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Westland Wessex HAS3 returns


perdu

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I was building this in last year's STGB which ended in February, unfortunately I was also extending myself with my Westland Wasp HAS1 and the timetable for this slipped and so, it came to pass that it found a space on a shelf

 

Yes, that shelf

 

As another of the stalled Wessex build models has resurfaced here and I have been doing a bit here bit there on this one I think I can allow her to resurface too

 

The STGB is here

 I can pop a few of the old pictures in here to set the tone if you like

 

Where it all started

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Bits rescued from a second version Matchbox Wessex added to bits from a first version Wessex which came with the noses for the early single engined one that I didnt use on my HC2 and Modeldecals sheet 99

 

Lots of innards made up from pictures

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And because I didnt want to buy any more after market stuff than the transfers I made up the missing bits from plasticene to cast them from

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This gave me the hump and the sonar bay position for under the floor

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Soon tidied that up

I built the sonar gear on a false floor that was slid in place when I was ready for it, no way could I do the 'shipinnabottle' thingymajig

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The winch was rescued from the front of a Minicraft US Army deuce and a half and popped into a custom made frame

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Electronics racks built up

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seats made

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The walls were wired and piped up/down

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prior to closure

And the hump fitted on

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The parrot beak was moulded and added

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And the driver and looker's seats made up from plasticard

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I started to make them both with the seat pans flat for sitting on then changed my mind

Flat here

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Here seen with  the one seat up to allow passage from back behind to up top at the front

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A pull moulded canopy came next with roof console and rotor brake fitted later

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The home brew sonar well was popped on and the underside plumbing added thanks in the main to photos from Mike/Bootneck and the 4+ magazine drawings

 

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after adding surface detailing including the refuelling in flight filler a coat of RAFBG was applied, this was a jar of thirty five year old Compucolor2 paint which was in perfect condition, amazing stuff

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yellow paint to come which stymied me, horrid evil colour

 

Whatever was the Andrew thinking of bunging it on aeroplanes?

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This awful mess was where I stalled, time crept quietly by and the STGB Westland Wessex event ended with this unfinished

 

Many very nice Wessii emerged from the STGB so it wasn't all wasted time, only my own wasted endeavour

 

Here is where I'll drop this but rejoice, I  have been beavering away at it and there will be better prospects to see

 

later

 

Thanks for looking

 

bill

 

Edited by perdu
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Thanks Hendie

 

I think this time, given time I am closer

 

Sonobuoy is up its pipe, the transfers are on mostly, just a few to glean from other sheets

 

Pylon needs adapting and tank painting and bunging on and the winch and wipers (and the OAT unit)

 

rotary bits fore and aft and maybe get her into RFI for a tear down session

 

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isnt postimage.org great took these about five minutes ago

 

:)

 

laters guys

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That's a great looking helicopter Bill :clap2::worthy: 

 

Superb detailing, the inside looks like 1/32 with detailing, not 1/72.

 

Looking forward to seeing it with the rotors on :).

 

Best regards

TonyT

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Whille I have been making a few wheels for Buccaneers I have also been doing a bit of Wessexery

 

I decided to use the Italeri rotor gear which even has representations of the BIMs on the blade roots, good on them I say, even if that is tempered by the over bent blades for parking the aircraft

 

Yes, me praising Italeri, well done you lot  :thumbsup:

 

I have been doing a little job on the blades, no Martian I'm not folding the damned things  :)

 

And I am no Hendie or EXFAAWAFU neither but there are some obviously missing bits

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Does this early experiment give you a clue?

 

a' course it do!

 

This is not the way I decided to go for the droop stops

 

I reckoned I needed four bits of plastic for each so I trimmed an Evergreen I beam section to turn it into a T section and cut several thin slices off the T

 

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Turning a T into an odd shaped H huh?

 

Then a side for each unit was cut from Slater's 0.010" plastic rod and glued on which, after a drop of paint became this

 

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No centre springs, sorry, but...

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I dont intend to change the pitch change rods, this will have to do but the counterweight setup for the tail rotor will be done next

 

...or soon

 

And I hope to get the rotor head oil tank pipes fitted too, soon

 

Do remind me if it seems I have forgotten them and their little hydraulic cylinders

 

 

night

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Great work Bill. Lovely detail inside and out. You can't deny that yellow over blue is a good-looking scheme, even if it's a beggar to paint. Inspiration to finish my recently re-started 51A which is back in the panel shop being filled and sanded for the upteenth time. 

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10 hours ago, perdu said:

I have been doing a little job on the blades, no Martian I'm not folding the damned things  :)

 

Why pick on me? I never said a word! Innocent me Guv!:innocent:

 

As t happens, I never fold my helicopter blades. I did so once on a really long and difficult project and regretted it as, with the blades folded I felt the helicopter had lost it's character. Anyhoo, she's looking good Bill. Finished in time for Telford?

 

Martian the Unjustly Maligned

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I don't know either but I suspect it is aerodynamic,maybe to do with station keeping when dunking

It must be useful, Sea King and an assortment of other multinational helicopter designs went that way didn't they

 

Martian if she is at Telford she will be amongst my other helicopters on the club stand

 

I'm too unhappy with the paint to subject the poor judges to it

Edited by perdu
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Looks lovely! I've never really liked that blue/grey and yellow scheme compared to the orange and blue, but I am definitely warming to it on your model. Good save on the paintwork - but we should club together and buy you some wider masking tape :)

 

Regards,

Adrian

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10 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

As t happens, I never fold my helicopter blades. I did so once on a really long and difficult project and regretted it as, with the blades folded I felt the helicopter had lost it's character.

Agree with that, what's worse though is the amount of helicopters in preservation with their rotors either folded or completely removed.

 

Interesting theory Perdu and probably correct, but wouldn't they have used that set up for HC.2 s and HU.5s that would also hover for periods with something hanging from a wire in the SAR role?

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I don't know about that James, the dunking role needs precise marking for prolonged periods, collecting a bod from the 'oggin surely amounts to more of a dash in - drop 'ook- and lift

 

Its the similarity to the Sea King Puma type rear fuselage that gives me the impression of Hump's purpose

 

I did read somewhere, maybe Aviation News, my one time favourite place to glean stuff that its purpose was aerodynamic

 

Helicopterish stuff was always/often imparted by the great Elfan Ap Rees and I clung to his every word in the rotary world

 

I suppose I could Google it but I'm not so inclined...

 

😁

 

Just in from a great evening dash out in the Midget, might be the last chance of a topless foray for a while

 

We seem to be due a droplet or twenty of rain from tomorrow

 

I may attend to the reasons for the hump in the a.m.

 

Purrups

 

😉

Edited by perdu
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19 hours ago, perdu said:

but I suspect it is aerodynamic

Aerodynamic?  Wouldn't that be otiose on a Wessex :whistle:

 

8 hours ago, perdu said:

collecting a bod from the 'oggin surely amounts to more of a dash in - drop 'ook- and lift

Having been a bod plucked from the 'oggin - for the experience as it were - it certainly felt a lot like a dash in - dangle master loadie, snag bod - and lift.  Rather fun too.  And somewhat welcome after bobbin' about in a single man dinghy for 'alf an hour.  The Air Sea Rescue Loadie's always exuded an air of utter competence as I remember it (they certainly overawed this young flying officer)...

 

19 hours ago, perdu said:

I'm too unhappy with the paint to subject the poor judges to it

 

She looks well smart in the photo's Bill.  I like the Wessex anyway - but that blue and yellow scheme is especially attractive.

Edited by Fritag
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ASW hover and SAR hover are very different beasts, and you wouldn't use the AFCS ("auto-pilot" / "the box") for a wet winch.  The reason is because the aircraft's downwash moves the casualty around in the water, so the pilot must fly accurately to the rear seat con (instructions: "left 3 feet, back 1 foot" etc) - the box could never do that.  You'd probably plug in the RADALT height hold to allow you to concentrate fully on just flying the front-back-left-right stuff accurately, but that's it.  

 

At night you'd use the box much more, but even then only to get you to the hover in the first place - there was a standard SAR circuit whereby you overflew the casualty into wind and then timed your turns with a stopwatch; if you got it right it would bring you to a stable hover about 10 yards short of the casualty, at which point you'd disengage the cyclic channel and obey the con, as above.  Any kind of night manual hovering over the sea - even with a height hold in - is incredibly difficult and disorientating; not recommended unless no option.  There is simply nothing to look at, so obeying the rear-seat con becomes harder and harder - it's very easy to get into nasty pilot-induced oscillations which can get out of control quite fast.  Only really for very experienced crews who are current and very worked-up as a team... like a SAR squadron.

 

The box is designed 1. to get the aircraft safely into a Doppler hover at night so it can lower the sonar body and 2. hold the sonar cable vertical, thus removing distortions from submarine tracking if it had tilted.  This is called a "cable" hover, and is achieved by rollers at the top of the pit-head gear, over which the sonar cable runs if it's off-centre, and which provide inputs to the AFCS.  Naval helicopters were designed to kill submarines; SAR very much a secondary consideration in design terms.

 

By day, even for ASW, you usually flew entirely visually ["manual jumps" - great fun, especially if chasing a fast SSN] - you'd only revert to the box if it was very, very calm so minimal references, or if the crewman kept on getting warnings from the sonar that it wasn't vertical.

 

The Wessex 3 "hump" was something to do with smoothing the airflow round the radar dome in forward flight; the prototype Mk.3s dudn't have it, and had issues with turbulent air around the tail rotor (not a great idea).  Obviously in the hover, not an issue.  [Even old wobblycopters have airflow issues, @Fritag.  It's not all about whizzing around!]

 

Lovely Mk3, Bill.  I have a 1/48 yellow-top in my stash [2, in fact; both Revell & Italeri, though likely to ge only one model] and seeing this might move it up the pile.

 

 

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Thank you for that brilliant explanation Crisp, I guessed you'd know

 

Yes it makes sense to keep the tail rotor supplied with a decent smooth(ish) airflow when dashing about

 

Glad you like the 3 Crisp, now I'm ignoring the scrabbly paint issues I've started to love her again myself

 

Planning to finish off the weapons pylon pull moulded faired in thingy today then crack on with the tail rotor counterweight system bits

 

The tail needs its mesh intakes adding too, somebody please remind me, the old brain box is getting more sieve like by the hour

 

 

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Aerodynamics are aerodynamics, whether it be the offset engine nacelle on a Walrus, the strake on the port side of a Sea King tail, di-hedral vs an-hedral on early Scimitar tail surfaces, or reversing the tail rotor direction after the early marks of Lynx...

 

P.S. I went gliding at Upavon at the weekend; a present from the Mrs, and my first time airborne with controls anywhere near me since a Lynx in 1996.  Great fun in lots of ways, but the aviation geek in me was fascinated by how well it demonstrated basic aerdynamics, with (obviously) all torque considerations removed from the equation.  Like how rolling into a turn with aileron led to yaw away from the turn as the drag differential bit.  I actually found it harder to keep the ball in the middle of a glider than a powered aircraft, which is counter-intuitive.

 

Anyway... Wessex!

 

P.P.S. I am less dogmatic re folded blades on a helicopter model - leaving aside the display space issue.  Sea Kings were almost aways folded (except duty SAR cab) throughout my career, both ashore & afloat, so they still look "right" to me folded.  Lynx less so (though obviously we folded them to put the cab away in its box).  A folded Gazelle would just look weird.  Having never flown Wessex I can see both sides - I suspect I'll fold an ASW Wessex model, but spread a Junglie.

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
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Balls and bubbles, watching for the massive sink and hoping for a thermal

I love gliding, I really ought to do it again properly

I always missed out on gliding courses as a kidett, never quite got into it before the 'girls and fags' thing hit teenage me

 

I had a couple of launches during a track day at Marham a few years back, I really should, shouldn't I?

 

😚

 

Crisp I'm not sure the complexities of the fold will come over nicely in 1/72nd scale

 

I wonder

Edited by perdu
trying to post with a dumb tablet
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45 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I went gliding at Upavon at the weekend ......... Like how rolling into a turn with aileron led to yaw away from the turn as the drag differential bit.  I actually found it harder to keep the ball in the middle of a glider than a powered aircraft, which is counter-intuitive.

Nice pressie.  I've done just bits and bobs of gliding and similarly found it disproportionately hard to keep it in balance with the ball/canopy string centralised.  Never had much practise using the rudders for balancing a turn. Don't remember the JP needing much balancing - and not sure the Hawk needed any - and no such things as adverse aileron yaw in a Jag.  No ailerons!  I might be better if I tried it again now seeing as my most recent flying currency (albeit more than 5 years ago now) was in a Cap 10 & a Pitts, with of which did need balancing in the turn.

23 minutes ago, perdu said:

I love gliding, I really ought to do it again properly

He's made me think the same....

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