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1/48 Aerospatiale Gazelle HT2 705 Naval Air Squadron (Fujimi) - DONE FOR NOW


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Nothing much to show yet - just wanted to get my thread started!

The statutory box and sprue shots. (Royal Air Force?? Not bloomin' likely, Fujimi-san).

Incidentally, I can exclusively reveal that the two Martians included in the kit as "crew" will not be making an appearance. Even allowing for the age of the kit they are pretty nasty!

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I have done a tiny bit - removing the horrible moulded grille (access to the avionics bay under the starboard side) and replacing it with some brass mesh. Now I just beed to work out how to do the plate that surrounds it!

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More soon; thanks for looking.

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Fantastic, could have been one of my choices but couldn't find any decals, how dum am I? As they say amswers on a postcard please. I'll enjoy watching your build.

Colin

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I've got a couple of these in the stash, waiting to be built so I'll be watching this for some useful hints and tips.

Nice work on the grill.

Mike

Note to oneself... get some very fine mesh!

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Go on give us a pic of the pilots now you've whet my appetite!

OK then. Check out that sunken chest, "interesting" width/height ratio, flat / non-existent face and colossal round helmet. With more skill than I have, I expect you could make something of them, but this is positively their final appearance in this thread!

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Put it this way: I am collecting 1/48 seated aircrew for another long-term project [i need about 15-20, preferably in WW2 attire, though that's less important]. Even given the fact that I am collecting, these are going into the bin.

More soon; I might even get some work done on it today and/or tomorrow!

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First (rotary wing) solo - Trafalgar Day 1985.

Small progress today, largely trying to sort out the poorer aspects of the model. The seats are horrible - kind of generic miniature sofas - so I have started some surgery on them to make them look a little bit more sensible. The only thing to show so far, though, is the IP, which has had some Airscale instrument bezels added to try to make it look a bit more like my reference shots. After all, the Gazelle has an awful lot of window up front, so it needs to look at least vaguely like the real thing!

More tomorrow...

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As I said, an attempt to improve the seats, showing before & after (I hope you can tell which is which...)

I have also scratch built a collective for the LHS pilot (not yet shown in pics) - the kit seems to think he controls his power with a fire extinguisher!

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The wire, which is supposed to give an idea of the characteristic beading on the edge of a Gazelle seat, won't be so obvious once I have primed & painted. I've changed the shape of the seat back (adding > a millimetre of card), scribed the grooves which are in the seat back, plus the column for the inertia reel to the straps, the reel itself and a control wire, and finally added the frame on which the seat slides around. Once painted, it should be good enough, I think - the doors aren't going to be open!

More later; now I have to match up the other seat.

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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OK then. Check out that sunken chest, "interesting" width/height ratio, flat / non-existent face and colossal round helmet. With more skill than I have, I expect you could make something of them, but this is positively their final appearance in this thread!

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Put it this way: I am collecting 1/48 seated aircrew for another long-term project [i need about 15-20, preferably in WW2 attire, though that's less important]. Even given the fact that I am collecting, these are going into the bin.

More soon; I might even get some work done on it today and/or tomorrow!

Typical looking WAFU in my experience :fight:

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Originally, yes - from the 1930s, I think; most Fish'eads (Seamen) would tell you it stands for Wet And F*cking Useless.

"WAFU" is basically what everyone (including themselves, sometimes) calls members of the Fleet Air Arm (aircrew, maintainers, the lot).

Some more progress, slow but sure - my eyes are going in circles after some of this lot, so I am stopping for a bit.

Instrument panel starting to get some paint (more to do yet);

RH seat in place, with some straps (just one more strap to go, but my first effort was swallowed by the Carpet Monster);

Scratch-built collective (with the black rubber boot) for the LH seat;

Half-rebuilt LH seat; and

Re-worked collective for the RH seat [the two levers are very different in the Gazelle].

Looking messy at the moment, but I'm happy with where it's going.

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Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Once I started taking a proper look at the engine, I realised I was never going to be happy with it OOB. "Simplified" is to be kind; in particular, the intake is way too basic - and this time they have avoided the whole issue of how to engrave / represent grilles / mech by just ignoring them altogether.

This is the original part (actually, I lie; it's the part hastily blu-tacked back together for me to take this photo, having already cut it in half!).

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The tapered bit to the right is the intake; you can see from the photo below (of a French Army cab, from the BM walkrounds section, for illustration only) that the intake is actually inside a mesh guard. we can safely ignore all the pipework etc on the engine itself, because on my version that's hidden under cowling - but the blue bit, visible under the mesh FOD-guard, is what I am trying to represent.

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So, having glued the two halves and let the join really cure for 48 hours, I cut the engine in two and started filing it to build the intake. The vanes in the intake (i.e. not the joins in the FOD-guard) proved insufficient to support the engine, so I drilled out the part and inserted a rod to run through the centre and keep it all aligned.

Two of the filed vanes have survived, and two are about to be added from plastic card: the photo below shows the kit form engine, which will be built tomorrow once everything has cured (I have also painted the innards black since this pic). Note the mesh, which will eventually form the FOD-guard.

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Elsewhere in the build, the LH seat now matches the RH one, so tomorrow I might also get the cockpit put together.

More soon - thanks for looking.

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Little bits of progress - been away.

First, some work on the rotor head, which is too fat and way over-simplified. It's getting there, but still lots to do:

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Secondly, the cockpit gradually taking shape. The port rudder (sorry - "yaw") pedals were a casualty of the carpet monster, but actually I am not at all happy with the kit pedals, so they're both going to be scratch built. Here it is so far, though, with scratch port collective (missing altogether in kit) fairly radically reworked cyclics (both of them), some major revision of the seats and added instrument cabling etc. Straps yet to be done, plus those pedals.

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Some more progress - in fact we're getting close to buttoning a few things up.

I have spent the past two days scratch building my own yaw pedals. For a start, the cockpit floor of the kit was wrong - I couldn't work out why I remembered seeing nothing but the view beyond my boots when I flew these things, but the kit had the pedals sticking up a good foot (scale!) before the edge of the cockpit floor. I can't believe I hadn't noticed it before, but a few reference checks later I realised how wrong the kit is. If you look at the photo in my previous post above, you can clearly see the difference in the shape of the cockpit floor.

Chopped off that scale foot and completely re-worked the pedals. Here they are, with an original kit pair on the blu-tac next to them for comparison.

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Sorry - not that easy to photograph. Apart from the fact that both pedals grow from a tube that runs sideways (almost said "athwartships" there, but decided to forego being too nautical on you...) under the cockpit floor, there's also the fact that the original part is simply square and the same thickness all the way round, which is hopeless. Plus the fact that the real ones are entirely separate pedals, not two halves of a single lump. Anyway, I am much happier with these, though they were a right faff to do; loads of tiny pieces of plastic sticking to my fingers or the tweezers! A few minor paint touches to do, then the cockpit is finally done.

The other thing I have been heavily modifying is the Astazou engine - specifically the intake (already mentioned in a couple of posts above). I have now completed the mesh FOD-guards - just remains to paint them once they are dry. Again, it isn't easy to photograph with just an iPad, but the final shot is to show that you can now see through the engine at certain angles, which is correct.

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Incidentally, the exhaust is black because it will eventually be painted with Alclad to get some burnt metal effects; this is the gloss black primer layer, which now needs re-painting after all the handling it got fitting those uber-fiddly mesh guards.

Glad this is complete; now I ought to be able to make some much faster progress.

I have also sanded off the not very special rivets in on the tail - to be replaced with Archer decals once it's buttoned up.

Ooh, and one final thing; I have finally worked out how to do the (very prominent) plate that runs around the edge of the grille into the avionics bay - some very, very careful cutting of the thinnest card I could find, and here we are; with some paint and a few rivets it'll do.

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More soon, and thanks for looking!

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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The trouble with looking too closely at these kits is that, once you've started improving bits like engine intakes and yaw pedals, you notice all sorts of other areas that could be better - like, for instance, the fenestron. The actual fenestron itself isn't bad; the blades are nice and thin and look decent enough. ...but the gearbox... oh dear! Either Fujimi only had access to an aircraft where the TRGB was covered over (let's be kind and say that must have been it), or they just gave up. I certainly never saw an RN Gazelle with the TRGB faired over on the starboard side (where the control runs are):

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Also, the vanes stick out much too far beyond the skin of the tail (hard to see in this picture) and have gaps which would be hard to fill between them and the fenestron wall. All in all, it had to go!

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I filed it down to just the three frames and added a piece of tube (which happened to be exactly the right size), with the wall suitably thinned. Add some lead wire for the frame, a piece of carved sprue from the kit for the gear box, a control rod from a length of trusty plastic rod and a hydraulic pipe made from a section of guitar string, and it looks much better:

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The fenestron fan itself will be on the other side, obviously; all I need to add now are the replacement fins for the struts at 7 & 11 o'clock (down is to the right in that pic).

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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