Vampire FB.5

Sprue shot, after washing it with soapy water.
 

some mold imperfections but are easy to remove, I do not notice any other flashes other than the one from fuselage and gear leg.

My impression on the plastic is that it is quite soft rather than Italeri's plastic, and Trumpeter decision to put sprue connector to the 'inward' part of the kit rather than on the surface of the kit does bring some pros and cons for me. And fuselage surface that I got are quite rough and needs to be cleaned up. The rivets are fine but too bad that the tail and aileron does not get some riveting. 

Cockpit Assembly with Flat Black as basis. 

Cockpit with PE applied. I decided to utilize the instrument panel part from the kit and sanded it off to give more structural integrity of the cockpit rather than following fully the Eduard PE guide to replace it. 

Added some plasticard on the gear bay. There was a very open gaping hole and is visible through the cockpit. 

Test fitting. 

 

Sprayed some flat clear varnish and gave some dry brushing. 

PE instrument panel. Gave some drops of gloss varnish for individual inst 

Coc 

 

 

 

Creating sub-assemblies. 

 

Fuselage being assembled and prepainted the tip with C66 Bright Green 

Primed with Alclad Black Primer 

Coated with Alclad Aluminum Airframe. Now I understand how powerful Alclad is for metallic paint. 

 

Since as I know Vampire isn't too glossy or metallic (NMF) since parts of it made out of wood, I tone it down with Flat Clear coat 

Coated with Clear Coat and then applying the decal. Trumpeter's red color for decal isn't exactly known for its strong suit. 

Decal finished, coated it again with Flat Clear. 

Assembling the External Fuel Tank, I changed it since slipper tank option is for Vampire F.1 as far as I know. 

 

It is officially finished