Head in the clouds.

At last, bag in the hot seat, and with no further ado; The time has come to cut the hull in half and see what is needed to correct my foolish, never to be repeated mistake. The cut was made about1cm aft of the sonar buoy opening; To try and take out some of the warp I clamped the two halves overnight; When offered up to the fuselage both sides of the hull where warped downwards at the point of the cut and toe inwards. To try and get around this issue I fitted 4 little pillar supports to the underside of the cabin floor at the point of the cut to give (a) support and (b) something extra to glue to, although I failed to take a pic, sorry. The hull was then glued from the front going aft about 5cm at a time,this allowing me to try and straighten out the twist and droop a section at a time. After all was fixed we had this; As can be observed, we have a gap, no big shake though, a piece of Evergreen fixed in place and plenty of Green filler gave a satisfactory result; After that little episode I thought I would go for something a little different so I turned my ham-fisted attention to XV371, and in particular, the appendage under the nose as seen here; (Copyright FAST Museum) I do not know what it is but I do not think it is a mount for other items, probably an electronic sensor of sorts but next time I am down the FAST museum I shall try to find out. It consists of 2 items attached to the underside of the nose by a motorised shaft which I assume will rotate it. To make this I simply made up blocks of plastic from Evergreen flat stock, filed,scraped and chiselled until I had it. I don't think you want to see photos of layer upon layer of card but I have a pic of the nearly finished article; Once I mount it I shall see if my measurements are correct and it is the correct size. Both items took some trial and error, adding or removing material as needed. Whilst XV371 was in my hands I noticed a few omissions, I noticed the little humps in the airframe that were missing or wrongly moulded, see this pic from earlier; Left of the window are two little humps, there should be three, also, to the right of the window is a moulded on disc( near the edge of the pic). There should be two here also, they can just be all seen in this pic; These have now been added, a little piece of plastic fixed to the airframe, I am continuing to whittle away at them until I feel they are the right size, at the moment they are a little to prominent; You may also notice that while I have been hacking away at this kit much of the raised details, rivets and panel lines had disappeared so I smoothed off the whole airframe and re scribed the main panel lines, the rivets, well ,I don't think you could get a good scale effect so I will be leaving them off, for better or worse! This pic tells another story, in my keenness to chisel out the hand/foot holds I made them too large so this was rectified thus; These will be sanded down and repeated on t'other side. ( yes, the pics in the wrong order again) Last up today is the crew door. I have decided to have ZB506 with an open door so as to use some of the etch that would otherwise not be seen. I built up the etch steps/door; The top piece of etch was fixed to the door and the door then split. When I offered up the top section of door with the etch attached to the kit door it looked way to thick; The etch was removed and the door sanded down to a more respectable thickness, not perfect but much better, I did take a pic this time but not sure if you can see any difference, there is about a 50% reduction, trust me!!!. Thanks for looking in.

I did not, the wonder of electronic wizardry did and I know not why, sorry old bean.

Is there any news on the Viscount kits as I could find no news on the Welshmodels site.

Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11.

Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11. Is there any news on the Viscount releases, I have had a look at the site but could not find any info. Did find the Andover C2 though and BAC 1-11.

Very nice indeed Kes, I too have this kit and acquired it with this very same scheme in mind.... great minds and all that!

Hello folks. I have had my 1/350 Trumpeter HMS Hood kit for a while now along with the FLYhawk upgrade set. I have been running my fingers through the Flyhawk set and I have noticed that the 4 page instructions seem to miss Fret L and M and some items off other frets, no instructions seem to be evident to fit items off these fets. Am I missing pages from my instructions or is this normal for Flyhawk. If indeed I am missing pages could someone scan the missing pages for me please. Thanks for any help forthcoming. Gary

Nice end result Pete, that pilot is spoilt though, he has the roomiest cockpit this side of an F35.

Very tidy and nicely presented.

Don't see many Heyfords and that scheme is superb. Very smart indeed.

Oh how I wish that was so Andy, no matter what I tried I could not get it to fit satisfactory, especially in length. Once cut it in half there was a gap of 5 mm so unfortunately it had shrunk but no worries, I hope to post a little update later this weekend. I just can't seem to build much modelling momentum at the moment so everything is in dribs and drabs so thanks to one and all for hanging on in there. It will indeed @OutcastJoel but not a story I want to revisit again......

This thread has had more resurrections from the dead than Status Quo, well....nearly, this being the second. Had a busy time since my last post, some family stuff, getting ready for our display at Telford and being host to this winter bug for 4 weeks during which I felt like I had been pulling buses up mountains all week. With things calming down I actually felt like doing some modelling today so here is a quick post of todays proceedings. Having not sat at the bench for a while with my 3 Kings I lined them up to refresh myself with where I am up to with each, I decided to try and get them all up to the same build point Looking at ZB506 I noticed the engine bay and the grilles on said bay. Strangely, Eduard missed the vertical grille on the left bay, supplying only the two small triangular sections as shown in the instructions. Bit of a glaring oversight and not what I would expect from Eduard. With this in mind I had to find something to represent the vertical section of grille and the best I could find without spending more money on extra PE sets was to cut down one of the mesh grilles used on the later box type air filters which I have no use for on this build. So out with the knife; and fitted accordingly; In the absence of other options I will take this as Ok. Now onto XV651. With XV651 being an early Sea King all the extra bits that grew on the HAR3A needed to be shed so I put the hull section on a diet, after which filler was used to repair any new holes in the hull and this is where it all went south. Why did I do it? Why oh why. To move things along a bit quicker with the drying of the filler I left the hull section on the radiator thinking it would be Ok as the heat is not too aggressive.......wrong! When I came back to it it had warped and shrank but I did not know by how much until today. The warping can be sorted by gluing it down in sections but that will be of no use as the tail wheel locater is not where it needs to be. After putting the hull on a diet I am now going to binge feed it. My plan is to cut the hull in half just after the sonar hatch, fit a bridge support to the inside of the hull, fix both sides down in the correct position and infill with plastic card. No wonder my builds take so long, I basically do them twice over. Anyway, that will be my next job so until then, tatty by.

I agree with John, it has really put life into the model and looks superb.

How cool would it be to have Hendie live next door to you, every night would be a masterclass in modelling, although I think both wife's ( and maybe even Hendie) may have something to say about it Riveting stuff here( no pun intended). As for the mysteries of 3D printing, your guidance and thoughts would be priceless for many of us......more work, I know!

So true Alan, to me she was the Queen of the skies. I must say I have read your posts and and find your approach sincere and professional and with your subject matter I would hope more people try resin kits, contrary to popular belief they do not come with devils horns and a one way ticket to hell in the box. I cannot remember after seeing your kits at SMW last year how heavy your kits are. I see someone has already mentioned the weight of wings on some kits, I have a Nimrod AEW conversion kit in 72nd scale and it weighs a ton, maybe some see problems fixing such heavy critical items and the potential for disaster. Do you have anything up your sleeve to make the construction of your kits more less gravity positive and with fewer butt joints that seem to be the norm for so many resin kits? I hope my questions do not seem impertinent but you come across as a man with a plan...just wondering, that's all Gary.