D.H. 100 Vampire FB.5
"RAF Service"

Xtrakit, 1/72 scale

Reviewed by Mark Davies

Valom's 1/48 scale An-2 Colt is available online from Squadron.com

The Vampire was Britain’s second production jet fighter. The Vampire MK I had a very short endurance. The next production version, the F.3, improved on this by adopting more internal tankage and the ability to carry drop-tanks, although the drop tanks caused buffeting that led to some changes in the tailplane being made. The opportunity was also taken to fit the more powerful Goblin 2 that increased static thrust by 200 lbs.

By 1948 the RAF had decided that the Gloster Meteor was the better of its two available jet fighters for continued development in the interceptor role until the next generation of jet fighters became available. However, the Vampire had a number of attractive features, and was well suited to specialise as a fighter-bomber.

Accordingly, de Havilland developed a strengthened wing with thicker skin, 1ft was clipped from each wingtip to enhance low-level handling, and extra strong points for up to 2,000 lbs. of underwing stores were added. The undercarriage was also strengthened to cope with the faster sink speeds on landing due to the higher wing loading. The F.3’s Goblin 2 engine was retained. In all more FB.5’s were to be produced than any other Vampire, 930 being built for the RAF and 88 for export.

Previous Vampire FB.5 Kits

There have been four 1/72 major previous injected Vampire FB.5 kits. Two have been around for a long time, an old one by Frog (re-boxed by Airlines and Novo), and the much better Heller offering, which can be made to result in a nice model (re-boxed by Airfix, Revell, Lodella, Tasman and others).  More recently there have been releases by A Model and Cyberhobby. A Model’s kit has several inaccuracies, is compromised by using one set of parts to cover multiple versions, and is limited run; whilst Cyberhobby has imaginary cockpit detail, spurious panel lines on the fuselage, and is over-priced in my opinion. By far the best Vampire FB.5 kit is the CMR resin multi-media issue, which is both very accurate and highly detailed; but it is expensive when compared the injected kits.

There clearly remains room in the market for an accurate and modern injected kit of the Vampire FB.5. Xtrakit’s release is therefore most welcome. The kit is produced by the MPM-Group, and shares the sprues with releases by this company’s Special Hobby and Azur brands.

The kit comes packaged in an end-opening box with attractive front artwork and colour profiles on the rear face. The airframe parts are in re-sealable plastic bags, with the decals and clear parts further protected in their own re-sealable bags.

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The instructions consist of eight glossy A-5 pages in a stapled booklet form. They are of excellent quality, featuring a brief aircraft history, parts map,    very straightforward and clear assembly diagrams complete with detail colour call-outs. The painting & markings guides are coloured four-view diagrams. Paint colours are cross-referenced to the Xtracolor range. They also include a note on the two different sized underwing roundels used during different periods, and mention that both sizes are catered for by the decal sheet. The instructions also include illustrations of after-market items designed to compliment this kit; these being a coloured MPM PE detail set (made by Eduard) and two Xtradecal sheets to compliment this kit (covering RAF & foreign operators of the Vampire FB.5, reviewed here in today’s “What’s New”).

There are two main sprues, and these are beautifully moulded; being crisp, flash-free, and with narrow sprue gates. Surface detail is superb, with a combination of very fine recessed panel lines and subtle raised reinforcement areas and panel locking clasps. Some very finely moulded small parts are included.

The Kit

Assembly is fairly typical for a twin-boom fighter produced in a two-piece mould. Cockpit detail is good for the scale and small size of the model. It includes a 3-D instrument panel that can be decorated with a decal if wished to provide for the instrument faces. The control column is quite elaborately detailed and finely moulded considering its small size. There is also a control side-console, gun-sight with separate clear reflector, and head-rest to add to the cockpit area. The seat looks fine, but lacks any harness detail. As an aside, I am surprised more brands do not offer decal harnesses like Tamiya does – If cut out with their backing paper in place (and the paper painted a suitable colour), these harnesses can be quite effective in 1/72-scale when used with closed canopy models.

A commendably thin and clear two-piece canopy tops things off, although an open canopy will require a harness to be added. Pavla or Rob Taurus will no doubt release Vac-form canopies for this kit in due course, but most will be happy with the kit items I think.

Of course, the coloured PE set by MPM mentioned earlier will do much to dress up the cockpit, and so do justice to the inclusion of a two piece canopy. There are also resin cockpit sets designed for other brand Vampire kits that could fit; and no doubt soon some will be released specifically for this and the Special Hobby/Azur kits.

The fuselage is split horizontally, and in addition to the cockpit, it encloses a compressor face and turbine. Due to tooling limitations the compressor face is a rather a compromise, to put it kindly. It looks more like two river-boat paddle wheels than one centrifugal compressor; but this matters little as I seriously doubt much of it will be visible through the intakes. The lower half of the fuselage is interestingly tooled as it includes the curved rear face of the air-intakes, which are designed to be enclosed within the wing halves - A clever approach. The instructions mention to add weight within the separate nose cone, but do not state how much. I would fill it with all you can. Turning to the exterior surfaces of the fuselage, we find a nice deep integral nose-wheel bay and nice cannon blast-troughs (holes will need to be drilled in these for a more convincing appearance however). The link and cartridge ejection chutes are nicely captured, as are the various cannon and engine access panels.

The wings are nicely done, and predictably are split in two halves, but they also have separate clear tips to provide for clear navigation lights. This is a very nice touch indeed, and it is one other brands could do well to follow. The main wheel wells include an adequate mount of structural detail, but are unavoidably a fraction shallow due to being moulded within the lower wing halves. Some darkening of the interiors and a shadow-simulating washe will reduce this in appearance. The prominent air-intakes are tooled as single pieces that fix to the joined wing halves, and so ensure a nice finish to this area. The tail booms and single horizontal tail surface will need careful alignment, but there are some fairly generous inserts to help locate the tail-booms. A couple of very finely moulded elevator mass balances round out this area.

The undercarriage is nicely done, with good detail that includes the door retraction linkages and well-executed undercarriage legs. The nose-wheel is separate from the nose-leg (unusual in kits of this size) and split in two halves. This is because the wheel has an anti-shimmy tyre with two side ridges. So do not make the mistake of thinking the tyre halves area a poor fit and start sanding the inner spacer down; the parts are designed to provide the raised circumferential ridges of the original’s tyre. The main wheels have separate open-side hubs that will aid painting, but the brake side where the axle inserts is moulded with the tyre.

Not much remains to mention. There is a pair of drop-tanks and four rockets with unavoidable slightly thick fins.

Frankly, as a fighter-bomber variant a few more payload options could have been offered; 250, 500 or 1,000-lb HEMC bombs come to mind here. But the two main sprues are already crowded, and another sprue of weapons would serve to push the price up, so their omission is perhaps understandable.

Accuracy

I have one benchmark when it comes to Vampire accuracy in The One True Scale, and that is CMR’s superb range of resin multi-media Vampire kits. I seriously doubt that any kit company has invested more effort into Vampire research. Having made a small contribution to it myself I gained an insight to how much work CMR’s then-owner (Petr Buchar) and his global network put into the various CMR Vampire projects.

I know that the MPM-group have checked out the CMR kits, and so I fully expected a close correlation between the two brands’ products. Dimensional, shape and detail agreement are indeed soon both apparent and abundant upon comparing the two kits; albeit that the parts breakdown is quite different.

However, I was genuinely surprised to find that the Xtrakit (Special Hobby/Azur) tail-booms are a fraction over 1-mm shorter than CMR’s. A scale 3” is hardly worth losing sleep over, and I cannot say for sure who is more correct; but I do feel confident in saying that this new Xtrakit release is very accurate overall.

Colours & Markings

Decals are typical of Xtrakit, being well registered and the appearance of good opacity.

They are printed by Aviprint. Markings are for one camouflaged and one overall high-speed silver scheme, these being:

• WA294, V9-C 0f No 502 (Ulster) Squadron, RAuxAF, RNAS Sydenham, 1953, and

• VZ180, F, of No 605 (County of Warwick) Squadron, RAF Gibraltar on exercise 1955-56.

This is the best injected kit of a Vampire FB.5 in 1/72-scale; probably any scale for that matter. It is only bettered in detail, payload choice and markings options by the far more expensive CMR kit.  Xtrakit’s Vampire is a superbly executed kit with high levels of detail and excellent production quality. I also think it is price is an absolute bargain.

With the two Xtradecal sheets mentioned earlier, and the bargain pricing, you should consider buying several and make the most of this kit to produce a colourful collection of high quality Vampire models.

I cannot recommend this kit highly enough.

Thanks to Hannants for the review sample

Text Copyright © 2014 by Mark Davies
Images Copyright © 2014 by Brett Green
Page Created 14 April, 2014
Last updated 14 April, 2014

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