Ex-FAAWAFU

That's simply excellent

Fabulous stuff, Johnny. If you haven't used Montex masks before, I can thoroughly recommend them; I used them on my (Hasegawa) Sea King build [ZE419] & they were superb. Top Camel action. I have a WNW Pup in my stash (destined to be Dunning's aircraft), plus a Copper State Models Bristol Scout... but like a lot of people I have been rather hanging back until some theoretical time when my skills have improved. In the end I'm just going to have to bite the bullet, I guess.

They are lovely builds, and I hate to be *that* guy… but the Sea Fury’s arrestor hook is on upside down

To be fair, the FlightPath set is very good with the appropriate amount of work. At least, their HAS5 & HC4 sets are - I haven’t sampled their HAR3 (what with not bring that interested in Crab cabs), but I see no reason why it should be different. In particular, it you want to do weapon stations in an ASW aircraft, your only options are FlightPath & scratch building. So yay to FlightPath, I say

Been absent from BM for a while (real life stuff) & from this build for even longer. I think I might have some pictures somewhere that illustrate the fore & aft windbreaks better - I’ll see if I can dig them out. Great work, by the way. To answer one of your musings, not strictly a fo’c’sle, no. Cable deck.

If I could be bothered, I’d show you the email & photograph exchanges - but you don’t appear to be too interested in either listening or being civil, so I’ll pass if you don’t mind. I’m in this hobby because I enjoy it & (most of) the people in it. On the face of it, your motives appear to be rather different. See ya.

I have been staying out of this, since our Slovakian friend seems to have decided that he is the only person who knows anything about Sea Kings, which is somewhat… let’s leave it at “tedious”… (especially for those of us with thousands of hours on type). Still, it’s a free world & most of us are doing this for fun. Anyway, I was at the initial launch of the Airfix kit (at Historic Helicopters), because they had used some of my 1980s reference photos as inputs to the design process, so were kind enough to invite me. So I know for absolute certain that Airfix will definitely, categorically be doing a Mk.3 at some point - I would guess quite soon, since they have now released an ASW/RN SAR cab & a Junglie one. At the launch they had a built-up test shot which had elements of all marks incorporated OTHER than AEW2 & ASaC7 (never say never, I guess, but at that time they said there were no plans / insufficient interest to tool a Bagger). So this odd test shot had HAS/HAR sponsons on one side, HC4 stub-wing on the other, and an impossible combo fit of RN & RAF role equipment (FLIR, aerials et al). In other words, the HAR3-specific parts have already been designed and the runners produced. It will definitely happen. Oh, and the JamScrew boys have been taking information, reference shots etc from everywhere they can get it - not just Slovakia. Airfix did the same. They are not muppets, these design people, however fashionable it might be for some modellers to say that they are. But they do have to operate within budgets and time constraints. The design team also confirmed at the launch (because I specifically asked them) that they had thought long & hard about whether to do positive or negative rivets, eventually opting for negative because a) only a minority of builders [sad people like me!] care & b) because re-instating positive rivets that had been sanded off entirely / eroded during build would be much harder for most builders than reinstating negative “rivets”. They also contend that once built the effect of the negative rivets is more than good enough; I’m not certain I agree with them on that front, but I am well aware that the design of *any* kit involves compromises; for example, the No.3 generator bulge on the port side of the transmission / “dog kennel” is correct for some cabs, but not all. The designers know this - but decided that having two sizes of Jenny bulge would either mean separate parts (hard to fair into that location accurately because of compound curves…and rivets) or tooling completely separate, alternate port fuselage halves, which would have added considerably to the cost… all for a difference that very, very few people would even notice. Personally, I think a much bigger failing with the Airfix kit OOB is the lack of blade droop - but you can deal with that using after-market (Jam Screw already do drooped metal & composite blades) and/or raiding a Hasegawa kit (their drooped blades are pretty good, albeit you have do some modelling work to convert them to composite blades if your subject had those). I also wish that someone in the after-market world would help us with some weapon stations at some point; scratch-building or CAD designing them so that they fit the compound curves of the boat hull is not a trivial task (I’ve tried it). Finally, as those of you who have followed me for a while on here already know, it is perfectly possible to build a 1/48 Sea King with positive rivets - I have done it, based on the Hasegawa airframe (which is essentially a Sikorsky / Mitsubishi cab, and thus requires a fair amount of correction work to depict a Westland aircraft). It’s a lot of work - I would estimate 30+ hours of applying HGW rivets (which is what I used) - not least because pretty much every airframe had slightly different configurations of rivets, showing their history. Did they ever have MAD fitted? Or the “Erica Roe” jammer in the early-80s? Which weapon carriers did they have fitted at various points? Mk.44 only? Mk.44 & 46? Or Stingray? The answer to those questions will dictate the lay-out of their rivets, which will be very different to the way they looked as they left the factory, and pretty much every airframe will have differences. Many of these airframes were in service for almost 50 years, and they were always evolving. It’s up to the modeller to decide just how precisely accurate they want to be for their particular airframe at the time at which they are depicting it. The details of the rivets on my ZE419 build (available elsewhere on BM) are based on the FAA Museum’s HAS5, of which I have literally hundreds of photographs. Sadly, the real ZE419 ditched in the early-90s off Islay (LACMN Jim Scott RIP) so checking the original airframe wasn’t possible - and my photos of ZE419 when she was 014/R of 820 NAS in 1988 are too long-distance to be certain of every detail from every angle. It’s good enough for me. As others have said, the Airfix Sea King is not perfect - no kit is. However, it is so far ahead of any other depiction of the aircraft in this scale as to be out of sight. If you want to take it from good to better (as I do), that’s up to you - but you can build a very good Sea King OOB, which is what 99% of modellers will do. P.S. Just a reminder, for those who haven’t seen it; this is the Hasegawa “Ark Royal SAR” boxing with a lot of rework, plus about 20,000 HGW rivets: If you want to see more (including the lengthy saga of applying the rivets…), search for ZE419 in topic titles.

Long overdue catch-up (I have been AWOL on a 1-to-1 real life project). Blimey O’Reiily! That is all.

Totally agree about smaller punch & die. I use my RP P&D set all the time, & it’s great - but I’d snap your hand off if it went even smaller. P.S. Great to see this back, Rich

Bloomin’ gorgeous

That’s why I’m doing them in batches of 10 or so!

Close to finishing the life raft canisters…. & they’re a bit of a faff! Remove print supports; white primer (both sides, so 2 sessions); white topcoat (ditto); realise the underside, where the supports were attached, still needed some work with a file; white primer again on the filed section; white topcoat; finally thin (0.1mm) black pen for the rubber seal… But worth it, I think. The trouble with building a ship with over 500 ship’s company, designed to transport a complete tank batallion or a Royal Marine Commando… is that I need 70 of the blighters! More soon Crisp

I am probably way, way too late to this particular party - and it’s a lovely build. It is true that the windscreen is not tinted on the Lynx, but it does have a heating element built into it, which from some angles can make it look very faintly gold. In this photo below (of “my” Lynx HAS3S, ZD260/346/BW of Broadsword Flight in 1990) you cannot really see the gold tint [it was *very* subtle], but you can see the white (actually silver in real life) edges of the heating elements. You can also see how dark the overhead panels often appear from outside. [I have a long-term idle dream of building this scene one day, but since it shows us doing a MRGB change alongside in Gibraltar, which necessitates removing both engines, you can probably imagine the amount of scratch building that would be needed! Probably never going to happen, though I will certainly build “Danny Boy” one day (the nickname one for you “Where Eagles Dare” fans…).] Anyway, as I said, superb build. Crisp

Continuing with the LCVP davits, having got the brass davit support pillars nicely square I found that the torque bar wasn’t level (probs slightly off-centre drilling on my part): So a shim on the right (some spare brass from the PE runner) & some filing on the left, now improved: Finally time for glue! Here rather precariously balanced in situ on the superstructure: …and here with an LCVP test-fitted (nice & snug): More soon (though doubt there will be many photos, since it will essentially be the same repeated three more times!) Crisp

All 4 now ready to assemble: