Wessex HU.5 - done!

[Will Vale]

I think I've finished the cockpit now - I painted the collectives and fitted those and the seats, then cleaned up the rear lower part which is visible in the cabin and has big holes and pins where the seats fit. I also masked the floor and painted around the holes below the seats and touched up the rear wall.

(click for bigger)

I think there's some sanding dust on the cockpit, it looks messier than last time but I've only painted the collectives and seats, so hopefully that'll brush off.

I also did a very quick paint and weathering job on the main gear box/swashplate (is that right?) trying to get enough contrast that it'll be visible through the mesh.

Elsewhere in the interior the seats got some tape seatbelts - quite a few to do, but doesn't compare to the Merlin in that regard

And finally I filled the gap between the floor and the door sill. There's a seam here in real life, as far as I can tell, but not an inch gap. Came out nicely

Off to put the interior together now. I think I'll follow Italeri's plan and end up with a gap at the top of the rear cockpit wall, I hope that the canopy will hide this.

Cheers,

Will

Edited September 3, 2013 by Will Vale

[Will Vale]

And a bit more - I added fire extinguishers, one on the cockpit bulkhead, and one on the firewall in the cabin following a (possible totally wrong) pic I saw.

I've also made a scruffy rotor brake for the overhead console, and added the map box, a wiring loom, and what looked like a handset cable at the same time:

With that out of the way I've been closing the fuselage. It took a couple of goes, and I had to remove all the location pins since they were about 0.5mm out front-to-back, but it's nearly there now. A fair bit of sanding needed, especially on the tail, but not much filler I hope. I'd have been happier if the interior fit snugly to both walls, but I guess it's not going anywhere at least. I added the floor panel at the same time and then had to swear as I pinged one of the side windows out by gripping the fuselage in the wrong place

I thought I'd been clever fitting them with Tamiya Extra Thin, and cleaning up the mating surfaces first so I'd get a plastic-plastic bond, but maybe I didn't keep enough pressure on while it was drying. Anyway, I've fished it out and jiggled it into place behind the seats, and applied more Extra Thin with a long brush. Seems to be OK, but I am pretty worried about masking them - maybe I should use liquid mask? The corners are going to be tricky to do with tape in any case...

Cheers,

Will

[Will Vale]

Some more progress today - made up a bunch of sub-assemblies (main and tail rotors, winch, exhausts) and cleaned up some other parts. Thankfully the two D sprues with the rotors were very clean, but there was a lot of flash on the winch frame and main gear legs. All fixed now.

I've also sanded the fuselage seams, which were pretty good and only needed a bead of CA to fill the hairline gap on the sharp rear edge of the tail, as well as tidy up a notch in the roof where the fibreglass vent section fits. There may be a need for some LSP but I think I'll try a straight coat of primer first. Once that was done I curved and fitted the various etched grilles to the tail, still need to clean up around those.

Need to do the IP now so I can get the nose fitted and sanded, which means finding the OHP film for the glass layer. If I'm very lucky I might be able to get primer on tomorrow lunchtime or Friday. I've been musing about the rotor shaft mesh as well - I think I'll need to mask that area and insert the mesh last to avoid filling the transmission bay with overspray. Which means making the fit perfect beforehand. I suppose I could also brush paint it, or paint it before installation and then fill any gaps and mask over most of it? Food for thought.

Cheers,

Will

[heloman1]

Lookin' good Will, I'm battling with decals.....

Colin

[Will Vale]

Thanks Colin, that was fast work painting and varnishing! Certainly look like a *lot* of stencils to apply...

This evening I did some more sanding, and rescribed the panel lines around the tail where I'd sanded them away, and primed all the bits I've got so far. I think everything else bar the door and the antennas should be OK to attach before painting provided I'm careful. Most of the subassemblies look nice in primer, I think the exhausts could do with a fine sanding.

Quite pleased with my efforts at cleaning up the main rotor (slightly less so with the tail rotor) - I've been finding some of the basic modelling tasks like part cleanup, seams and scribing a bit easier on this build. I guess a couple of years of practice are good for something!

I had some primer left in the paint cup so put a bit on the tail - quite a bit of work still to do to get those grilles tidied up:

It's just the top ones, which have very non-square apertures to fit into - the others are fine. I think these require some putty instead of just CA.

Will

[heloman1]

Nice work there Will, coming along a treat. I'm battling with decals in that I've got a milky deposit around some ModelDeclas code numbers!!!! i've just left a question in the declas page of the forum. Hoping for an easy fix.

Colin

[Will Vale]

Was it on top of Klear? I've seen Microsol make Klear go milky before, but it went away when given another coat of Klear.

[Will Vale]

Well I'm still getting stuff done, but there's still plenty of stuff to do. I painted the console, IP and inside of the nose, and while I was at it put some Alclad on the exhausts.

Then I assembled the IP, making a sandwich of the plastic part, the decal, a slice of OHP film cut to shape, and the painted etched piece. I thought it'd come out well but from the side view I think I must've bowed the etch slightly since you can see the dial frames proud of the surface. Oh well...

I've also attached the nose and got it all smoothed off - the fit was much much better than I'd feared, I only needed filler at the T-joint underneath, and between the windscreen flashing and the window pillars. With that done I've fitted a few more detail parts like the cable trunkings (which Italeri have curve the wrong way at the top) and the long ribbed intakes (??) under the cab windows, which are lovely mouldings but the instructions want you to put them in the wrong place compared to photographs.

While on the nose I added a vertical baffle in the large intake on the port side, and drilled out the deep intake on the other side to fit a thick piece of styrene behind (to make the hole really deep) and a bit of treadplate to cap it off since I can't find my brass mesh anywhere.

With all that fun stuff done I did the job I dread on every aircraft - canopy and window masking. It went OK, I think, but we won't know for sure until the tape comes off.

The big problem now is that the canopy is about 1mm wide at the top, and 2mm at the bottom. Not sure what the best way to fix this is - I think maybe I can squeeze it at the bottom (since there's no way to widen the nose) and just live with the discrepancy at the top. I'm reasonably sure it's the canopy that's wrong since everything else matches up and fits together widthwise.

Anyone got any good tips for too-big canopies? I can't just spread the fuselage, I think, since it's fitted around the cockpit and anyway the nose doesn't have anywhere to move...

Sorry no pictures this time - it's late.

Cheers,

Will

[heloman1]

Hi Will, I too didn't notice the capoy problem untill too late. So what I did was glue it top rear and one side at the bottom using CA. I then glued the other bottom edge as best I could, I then pulled the front edge of the cockpit door fram out to meet the top corner of the canopy. It doesn't look too bad.

Wait until you get to the decals, either Zanchetti got the zig or Italeri screwed them down tot a low price. I've seen better in a twenty year old kit!!!!!!! The Italeri have some of the placing incorrect.

I'm rapidly thinking Italeri don't like producing chopper kits, not good ones at any rate.

Good luck with the rest.

Colin

[Will Vale]

Oh dear, I find decals very fiddly at the best of times, I hope they will be kind to me...

Thanks for the cockpit advice, what I ended up doing was gluing one side to both parts of the window frame with Contacta (nice and grabby) and then once that had dried enough, holding the other side in place (squeezing the canopy) and adding Extra Thin very very carefully at the back, and then along the frame. I had almost no contact with the fairing moulded into the bonnet but where it touched I added a little more extra-thin there as well.

Cue sitting in one place with my hands very still for some time!

It seems to have worked, although I had to file down one side of the moulded fairing quite heavily, and build the other up from filler to take up the gap. I've just applied a coat of LSP ready for smoothing it out a bit more:

I did the same at the rear upper corners to get them to blend into the roof, although it was pretty good there. I'm surprised how well the sides came out, and hopefully my resculpted fairing won't look too terrible once it's had a matte finish applied.

Biggest disaster avoided today - dropping the canopy in a pool of 5-minute epoxy while I was epoxying the console into it (which of course didn't fit, and had to be relocated and filed down so as not to foul the rear cockpit walll). Luckily all the panes were already masked, and I wiped it off quick smart so fingers crossed I'll be able to remove the masking tape later

While all this has been going on I've been slowly fitting the external bits - just the window grabs, step and winch to add once the sanding is complete. I replaced the nasty lift rings (?) on the tail with 0.45mm NS wire and added a couple of plastic straps to the intake grille.

Cheers,

Will

[heloman1]

Coming along nicely there Will. The decals adhere nicely with a drop of Future under them it's just he quality of printing and the accuracy of the images.

I think Italeri need to revisit this kit and sort out it's shortcomings. Compared with the Airfix Lynx this one is a mare!

Colin

[Will Vale]

It's nice to know that I have something to look forward to with the Lynx! I think I've beaten (sanded) the canopy fairing into submission after two rounds of putty, two rounds of LSP, CA and two rounds of primer. It's not perfect but I think working on it now will make it worse.

(click for bigger)

I also stuck on the last few bits (apart from the black antennas) cleaned up the top and bottom seams again, and rescribed the panel lines across them. I also had to do a bit of work to fair-in the landing light. I suspect I didn't get the location quite right but it's close.

Oh, and yesterday evening I painted and gloss coated the rotors. Quite pleased with these:

I'm sad the kit doesn't give you decals for the ID bands, but I don't think there's any way to replicate them with paint - much too fine to mask. Oh well.

I suspect I won't make it to the end in time - weathering really ought to take a couple of evenings - but it's close so I'll see how much more I can get done.

Cheers!

Will

[swordfish fairey]

Looking great Will, can I just point out a little something tho' ,the small shark fin shape aerial on top of the fairing is the wrong way round...Hope you don't mind, your build is first class in all respects.................

Hope that didn't come over as a rivet counting, pedantic twerp type comment.... Tony

Smudge

[Will Vale]

Thanks for the tip - always glad to get some corrections from people who actually know. (And I am/was a railway modeller before getting into kits so I am already far more pedantic and twerpy than anyone on here )

The annoying thing is that I checked photo references beforehand and as far as I could see it was the other way - curse those small pixels!

I can probably chop it off and turn it around, particularly since it's a different colour to the panel it sits on.

In the meantime, I got some green on:

I applied a fairly simple pre-shade to the primer, and then painted a base coat of Tamiya Olive Green with a bit of black added. I then sprayed a mixture of Olive Green and Khaki Drab in blotches in the middles of panels (like the cool kids do). I added thinned Khaki Drab to the upper surfaces, both in the panels and as a mist over the top, and a darker mix of Olive Green and black to the bottom. Pretty quick to do and I think it looks OK. The lighting is mostly from overhead here - the shading isn't quite as strong as it looks in the pics.

And in excellent news, I found this terrific colour picture of "XQ", I think in process of winching up survivors from the Sir Galahad? This was my colour reference, and it also shows some nice details: The painted-out crest, the large markings applied over the antenna stencils, and best of all - no need to mask and paint the black area around the steps!

http://fighters.forumactif.com/t58946-westland-wessex-hu-mk-5#1077436

Top banana, basically. Unfortunately I don't think the kit decals include the small crests.

Cheers,

Will

[Bengalensis]

It's progressing very well now and looking great. I hope you can make it.

[heloman1]

Looking very good there Will, hope you get it finished in time.

Colin

[Will Vale]

Cheers guys, I really appreciate it. I reckon I can at least get the decals on tomorrow - I've just sprayed a couple of coats of Aqua Gloss in preparation.

And I lopped the offending antenna off, filed the base down a bit (it was pretty thick, and shouldn't really be there at all according to the pic) and made a new one out of styrene.

Bedtime!

Cheers,

Will

[swordfish fairey]

You are spot on with that Will, it has no base, just a beading of painted over sealant around the bottom.............

Smudge

[Will Vale]

I haven't got rid of it entirely I'm afraid - I didn't want to risk filing the edges of the fairing which I've so far kept nice and sharp.

[Will Vale]

About halfway through decalling. They're a bit of a sod - they go on nicely and stick well, but the instructions on placement are terrible and quite a few decals are too big - particularly the "FIGHT FIRE/FIRE PANEL" flashes on the nose. I've had to move several after looking at reference for another stencil and finding out something was wrong that I hadn't spotted.

I reckon the Falklands scheme is actually the worst choice since it looks like the stencils should mostly be black rather than white (or painted out) and the typeface for the tail code and XQ lettering is wrong - too heavy and clearly much too modern. Also the inner/outer ratio of the roundels is wrong. Not a problem the other versions suffer from.

Cheers,

Will

Edited September 8, 2013 by Will Vale

[Will Vale]

And here we are. I tried valiantly to stick to references for the first half, but gave up a bit for the second half. I think what I've got is a 1980s Falklands Wessex with 1970s hi-vis stencils, although *some* of the stencils I can see in the image I linked above are white, so who knows? I hope I can tone it all down a bit with an overspray of paint later.

(click for bigger, sorry for the phone cam pic)

I trimmed down the FIGHT FIRE flashes as much as I could, and cut-and-shut the walkway decal on the top so the edges line up, although it's still too long front-to-back. I also used a different decal for the horizontal tail non-skid since it was vastly too big. The fuel decals also had to be cut up and moved around, but sadly I couldn't get the "suction pressure" or whatever-it-is decal to lift so that one's remained in what I think is the wrong place - should be above the cap?

In the image there's what looks like a white stencil on the nose immediately in front of the ribbed ducting - I have two decals not called out by the instructions which look like the right shape (a square with writing underneath) but they talk about FUEL OIL HERE if I'm reading it right. Are they meant to go somewhere else?

[edit] It's midnight here so I guess that's the end of my entry, but I'll try and get it finished this week - not much left to do really.

Oh, and is Italeri's decal adhesive excitingly toxic? There's quite a strong sweet "heady" smell in my office at the moment and I feel just a little bit like there's been alcohol in the air despite working next to an open window and only applying decals. Most odd!

Cheers,

Will

Edited September 8, 2013 by Will Vale

[crobinsonh]

Great progress - really enjoying this build

[Will Vale]

Thanks! I wish I'd got started sooner though, but at least I'm on the home stretch now. I tidied up some silvering, removed the interior masks and painted in the window surrounds, and added a couple more antennas that I'd missed - one blade on top of the fuselage, which Italeri have provided a mounting panel for, and one "rod"-like antenna underneath. Not painted them yet though.

I've also gloss-coated over the decals, finished the main rotor and put it all together to have a look at:

(click for bigger)

Looks OK apart from the pebbledash paint (Alclad Aqua Gloss is odd - sometimes it sprays perfectly and levels, other times not. The door came out very shiny and was varnished in the same sessions, so it's not a batch or weather thing. Maybe I'm subconsciously matching my stroke size/timing to the size of the object rather than keeping a constant hand speed?)

The orange peel is finer than the decal film edges though, so I'm 90% sure it will vanish under the Dullcote at the end of the build.

Some detail painting to do (although not much) and then a wash. I regret not trimming the walkway decal back further - I cut out a strip from the middle, but I could probably have cut a T-shape out and re-assembled the pieces to fit with the panel line. Ah well, at least this version doesn't have a big playing card there to show that the size is out...

Cheers,

Will

Edited September 9, 2013 by Will Vale

[heloman1]

Looking very tasty there Will. The kit decal sheet really is a shocker, stencil detail oversize, as you say not black set offered, wrong type face on the tail DANGER warning placard, out of register.....

Come on Italeri you can do a lot better than this!

Colin

[Will Vale]

Thanks Colin, I didn't appreciate how dodgy the decals were (despite your earlier mention) until I started applying them and checking references. Ah well, it's not accurate "but it looks like a Wessex"