gives it a better base coat. As you can see from the photos, did the job quite well.

Supermarine Spitfire

As for the Spitfire, that build is going really well.

I have now airbrushed the model, very happy with the finish of the paint. However that camouflage scheme, not right.

As this is my third attempt at airbrushing a camouflage scheme, I’m going to take it.

The method I used was to use blue-tak snakes to mark out the edges of the camo scheme. Then in fill with masking tape. Much harder than it looks to get those snakes to curve and stay in place.

Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair (No 1313) build.

The completed Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair model.

This Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair is another kit picked up on Ebay, and hopefully at a decent price.

Kit went together quite well, again if any issues, then that would be down to my lack of skill. Being one colour, it was also another useful airbrushing exercise, which didn’t quite go to plan.

Anyway, on with the build photos.

The box art

Box art for the Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair.

Nice attractive and dramatic box art. Those Suez markings are really nice, but didn’t go for that scheme.

The decals

Decal options for the Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair.

As with kits of this age, not many decals, just the main ones. Register etc., all looked good, so was happy to use them.

Kit contents

The Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair kit contents, as you see, not too much to put together.

Construction

Work in progress on the Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair.

Construction started, using a mix of Hataka and Vallejo paints.

Checking seam lines with black paint. Took a while to get them to not show.

Filling gaps on the Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair.

That seam line on the front half of the fuselage took some work to get rid of. I even made up some liquid plastic by melting bits of sprue in liquid poly glue.

Getting ready to prime the Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair.

Finally got it to a stage where I could give it a coat of primer. Canopy also masked, and gun barrels also cut off, to be replaced with metal wire.

Getting ready to prime the Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair, bottom side.

Underside ready for primer.

Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair primed, top half.

Top primed using Halfords Grey car primer. Gives a good hard coat of paint.

Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair primed, bottom half.

Bottom with a nice coat of primer.

Pre-shading on the Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair,

Because I had (for me) a success at pre-shading my earlier Spitfire build (Spitfire PR.XIX). I thought I’d give it a go on this Corsair.

Italeri 1/72 F4U-7 Corsair painted and ready for decals.

Unfortunately, I was a bit heavy handed with spraying the Vallejo 71.295 USN Sea Blue so lost all the pre-shading that I did. Still getting to grips with airbrushing, knowing when to stop seems to be the problem.

The finished kit

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Products

During this build I used a number of products, that you also may find useful. To start with, fillers are something every model maker requires, and the 2 that I find the best are Vallejo Plastic Putty and Standard Milliput Yellow-Grey.

For masking I use Tamiya 10mm tape and Tamiya 3mm tape plus when reuired standard decorating tape. I always, well nearly always, take some of the stickiness from the tape by sticking it to my trousers before applying to the models painted surface. Another masking product that I use is the Vallejo Liquid Mask.

The USN Sea Blue was Vallejo 71.295 , which sprayed quite well. The interior green was from the Hataka RAF in Africa acrylic paint set (AS08). I’ve had mixed results when spraying Hataka paints, but that may be more down to my ineperience.

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Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier FRS.1 (PK-37) build

Think I picked this Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier it up on Ebay at some point. Anyway, my first actual jet for a blog that has ‘jet’ as the first word in it’s description.

As with a lot of Matchbox kits, a very simple build, which I managed to mess up, but more of that later.

At the time of building this kit, the world is in the grip of the Corona Virus pandemic. Therefore I’m stuck at home, and getting non-essential supplies is not top priority. Plus I’m having to watch the cash flow, due to being furloughed from work. On a positive, I’m getting lots of model making done.

Anyway, on to the build, which is documented in photos.

Box Art

The box art, in the very ‘Matchbox’ style.

Kit contents

Contents of the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier.

Two sprues in the distinctive 2 colour style of Matchbox. Plus some slighty out of register decals.

Instruction sheet

Instruction sheet, font and back. Very faded, so wasn’t a great deal of help. Lucky for me, I have the Tamiya 1/48 Sea Harrier FRS1 in my stash (see my blog post about ScaleMates), so I could refer to the instruction sheet in that kit for colours and decal placement.

Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier instruction sheet, back.

The actual, very simple build process. Not something you could get wrong….right?

The Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier build

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Cockpit and engine plate.

That’s it for the cockpit detail. Didn’t want to put to much effort into detailing the kit, so decided to add the pilot to the office space. As you can see, primed with Halfords car primer.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier.

Interior spayed black with Vallejo 71.067 and some dry brushing on the simple jet intake with Vallejo Oily Steel 70.865. Also painted the pilot and stuck him on his ejector seat.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Fuselage construction.

Fuselage sides stuck together and clamped with washing line pegs and masking tape.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Filling gaps and seam lines, top.

This model required lots of sanding to get rid of the seam lines. The fit wasn’t actually too bad, but it did take a lot of work to remove the seam lines.

Also this is where I messed up. Trying to be smart, I didn’t follow the instructions to add the four jet nozzles, thinking they would get in the way, bad idea!

When I came to fit them after all work, including painting and decaling had been done, I discovered that they did not fit very well, the hole being too big in the fuselage. So had to do lots of extra work at the end to get the nozzles to sit on the kit.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Filling gaps and seam lines, bottom.

Same work required on the underside.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Masking for scribing air brakes,

Re-scribing the rear under carriage doors, using a Tamiya plastic scriber tool. I used electric tape as the guide.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Masking for scribing nose wheel bay,

Same work carried out for the front under carriage doors.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Checking for visible seam lines.

Using black paint to see if more work is required on seam lines etc.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Wings added.

Wings on, almost ready to apply the primer.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Model primed for top coat.

Primer applied, in this case, Halfords Car Primer.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Dark Sea Grey added.

The Extra Dark Sea Grey applied, or in this case, which was a very close match, Vallejo 70.816 Luftwaffe Uniform.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. White added.

Underside painted with Vallejo 71.001 White, which covers quite well, for a white paint.

Work in progress on the Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier. Glossed and ready for decals.

Vallejo Gloss Acrylic Varnish applied before decals added. It was then followed by another coat after the decals had been applied. Incidentally, I used Micro Sol to help the decals set on the Harrier.

Conclusion

Well as mentioned above, I messed up adding the jet nozzles, so had to mess about filling the holes where the nozzels sit, and then cutting the back off the nozzels so they sat a bit closer to the fuselage.

Another thing that I should have done differently, I should have added the to wing wheel units before addign the centre landing gear. This was I could have cut down to size the central landing gear so that all wheels touch the ground. Oh well, lesson learned, I have 3 other 1/72 Harriers in the stash, 3 different marks.

The finished Matchbox 1/72 Sea Harrier

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Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX (A02017A)

The completed Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX in Swedish Air Force markings. — Spitfire S.31, 3 Division Flottilj 11, Flygvapnet, Nyköping, Sweden, 1949

Not sure when I acquired this Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR XIX kit up. I obviously got it because it fits in the Cold War period.

Construction of the kit was straight out of the box.

To enhance the cockpit, seatbelts were cut from masking tape. At this scale and size of model, adding detail to the cockpit seemed a bit irrelevant.

The Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX build

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX kit. Painting of the interior parts.

Step 1 prime the inside areas, such as the cockpit, wheel wells etc., and then give them a coat of Hataka A025 Interior Grey-Green. I hand painted the cockpit details with various paints to hand.

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX kit, gluing the wings together.

Gluing the main components together, including the transparent areas where the cameras would be located in the real aircraft. Usual use of tape and pegs to hold the parts together while the glue sets.

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX , main construction completed.

Seam line and gaps filled and sanded. For small areas I use Vallejo Plastic Putty.

For larger gaps, such as the wing roots, I use standard yellow-grey milliput.

Sanding and filling is now completed, a black paint is applied to see if further work is required.

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX . Using black paint to check for flaws in the joins.

Canopy masked using Tamiya masking tapes and attached to the kit with PVA glue.

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX . Model primed and ready for top coats.

Kit primed with Halfords grey metal primer paint. I was keen to get the primer on, that I had forgotten to mask the side camera window. Then when I attempted to remove the primer, I pushed the window into the body of the fuselage. I did mask the two underside transparencies, I used Vallejo Liquid Mask.

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX , trying some pre-shading (top half).

With this kit, I decided to have a go at pre-shading. Lucky for me,, pre-shading does not have to be very accurate, as my airbrush skills are not up to precise work as yet.

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX , pre-shading on the lower half.

The underside pre-shaded.

Work in progress on the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX , PRU Blue added to top half.

As this is a photo reconnaissance aircraft, it has a nice simple paint scheme. I sprayed Vallejo 71.109 Faded PRU Blue for the overall colour. The pre-shading adds a nice subtle effect.

Work in progress on Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX , PRU Blue added lower half.

The underneath, wheel wells masked with blue-tak.

Work in progress on Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX , final bits and bobs.

Jumping ahead, model given a coat of gloss varnish then decals applied. I used Micro Sol to set the decals, but I really need to use much more than I do, as they don’t always settle in to the panel lines. Followed by a coat of varnish to seal the decals. To add a little extra I also did a very subtle exhaust stain using some pastel chalk from a cheap set of artist pastels.

The finished Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR.XIX

[Show slideshow]

Products

During the build of the Airfix 1/72 Spitfire PR XIX I used a number of products, that you also may find useful. To start with, fillers are something every model maker requires, and the 2 that I find the best are Vallejo Plastic Putty and Standard Milliput Yellow-Grey.

For masking I use Tamiya 10mm tape and Tamiya 3mm tape plus when required standard decorating tape. I always, well nearly always, take some of the stickiness from the tape by sticking it to my trousers before applying to the models painted surface.

I also used Vallejo Liquid Mask to mask the transparent parts of the kit.

The P.R.U. Blue was Vallejo 71.109 Faded P.R.U. Blue, which sprayed quite well. The Interior green was from the Hataka RAF in Africa acrylic paint set (AS08). I’ve had mixed results when spraying Hataka paints, but that may be more down to my inexperience.

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Airfix P-51D Mustang (A68208)- SAAF F-51D

Managed to pick up 2 Airfix P-51D Mustang starter sets earlier in the year for £4.99 each from Aldi.

The P-51D was still in use during the early part of the Cold War and in Korea.

Now that I had 2 Airfix P-51D Mustang’s in my stash my next step was to find some suitable decals. Came across a set by a company called Print Scale.

Print Scale have a Korean War F-51 set with a mixture of options. My next step was an impulsive purchase without doing any research on the quality of the decals.

On receipt of the decals it was surprise to see that the US ‘bars and stars’ and the Korean equivalent were out of register!

Looking at the photos on the small instruction leaflet of aircraft in Korea, the Korean markings do actual look out of register, but the US were not.

However, the set also included some SAAF (South Afirican Airforce) and some RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) markings, which all looked good.

The build of the Mustang did not throw up any nasty surprises. Fit was generally quite good.

Only issues I had with the build were the under carriage. It was a bit fiddly and feels flimsy.

I found the kits front windscreen was not a good fit. This may be more down to my skill level.

The aerial could not be removed from the sprue tree without breaking.

A first for me with this build was using Tamiya acrylics for spraying. I will admit being really pleased with how easy the Tamiya paints were to spray. Will certainly be moving over to them when I can.

Now back to the decals, they are a complete pain to use, very thin (which is a good thing). But fold over as soon as you try to remove them from the backing sheet. Care is required applying these decals.

Hope to have a USAF version up on the blog soon.

Anyway, the result, for me, is not too bad.

The completed Airfix P-51D Mustang

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