Ex-FAAWAFU

Deffo back to front on the cyclics. None the less, it looks great; you have not fallen into the standard modellers' trap of working on every single seam and panel line until they are nearly invisible - the panels on either side of the nose just behind the radar are seldom a very tight fit on the real aircraft, and yours looks just right, whereas in other places, where the panels are genuinely tight, yours work well. Is it too late / difficult to swap the sticks round? The only other thing I'd say is that your rotor head looks a tad squiffy on pics one and two of the completed aircraft. It looks as though it leans backwards (though it could be to do with camera angle?). And Lynx blades don't droop like most helos - semi-rigid head and all that. Yours look close to droopy. But for all that, it looks pretty fine.

I'm surprised your mates allowed a Grubber anywhere near the nose bay! Those last pictures are really excellent; your home made No3 Genny has worked beautifully, and the PE troop step looks spot on.

I think you've made the right decision about the colour. Really love your idea with the brass rod in the ECU exhausts; definitely gonna be nicking that one when I get round to my 2 planned cabs (1 bog standard 820 ASW, 1 detailed 819 SAR). Nice work with the nose bay, too; not an area you often see attempted.

Your patience and attention to detail is so impressive, and the aircraft are really starting to show the benefit. Wonderful stuff in one of my favourite threads.

Loving the PE wing fold stuff; it really adds to the overall impact. Nice job; now the pair I have in my stash (one destined to be a Mark 1) are whispering even more persistently to me!

See? I told you someone would be along to berate me for being a wimp! [More likely fix is that I will use the replacement kit as a master to cast a new nose - possible I might use it as the basis for a P1052 (the swept-wing Sea Hawk-ish prototype)]

Great to see it done; looking good

Some colour, at last! First, the monster masking job - a real pain, because of the need to get it vaguely symmetrical: Then the first coat (of several, I suspect). It is not as pink in real life as this makes it look! More soon. Crisp

First, choose your red!

Just to prove that my life hasn't all been disasters with Sea Hawks (se FAA GB thread for details...), the rotor head is now pretty much complete - just needs a few minor touch-ups with the OD paint. Thanks for advice, Nigel; a session of gentle but persistent pressure with my hands seems to have sorted the blade droop. The rest of the aircraft has gradually been acquiring its white paint (Vallejo 70.820 Off White, to be precise), and is now awaiting one final coat before being set aside to cure, pending the masking job for the red. More soon. Thanks for looking, as always. Crisp

Lovely job.

Exactly! This one WILL still get built - just not in time for the GB. Lest anyone is quietly thinking I ought to be trying to save it, I offer evidence of a Sea Hawk nose that's probably beyond my powers of salvation! The black bobbly stuff is Robbie's (pretty neat!) application of Liquid Gravity lead balls, super-glued in. The thought was spot on, and the execution good - shame about the collateral damage. His parents were mortified, but I have genuinely derived just as much enjoyment from really igniting his love of aviation as I would have done from finishing the model. It's a fine kit, BTW; I had got as far as preparing to button up the fuselage - no apparent fit problems with the tail section, Jenko. I think I will use the wreckage to experiment with Alclad etc on the jet pipe area.

Disaster! Fatal fail; this build has ceased to be. We have had some friends over from Italy, and their son is disabled. He loves everything to do with aeroplanes, so he's been sitting with me watching me do bits and bobs to the Sea Hawk. We went out last night, and Roberto decided to help me finish it. In particular, I had been discussing with him about how to make sure it wasn't a tail-sitter - so while I was out he (gulp) cut off the nose with some sprue-cutters and filled it with glue. My own fault for not putting the model away (and, frankly, worth it for the hours of pleasure he seems to have derived from looking at all my reference material). I have salvaged the few bits that i could (notably the Aires cockpit) and ordered a replacement kit. No matter. So no more updates on this one. Back to finish the Gazelle before we go on holiday on a fortnight, and then probably a period of concentrating on the Barracuda (...though there's the Sea Vixen FAW1 conversion winking at me from the stash as I speak...)

My gob is well and truly smacked; individually modelled compressor blades?? Much respect.

Super job - always had a soft spot for the Intruder for some reason. I was still flying when this incident happened, so I'm not sure how I missed it; surely it must have featured in all the flight safety mags etc? This is the first time I have heard of it; lucky boy (and a damn good piece of flying; he sounds amazingly calm considering he's flying as slow as he dares with what looks like his dead mate flailing about a couple of feet from his face. Much respect!).

Stunning, as ever, Colin! Your attention to detail is awesome

Looking really good; nice one!

Does my time taxying around the Dummy Deck at Culdrose count? I was grounded for 3 weeks in 1987 after an operation on my sinuses (cos obviously the pressure difference is immense at 200' in a Sea King...). Thought I'd get a bit of loafing time, but the Boss sent me across to to the School of Aircraft Handling to taxy aircraft for baby Chock-heads / Roofrats to marshall over the side etc. I got to taxy a Sea Hawk, and an ancient Harrier (might even have been a Kestrel; they certainly had one for a while). That was definitely driving, not flying, though I was (just about) in control of an aircraft... [For those who don't know, there was - probably still is - a concrete carrier deck on the least-used taxy-way at CU, where they trained handlers].

Well those official numbers just show what a totally arbitrary load of nonsense it is; you try ground taxying a Sea King from dispersal onto the main runway at Culdrose in 2.5 minutes - not possible (even at the "fast walking pace" that we all used that was actually about Usain Bolt speed!) Clearly I should revise my log book!

Wow! That is quite silver, isn't it? But a terrific job on the kit - you make aligning some of those "interesting" joints sound a doodle with 2 minutes of filler and a quick wipe with newspaper. My Barra build tells me different. Great work.

Just when I was starting to wonder whether I'd ever get started on this one, I clear some space while the Gazelle is fully drying its first coat of all-over primer. So here's the cockpit, painting done about 85% (still a few dots of colour / highlight to finish), assembly still only about 50% (largely the seat / harness).

Though your Dad's reaction is understandable, he wasn't being fair. The Fury ditching with undercarriage problems was also John Beattie, off Prestwick in 1989 - and I can assure you he was completely, utterly gutted about having to do it... but he had no realistic option. When he took off, only one main wheel came up (it was always assumed because of a hydraulics failure when a pipe burst - not unlikely with a 50-year old aircraft, even a well-maintained one), so he was stuck with one wheel up and one down. He tried everything to get it to retract - rolled inverted and porpoised, pulled negative G, bounced the "bad" wheel on the runway several times, and so on, but it would not budge - and the "good" leg wouldn't come down and lock either, so he couldn't just land and get it sorted. In the end, after trying everything the engineers could think of for over 2 hours, he was ordered to bale out on a safe heading and let the cab ditch. It's all very well old salts who used to fly these things for real woofing into their beards about LMF and how it wouldn't have happened in their day, but to land on one wheel would have been exceedingly dangerous - un-necessarily dangerous. There was a high probability that the aircraft would have flipped over and either killed or maimed John Beattie - and/or members of the large crowd (it was at Prestwick Air Show). The bottom line is no aircraft, however historic or wonderful, is worth the death of a pilot. It's only a machine, when all is said and done, however much we all love them.

That explains it! I thought I had completely mis-remembered..

God, I'd forgotten the JP cardboard cockpit! I had my Bulldog one for several years (though it's long gone now), but I think Her Majesty's Air Force decreed that no matelot was going to hang onto the JP one as well...

The aircraft records it? Gordon Bennett! Does it fly itself as well [never been the same since they stopped using castor oil etc etc]? I hope to see many model that equal this one in the coming years, but I am confident that i am unlikely to see any that surpass it. Totally fabulous. Looking forward to the JP thread! [P.S. Harking back to a couple of pages back... I went to Duxford yesterday - I had 3 hours to kill in Cambridge, so why wouldn't you? To my surprise, in the restoration hangar (in many ways the best bit of the whole museum) there was the very T20 in which I flew with Beatts. It crashed a couple of years later and I'd always assumed was written off... but it appears not; it's on the way back to flying condition, apparently. There was another Sea Fury there - an FB11, also being restored - which is in bits everywhere, so I look loads of pictures that would normally be impossible. I'll post them in the walkrounds section idc. There is also a Sea King 6 there which appears in my logbook. Given that the FAA Museum Lynx and Sea King 5 are both also in there, I can no longer pretend to be anything other than a museum piece myself, I guess!]