Alrighty then, my turn to report on progress. The Vampire has been slowly advancing in its build status. Majority of areas needing putty and sanding are well underway and I've laid down some Tamiya Flat Aluminum paint to see how these areas look. I have been using Vallejo Acrylic Resin Plastic Putty and it has been a dream to work with. No shrinkage, spreads smoothly and sands nicely. Here's the underside where most filling was needed.

DSC00665 by Jan Etal, on Flickr

The counterweights on the rear stabilizer were the last two grey coloured pieces in the kit to be added. Besides finish painting and decals, just need to add the pilots and the clear canopy parts. Here's where the rest of the Vampire stands.

DSC00666 by Jan Etal, on Flickr

Bit more filling to do around the intakes but that should go quickly.

Cheers,
Jan

Jan,

Looking good! I'm thinking you can finish it in the next 5 days!

Good luck!

John,

Although I've "put my nose to the grindstone", so to speak I keep on running into stumbling blocks. I had hoped to make some serious progress Sunday and Monday BUT Sunday afternoon my trusty 10 year old Iwata Eclipse airbrush decided it no longer wanted to spray paint. I have cleaned it religiously after each use and has always been fine. I spent the rest of Sunday and Monday trying to resolve the non-spraying issue. I finally resorted to gathering up all the tools that come with the airbrush and disassembling the beast. I soaked everything in the nasty smelling Tamiya airbrush cleaner and went over each part with cotton swabs.

The long and the short of it is that it appears that my normal cleaning routine did not work well after using the Tamiya Flat Aluminum paint in the brush. Traces of the metallic paint were evident in many nooks and crannies of the airbrush parts. Obviously there might be something unusual with that metallic paint that caused it to clog things up. at this stage about 90+% of the Vampire has finish paint applied with less than 10% still needing to be finished up. There are a myriad of decals in this kit and the canopy pieces still need to be glued and painted. In all honesty, I'll try to have it done but I'm not overly optimistic.

Cheers,
Jan

Taking a small break but have been at the Vampire steady all day. Decals have proved too be a nightmare with curling, breaking, partially dissolving when coated with Solvaset as well as other problems. They are just too darn delicate. Painting 99% done but canopy pieces need to be added.

Back to work.....

--Jan

Finish photos of the Vampire submitted in the campaign gallery. Here's a "cheater".

Vampire Finals-A-2 by Jan Etal, on Flickr

Cheers,
--a rather frazzled Jan

Way to go Jan!

I knew you could do it!!

John,

I’m glad someone thought I might complete the campaign because I was sure a few times that it wasn’t going to happen. The kit decals were deadly and to be honest, I came close to giving up after the third large one ripped just coming out of the water. Other than that and a few instruction anomalies it’s actually quite a detailed and nice kit. Thanks for running this campaign, it’s my first in about five years.

Cheers,
—Jan

OK, time to wrap this one up. Congrats to those who finished and thanks to all who participated. And a special thanks to John for coming up with the idea and leading the campaign!

Ribbons have been awarded so let me know if you didn't get one and think you should have. See you around the site!

Michael

Jan,

The pleasure was all mine! I fully understand the difficulties in getting one of them done!

For everyone else that participated, I thank you!

The totals to date are 6 of 13, so a 46% completion, great modeling! For those that didn't make the finish, worry not! Hangar Queen 9 is still open for business!

John

Michael,

Thank you!

Same here, Michael!

Cheers,
Jan

Thanks guyz, I didn't learn how to fly this time around, but I did learn how to rig a biplane.

Still a lot of wires left to go,but this is working out way better than I had hoped.

Mark, that looks quite impressive so far, especially for that scale! Perhaps you could start a thread in an appropriate forum detailing the method or process that you're using.

Cheers,
Jan

Jan,

Great Idea, Mark Builds a Biplane

Hey, too late, but another update. All of the wing lines are done.