A safe,
reliable, and economic transcontinental airliner for many years, this 5050 shp
RR Tyne Mk512 turboprop aircraft suffered from medium range jetliner
introduction in the market during early sixties, so only 44 Vanguards were
built, initially ordered by BEA and Trans Canada. BEA began operations in
December 1960 with Type 951 (G-APEA to G-APEF). The Vanguard 953 (G-APEG to G-APEU)
is the late variant, G-APEP being the last one to fly when ferried
back to Weybridge on 17th October 1996, as a Merchantman (converted to
freighter) wearing the Air Bridge / Hunting Cargo Airlines livery and the
name “Superb”. The biggest external difference between type 951 and 953 seem
to reside in a horizontal framing on the type 951 triangular cockpit windows.
Since
I had spent hours (I mean entire days) reading the wonderful airfix
catalog in the seventies, I wanted for long to build a Vanguard, but a BEA
"Red Square" Vanguard or nothing! So I managed to purchase an
old Airfix box (with the beautiful artwork I had seen in the 1975
catalog). In addition, I ordered the Welsh Models Vacform kit and an
Aeroclub metal prop set.
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Reference material
was mainly www.airliners.net
showing a huge collection of Vanguard pics.
An
anonymous article about the very same subject in the January 1991 issue of
Scale Aircraft modelling magazine was also very useful as well as the
"Classic Airliners" book by Tom Singfield (Midland Publishing).
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From
the Airfix kit, I selected wings, engine nacelles, prop spinners, tailplane,
landing gear, landing gear doors, red squares, registration decals and
union jacks.
From
the Welsh kit, fuselage, nose scoops, window decals, access doors decals were
elected to be used.
Scratchbuilding
went on for cockpit framing and glazing, then for other small detail or
decal,
Fuselage:
The Airfix fuselage seem accurate, except for the too short and rounded nose
cone, so the Welsh vac fuselage was cut off, and assembled with 4 bulkheads,
matt black paint and nose weight inside, then the wing roots were worked to get
the Airfix wings fitted.
Wings
and tailplane: The Airfix wings were inserted to the Vacformed fuselage using a
thick plastic card between roots to gain strength. As
chord and thickness are slightly different between both kits, bits of
plastic, a superglue / talcum powder mix, and thorough sanding were necessary to
get everything flush and strong enough.
Cockpit
windows: I have nothing against decal cockpit window, which I mostly use on
1/144 airliners, but those produced by Welsh Models are not dark enough to my
taste, they do not capture pretty well the correct shape of the Vanguard ones,
and previous experience on other kits made me fear of fitting problems, so I
decided to proceed the same way as in the article in “Scale Aircaft Modelling”
magazine. It worked fine for my first try with this method:
Engine Nacelles:
A lot of filling, re-shaping with superglue or milliput, and sanding were
necessary, then I cut out the different intakes in an acceptable shape.
After the silver paint was applied, I painted and buffed a piece of decal
with Humrol Metalcoat 27003 (steel), to cut appropriate cowling patches.
Further detail was completed using black decal and the scoops got a touch
of matt black. The intakes rings were brush coated with darkened aluminium
enamel.
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Props:
To fit Airfix spinners to metal props:
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1)
Airfix spinners cleaned up
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2)
Airfix spinners
Devoided
(tough job!) |
3)
The metal props had their spinners cut off
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The
prop blades were sanded smooth, painted “bare metal silver”, then the de-icers
were made from black decal stripes and paint. Once the yellow tips were painted,
I coated the props with Future, superglued them on nacelles then plugged the
spinners, simply with Blu-Tack.
Landing
gear: Very straightforward except a thorough cleanup of the Airfix parts. I
simply had to make a hole in the fuselage to plug the nosewheel, and simulated a
wheel bay with matt black decal.
Painting: Tamiya
spraycans were used to paint the model:
- Primer, bottom fuselage and spinners: AS-16 Light Grey USAF
- Top Fuselage and tailplane: TS-27 Matt White
- Wing leading edge and engine nacelles: TS-30 Silver Leaf
- Wings: TS-49 Bright Red
- Cheatline and tail top: TS-29 Semi-Gloss Black
- Prop blades and gear doors: AS-12 Bare Metal Silver.
Upon decalling, the model was sealed with "Satin Varnish"
Humbrol Spray ( A gloss finish gives a toylike look to your model, I guess),
except for wing leading edges and engine nacelles.
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Decalling:
The Airfix decals for the BEA “Red Square” livery were very old as the box
was, and strongly yellowed, but the only realistic option was to use them as
with no material to make my own. So, I placed them in a transparent film which
was taped on a window, facing outwards, for several weeks, to “bleach” them
as much as I could.
Another
problem soon appeared: The Airfix option depicts G-APEB. This aircraft had been
the only Vanguard to wear the old “Peony Red” livery (the one you get with
the Welsh Models kit) for a brief period in 1959, before receiving the “red
square” scheme worn by every BEA Vanguards. But as the first one to receive it
as an experimental livery, G-APEB tail red squares are smaller and not located
the same place on the fin, than on the other BEA Vanguards.
Fortunately,
the wing squares (with white border) were too large but convenient for the
average Vanguard tail, so I cut them inside the white border, to swap
between each other. For the wings, I cut tight the BEA letters and the
white borders were made from spares box stripe.
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Then
G-APEB became G-APEP with the help of a hobby knife. Window decalling
nearly came to desaster on the left side, before I decided to apply
separate sections of 2 to 3 windows at a time on the right side, as the
Welsh decals were unusually fragile and sticky.
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The
door decals were only provided for the left side ( 2 wide and 1small aft),
as I stated on many pics there are 2 other doors on the right side, and of
smaller size than their opposite (less than a red square width), so I used
2 Bristol Britannia doors I had in the spares box, to set before the
squares as shown.
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Conclusion: Not an
easy build, but that subject was a long awaited “must have” for me, and it
fits nicely aside my BEA Comet IVB in my showcase.
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Upon
completion of this model, Albert Ross from Swindon, UK told me that after being
pestering everyone to make some BEA red square decals, F-DCAL (http://www.f-dcal.com/
)are about to release some for a Trident, Viscount and Vanguard in 1/144th. He
also heard rumours of them in 1/72nd for an Airfix Heron and for the FROG/Maquette
Herald. Very good news indeed!
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More
of my building (and on many different aircraft subjects) available at my webpage:
http://www.freewebs.com/aeroscale
Alex
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