started this kit today , had know cockpit what so ever so i used some airwaves etched from the spares box it consists of a sea vixen airbrake and a sea venom front undecarrage bay ill upload pikkys later

steve

Whose kit are you using? If it's the Pegasus one you have some serious plastic carving ahead of you. FYI Aviation News plans are wrong!! Compare photos with the plans and you will see that in the real thing there is an unbroken curve from the base of the windscreen to the prop tip. Dunno where Pegasus went wrong (other than to use the AN plans) but the canopy looks a bit squashed to me. Remember also that the exhausts run parallel to eachother and do not 'flare' with the widening fuselage.

thanks for the shout mate have you got a copy of some good refferences ?

anyway hers some shots ......

I have something buried in the garage, but it will take a few days to mine that deep!

From memory the only other set of plans are from an obscure publication called 'Control Column' from the very early 1980's. They are more accurate. Again if ememory serves, the Scale Aircraft Modelling feature seemed to use the Aviation News drawings.........not surprising as at that time they were both from the same stable.

I have both the Pegasus kit plus a vac form whose origins I forgot (it's in the garage). I had vague plans to graft the nose of the anonymous vac form to the Pegasus kit. The canopy of the mystery ship was more accurate but fogged! I also recall thinking that I needed a Heller Spit XVI prop and spinner to complete the ensemble (in my mind I am the world's best modeller, but as a practicing beauracrat I plan and run things up flag poles rather than actually model...........).

I promise to post info to you but probably at the weekend. First I have to master Photobucket which seems to be the photo album of choice.

Fingers crossed!

BTW why do you have an Airwaves Sea Vixen P.E. set??!!!?!?!!?

lol the sea vixen etched is there for a good reason .... look at the cockpit floor i have made .. it is a sea vixen airbrake its a perfect fit !!!

just remember the Sea Vixen never had Firestreak missiles............they ripped the wings off.

BTW what colour scheme are you doing -

silver

silver and dayglo

er...........that's it

lol dont worri about sea vixens i work on one lol they have there surprises , i think i may go for the silver / dayglow have u built one before would love to see it

Nope! I plan, strategise and then just as I am about to commit to plastic, someone else brings out a new kit (15 years planning a Hudson in 1/72 scale and then Italeri go and stuff up my plans). If someone wants to do a resin Balliol I won't complain. It comes in lots of pretty colours.........silver/silver and dayglo/ red and lots of operators........RAF/FAA/Ceylon/Boulton Paul. It will ship thousands of units. C'mon Airfix you're on an FAA roll here!

Q. how many Britmodellers would buy one?

Put me down for at least a couple, both Sea Balliols.

Nick

I was told by someone from a rival cottage industry concern that he reckoned that a lot of Pegasus kits originated as Czech resins and Chris Gannon used them as masters, the Balliol being one of them. I also suspect the CMK Bv 155 was also used as a master as the CMK and Pegasus kits are fingerprint identical.

The Balliol was a nice kit. Built mine as a Sea Balliol but it's long gone.

Still need to burrow in the garage. I have loads of 'useful items' that need depositing in the local dump first (q. how do you fit six interior doors into a Ka?)

In the meantime I remember realising how the canopy is inaccurate. Look at the real thing and you will see that the windscreen panels are as tall as they are wide. Look at the model and you will notice that they appear squashed.

Interesting comment by Wooksta re the origins of the Pegasus kit. If true, then the Czecks also used the awful Aviation News plans. I assume that the resin kits are early incarnations of CMK or whoever and which only had production runs of a few dozen?

This is a kit you don't often see built. It was the first Pegasus kit I made about three years ago. I thought it was quite good -except for lack of cockpit detail which I did a bit of scratchbuilding. Nothing else was added.



Cheers!

Don't think I've ever heard if this plane let alone seen a model.

Ok here is a series of pix I found on t'interweb

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=boulto...l%2Fballiol.jpg

Strewth that's a long URL (how do you contract this into 'Linky'?!)

Anyhoo..........this shows the two fuselages retrieved from a scrappy in Failsworth Lancashire in the 70's. BPA are essentially building metal clad wooden frames around them to make static external replicas.

The cockpit shots are the best I have ever seen anywhere (Pilot notes are grainy b/w anyway) and since they are being refurbed by PB oltdimers would be inclined to believe what I see.

For an overview of the Balliol see here (even this uses the c****y Aviation News plans - c.f. the canopy and 'notched' curve from windscreen to spinner again)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_Paul_Balliol

Note that it flew with a Mercury Radial (prototype), AW Mamba (T.1) and then the RAF got cold feet and decided to use surplus Merlins (T.2). Do some digging around and you will find interesting variations on the airframe (nose - obviously; tail assembly and the canopy as well). There were also minor detail differences. For an obscure 'nearly was', the Balliol offers some interesting diversions. Unfortunately from a colour scheme point of view you only get anodized metal, natural metal, high speed silver (with either yellow trianer bands or dayglo details) or one overall red pre production example used by PB (G-ANSF). As an aside, many examples flew straight to an M.U. and were scrapped in situ. Drifting further off the main point, Blackburn built a batch and curiously cowl panels were not interchangeable with BP built examples. Final ramble - all had manual wing folding.

I know that I have banged on about the Balliol, but this is perfect resin fodder and even I would be tempted by a CMK resin even at their prices. If the better half moans, I would say that it was only the price of a perm!!!

As for real airframes, there is one T.21 at Cosford (this should really be with the FAA Museum!). There is definitely one complete example in Ceylon - apparently the Shuttleworth Collection tried and failed to get it to add to their trainer collection. Rumour has it that there is another substantially complete airframe out there too. Other than that, all you have are the two semi replicas with the Boulton Paul Association in the Midlands. These guys did something similar with a Defiant too - v. nice!

Hope this helps and if anyone reads this, please take time out to have a look about the real thing.

I must have seen the one at Cosford, but I don't remember it, thanks for the info and links.

Sea Vixen/Steve

I have found some references that you may be interested in, including the accurate 'Control Column' plans. If still interested, PM me and I will arrange to post them out to you this week.

Cheers

finnished work on the cockpit today should have the fuslarge halfs together today