moaning dolphin

Nice to see this unearthed again, youll be blowing the dust off Karel Doorman soon

Shame about the problems with the paint finish but you've recovered well, looks really good and I like the rigging, great effort! Bob

Good day again all and welcome along, in this installment we actually progress to a touch of colour! So after I primed I looked at the rear cabin floor, the intent being to add some subtle shades and colour to the blandness of medium sea grey. This was all experimental, I have done some dark preshading of a single colour which works nicely. I started with some highlights with white primer, this was to try and highlight panels underneath the floor covering that have a subtle effect on the lino and to highlight some areas of wear, I then added some blue and finally very dark blue for the seat rail channels, looks a bit messy though! The area in the middle where there is no colour will be hidden by a seatray that I will make and fit later. At least with this method if it looks a bit gash I can just add more MSG and cover it over. Also in this picture you can see I've added some yellow primer to the front cockpit, this is in high wear areas where the aircrew rest their weary boots while flying, at the same time I added the same primer to high wear areas of the seats, I then coated this yellow with future polish to give it a bit of resistance when I do the wear effects So it was out with the Medium Sea Grey, I used the Vallejo Air variety and it sprayed on nicely giving me this result Nice subtle shades and I have the darker effect for the seat rail, quite happy with that. Again the upper right area will be covered with stuff so not worth shading here. And once again I jumped ahead and painted the cockpit floor and equipment. This is nice and easy as it is all black! I used Model Master Acryl interior black for this, and while I was at it I coated the seats and centre console, , the seats turned out really nicely, they have a rugged appearance just like the real thing I will highlight the harness and cushion in slightly differing shades of black just to break up the monotony of it all. Then it was out with a bit of nail varnish remover and a cotton bud and A LOT of restraint to apply a bit of wear. This involved just removing a touch of the black. it looks ok, I'll dust some pastel dust in there as well to blend it all in and I will also revisit the areas that I can see in the pictures above that I missed with the black but couldnt see in real life! Its starting to come together now, glad to get some colour on it but still a long way off boxing all this stuff in! Well thats all for now, have a jolly good weekend, stay safe and will hopefully see you all next week! Bob

Good day all!, Thanks for the positive feedback, glad you like it There is in fact you tube footage of one of their displays. Its only a couple of minutes long but the first few seconds where they do the syncronised wing spread is a sight to behold especially for us old and grey WAFU types! Hope the link works. https://youtu.be/9gDJVNcnXeA

Good day to you all, Happy Thursday! Welcome along to my latest completion. This is my Trumpeter 1:48 Seahawk FGA 6 converted to an FB3 and dressed as a member of the Red Devils. The Red devils were an aerobatic team of 5 aircraft from 738 Naval Air Squadron running for a couple of years in the early 1950s. Their claim to fame was being the first team to (intentionally!) use smoke as part of their display. I have depicted the aircraft folded as the aircraft started their display folded, taxied to the dispersal and then did some synchronized wing spreading just before taking off. Also, it shows off the large underwing Royal navy. The model is OOB with only an aftermarket seat installed which is a huge improvement on the kit version. It was a spare I had kicking around, it looks a bit different so may well be the wrong type for this aircraft but it does look better! I also remodeled the nose, gun ports, wing fold, intakes and tail bullet. The decals are aftermarket from Model Alliance Naval display teams set, a nice set but I felt the white was a little too transparent. The paint finish is Model Master Acryl signal red which almost gives the red a 1950s shade to it! To convert from a FGA 6 to an FB3 was more or less just an antenna change around. There was no other major modification involved. See link below for the WIP Build link Anyway, enjoy the phots! And here it is with their Classic Airframes counterpart Thanks for looking in! Bob

Good day! First up one for Mr @perdu, I dug out the decals and seem in good condition. I have only used the ones for the consoles, red borders on the firefighting holes around the engines and the 'Danger' arrows. The downside is the go faster flash stripe is lacking the black border but they are there if you would like them, just let me know! So moving on to progress, not much to report after slicing my thumb open. This wasnt a model making injury, more of a washing up injury, hence another nail in the coffin for model makers to partake in domestic duties! But progress was made, I filled the gaps in the cockpit floor and finished off the seats with some cabling, Just a note on those seats. I stuck a small piece of plastic where I removed the head board to replicate the seat harness going over the back of the seat pan (check previous phots). This is wrong however as the seat harness goes through the back of the seat via a small opening. I ripped off the plastic and then drilled a small opening to replicate this. I'm sure this wont be the only time my mind thinks one thing but reality says another! Then these items were taken to the dope shop for a quick prime I also brought out the center console, the remaining cocktail stick holds an electronic box which sits down on the pilots side. All the cockpit parts will end up in various shades of black while the cabin will be medium sea grey but I am going to experiment with different preshading to try and break up the great expanse, but that is all for now. SWMBO is off out tonight so I have a few extra hours of guilt free modeling Laters all and stay safe! Bob

Nice work, looking forward to the paint going on. I've started building dozens of these over the years but I think your progress so far beats any of mine!

Let me have a look in my decal stash, i bought the Cormorant italeri kit but used BB decals. Ill have a look tonight to see if i can find them and see what state they're in. If they are usable you are welcome to them!

Absolutely, its a very colourful version

Its a good start!

Been following this along since it started and realised that until now I have just been sitting and staring in awe and silence! Wonderful modeling going on her but a word of warning, Never, ever tidy that work bench! At least you know where everything is!

Welcome along! Worth looking deeper in Belcher Bits, he does alot of good Canuck conversions and decals sets! Having been through that with the actual Italeri CH149 version, there was quite a bit of work involved (link in 1st post) and I think the TT1 would provide a few more headaches challenges but I'm sure its something you could turn into a silk purse! As far as I know there is only Eduard etch available for this kit and Belcher do a nice set of decals in 1:72 For todays update I had a look at the cockpit area and in particular the seats. The kit versions are quite plain and considering what I have already spent on this kit I didn’t want the extra expense of etch seat harnesses especially when I wouldn’t be using much else on the fret. Also, my attempts at doing my own harnesses has never been very good. The Belcher Bits conversion provides us with 3 seats. seen below with the kit effort. These seats are modelled on the FE and SAR Tech positions in the cabin area and are very nicely detailed WITH harnesses but in the cabin two of them wont be very visible which is a waste! I looked at the difference between the cockpit and cabin seats and the only noticeable differences are the arm rests (which are separate resin pieces on the BB set) and the pilots have no head board fitted. So, it’s quite an easy conversion, I will use two of BBs seats in the cockpit and fit the kit seats in the cabin. I will use the third seat for a position adjacent to the cockpit door which will be visible. The other two will sit by the forward bubble windows which will probably have a distorted view anyway! So back in the cockpit, I made my own seat legs from plastic rod and used the kit cross-beam support for the back of the seat, now here I have a bit of beef with Airfix, it seems this part was designed by the Matchbox designer in trying to fit as many spru gates around a fragile part as possible, I’m sure they can squeeze a couple more on there if they tried lol! Luckily I did manage to clean them up with minimal breakages! The BB seats also come with nicely molded on cables but I removed these to replace with proper wire. They are perfectly acceptable but just my personal preference. I removed the head board, this is very easily done but the only downside to this is I lose a bit of seat harness detail at the top, so will over come this with a bit of thin plastic strip and kind of melt that in position once secure. I also got around to gluing some kit parts in! (finally!) I attached the flying controls however the picture makes the gaps around them look hooooge but in reality, they are barely noticeable unpainted, still worthy of a fill though. And that is where I got to last night. I might throw some primer on tonight and see how it looks. Still a long way to go on the inside though! So until later, stay safe all! Bob

I did start one quite a few years ago for the Hasegawa P3, never got round to sticking any parts together but did use up alot of plasticard (sounds familiar!). I did try and find it but couldnt, it must be deep within this forum somewhere lol!

An excellent choice, had a real affinity with the Seaking mainly in the RN but also had these in plant when I worked on the CH149. Lovely aircraft, looking forward to seeing this going together.

Good day one and all again, thanks for joining in and I have some progress for you 😁 Soooo, before I start putting the thing together I need to prep the inside. Airfix have it set up for troop carrying and I need to convert this to a SAR cab, so the first thing to look at is the cabin floor area which is no. 4 in the picture below (I could start with 1 but thought I’d mix it up a bit!) The floor layout is very similar in that it has the 4 ‘seat rails’ which run fore and aft the whole length of the aircraft about 1/2 a meter apart (these are one piece and need some creative handling when removing/installing in a confined area!) and the centre line of floor panels look the same but thats about it. The Mk 3 is abound with tiedown rings and reinforcing ridges to protect it from heavy footed booties and the like where as the 149 boards are plain. Luckily the designers have come to the aid of us modellers, to prevent damage to the floorboards a thick floor covering is applied over the top (almost like lino) so this hides all the detail apart from the 4 seat rails, so thats an easy start! I then need to fill some of the holes along the side of the floor (no. 2). These are for the troop seats which run the whole length of the MK 4. The SAR only has up to half a dozen so most of these can go. I just opened them up a touch and then filled with plastic rod and then cut down to size. Next to go is the big hole in the middle for load lifting (no. 5), again this isn’t a 149 feature so the kit supplied blank can be fitted and again this is hidden by the lino. So after a bit of work this is what we have for the cabin floor area (don’t worry about the forward bulkhead, I’ll cover that later!). The floor lining is just strips of card and the edges have been rounded down. You can see I have also marked out the sea tray, this will be fitted after I have painted the floor area and I’ll cover that build up later. As for the cockpit floor, not much to change here, just the two boxes (no. 1, top pic) have to go, these will be replaced with a stowage for maps, charts and inflight magazines (no not that sort of mags!). Removing these left a rectangle shaped hole in the floor which was filled with plastic card and filler. Also for the co-pilots station (left hand seat) the box has a protrusion that the collective lever locates onto. I marked this area with a hole to give me a good idea on positioning. So that’s the floor for now, the next major piece is the bulkhead separating the pilots from the cabin. In reality this is where most of the electronic boxes are housed, a whole pile of magic that no one can understand goes in in there! So looking at no. 3 in the first picture you can see that Airfix provide some detail. I am not really up to speed on what the Mk 3 looks like, it may be correct but I do know this is not how the Mk 1 or 149 is built up. I decided to build this up from scratch rather than trying to make the kit piece work. I cut the bulkhead using the kit part as a template and then made up some protruding panels for behind the cockpit seats. These panels cover the flying control rods, I made from plastic card shaped and then scored to take the reinforcing ridges. You can see how they differ, the kit one on the co pilots side seems to cover the whole back area. Beside these is a circuit breaker panel which has been squeezed in. I still have some light fittings and wiring to go on there. You can also see here the build up of the map stowages on either side. Obviously the co pilot has more time on their hands so need a larger stowage😄 !, For now I think the cockpit is good for some kit parts to be installed a little later Finally for this episode, we look at the back side of this bulkhead, and guess what! Its different as well! Here is the kit part, like I said this is where the avionics are housed and the 149 has a larger one piece door rather than what's pictured. That doorless looking microwave oven above the door needs to be filled in and then I added a new larger door with appropriate features, the panel above the door is good and I just need to add a fire extinguisher to that. On the other side, the lower part of the cabinet needs to be removed. This is a stowage area for aircrew kit and is then blocked off with some panels, to save you scrolling back up, here is the pic again. in truth you could probably remove the detail on the front, lower and call it quits, but I wanted to make it look like separate panels. How much of it will be seen is up for a debate as you have a seat right infront of it and then a large SAR cabinet, so itll be quite well hidden! But we will know lol!😉 The upper part needs a kit attached to it which is held in place by netting so that will be added a bit later. Next I will look at priming to make sure there are no obvious flaws, and then painting, simple as that! Who knows I may even have some kit parts glued in by that time (that bulkhead is just slotted in place, needs to be removable for paint. So until that time, stay safe and I’ll be back in a few days, time to dig out another sheet of plasticard lol! Bob

Well hello all once again, hope you had a good weekend. Had a great one over here, feels like spring is in the air reaching a balmy -1! Might have to dig my shorts out soon! I did manage to get a little more time on this wee beastie, finished off the spraying with aluminium on the landing gear doors and wing fold area, painted up the wheels and legs, etc. It wasn’t until now that I found how poor the wheels are on this kit. That mains look a little thin but the hub detail is a bit off centre. The nose is worse but I stuck with it for this late stage. I can hide the worse of it on the mains as they face inwards and are tricky to see well and I just won’t look at the nose! and then she could finally stand on her own 3 wheels! I then fitted the doors, using various bits and pieces and lego jigs to space them correctly while the glue went off. Now for the folded wings, these were going to be a little bit of a problem as I didn’t factor in any hinge attachment areas. I tried gluing in place and holding with a jig but it just wasn’t having it. Then I remembered the extra holes I drilled for the hoses linking the wings and wondered if the wire I had would be strong enough. Indeed, it was! It also held up to a lot of fine adjustment so I could move it all around to line the wings up. Then a touch of CA and it was all held in position. Peeled off the remaining masking and lo we are nearly there. This is the current stage of play, just a couple of antennas to add and then she is done. So, this is the last update, next will be a photo shoot in the gallery. Thanks for looking in all! Bob

Greetings one and all, its time to kick off the next project and this one will be a big un, ooh errr misses. With the Seahawk Smoker in the final throws of completion it was time to dig out the next project. Here I present the great Airfix 1:48 EH101 Merlin Mk3! Only its not going to be a Merlin Mk3, not even a Merlin, infact technically not even a EH101 or AW101 which ever they call it nowadays. I’m going to try and emulate Canadas very own modern Yellow Peril, the CH149 Cormorant! So a bit of back story, I moved to Nova Scotia in 2012 with a Merlin Mk1 background and started work on the CH149 depth maintenance line here in Halifax Airport. This was the first run through for third line Cormorant work and it was thoroughly enjoyable starting on this project. During the last 9 years Ive spent about half my time on CH149 the rest on CP140, now I find myself in Asset Management for the CH149 controlling all the whirly, noisy stuff that make her fly from the comfort (!?!) of my office. So seeing the aircraft nearly every day, I always look at minute details thinking how to replicate them in a kit. I unfortunately missed the initial release of the Merlin however I did have a go at an Italeri 1:72 version which involved a lot of work and turned out not too bad in the end, you can see that build from a few years ago here Linky But it has burned me that I don’t have the 1:48 version so before Christmas I started a big search for a reasonably priced kit and found one on HLJ.com. I didn’t even think they would have it in stock! So I ordered it and waited to see what the postage costs would be. The shipping costs worked out just 5 bucks cheaper than the actual kit!!!! But I though screw it and indulged myself, whats a 95% rise in costs? Just don’t let SWMBO know! The kit only took 3 days to arrive in Halifax from Japan ….. then another 3 days to travel the 20 Kms to my house! but still pretty pronto! I also managed to get a conversion set from Belcher Bits, he had just received a second run so timing was perfect. That was it everything I need to convert this helo. Oh and a shed ton of plastic card, rod, tube and various other bits and bobs to do it. Luckily I do have a great reference material as the real aircraft is only a short walk away and I have access to all the tech info I need (although the latter is surprising inaccurate for model making!). Unfortunately it isn’t something I can share with every one! This will be a long term build as every part of the kit I look at needs some work, that’s the peril of knowing the subject well, sometimes you just get dragged down an endless warren. Another kicker to get this going was only just the other night, 4 Cormorants were scrambled to assist a Trawler in the Atlantic. The weather was atrocious and the aircraft were operating at the edge of their limits. When I returned to work next morning, the 4 aircraft were red (unserviceable), one had to cut both rescue hoist wires and another was stuck in Yarmouth after a hydraulic failure. But with the aid of the US Coastguard all 31 souls onboard were saved, the fishing boat sank several hours later. Theres a link to the story here: Rescue link The video shows the conditions and just how tricky the rescue was. So in honour of the Cormorant SAR crews here is my interpretation of Canadas finest. First up the boxtop And the sprues And finally the clear and detached parts, clear parts are nice and clear ..... which is why they are hard to see in this picture 😁 And also the Belcher Bits conversion The resin parts are really well done and have some lovely detail on them. Theres going to be alot of cutting, bodging together and scratch building on this so please dont expect an update every 10 minutes 😄. More to follow so stay tuned! Stay safe and have a great weekend! Bob

Good Evening / afternoon and even morning, hope you are all doing well! So after last weeks splash of colour I added some gloss in the form of some Pledge and then spent the weekend watching gloss dry. Not very exciting to watch but the end result is not too bad. I gave this a good couple of days to cure as in the past I have found that Micro Sol can damage the layer. So with that all done, I dug out the decals! There arent many to go on and I used a couple of stencils from the kit, here is where we are at now. To be honest I am a little disappointed with the white on the roundels and white wing lettering. It is a tad transparent. If I had hindsight I would have laid down a white background to give it a bit more body. I still have the red dots to add, then Ill add another coat of pledge and then it will be on with the final rebuild, Job nearly done! Until then look after you selves and stay safe! Bob

Welcome to the light side! Just a quicky of an update today, managed to get some red down last night so we have some colour! A couple more light coats of Model Master Acryl Insignia Red and I should be about done for this stage. All that remains then is gloss, decal and just wrap it all up! (which always seems to take the longest!) So until that time have a great weekend all! Cheers now Bob

Good morning to you all, a short and sweet update for you, got a bit of work done last night and ended up with a rather pastey* looking Seahawk this morning! Hopefully tonight I will get some colour into its cheeks! *I think its spelt pastey although auto correct would want me to change it to pasty, which I know is incorrect and mmmm pasty .... I miss my proper Cornish Pasties 🤤 Stay safe Y'all! Bob

Good day one and all once again, hope you all had a fine week since I last updated. More minor adjustments for the Seahawk this week, first up a bit of rhinoplasty. The kit depicts a blunt hole with a circular opening, but comparing it to the original you can see it should be more oval and it’s a bit like a scoop rather than a plain hole. So to rectify this I thought about replacing the whole nose. I took some thick plastic square section and drilled and shaped out the hole, (it does look alot neater in real life!) this was then cut down and the kit nose was sanded back to its bulkhead and then the new section was securely glued into place, this was then left overnight because I was going to do some severe work on this area and didn’t want it popping off. Once secure I whittled it down to roughly the right shape with some Harry Roughers wet and dry before some fine tuning. It still needs a little more work but am going to wait until after I have done the first prime coat so that I can see what I am doing. I then turned my attention to the wing fold area, its now nice and busy, not greatly accurate but busy is good enough. It should look ok under a coat of paint, I have left a couple of small holes to accommodate some wiring from lower to upper wing once all is attached. The bullet fairing was also worked, unfortunately going too hard I broke through the plastic so had a big hole to deal with. I drilled it out to accommodate some plastic rod, glued it up and applied filler. Still not sure about the final shape, although the shadow looks better! After that it was out with the primer! I gave the kit a good dusting, wiped it down and then applied a coat of grey to see where the imperfections lie. Not too bad for the first go over! I have now filled the imperfections, rubbed down and re-primed, I will look at the damage tonight and if all is well I will go over the kit again in white primer as this will provide a better backdrop for the red, although I think I read somewhere that yellow is the best undercoat for red? Or it may have been the other way around, I cant quite remember lol! Anyway thats it from me for now. As ever look after yourselves and stay safe! Cheers now Bob

Welcome back! Only been a short break and I have managed to get a bit more done on the wing folds. I continued with the strip around the leading edge so that this creates a recessed structure I deliberately left some areas over length so that I could chop them down once the glue had dried. This also helps the glue to bond all the length of the wing. I then applied a very thin layer of filler to help blend in the joining areas better. i will rub that down later then it will be time to fill in the blanks. Here you can also make out the detail on the upper wing, in the grand scheme of things it is perfectly reasonable. I do need a few more lightening holes in the lower wing, then add more detail in there. I may not be really accurate but something to make it look busy. I have also joined the rear fuselage and stuck that on. The fit wasnt too bad but due to the curvatures of the parts it is quite difficult to nestle it in perfectly. Once dried there was a small lip which I had tried to avoid but to no avail. So out with the wet and dry and blend the lot in without losing too much detail. I did need a wee bit of filler but all is not too bad. I also looked at the bullet, on the kit it is far too bulbous and a bit short I think. I rubbed it down to try and thin the profile. Of course I only have an after shot so nothing to compare it to! but looks ok i think. So to add in an edit, I found the above pic off Prime Portal The Airstrip - Prime Portal An excellent resource if I dont mind saying so! But you can see the profiles side by side here and I think it does need more work in sharpening the profile, so its out with the sand paper again! So next up will be some reprofiling, fill in the wing fold area and then to the dope shop for a prime, hopefully will get some colour on this weekend. Looks like a snow storm coming in so I wont be fighting that, just sit back, keep calm and carry on modelling! Until then keep safe! Bob

It'll be interesting to see the outcome, the VH-71s were always an option but the cost of converting the airframes was prohibitive. The latest option was to use components from the VH71 and have new airframes (611- i think?) but with covid and all that the Cormorant Mid Life Upgrade is on hold for now. No idea of which way it was going but I think the new airframe option is now too expensive. We wait with anticipation! I got the Belcher conversion, it goes along way to convert it but there is still alot to do! I'm hoping to start this spring!

Thanks for chipping in I have had a look and will go through it a bit in my next update. I have thinned it a bit but thinking there may be more to do! Its the first time I have used Montex, normally I go with Eduard yellow tape type. they have work very well so far 👍 As this will be a flying display aircraft it will be depicted relatively cleanly, nobody pays to see dirty aircraft! Much obliged, it is such a nice aircraft. Bob

Good day again and welcome along one and all! Thanks for the positive encouragement, all appreciated 😁 I managed to get a little work done over this last weekend, I took the plunge and assembled the fuselage. Not a bad fit to be honest but there were a couple of issues. I started with the nose, securing that together, I have seen issues on other builds where the sides by the cockpit bulged out, wary of this I tried my best to avoid it but even with clamps and tape all over the place I still had a little bulge! Like I said nothing really bad and a little rub down will solve that. The very tip of the nose was troublesome to get together, as I couldn't get it to stay together, with SWMBO hollering to go out shopping, I resorted to some super glue and within seconds it was bonded ..... along with my fingers! but we got there in the end. When I got back I glued the rest of the fuselage working back, I still needed to clamp and tape as i went but soon it was all done! While that was drying I looked at the canopy, I had already dipped in future and readied for internal paint. I got these masks from Montex which were great because they had internal masks as well. At this scale and above I like to paint the inside, especially if the canopy is going to be open. I think it just looks better than using the internal colour on the outside technique. The insides were masked up I gave the inside a spray of internal black and then set aside and took out the wings. Again having seen previous build threads, there is a consensus to fit the airbrakes on first if you are going to have them closed. This I did and then the wings were ready to assemble. Now onto the big quandary, to fold or spread? My previous build was folded and I had intended to spread this particular aircraft, but every photo on the ground shows them folded, there is also nice colour footage of a Red Devil display and they start on the runway folded and as they taxi for take off they have syncronised wing spreading. The other thing that swung it was they are quite plain red aircraft, with huge white ROYAL NAVY lettering on the underside, so if not on a mirror you cant see that, so folding the wings would easily display the RN title, So folding it is then! which also means that airbrakes should be closed. In the phot above you cant see it but the wing ends have a nicely molded plate on the end with sufficient detail. The aircraft side however has an insert, that doesnt fit great. There is a small amount of detail there but rather than faff around with it I went for the scorched earth policy! This now gives a blank canvass, but on the real thing the detail is almost recessed into the wing. I went about recreating this with some carefully placed 1mm plastic strip. This will make it look more realistic, the 1mm strip being a good thickness to represent the wing skin. It does add an extra 48 scale mm but that shouldn't detract too much from it. My first calculation I though it added nearly half a meter to each wing, until I realised I was adding 48mm not 48 cm! The leading edge will be fun trying to follow the contour of that but at least the wing is nearly straight and wont encounter the problems of a swept wing. Eagle eyed viewers will also note that the tail is now fitted. I havent got any detailed phots of that yet so will update that next time. In the meanwhile stay safe everyone! Bob