Sud-Ouest Vautour II N

 This is the 1:48 Hi-Tech limited run injection moulded kit built straight out of the box.  As its creator Philippe Jourdan states "our kits require some work to be done by the modeller".  He is not wrong, although he has provided well detailed resin cockpits, engines and undercarriage bays to limit the need for serious scratch building.

 The injection moulded elements comprise fuselage halves, wing top and bottom
 and the wing mounted engine pods split down the centre.  These parts fit together OK but a reasonable amount of filler is needed to blend the engine pods into the wing and the wing to the fuselage followed by re-scribing the panel lines. Essentially the construction process is as for a vac-form without the need to cut the components from the backing sheet. An etched metal sheet from Eduard is supplied with the kit and contains cockpit, wheel and wheel well details as well as fuselage pitot tubes and undercarriage bay door hinged and actuators.

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 The undercarriage legs are cast in a soft white metal which is easy to clean and requires the addition of actuating rods for completion.  I used steel rods cut from long mapping pins to give strength to the undercarriage.  The illustrations in the single A4 instruction sheet are somewhat limited but after staring at them and the kit bits for a few hours with a large G&T they seemed to make sense.

 I opened up the speed brakes so that I could use the separate injection moulded examples supplied by Hi-Tech with the interior scratch built using plastic sheet. 

The model was primed with Halfords grey acrylic spray primer and then various wing an fuselage panels were masked off before re-spraying with Halfords "Nissan Silver" paint.  Smaller panes were also painted with Humbrol Metalcote before removing the masks and buffing with SNJ aluminium powder to give a contrasting metal finish.

 The excellent kit decals were used to represent a Vautour II N of ECTT 2/30  Normandie-Niemen.

 I have seen reviews of this kit criticise it for poor fit and finish, however I thoroughly enjoyed making it and would heartily recommend it to anyone who has a few vac-forms behind them.

Darius

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