Operated by the Royal Candian Air Force's 421 Squadron, but based at RAF Odiham in the UK for training in the late 1940s and early 50s until replaced by the Sabre.
Like the eponymous Vampire, this model has gone through several lives. Beginning back in July '23 when it was to be part of a DH group build on Britmodeller, I had originally planned it in the metallic RCAF scheme.
The Mark 1 Models kit is nicely detailed but definitately a classic 'short run' plastic kit with big sprue gates and loose fit on many parts.
The fuselage is split along the sides, leaving a rather big seam that needed a lot of filler.
The tail is a delightful buttress joint.
At this point, after half a tube of filler had gone into the kit, I decided to chicken out of the metallic scheme and go for a more forgiving green scheme - a Swedish livery.
However, somewhere along the line I just couldn't get this brushpainted scheme to my satisfaction. The deliniation wasn't quite right and the paint just wouldn't go on smoothly - it ended up in my Crypt of Shame©
Then in January of this year it rose from the tomb for the Britmodeller KUTA group build, along with several other planes that I decided to completely re-boot the paintwork on.
Paintwork stripped off without much damage - I added more filling to the agressive horizontal seam line which also filled the panel lines below the canopy, but reference photos show that there are no visible panel lines here anyway, the kit ones are spurious - so I decided to go back to silver and the original Canadian theme.
A metallic coat and it was straight on with the decals.
The decals even come pre-cut to fit the open wheel doors (doesn't seem to happen as often as it should on kits)
Canopy fitted and she was complete, except for a diorama.
I went with a simple base, referenced to photos of the airfield at the time. Added a 3d printed start cart from Ray Rimes Minatures and a figure from eBay seller 3djson.
The Landrover was an Oxford dicast I found at a model railway show. To make it more presentable I cut out the very large clear plastic struts on the interior that held the screws and glued it back together. I carefully brushed matt varnish across all surfaces aside from the windows and repainted the yellow roof as it was too softly deliniated at the edges.
With a name plate from Name It Plates, that was the build finally complete after 15 months.
