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Hinchcliffe 10 Naval Squadron Camel, blue guns?


Beardie

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Hi all,

 

I am working on my first Wingnut Wings camel and I am intending to do the Camel of W G R Hinchliffe 'Donner Wetter'. The profiles in the WnW instruction manual depict it as having the gun jackets painted the same blue as the cowling.

 

Does anyone know the source and accuracy of this?

 

I would have thought that guns would have been a sort of 'consumable', being swapped out, serviced etc quite frequently meaning that it would be a bit of a nuisance having to keep them painted up.

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Thanks Europapete. I have never heard of the guns being painted before and it came as a surprise when I saw the initial build on the Wingnut Wings site which had been painted this way.

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How are you finding the kit Beardie?  

 

I'm currently working (at glacial pace) on fighters of FAA WWII Aces but I am considering also building a couple of RNAS aircraft Pup, Triplane and Camel.  I would prefer 1/48 but by all accounts the WNW Camel is, to quote our colonial cousins, seriously awesome..

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It is a beautiful kit. So far I haven't stuck many bits together as I have spent days working on painting cockpit framing, instrument panel etc. The decals are absolutely awesome. You get the feeling that, if you could magnify them enough you would be able to read everything on them and they have even gone to the trouble of giving the tiny clock on the instrument panel a silver coloured pin in the centre of the hands. The one surprise is the number of ejector pin markings on the internals of the fuselage although I haven't bothered filling any of them as this is my first build (and won't be my last) and I don't believe any of them will be visible on the finished model. The two things I would caution are  that, if you intend to fully rig the internal framing and controls, care will need to be taken to figure out what goes where and at what point in assembly you should install your rigging material and the other thing is to take extreme care with the cabane struts which are molded as part of the cockpit framing and could easily get broken.

 

Sizewise I have to agree with all those who have previously made the assertion that 1/32 is the perfect scale for WW1 aircraft. Big enough to run around the room with making engine noises and full of detail without needing to resort to photoetch and so well engineered that, on my other Sopwith Build (Snipe) I just glued all the struts into the lower wing and fuselage without looking at alignment of the top wing(This was an experiment to see how good the 'socket' fittings of the struts were) and, when it came time to install the top wing it all but fell onto the top of the struts and was perfectly in alignment.

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Sent an email to Richard Alexander and received a prompt reply with clarifcation for the colour of the gun jackets.

He refers to Cross and Cockade Volume 44 #1 with photos of the naval 10 Camels. He says that the aircraft in the main seem to display gun jackets of a similar tone to the flight colours of their props which led them to believe that the gun jackets were quite possibly painted to match the flight colours. I guess it is a little subjective but certainly makes an interesting point on the model.

 

He also noted that one of the elevator decals (number 38) is the wrong way around and will need to be flipped over before application, it would be wise to give some additional diluted gum arabic, dilute PVA, future etc. to ensure that the decal sticks once turned over.

 

A final note is that the cockpit decking for this particular decal option requires some careful surgery as it was cut down around the guns. I was a little confused with this step as the instruction manual shows how much is to be cut off and then, in another box, shows the decking still whole.

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Just to add, I asked Richard Alexander in the email when we would be likely to see the new Stahltaube kit. He said that it will be released once he is completely happy with it which he really hopes will be this year.

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Richard kindly sent me a link to the Cross & Cockade page for Donner Wetter http://www.crossandcockade.com/uploads/File/DonnerWetter.pdf

 

There is a reference to the Naval 10 book as providing a source for at least one Br.1 having been painted with stripes.

 

the article goes on to say that the photographs were discovered in Hinchliffe's own logbook during the digitisation of the RAF collection.

 

Think I need to get myself a copy of C & C Vol 44 #1 :D

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hhmmm.....going by that photo in the link, the grey shade between the guns and the surrounding panels does look the same. Yes, the Navel 10 book does mention striped bently camels, just not this particular machine. regards, Pete

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I am guessing that the photos have only been discovered in recent years, I think vol 44 was published in 2014 I think Richard Alexander also said there are pictures in the issue of the other naval 10 flight leaders aircraft. You can clearly see the cut down cockpit decking forard of the pit in the photo as well.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On ‎17‎/‎04‎/‎2017 at 0:29 AM, Beardie said:

The two things I would caution are  that, if you intend to fully rig the internal framing and controls, care will need to be taken to figure out what goes where and at what point in assembly you should install your rigging material and the other thing is to take extreme care with the cabane struts which are molded as part of the cockpit framing and could easily get broken.

 

 

AAAhhh yep.........I agree. It sent me a little cross eyed doing that internal rigging on my Ships camel yesterday:swear:, had to seriously self medicate with beer on completion. Yes, I have broken off one cabane strut.....3 times to date:angry:

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Oh dear, at least it is only one. I have bent one a bit and lord knows how many times I had to delicately and carefully get out of my chair and get under the table to retrieve my cockpit assembly.

 

The stick and rudder cables are the worst. Gently tugging on them one at a time and trying to see (with the aid of serious magnification) which cable you had without pulling it out of it's position.

how did you do your two inner stick control wires? I strung them straight back from the pulleys under the instrument panel and secured them in the holes in the guide under the seat and then put some CA on the stick and squeezed them behind the stick until they gripped and them did the same in front of the stick. There was no way I was going to attempt to string separate line from the pulleys to the stick and then from the stick to the guides.

 

Another trick I employed for strength with the pulley to stick cables was to cut very slight grooves on the inside lower faces of the pulleys and then used a single piece of invisible mending thread around the post and CA'ed into the grooves and then another single piece CA'ed all the way around the outer sides of the pulleys to represent the outer cables.

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3 hours ago, Beardie said:

Oh dear, at least it is only one. I have bent one a bit and lord knows how many times I had to delicately and carefully get out of my chair and get under the table to retrieve my cockpit assembly.

 

The stick and rudder cables are the worst. Gently tugging on them one at a time and trying to see (with the aid of serious magnification) which cable you had without pulling it out of it's position.

how did you do your two inner stick control wires? I strung them straight back from the pulleys under the instrument panel and secured them in the holes in the guide under the seat and then put some CA on the stick and squeezed them behind the stick until they gripped and them did the same in front of the stick. There was no way I was going to attempt to string separate line from the pulleys to the stick and then from the stick to the guides.

 

Another trick I employed for strength with the pulley to stick cables was to cut very slight grooves on the inside lower faces of the pulleys and then used a single piece of invisible mending thread around the post and CA'ed into the grooves and then another single piece CA'ed all the way around the outer sides of the pulleys to represent the outer cables.

 

I chickened out on fully rigging the stick, only ran the elevator control lines from it but I did fully rig the rudder bar. I'd had enough by that stage. :D

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Blue painted guns? Surely there wouldn't be much paint left on the barrel after firing off a full magazine/belt? Have we got a 'translation' problem here somewhere, I ask myself. Gun barrels are 'blued' in manufacture - that is hardened by heating up till the steel takes on a blueish hue which denotes the metal has reached the required hardness. Cannot imagine any armourer painting a machine gun for anything else than display. The paint would get in and clog up the mechanism. Gun oil would be all that is used.

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Not the barrel, Alan - the jacket. The aircraft-application Vickers gun retained the water-cooled jacket of the original land-use gun, but without the water and with ventilation slots usually added. It would be possible to retain paint as it wouldn't get more than warm,

 

Kevin

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Fair point Kevin, Must admit, I was picturing a Lewis gun. Still canny imagine anyone allowing paint anywhere near an operational machine gun. Not if your life depended on it still working. I think I'm right in saying that all markings or colour id on front line RFC aircraft had to be approved by higher-ups - no flying circus stuff like Richthoven - though training squardons were different. I have never ever encountered mention of a garishly painted machine gun (even the jacket) on a front line RFC aircraft. New one on me!:think:

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I must admit it does give me a shaky feeling doing it but I guess that, if it was only the cooling jacket, which would be getting plenty of air through it to keep it cool and I presume it wasn't painted while attached to the gun. I guess if the paint could withstand the heat of the engine then it would be fine on the jackets. Donner Wetter is certainly a gaudy bird all round as, it seems, were all the Naval 10 flight leaders machines.

 

Actually having a look around at Vickers guns on this 'ere internet quite a lot of ground use Vickers had their jackets painted khaki so, perhaps, they felt it was perfectly safe to paint them.

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34 minutes ago, Beardie said:

painted khaki

After our conversation about 'Yellow Ochre' and 'lamp black' mix for PC10, I've been having a liitle muck about with artist's gouache (which has those very names!) to see what I came up with. I might put my speculation on a dedicated post for the experts to shoot me down. It was prompted by you saying (which i've read elsewhere and concurred with) that PC10 was not really for camouflage - just sun/weather protection.

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Hi Alan,

It would certainly have fulfilled the requirement for protection providing a very dense opaque covering for the fabric. If I were to guess I would say that the fine carbon of the Lamp Black fills in any microscopic holes between the particles of hydrated iron oxide that make up the ochre.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if PC12 was simply the result of substituting Red Ochre for yellow, possibly due to a shortage or even just a mixup.

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