The EDSG Files # 2: Fairey Barracuda 1/72

[Martian]

3 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Not sure how I'd manage all that flowing hair Martin - Slaters' Microstrips? 

 

A fantastic and brave creature, like all of her sisters in the ATA:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/maureen-dunlop-pilot-for-the-air-transport-auxiliary-who-made-the-cover-of-picture-post-7834571.html

Tony

Textured Miliput. See my Haunebu build:

for some ideas bout converting 1/72 figures.

 

Thanks for the link. I had the privilege of meeting the great Lettice Curtis once a fascinating person and her book a great rea as well.

 

Martian

[TheBaron]

A bright and beautiful morning here. The kind of morning to declare that you have been out visiting fellow villagers and distributing alms to the needy of the parish eh? 

 

No. Pints of strong tea, interspersed with bacon rolls and then coffee and up and Barracuding. Today has been designated an official day of domestic indolence - aside from modelling and cooking, this afternoon has been set aside for the guilty pleasure of a Midsomer Murders and martinis with Mrs. B.

 

First up, passing on a recommendation - this one stolen blatantly from one of Ced's recent builds - of using double-sided tape to stick Micromesh to sanding pads in ordert to 'roll your own' Micromesh pads:

Hail Ced: Thriftius Maximus! A great idea.

 

I finished up last night by filling the sink holes on the interior with PPP:

and grinding-off the Vickers magazines:

First job this morning then was to smooth down the filler:

Rolled sandpaper and 2500 W&D (moistened) was the easiest way to smooth down on a concave surface without damaging the existing mould-details of the kit.

 

There was a little more I wanted to add to the pilot's tub - aside from a dial on top of the port console there were a pair of cable looms on either side that are prominent enough to warrant some addition. Here's a quick method for this scale. Cut some some fine braided VGA cable to length and roll under a ruler to straighten them all:

Next, twist just the ends to keep them as a unit - in such a way that the individual strands are not twisted and remain a series of separate cables - giving a managaeble yet distinct multi-cable run that can be twisted in three-dimensions to the correct shape for gluing-on:

Port:

Starboard:

Not included in the model is a movable headrest on the Nav's seat - this part could apparently flip up to allow ingress from the rear. I cut the required shape, scribed and bent the 'wings' in and added some Microstrip brackets. I've seen no engineering details for this part anywhere so this a a generic guess regarding mounting points:

There was also some kind of wire or tube running from the base of the Radio/Gunner's seat and up - oxygen? Intercom? Either eway, I added this in wish some Microtube. How did I live without Slaters' stuff previously?

Having added a shelf port and starboard by the Nav's windows, it was outside for planet Halford Prime:

I haven't obsessed about the visibility of all of those sink-marks as some will be covered by radio and electrical gear later:

Cockpittery:

Surprisingly the bulkheads have stayed-on thus far:

Exciting boxes :

Ewww. I seem to have mounted those on Golem's fingers....

That's it for now chaps. I've got some interior green on order but it won't be here for a week at least so I'll mix up a batch and get this sprayed. 

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheBaron]

1 hour ago, Martian Hale said:

for some ideas bout converting 1/72 figures.

Oh God.You weren't joking 

1 hour ago, Martian Hale said:

I had the privilege of meeting the great Lettice Curtis once a fascinating person and her book a great rea as well.

Off to Abebooks to look for a copy of now Martin. Thanks for that.

 

Tony

[rob85]

Great start Tony, looks a nice kit from the details supplied.... Obviously that's for us mere mortals that can't turn a frog into a prince.....

 

Rob

[The Spadgent]

Excellent work as always Tony. Those little details are sublime. Looking forward to a blast of green.  the details will really ping! 

Happy Halloweeeeeen.

 

Johnny

[TheBaron]

5 hours ago, rob85 said:

Great start Tony, looks a nice kit from the details supplied.... Obviously that's for us mere mortals that can't turn a frog into a prince.....

Cheers for that Rob. 

4 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Excellent work as always Tony. Those little details are sublime. Looking forward to a blast of green.  the details will really ping! 

Happy Halloweeeeeen.

And a Happy Halloween to you sir! I hope the neighbourhood children will be keeping you similarly demented!

After an afternoon screening of Bad Day at Black Rock (it just gets better with each viewing - this time in glorious 1080p) and some refreshments my gander was up to finish off painting the insides this evening. First up all the black parts:

Despite the exposure in this they are actually black - I over-exposed so you'd see the quality of the detail that Special Hobby have included in this OOB. Nice isn't it?

 

Next for Snortin' Norton was the interior green. As with EDSG I'm not going to open another cylinder of invertebrates on this topic. Everyone has their favourite colour and folk-remedy: all cool as far as I'm concerned. It's what you like. In my case I mixed up from the RGB values of  the interior green on a well-exposed photograph of an RAF interior and using Tamiya got:

XF58 - 13 drops

XF14 - 4 drops

XF54 - 7 drops

XF23 - 9 drops

This ratio is almost in distinguishable from that in the original photo, and looks like:

Again, these following photographs are all over-exposed by a stop or so to show detail:

Be conscious the white balance in all these shots isn't 100% accurate in hue due to mixed tungsten and fluorescent light sources:

 

Dusk falls on Gotham:

I need to have a think now about next steps beyond the cockpit. Building the wing-spars before going too much further is one obvious task, as it involves hacking a couple of holes in the wings roots and fuselage, also cutting-out cowling panels for the engine reveal. Looking at the SH mouldings I expect to have to build those two big coolant radiators at the front by the lower intakes, as well as the oil tank and cantilevers. Even so, I'm really pleased with the quality of this kit - it occurred to me earlier that this is the first truly modern kit I've built since coming back to modelling. 

 

Good evening to you all,

Tony

[CedB]

Veeerryy nice work on the internals there Sir, and I'm glad the micro-mesh recycling's working for you too

Great work Tony, great work.

[keefr22]

30 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

After an afternoon screening of Bad Day at Black Rock 

 

 

Don't remember D.I. Barnaby being in that....!! 

 

Cracking progress Tony, and that green looks very nice....!!

 

Have a good evening yourself!

 

Keith

 

[Learstang]

Excellent work there, Tony, and nice to hear it's a good kit. My old MPM kit keeps beckoning me to work on it, but I have some Seafires and Bf-109s that need working on first.

 

Regards,

 

Jason

[Martian]

Nice progress Tony.

 

Martian

[rob85]

What the other chaps said.... Your doing a cracking job

 

Rob

[The Spadgent]

Lovely details coming through. All those scratch bits look even better now painted. 

Am I wrong or has there been a severe lack of filler thus far.  let's not curse it but.

 

Johnny.

[AlexN]

Pop!

 

 

Late as usual - but not as late as the last couple of times, where I have ended up appearing after the streamers, trampled popcorn boxes and empty bottles and boxes had been long swept up by the hard-working BM gnomes¹.

 

Lovely-looking kit, Tony - I have SH's 1/48 boxing which has, from memory, the same or a very similar box-top photo adorning it. The instructions, however, are a totally different bucket o' snakes: the 1/72 set look as though they might have been produced by Eduard (or Bronco, on t'other side of der Welt), very flash; the 1/48 version is standard SH/CA/Pavla, etc, fare.

 

The kit itself looks entirely different in terms of detail - one expects that the various outlines are the same. I will have to haul down to the lockup und rummage tnrough the tea-chests to find it, however. I think that I marked that particular box 'SH' but most likely it is down the bottom, at the back.

 

I'm looking forward to watching this one evolve .

 

Cheers,

Alex

 

 

¹ Another Pratchett reference

[abat]

Great work Tony, the ease of your paintwork (my nemesis) is outstanding. DCI Barnaby visits our lounge room quite regularly during my evening modelling sessions. 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

On 29/10/2016 at 5:13 PM, TheBaron said:

Let me know if you need any close-ups of particular sections Bill. 

 

Looking at the Gunner/Radio Op's chair as-is does not fill one with confidence for the prospect of a solid mount, whilst the roundedness of the base contrasts with the very sharp corners of real thing:

I decided therefore to ditch the original mount and make up a sharper version, drilling out mount and chair underside to receive a few mm.s of brass rod as a more secure structure:

The triangular mounting in this photo is a bit tall so I reduced it in height by about 2.5mm before finally gluing it all into place.

 

The driver's seat has some kind of horizontal mount across the top under the headrest:

 

 

so I added this in with piece of microstrip:

That will suffice to tag some straps onto later. I also added the rudder pedals onto the front cockpit for good measure:

The joystick for this was somewhat lacking in definition, so firstly I scratched-up the handhold from 15A fuse wire, twisted round some fine tweezers and then crushed slightly to mould the parts into a whole in some flat pliers:

As with the chair mount previously, I drilled out the base and added some brass tube to give a well-secured column for the joystick assembly:

That front part is looking ok now. I do believe it is ready for some interior green before, adding the harnesses and soft furnishings:

As to the rear cockpit, this too in sitting in anticipation of greenery. Those upright bulkheads are nightmarish to fix securely, as there is so little surface area joining them to the cockpit floor that I'm anticipating having to repair things at a later point in time:

I'll leave that now tonight to harden. Hopefully tomorrow will see some primer and a snort of green on these structures, then we can start adding boxes, cushions and straps. Maybe a wire or two if I can discern some detail from the rather ropey reproductions I've got of the rear cockpit areas.

 

Have a good evening all of you.

Tony

 

 

 

Is it too late to tell you that you have put the joystick on top of the master compass?  That's why in the view from ahead it looks as though the grip would be somewhere in front of the pilot's face.

 

That amorphous round lump on top of a square lump is meant to be the (round) compass sitting on its four-legged pedestal; the whole thing sits between the pilot's knees.

[AlexN]

On 24/10/2016 at 23:41, TonyTiger66 said:

Your Nan didn't by any chance make brawn out of the leftover roast meat did she?  Tongue sandwiches for afternoon tea (with Colman's mustard)? Followed by hot tea, scones, biscuits and then 'boiled sweets'? Butterscotch, Glacier Mints and Pear Drops were favourites.

 

 

Ah, brawn >sigh<. In our mum's case she made it out of a half pig's head - from memory. Or partly out of said half-head. And I remember cold ox-tongue for tea at Gran's on Sunday evenings.

 

Two things that have fallen massively out of favour . Well, MacVomit is so much easier, innit? (Banned in our household, along with BurgerGrunge/Cringe and suchlike - although we do rather guiltily enjoy the rare KFC 'treat' - when we think that no-one's looking).

 

And boiled sweets - we used to get the black-and-white-striped mint humbugs from Gran after the ox-tongue feast . Gran came from Birmingham and also knew how to make do. And I was in fact - in many, many ways, brought up to be a Pom rather than an Aussie. The latter came later when I left home - and everyone thought that I was English. They don't, now. I'm ambivalent as to whether that's a good or a bad thing. I do feel as though I have lost something while gaining something else. Pretty typical of life, though.

 

I am still working through the first couple of pages of this thread, but love it so far :).

 

Cheers,

the alex

 

 

[AlexN]

On 10/24/2016 at 23:41, TonyTiger66 said:

It seems I am alone in finding the Barracuda a very forceful looking and quintessentially British design. 

 

No - absolutely, unmistakably British . In the way that our old 1926 Morris Oxford motor car was (or is - I think that it might currently reside in the Birdwood Motor Museum in the Adelaide Hills). That comment can be viewed both positively and negatively and is intended as - like the proverbial curate's egg (another British term...).

 

Mr  

[AlexN]

On 10/25/2016 at 21:37, TheBaron said:

Do you mean Crisp's Barracuda WIP? I only discovered that a night or two back and have been taking copious notes.

 

What? How did I miss that? Followed immediately by a-scuttling and a-rustling as the alex schnoodles off in search of this (mythical?) beast...BINGO!

[AlexN]

On 10/26/2016 at 05:01, TheBaron said:

Greetings fellow Robin-fancier! 

 

We used to have a Yellow Robin nearby where we used to live, bird (not place) here.

 

Very sharp, distinct call. I think I've seen them around here (lower Blue Mountains) or at father-in-law's (upper Blue Mountains) but I can't remember exactly where. It certainly looks robin-like, from a distance. At any rate it didn't come into the 'garden', unlike the pair of (Eastern) Whipbirds (very cryptically coloured - and no direct relation to Robins as far as I know).

 

A. 

 

[AlexN]

On 10/26/2016 at 05:01, TheBaron said:

2. A mine. Why? Well, the loadout drawing I've got shows nothing like what we see suspended in the 'wing pod' shot - including an overload fuel tank - but it does look like the 400lb mine in this image:

 

The engine cowling looks as though it has a sharkmouth on it - I realise that it's the shadows of the exhaust ejectors, but that's how it seems to me. Were there any sharkmouth Barracudas? I could do a 'what if' one day, if not. That deep engine cowling is crying out for one...

[AlexN]

On 10/26/2016 at 21:00, The Spadgent said:

"Hot potato, orchestra stalls, Puck will make amends" tweak! ....ouch.

 

 

Is the 'hot potato' a reference to the late Mr Adams' The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul? That definitely has a 'hot potato' in it - and not in a good way! Ah, no, the man hisself has congessed over a slow fire and amusing instruments of torture ('jokes', whatever they are). I did laugh a lot at the jolly japes in the Blackguarder video snippet. Gosh, they was funny!

My apologies for the apparent spamming of your thread, Mr TheBaron: but if you average them out over the number of posts it's not really that many; just rather concentrated and out-of-context. 

Please let me know if my recent posts have been too extraneous, and I'll delete the 'ole boilin' of 'em.

 

Cheers,

the loopy

 

 

Edited October 31, 2016 by AlexN
An extra grovel

[TheBaron]

14 hours ago, CedB said:

Veeerryy nice work on the internals there Sir, and I'm glad the micro-mesh recycling's working for you too

Great work Tony, great work.

Thanks Ced: I'm grateful for that technique - not only cheaper but you can have custom combinations of different grades to hand, rather than my usual scrabbling and head scratching...

14 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Don't remember D.I. Barnaby being in that....!! 

 

Cracking progress Tony, and that green looks very nice....!!

Cheers Keith!  You don't remember that episode? It's the one where Joyce puts too much chilli powder in Tom's dinner and he hallucinates he's a detective in Los Angeles; Cully is later mortified when he turns up wearing a baseball hat and MC Hammer trousers to her opening night of Hamlet and crowd-surfs during the 'To be or not...' speech. It later spawned a hit single for John Nettles - 'The Bergerap'...

14 hours ago, Learstang said:

but I have some Seafires and Bf-109s that need working on first.

Not the most unpleasant job in the world Jason!  Thanks for watching.

11 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Lovely details coming through. All those scratch bits look even better now painted. 

Am I wrong or has there been a severe lack of filler thus far.  let's not curse it but.

Filler? I've *almost* forgotten what that looks like so far on this. Let us pray it continues....

11 hours ago, AlexN said:

Later as usual - but not as late as the last couple of times, where I have ended up appearing after the streamers, trampled popcorn boxes and empty bottles and boxes had been long swept up by the hard-working BM gnomes¹.

 

Lovely-looking kit, Tony - I have SH's 1/48 boxing which has, from memory, the same or a very similar box-top photo adorning it. The instructions, however, are a totally different bucket o' snakes: the 1/72 set look as though they might have been produced by Eduard (or Bronco, on t'other side of der Welt), very flash; the 1/48 version is standard SH/CA/Pavla, etc, fare.

Welcome along Alex. I'm finding it a most enjoyable kit to build indeed - my only gripe is not having detailed-enough references for the overall cockpit interior, and from particular angles. I like to have a mental map of such spaces before building anything usually and I don't quite have that for this one. It helps though that the OOB detail is so good in places.

10 hours ago, abat said:

Great work Tony, the ease of your paintwork (my nemesis) is outstanding. DCI Barnaby visits our lounge room quite regularly during my evening modelling sessions. 

Thanks for that abat.  I mortified my wife and kids this summer by playing the Midsomer Murders soundtrack rather loudly with the car-windows down as we motored down through Dorset. I do hope there wasn't a spike in rural crime due to unconscious suggestion...

7 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

Is it too late to tell you that you have put the joystick on top of the master compass?  That's why in the view from ahead it looks as though the grip would be somewhere in front of the pilot's face.

 

That amorphous round lump on top of a square lump is meant to be the (round) compass sitting on its four-legged pedestal; the whole thing sits between the pilot's knees.

HAHAHA. Classic! That's set a new personal best for me Crisp! 

 

TBH I've been uneasy about some of this interior due to lack of multi-angle documentation to establish a sense of structural continuity and spatiality (Oh for the equivalent of a Navy 870 with a Barra in their shed...). It's not helped by the fact that SH actually tell you to stick the blasted thing there themselves:

Or that in this full-frontal I've been using, you can't see the thing clearly enough either:

A bit of delicate plier-work for me this morning then to reposition that and rebuild the compass mount. At least having drilled-out the top now I can drip a bit of Klear into the recess and pretend is was just super-detailing on the compass and not a SNAFU... 

I guess the compass itself would visually look something like that of the Albacore's (albeit in a different location):

Thanks for the eagle-eye on that Crisp!

38 minutes ago, AlexN said:

My apologies for the apparent spamming of your thread, Mr TheBaron: but if you average them out over the number of posts it's not really that many; just rather concentrated and out-of-context. 

Please let me know if my recent posts have been too extraneous, and I'll delete the 'ole boilin' of 'em.

An aircraft as 'individual' as the Barracuda is positively calculated to induce a certain giddiness in the viewer, isn't it? 

 

Tony

 

 

 

[keefr22]

59 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Cheers Keith!  You don't remember that episode? It's the one where Joyce puts too much chilli powder in Tom's dinner and he hallucinates he's a detective in Los Angeles; Cully is later mortified when he turns up wearing a baseball hat and MC Hammer trousers to her opening night of Hamlet and crowd-surfs during the 'To be or not...' speech. It later spawned a hit single for John Nettles - 'The Bergerap'...

 

'Bergerap'......groan....!!

 

I remembered after I'd posted that they did do a rather daft cowboy episode based in a re-enactment type place. They've repeated it at least three times recently so I don't know how I forgot it. Wait, yes I do, it was daft...!! 

 

As to the 'compass'. I'm not sure that is what SH meant that lump to be, because if you did fit the stick to the rear of it, surely it would then be tight up against the seat? I reckon they meant that to be the rubber gaiter type of base often seen at the bottom of sticks, & just completely forgot about the compass? Looking at the pic of the real one too, the compass is where it's often found, right at the bottom of the I.P., & looks to be over the bar of the rudder pedals.

 

Keith

 

 

[71chally]

Interesting,  I thought the joystick location in the kit is correct, with the compass mounted on the floor between the stick and the rudder pedals, ie where that circular item is fwd of the stick in the cockpit photo.  As above, assume that lump to be the  gaiter for the stick mounting.

Just my take on what I would do and going from my interpretation of the cockpit (so please completely ignore if need be!!), I think that the joystick gaiter may be molded in the floor just a fraction too far fwd, you could either move it aft a tad or could move the rudder pedals further fwd a tad, and add the compass base behind them, in the photo it appears that the compass base is on that portion of floor that angles downwards. 

Without going in the loft, I think the 48th version has the compass between the stick (mounted on that same gaiter blob) and pedals, just under the instrument panel.

 

Anyhow superb progress!

Edited October 31, 2016 by 71chally

[TheBaron]

3 hours ago, keefr22 said:

'Bergerap'......groan....!!

 

I remembered after I'd posted that they did do a rather daft cowboy episode based in a re-enactment type place. They've repeated it at least three times recently so I don't know how I forgot it. Wait, yes I do, it was daft...!! 

 

As to the 'compass'. I'm not sure that is what SH meant that lump to be, because if you did fit the stick to the rear of it, surely it would then be tight up against the seat? I reckon they meant that to be the rubber gaiter type of base often seen at the bottom of sticks, & just completely forgot about the compass?

Do you want me to post the Bergerap lyrics Keith? It's no trouble. Honestly.

 

Cough: doremefahsolatido. Ready. 

 

'I'm Jim B, I'm the Jersey Lone Ranger

Bustin' those lags for the Bureau des Étrangers...

 

I need something that rhymes with 'Celia Imrie' after this bit.

 

 The Suzi Quatro 'Aged Rockers in Midsomer' episode always amuses me. 

 

For the compass, I think SH have indulged in a little 'Whiffery' and produced a Barra with a joycompass, combining the functions of both into a compact and highly-confusing item of equipment....

2 hours ago, 71chally said:

Interesting,  I thought the joystick location in the kit is correct, with the compass mounted on the floor between the stick and the rudder pedals, ie where that circular item is fwd of the stick in the cockpit photo.  As above, assume that lump to be the  gaiter for the stick mounting.

Just my take on what I would do and going from my interpretation of the cockpit (so please completely ignore if need be!!), I think that the joystick gaiter may be molded in the floor just a fraction too far fwd, you could either move it aft a tad or could move the rudder pedals further fwd a tad, and add the compass base behind them, in the photo it appears that the compass base is on that portion of floor that angles downwards. 

Without going in the loft, I think the 48th version has the compass between the stick (mounted on that same gaiter blob) and pedals, just under the instrument panel.

I was definitely too quick to complacently follow instructions rather than attend to the (very!) faint alarm bells that were ringing in my head about this region - especially as Crisp had previously pointed-out the compass-mounting earlier in this thread. I checked back at his own Barra build:

...and sure enough the sequence is pilot/joystick/compass/pedals. Besides, his Dad flew the things, so he'd know. SH appear to have created some kind of generic region here that conflates both compass and joystick spatially. A purist would probably want to cut and move that compass moulding about 1.5mm forward to the rudder pedals to leave room for the joystick - I've simply moved the seat back about 0.5mm to add mine in. TBH when it's closed-up later the discrepancy in the kit won't be problematically-visible at this scale.

 

Here's the re-done joystick/compass arrangement then:

 Might want to ease those pedals back slightly as well - not all those FAA lads were 7' long...The compass is just a circular piece of sprue polished-up to give a glass surface.

 

I've added some precautionary 1mm strips as buttressing for the cockpit floor, as the largely flush walls seem a recipe for potential slippage later on - especially if any jiggling is required later when closing the fuselage:

No - it's not Willem de Kooning does Halloween, it's the comfy cushions:

Tamiya XF7 with a raw umber oil wash. I find a red base gives more visual life to these materials, rather than just painting the actual colour accurately and then adding a darkening wash. I notice there's no cushions provided for the poor radio op stuck at the back - did they sit on their parachutes, or were such aircrew selected on the basis of possessing wooden buttocks?

 

In situ:

A final wash-over of the interior green - a 50:50 oil wash made from Terre Vert and Payne's Grey:

That'll be knocked back in places when dry, and some dry-brushing of highlights too...

 

That'll probably be it for today. Although it's a Bank Holiday here we're holding a Halloween party for our youngest and his mates later. I've planned some nice games for them: Bobbing for Onions, Kendo Piñata (everyone is blindfolded, given a stick and shoved into a locked room - last man standing wins a Crunchie), plus Hide and Seek The Adults Will Look For You When The Booze Has Run Out...

 

Happy Mondays!

Tony