Gary West Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 Nice work so far - She's a tail sitter so dont forget so dont forget to descreetly add some weights in somewhere! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heloman1 Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 After you kindly sent me the spare Sharks decals, for which I'm extremely greatful, I've just had a scratch around in my stash to find the Heller Gazelle kit, thinking it might be better than the Fujimi kit. I should have known better, the MRH is just a few blobs the crew seats deck chairs without the legs....... I think I'll resign it back to the stash. Colin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 2, 2013 Author Share Posted July 2, 2013 (edited) AAAAAAGH! Disaster! Recoverable, and in the end relatively minor, but still a disaster... Mindful of the fact that, as Gary said above, she's a tail-sitter, once I had the fuselage safely bolted together I put in some nose weight. I built in a small baffle underneath the cockpit floor, and then poured in some Liquid Gravity - first time I have used it. It is basically a lot of heavy, but very small, balls, so you can pour them into a small space and then follow up with some CA glue to anchor everything in position. This I did, and then left the aircraft sitting on its nose to let everything dry. I was planning to go out, but thank God I didn't, because when I looked up... there was a great lake of CA glue leaking everywhere into the cockpit - eventually traced to the too-big original hole for the starboard cyclic, which clearly was not fully plugged by the stick once I fitted it. It isn't that easy to see in photos (but believe me it's bloody obvious in real life). I was able to minimise the damage a bit by spotting it early - the glue was still tacky enough to be relatively easily excavated using a thin blade. This picture is how it looks AFTER things have been improved, so use your imagination as to how horrible it looked an hour ago... I am going to leave it to dry thoroughly, and then some very careful sanding is in order, followed by some masking and re-spraying. In the end it has only spread over the cockpit floor, so it could be worse; I think if I had gone out the model might have been a write-off. It would have been almost impossible to disguise that amount of glue inside a large glazed cockpit like the Gazelle's. Still, look on the bright side: the CofG is very definitely forward now, so at least she won't sit on her fenestron. But I'm not happy! Here's an overall picture of the fuselage (which also shows the glue lake damage behind the pilot's seat) to be going on with, because progress is not going to look very spectacular for a day or so. This looks like the models I used to make when I was about 6; as much glue as plastic! Edited July 2, 2013 by Ex-FAAWAFU Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 2, 2013 Author Share Posted July 2, 2013 Oh man, this beast is fighting me all the way! While doing the sanding to make good the Great Glue Flood of '13, I thought I'd do some full-on dry fitting while I was there - particularly the front section of the canopy. Not. Even. Close. There must have been around 1/4" of gap. Sh*t - what have I done? Have I fitted the whole cockpit floor in the wrong place? Check refs - no - definitely not; the back seat essentially aligns with the rear of the back door (as in this pic from the BM Walkrounds section): OK, so maybe it's the IP pedestal - too far forward? No, can't be a) because if it were any further back it would would the collective, and (even in pure plastic fitting terms) because it simply wouldn't fit any further back because it is moulded with a great step on its underside. And it cannot be because it is fitted off-centre, because the pedal have to fit on either side of it, so I was particularly careful with that (even allowing for my replacement pedals). So in the end, it has to be the kit. Has anyone out there build this successfully without having to do some serious sanding of the IP pedestal to make the windscreen fit? If so, tell me how you did it! Anyway - what with the underside being flooded with CA glue (see above!) and all, there is no way on God's earth that the IP or the cockpit floor can be moved aft, so there was nothing for it but some major sanding. I don't have a "before" shot from fully side-on, but compare and contrast this: With this: Despite all this bad stuff today, I am not downcast; I still think I can make it look more than respectable in the end. But today has been one of those days when you wonder whether someone at the company who made the kit was running some kind of elaborate joke on us poor saps who try to make these things! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 4, 2013 Author Share Posted July 4, 2013 So, a couple of days on and I am almost recovered from the Great Glue Flood; the cockpit has been cleaned up (as best I can) and re-painted - just a couple of details to go such as re-fitting the outboard pedals on either side (I had to remove them in order to get at anything low down in the cockpit). You will note that the port door is now on; I am adding the cockpit glazing bits one at a time in order to give them lots of time to dry, because they all depend on each other for alignment - there's nothing stable to stick them to! I am also embarking on one more (final?) piece of scratch building, having noticed that there is no part for the cockpit roof - which means nowhere for the throttle, nowhere for the rotor brake, nowhere for the wander lights etc etc. Since some of these are pretty visible parts, even through a model canopy, I am building the roof mounting on which they hang. Lots of compound curves to fit, but so far it's working nicely. It's advanced a fair bit since this photo, but is currently sitting surrounded by clamps, so no pics til tomorrow! More soon, and thanks for looking. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel Heath Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 The cockpit and the thing you're doing with the roof look realy nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snapper_city Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 Good to see you taking this by the scruff and not letting it beat you. It will all be worth it in the end... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 5, 2013 Author Share Posted July 5, 2013 (edited) Positively (it sez 'ere...) the final set of improvements are the attachment points on the skids for the ground handling wheels. The kit's are pretty much just a couple of amorphous lumps, which means a) they're a lump short and b ) they lack holes. I tried drilling holes, but the moulding is very skew on one sprue of this kit (one reason for so much filing; there have been some serious moulding lines to clean up), which meant I either had the slots at a weird angle, which looked horrible, or the holes burst through the wall of the thing half-way through... so off they came, to be replaced with some plastic tube with its walls filed to about half original thickness. They have ended up a little over-scale, but they're still a big improvement (I think). Photo effectively shows before and after, cos I have only done one skid. Even the one that has been amended still needs work; the third hole needs to be added just where the vertical part of the skid meets the horizontal. Cockpit roof coming on; likely to be finished tomorrow. I have also had to insert a shim into the starboard side of the cockpit, in order to make the window fit properly; some over-enthusiastic cleaning up of parts, I think, so my fault. It'll look fine once cleaned up, but it is vital to get the windscreen part to fit tightly. More soon! Edited July 5, 2013 by Ex-FAAWAFU Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengalensis Posted July 5, 2013 Share Posted July 5, 2013 What a project! I really like the work you're doing here. Wonderful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 6, 2013 Author Share Posted July 6, 2013 (edited) The third hole is now fitted (& drilled through the leg of the skid, with a lot of concentration to make sure I was drilling dead straight!) And, in the same photo, the cockpit roof is finished (bear in mind you are looking at it upside-down, as it were; rotor brake & throttle levers to the left as we look, then wander lights, then random electrical boxes from ref shots (to do with the back seat intercom, if my memory serves, but it's over 25 years since I flew one of these!). The shim is also fitted, ready for the starboard door (it's the white bit just ahead of the masked and grey-painted window - I'm now just waiting for the internal paint to dry before fitting the door). Note also that the somewhat nerve-wracking business of fitting the horizontal stablilisers has started; starboard one glued in place, port to follow shortly (it just happens to be in the background of the shot!). Not too far from having a closed-up fuselage now, when the airbrush comes to life. More soon... Edited July 6, 2013 by Ex-FAAWAFU 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keefr22 Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 That's looking very neat! Good save from the great glue flood....!! keef Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
[email protected] Posted July 6, 2013 Share Posted July 6, 2013 Regarding WAFU.... Interestingly http://www.soslang.com/term/w.a.f.u. puts an entirely different slant on it....hehe, .....and yeah I'm overlooking the 'dots' between the letters. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 7, 2013 Author Share Posted July 7, 2013 I'm now trying to picture my Dad wearing clothes 5 sizes too big for him in 1943..... no, it's not working! Hadn't heard that one, anyway! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heloman1 Posted July 7, 2013 Share Posted July 7, 2013 It's coming together nicely Crispin, I like the treatment of the skids. Colin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 8, 2013 Author Share Posted July 8, 2013 (edited) She's still fighting! Got both doors on, fitted nicely with the shim, no probs. Then dry fitted a) the section of the fuselage which supports the rotor mast... bloomin' great step at the front edge (on the right in this pic): I'm not having that, but there are some complex curves in that part of the airframe, so it has taken a LOT of filing (God bless the inventor of the needle file!) to get it anywhere acceptable: b ) the windscreen... which isn't even close to fitting neatly, thus condemning me to the thing I dread most of all, namely filing / sanding clear parts. Luckily at the recent salisbury show I bought a set of Albion Alloys micro finishing cloths - which start at 1500 grit and end up at 12,000. I have never managed to get a decent result before, and feared a horrible scuffed, clouded screen (which is more prominent on the Gazelle than most aircraft), but so far it's looking promising - certainly with a coat of Humbrol Clear, I am optimistic that it will look OK. I have also changed plans re horizontal stabilisers. We all spend hours and hours mucking around with filler and sandpaper to get the perfect seamless, invisible joins bewteen wing and fuselage, so there is an irony that the Fuijimi kit doesn't have a big enough gap! The tail of the real aircraft has a pretty large gap between the horizontal stab and the fuselage, but if you fit the kit ones realistically, there is so little plastic touching that they fall off if you even look at them... so I have drilled them out and am fitting a brass rod through the tail. Speaking of brass rod, the kit isn't moulded with the distinctive grab handle under the tail (not all Gazelles are fitted with it, to be fair - but all the RN ones certainly were), so... I am going away for a few days, so there won't be any more progress til the weekend at the earliest. Thanks for looking, and happy modelling! Edited July 8, 2013 by Ex-FAAWAFU 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel Heath Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 Looking very good so far. Nice work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 16, 2013 Author Share Posted July 16, 2013 (edited) Not much progress over the weekend, because I was at the Test match on Thu - Sat (not complaining about that!). Not likely to be that much this week, either, because there's family wedding on Saturday, and (though it is my nephew getting married) it is in our home town so the entire family is descending on us... Anyway, FWIW this is about the only visible new stuff. I don't know how easy it is to see in this photo, but I have added the eyebolts at the bottom of the MRGB fairing / top rear corner of the back door (largely used for tie-down points, if I remember right). Also the external rods for the rear door jettison mechanism. You might also be able to make out that I have cut away the left-hand bottom corner (as we look here) of the MRGB fairing, and scribed a gap between the lower edge and the top of the fuselage. A model where the joins are too tight; that must be a first for me! The reason why is probably best explained by looking at this pic of the Gazelle in the RAF museum (my own photo from last week). This also shows the tie-down ring and the top part of the door jettison mechanism. Aside from all this detailing malarkey (but less photogenic), I have mostly been filling and sanding the tail in readiness for the first full coat of primer. More soon, and thanks for looking. Edited July 16, 2013 by Ex-FAAWAFU Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 16, 2013 Author Share Posted July 16, 2013 Ring the church bells and put out the bunting; my Gazelle finally has a windscreen! Lots o sanding to make it fit (it's too wide, especially at the bottom), and probably still more to do, but it's a lot closer than it was, and it seems a good way to sign off for the week (see above re wedding!), so it can cure over the next few days. Starting, at last, to look like a Gazelle! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IXGR1 Posted July 18, 2013 Share Posted July 18, 2013 Great work on the flying fishbowl. Eager to see some leggs on her next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heloman1 Posted July 18, 2013 Share Posted July 18, 2013 Great work Crispin, it's starting to come together nicely. I do like your jig. Enjoy the wedding. Colin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fritag Posted July 20, 2013 Share Posted July 20, 2013 (edited) Okay. So has the Barracuda been elbowed from the jig Crisp - or did you buy a job lot of them? Tell you what - I might even learn to love helicopters after this.... In its 'unbent' pre-first solo condition I presume Edited July 20, 2013 by Fritag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D1fuN0 Posted July 20, 2013 Share Posted July 20, 2013 Hey I like your jig EX. The Gazelle is coming along really nice, this one is going to look really nice I think. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OzH Posted July 21, 2013 Share Posted July 21, 2013 Some good progress, keep it coming... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 23, 2013 Author Share Posted July 23, 2013 (edited) Great work on the flying fishbowl. Eager to see some leggs on her next. You ask, you get: she has legs! ...and she doesn't tail-sit, so the Great Glue Flood did at least achieve its aim! Tail next; got to finish the fenestron rework and then add the TR drive shaft and hydraulics pipes along the spine. That'll be tomorrow's fun, since I am off this week. If Steve / Fritag is lurking, he will doubtless be pleased to see a Barracuda on its side in the background, getting a serious sanding! Edited July 23, 2013 by Ex-FAAWAFU 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ex-FAAWAFU Posted July 25, 2013 Author Share Posted July 25, 2013 (edited) Half way through finishing off the fenestron; the kit part for the control runs was hideous (i.e. there were none, as you'll see if you look back in this thread), and the vanes had huge gaps, so I cut them off and am now replacing them. I hope it's obvious which is which (!), but if not, 8 o'clock is fitted and sanded to shape, 4 o'clock just fitted and curing. 12 o'clock is the control runs so a different shape anyway. Once this is done, then I just have to match up the strengthening plates for the horizontal stabiliser (visible here) on the other side, and then we're ready for a mammoth Archer's rivet session; at present the whole tail cone and tail is smooth, so it needs a lot of bumps to be added. That'll be tomorrow's job, I think - and once that is complete, we're pretty much into priming and painting. I have also added the brackets for the hydraulic pipes on the port side of the tail rotor drive shaft (a guitar string); they appear on both sides of the shaft, so I need to match up the starboard ones. Edited July 25, 2013 by Ex-FAAWAFU 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts