Head in the clouds.

First order of the day is to correct my mistake,albeit one of those mistakes which are easily rectified, I failed to fit one of the stringers to the inside of the fuselage of ZB506. With that out the way and done it was time to turn my attentions to XV371, in particular the sponsons and undercarriage. As is well known the sponsons are hollow and have no detail so I set about giving some substance in the way of a well for each sponson made from evergreen sheet. There is not much in the way of detail inside these sponsons, but what I will do is to replace the plastic actuator piston for the main U/C leg with brass rod once the undercarriage is glued into each sponson: Talking of undercarriage, some PE from the Airwaves set were fitted where the sterngthening web is located, first removing the plastic item; Whilst working on the old Airfix kit I decided to look again at the transparencies and decided they are not as bad as I first imagined so with this in mind more detail needs to be added to the cockpit. First up for attention is the crew seats, the kit items having no detail so new seats had to be built, but the kit items would not be discarded, instead they were trimmed down to give me a basic canvas on which to start. The seat and backrest were thinned down and two new sides for each seat made from Evergreen plastic. Then the drum for the seat belt was made and fixed, simple to do unlike the seat support which consists of a plate and two uprights to which the seat is fixed, these being made from brass rod and plastic. The seat cushions are made from plastic and roughed up with a curved blade, not sure if it will work but nothing to loose; There may be two smaller rods to fit to the back of seat but I will check my pics first. Turning away from the cockpit I decided to look at the grills that sit in front of the rotor assembly. I decided to remove the plastic where the PE mesh is to sit, not a problem but I maybe should have waited until the fuselage was glued together otherwise this happens; Luckily I did not loose the missing piece so all is not lost. Well that little lot has took several hours over the weekend to do, seems so little for so much effort. More later.

This is looking interesting on just about every level; Madness.....check. 10/10 Workload....check 11/10 Bumps in the road.....check 10/10 Subject matter..... bang on the money, especially the Griffon and the FM Dragonfly. Good luck with it Corsaircorp, I think you have a fight on your full but capable hands.

So that is my mission should I.......you bet

Dog first, Tonka later, hope you get both fixed up nicely Ced.

One of my favourites and beautifully done.

You can't Pete, I need beer for Bank Holiday Monday Weapons, you must be spoilt for choice but how about a Railgun, very modern!

Good eyes Andy, that little detail sailed right past me.

Now that the windows have been blanked in where necessary I could move on with the internal detail which will be different on all 3 builds. XV371, being an old kit and with transparencies that are, well, not very transparent, being rather thick and not particularly smooth will only have a coat of paint. XZ570, being the newer Airfix HAR3 kit has nice transparencies but I have no idea of the internal set up on this development Sea King so it will get the airframe stringers and a coat of paint. No doors will be open. ZB506, again a new Airfix HC4 issue with nice transparencies will have the side door open and possibly the crew entry door open so will have a full internal fit out with airframe detail and test equipment in place so this will be more involved than the others. To that end several hours over the weekend were gobbled up with doing the stringers on XZ570 and ZB506, using Plastruct 0.5mm x0.8mm strip to end up with this; ZB 506 will get more detail such as wiring, bracketry and instrument panels as it progresses but one thing has come to light; seats. I do not have enough of them, I need five the same the pilots seat, there they are just below the left fuselage half. If I can get hold of some that will make life easy, if not they will be scratched as will the entire inside of the cabin. This is what I have set myself; Copyright FAST Museum. Are those windows blacked out? They look like it and it would probably make sense for a test airframe. I do not know if this is XV371 when it was fitted with the Hele Tele system or ZB506 but I am fairly confident that the telemetry and test equipment would be the same, just being transferred from one to the other when the latter carried on with the programme. The cockpit bulkhead is wrong for what I need, to be fair it seems completely wrong for any mark from pics I have seen so it was trimmed down and fixed in place. Next up was the cabinet behind the bulkhead that held the ventilation unit and other magical equipment so this was also given a lick up. The document holder was hollowed out and made to look more like fabric than aluminium and various other detail added to end up like this; More soon, thanks for looking.

They do not come much better than that.

That is great Steve and the presentation is superb and all from scratch. It is nice to see the 'other' ship from the events of that fateful night.

Nice build of what looks like a dodgy kit, the Firebar looks good next to the Javalin too.

Something to do with Zepplins and the biscuit was first produced in Grantham, apparently, We do have 2 of the most struck railway bridges in the country, it;s the traffic lights you see, they do not always work.

Ay lad and proud of it. in the late seventies/early eighties Grantham was voted the most boring town in the UK, the most exciting thing to do was watch the traffic lights change so watching this build is excitement off the scale If your interested we now have some more traffic lights.

Superb scratch build.

I live, I learn, cheers tweeky.