Hamiltonian Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 (edited) This is the old Airfix kit of Wallis's autogyro, dressed up for the Bond film You Only Live Twice. Ken Wallis used to be proud of the fact the autogyro flew itself "hands off", but I doubt if he could have also fired guns, rockets and flamethrowers at the same time, as Sean Connery is doing in the box art: I scratch-built replacement front weapons pods, since the kit provided little spring-loaded rockets which may be remembered fondly but were thoroughly unrealistic. I added the pitot tube, lateral drift indicator tuft, and a support for the rotor spin up drive head, which weren't included in the kit, as well as a seat cushion and lap belt to hid the horrible kit seat base. I also added some of the more obvious cable runs - spark-plug leads, rudder cables, brake cables, and the control cables for the spin-up drive. And I made a couple of decals from a photograph of the real front weapons pods, to add a bit of detail. I wanted to model it with the rotor supports in place, and the pilot figure looked a bit daft sitting in an aircraft that obviously wasn't ready for flight, so I left him out. Even without the pilot, the kit wants to sit on its front wheel, whereas the real aircraft tilted back on its rear wheel when no-one was on board. So I slipped short lengths of 2mm brass rod into the hollow tubes of the rear flamethrowers before assembly (the only place to hide some weight), and that just tipped the balance in favour of a realistic "nose up" posture. Paint is Humbrol enamel and Alclad. I can't believe this was "Skill Level 2" on the box - it was a very fiddly build, with lots of parts having to marry up in complicated ways. I just hope I never meet a "Skill Level 4"! Edited June 13, 2021 by Hamiltonian Replaced dead links 38 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete in Lincs Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 Nice build. Somewhere in the past I read an article on building a more accurate version of the kit. Never could rediscover it though. I saw the kit at a car boot sale some time ago. The seller wanted a silly price though because the box had been signed by Ken Wallis! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gorby Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 Excellent build, looks like you've taken it to 'skill level 10'. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyW Posted October 26, 2017 Share Posted October 26, 2017 Wow! A fantastic build of an Airfix classic. I was lucky enough to meet Ken Wallis a few years before he passed. He lived about five ordinary lives in the space most of us get for one. Tony. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squibby Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 Great little build This was from 'You Only Live Twice' right?...the one that had Sean Connery pretending to be a Japanese man, which worked as well as you can imagine... I can't stop laughing at his nonchalant pose amidst all that hectic action... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsairfoxfouruncle Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 007 ... 👍 nice build 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Masters Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 Very nice. One of my favourite Bond films and one of the more unbelievable ones too...Excellent model, by the way. Very clean and neat. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aeronut Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 I think that's the first build of this kit I've seen where the builder has added rudder cables 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qn30jEkPz7 Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 You’re quite the operator @Hamiltonian Very impressive 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bearmatt Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 15 hours ago, Gorby said: Excellent build, looks like you've taken it to 'skill level 10'. Absolutely what Gorby said! (Skill level 2 was probably written, so people would not be discouraged from buying it ) Cheers b. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 17 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said: Nice build. Somewhere in the past I read an article on building a more accurate version of the kit. Never could rediscover it though. I saw the kit at a car boot sale some time ago. The seller wanted a silly price though because the box had been signed by Ken Wallis! Thanks for the comment. I did my small amount of detailing using a few photos, Q's walk-round with Bond in the film (in which we get to see quite a lot of detail of the aircraft), and Dick Ellis's lovely technical drawing in Flight International from 1966. But there were a number of pipes and cables I couldn't properly trace, and the detail of the slings supporting the fuel tank wasn't clear enough for me to feel like sanding down the kit tank and building slings instead. So an article on the topic would have been a fine thing. Sounds like your car-boot seller will eventually get a buyer who throws away the kit and keeps the box-top! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 16 hours ago, Gorby said: Excellent build, looks like you've taken it to 'skill level 10'. Thanks for the kind comment. It didn't feel like that when I was stripping the tail back and starting the painting again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 10 hours ago, Squibby said: Great little build This was from 'You Only Live Twice' right?...the one that had Sean Connery pretending to be a Japanese man, which worked as well as you can imagine... I can't stop laughing at his nonchalant pose amidst all that hectic action... Yes, it's high among the contenders for most ludicrous box art of all time. I remember laughing at it as a kid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 4 hours ago, Aeronut said: I think that's the first build of this kit I've seen where the builder has added rudder cables The rudder cables were the first bit of detailing I thought I absolutely needed to add. The kit tail just sits there on the end of its bare metal rod, with no apparent way of moving the rudder. Fortunately the cable run is pretty clear in Dick Ellis's technical drawing from Flight International. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 (edited) Thanks all, for the kind comments. I'm used to keeping a little pot of pre-painted parts that need to be added to the kit later in the assembly. But this kit consisted pretty much entirely of prepainted bits and pieces that would eventually come together to produce the final product. I needed to get some extra pots! It was oddly appropriate, though, given the way "Little Nellie" is assembled out of giant suitcases in the film. Edited June 13, 2021 by Hamiltonian Replace dead link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 1 hour ago, bearmatt said: Absolutely what Gorby said! (Skill level 2 was probably written, so people would not be discouraged from buying it ) Thank you. I do wonder how many of these ended up being thrown out half-finished after an assembly problem. I've never encountered a kit that had so many parts that could be assembled upside down or back-to-front (or both!), and so many parts that needed to align with so many other parts. The framework for the rotor support has to engage with about seven other components, for instance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bearmatt Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 3 minutes ago, Hamiltonian said: Thank you. I do wonder how many of these ended up being thrown out half-finished after an assembly problem. I've never encountered a kit that had so many parts that could be assembled upside down or back-to-front (or both!), and so many parts that needed to align with so many other parts. The framework for the rotor support has to engage with about seven other components, for instance. Ey...little kit - big problems! By instance...how did you make the circles on the nose? (Decals? Painted?) They look very good and things like that are always a pain... (at least to me) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 (edited) On 10/27/2017 at 1:30 PM, bearmatt said: Ey...little kit - big problems! By instance...how did you make the circles on the nose? (Decals? Painted?) They look very good and things like that are always a pain... (at least to me) The nose is a combination of the kit decals and painting. The kit decals provide a side stripe and half a nose ring for each side, which have to be neatly aligned with each other at the front. The central black disc has to be painted inside the inner white ring of the decals. (And the nose decals don't sit neatly unless you slit them radially in several places to avoid wrinkles.) I found the main problem with these decals is that they are at the border between yellow and silver paint, and are semitransparent. I've seen a number of builds of this kit in which the yellow paint shows through the decal, so that you can see the paint border through the white side stripe and nose rings. I got around this by scanning and printing a copy of the decal sheet, cutting out the side stripe patterns and gluing them to masking tape. Then I cut the masking tape to match the decals, and positioned it on the kit. (Multiple applications to get the masks neatly applied!) So my yellow paint ended up exactly aligned with the eventual decal positions, and the decals were easily positioned by sliding them up to the border of the yellow paint. Then, once the decals were set and varnished, I took a deep breath and hand-painted the central black disc on the nose. Edited June 13, 2021 by Hamiltonian Replace dead link 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bearmatt Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Very smart with this scanning, printing. And a big WOW for hand-painting the central disc! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viking Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Fabulous job you have done on an old kit from way back when, and brought it up to the standard of a new molding. Cheers John 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 28, 2017 Author Share Posted October 28, 2017 4 hours ago, bearmatt said: Very smart with this scanning, printing. And a big WOW for hand-painting the central disc! Thanks. I usually scan decal sheets anyway, especially from old kits, so that I can print replacements if I mess up or if the decals fall apart (as happened to me with my last Hurricane build, using a much newer kit). This time I'd just done a test printing on ordinary paper to check I'd sized them properly, and as I was looking at the sheet I thought: Hmmmm, this could actually be useful ... The mask cutting didn't need to be too exact, since the decal stripes have a black edge a millimetre or so wide which concealed small errors, but without having the ability to test-fit a paint mask until I got it right, I can't think of another way I'd have got everything aligned satisfactorily. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted October 29, 2017 Author Share Posted October 29, 2017 19 hours ago, Viking said: Fabulous job you have done on an old kit from way back when, and brought it up to the standard of a new molding. Cheers John Thank you. There are certainly moments during these "nostalgia builds" when I wonder why I'm putting myself through the hassle! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamiltonian Posted December 14, 2017 Author Share Posted December 14, 2017 Quick note for completeness: I finally got around to posting an abbreviated build log for this kit, here: https://oikofuge.com/airfix-124-wallis-wa-116-agile-autogyro-little-nellie/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Head in the clouds. Posted December 14, 2017 Share Posted December 14, 2017 Superb and what a blast from my youth. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rumblestripe Posted December 14, 2017 Share Posted December 14, 2017 “Oh, I travel… a sort of licensed troubleshooter.” No, Mr. Bond I expect you to fly! (sorry) Nice build sir. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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