TheBaron

That is a substantial piece of work there Mark: congratulations on such quality.

Wating for the missus to come home from her evening class a few nights back, I was listening to music with the headphones on whilst watching the moonlight when one of those beautiful synchronous moments happened: Pye Corner Audio's Deep End track came on in perfect sympathy with the motion of the clouds... (Push 'play' and scroll back up to image 😄) 😁 I've (paradoxically, given the nature of CAD) found it doesn't pay to be too conscious/rational when doing this stuff Anthony. After a long period of looking at something I want to build, there's a kind semi-meditative state in in which your imagination feels the shape like a hand running over it. Peter Gabriel's homage to Anne Sexton ('Mercy Street') can't be bettered as a summary I think: 'Looking down on empty streets all she can see Are the dreams all made solid Are the dreams made real All of the buildings, all of the cars Were once just a dream In somebody's head' My thanks Chris. I love these bits of aviation folklore Pete. Thank you. 😁 The Klein bottle does Giorgio! You can't pour wine from it and it's a total mystery how the wine got inside there in the first place.... Agree with both the dislike and the paint idea Bill. I've seen old circuit boards where the etched circuitry was so pronounced that it resembled pipework, so that idea definitely sounds like a runner in the smaller scales. Possibly PE bent into shape and a blast of high-build primer for dimensionality? Started this post last night and then got waylaid by domestic duties, typing now in the early morning light with the live feed from NASA showing Artemis on TLI burn as its destination hangs above a frosty garden outside. So where was I? Well, beginning to suspect that the Nimbus will turn out to be a bit of a build-within-a build when it comes to the level of work required quite frankly.. With so much visible in the way of pipework and electrical harnesses - not to mention all of those other delightfully irregular components bolted on around the core in various places - I think the key will definitely be to work outward from the centre in a sequence of overlapping layers. This should (a) hopefully minimize the risk of ending up with two parts trying to occupy the same point in space, and (c), yield a realistic assembly sequence from parts later. (b) is currently left blank for me to make something up in due course if this all goes horribly wrong. With the pedigree of this audience I realize that continued identification of parts on the basis of 'a bloke on Ebay called it that' is a referencing system that can only be pushed so far, so with this in mind - and suitably aghast at the sheer volume of pipework involved at this scale - I went and bought a copy of the Nimbus servicing manual: As you can see this produced a valuable haul of the key engine features, not the least of which being detailed ( & labelled! ) maps for both the pipework and electrical runs. I still don't necessarily understand what the parts do but do at least now have the correct names for them; you takes your definition of 'progress' where ye can... (Also déjà vu at one or two of the brake disk drawings @bootneck & @perdu 😁) I had begn work on some of the engine features prior to getting my grubby mitts on said documentation, with what initially I was going to call 'Mystery Object #1': - which Bristol Siddeley now reliably inform me is an oil pump. Or more exactly, oil pump No.2 This distinguishes it from oil pump No.1, which has a filter on one end: No.1 is usually hidden by shadow and intervening structure so glimpses of it in photographs are enough to let you know there is a part there but without sufficient information of shape and purpose. Probably the best illustration of why I like to have manuals to back up photography in such ambiguous situations; alsdo it's nigh on impossible to work out where all the pipework under the engine goes to/returns from so the map in the manual is another lifesaver in terms of perserving authenticity. 'Mystery Object #2' turned out to be the fuel filter: Almost impossible to work out from photography how exactly it is bolted onto the compressor casing so again manual drawings were vital. Moving further back along the starboard side is another feature that has to be made up as brass PE is the mounting plate for the heat exchanger: The lazy part of you is tempted to think in such situations that you could just do this up as a printed part with thicker walls and no-one would notice but tbh, even with the part thickness above at 0.1mm (slightly over the original in scale terms), you can see how trying to print it at 0.3-4mm for strength it would detract from the overall visual 'feel' - especially when trying to bluff other similar fittings like the fuel filter mount. As Bill rightly mentioned about PE being used to fake some types of feature in unrealistic ways, this is a good example of the opposite condition whereby resin would be the wrong material for the job. With printed heat exhanger details fitted however, the two sets of materials should offset each other quite nicely: I needed a break after that session in order to study up on pipe runs, so used pare moments to pay tribute to Bill & Mike's kind researches by tidying up the rear of the rotor brake disk with any outstanding detail: A delightfully non-regular bolt pattern to reproduce on that rear plate and another vote for PE on the rotor drive securing nut, which the tail rotor driveshaft will slip into: 'Two tug-droids manoeuvere the rear whifflegrunter unit of a Sargonian 'Asteroid Inconveniencer'- class cruiser into position': There was no escaping the call of the pipes however and asthe oil system seems to dominate a lot of the concealed under-engine areas, it made sense to continue with the first set of runs outward from pump No.2: You can see here how those two intersect with bracket on the side of the fuel filter. Both then subsequently extend backward in quite a convoluted fashion under the engine to plug into the bottom of the reduction gearbox -performing what the manual refers to as a 'scavenger' function - so I'll come back to those two later. Firstly I wanted to concentrate on the third pipe run behind them which goes back directly under the engine to connect up with oil strainers on the turbine casing at the rear. I'd actually forgotten about these strainer fittings: there appear to be three of them - a prominent one on top of the engine and one less so one either side at cardinal angles, this being the one to stbd: With those in place I could then focus on building the pipework and three-way connector which they attach to: Al-most Raleigh Chopper handlebars... Having established what was going on at either end it was then time to complete the intervening pipe run along the underside: At this stage you're constantly having to be cvigilant with regard to the engine profile, proximity to driveshaft and engine deck as spatial factors. The other thing to remember is to connect that pipe run to pump No.2, not No.1 as I clumsily did at first.... Recent progress in rendered form: Now, where's Artemi- Wow! Tony

You must feel rightly pleased with this latest Smörgåsbord of colour and lustre Steve - particularly with such a significant amount of it worn by your exquisite printed components. - is just the business, it really is.

That's looking very good after the latest round of work Pete - agree those exhausts are looking very much like independent features!

Another impressive piece of work Chris and beautifully rendered. Congratulations.

Bold work as always Jerzy and a pleasure to see this develop.

I don't expect many people to read this post as I presume the after effects of the Telford Bacchanalia will take a few days to wear off. Looking forwards to hearing about who got tied to which lamp post and which hotel room was found to hold the most traffic cones... At least it's quite and I can catch up on the mail. 😁 That's a good question B ill but I definitely think it's down to RAM: much of what comes in the full commercial version is for industrial production stuff and generational design, whereas the growth of the Wasp design is simply pushing against the hardware. It doesn't stop me from working, just a periodic PITA. 😁 I'l have to ask Mike to move this thread to the Fleet Air Arm Space section so..... Thanks Ian. I use a notebook (plugged into an EGP and second monitor for processor-heavy work) so it seems to be something about the EGP not liking high RAM usage in Fusion. As all other heavy program combinations I run are fine it seems to be one of the gremlins in Autodesk's code when it talks to Nvidia's drivers. Hope your own designs are going Ok? Ah now you two are both pretty special for taking all that trouble- my sincere thanks to both yourself and @bootneck for this Bill. 🫂x2 At least my solution appears - more by luck than (mechanical) judgement - to have arrived at something close enough to the actual structure, which is a relief! Those are great photos and drawings - I'm obliged go back and add that tail rotor drive fitting to the rear face of the brake disk now that there's such clear info for it on shape/detail! Man Planting Deviant Thoughts Into The Baronial Earhole: Caspar David Friedrich ca. 1825-30. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Splendid seeing so many of you in those Telford photos over on @Brandy's thread - hope you all had a successful/debauched/happy event and safe travels home. Took the weekend off to relax, listen to music and cook for the family here, but made a small start on decorating the Nimbus for Christmas. Image credit: Jon Davies Yon gert Flugelhorn - that thing which looks like a giant fire extinguisher nozzle pointing back along the stbd side of the engine - was the target for tonight. Being the biggest feature on that side of the engine it makes sense to start with that and then work your way down the scales to ensure correct size and position of everything else that needs to be added. Corollary is of course that this feature has to be accurate at the onset of the endeavour, else it will skew every successive componenent that references it. It is I believe the starter and cooling duct for same, a fact which I state with all the confidence of one who saw a bloke selling parts for it on the Eb-y: You can correct me if that's wrong but I'll press ahead in blisful ignorance for now. Prior to starting the work, I used a side-on photo of the Nimbus to knock up a sketch map that triangulates the most prominent features on that side of the engine with one another, and then began roughing out the starter unit itself: in Fusion: With that component established, it was then safe to build the front of the duct around it: It took a while to work out the best method of handling that form, not so much because it was complicated to build initially, but because it needed to be built in a way that inaccuracies could later be modified in response to the rest of the assembly. As you start to move back along the duct there's a part of it that's lagged with what looks suspiciously like asbestos, clamped in places by a couple of jubilee clips: The bands are too thin to be worth designing here but I'll add them in from strips of adhesive metal foil during assembly. You can't see it from this angle - indeed you mightn't see it in the final print - but I sculpted that part of that duct (rather than crudely simplify it as a cylinder) to include bulging in the material caused by the clips. The bold Mr. Horn(e): A really fun feature to work on due to the way it bends inwards and downwards as it travels back towards the rear of the engine, which required some nimble thinking over how to position the base drawings in space. Again, not hard, just time-consuming working out relationships. As per usual I've coloured as brass any features that will be PE for strength - in this case the rear support which the horn is bolted onto the engine by: For the starter unit itself I added a square peg to the underside so that it can be easily mounted in the correct position on the compressor casing. Doesn't seem like too much compared to the time it took but with that in place now I can begin to address the stbd side of the engine more comprehensively. Looking at all the pipework and fixtures which you can see in the Jon Davies' photo above, I've come to the conclusion in recent days that - much as I might like to kid myself I'm a craftsperson of @perdu's calibre when I'm patently not - I'm simply not up to the job of bending so many bits of fine metal tubing through so many complex angles in such confined spaces. A much more realistic strategy wil involve printing smaller fittings and their connecting pipework as a series of 'looms' (much like wiring looms) which can be draped around the engine as a sequence of successive layers. This is one of those decisions predicated upon the fundamental connection between designing something and making it manageable to assemble later as a physical entity. The alternative would end up I feel being something so complex in nature that it would be nearly as complicated to build as a real Nimbus. A worthy ambition perhaps, but one firmly in the tradition of Siege Perilous... Of course I stil lhave to work out an assembly sequence ( ) in the manner of that oul' firm: Trial & Error. When we first moved to this house almost twenty years ago, amongst the trees we planted on a virgin site was a Medlar. It's not in an ideal location (exposed to the Northwest winds near a ridgeline) but each year it faiithfully yields a small handful of fruits in a small but significant annual ritual: Peace upon you and yours tonight, Tony

Saw this earlier and thought of you Anthony: John Ruskin: Modern Painters Vol. V (1860)

These are sure to be well appreciated at Telford Terry. Best wishes for a great weekend.

Work to feel humbled by Anthony. And I feel humbled by it. Like watching a musician find extra notes on an instrument you thought you were familiar with.

Just occasionally it occurs to the non-modelling world that we may actually posses vital life skills after all (I've lost track of how many times the family has borrowed tools from my studio to repair something small and fiddly, with grudging admissions of utility). I managed to solder repairs to a favourite bracelet of my aged Mater's for her birthday at the weekend and she was delighted: Was tempted to put some extra PE on as well but you know, you have to draw a line. Immensely pleased to learn over the course of the last week also that people have been safely receiving their Vixen kits - in all candour I don't know when I've been more nervous about an undertaking! It's one thing to spend your days solving mysteries with a van and a talking dog but another level of nerve-shredding altogether meeting the expectations of expert modellers. You know what they say about men with big sticks Pete. Yep, it means they also have a huge- -tree in the garden that is slowly dying and shedding wood everywhere before it eventually falls over onto their house. That's the glamorous jobs done now anyway Chris. Back to metal cylinders again today I'm afraid... Thanks Ian! You're dead right that it's a bit of a mare's nest around that part of the deck; loads of fittings and whatnot to obscure a visual reckoning. It's one of tthose particular situations where I find it really important to have a parts or maintenance manual to correspond with photography, there's nearly always something you can't quite see in its entirey and which the latter helps give you the confidence to proceed with on an informed basis. Mad isn't it G? Makes you realize how adaptable kitbashing became for making the kind of model 'bigatures' used in scifi films when you see parts of something like the Wasp in abstract... Image credit: The Prop Gallery Pretty sure I see a rotor brake in there.... 🤣 To business anyhow. As Ian mentions, it not a straightforward proposition working out some of the angles an connections on the Wasp's engine deck: In the latest sessions I concentrated on getting all of those supporting pylons for the MRGB in place. There are of course more pylons for the flotation gear involved in that area later on but by this point of the design/build you're having to work out not just designing parts of the helicopter but at the same time mentally creating an assembly sequence in your head that will allow all these parts to be assembled later in a feasible sequence. My ideas for the pylon sequence evolved - as much of this way of working does - over the course of designing the parts and you become steadily more familiar with their relationships to one another in space. Constructing the basic pylon wasn't hard (it's effectively the same item modified for different situations after all) so after studying the part(s) in question for a while I came up with this basic starter-template that could be ccopid and modified to build the other pylons: Simple enough. The hard part kicks in when you have to replicate these around the structure at a variety of angles which absolutely must match the required angles at the top on the MRGB and at the bottom on their respective mounting lugs. The good thing about CAD work is that you only have to build the pylons for one side of the helicopter and then you can mirror these across. The bad thing about it is that the symmetries involved will be bitterly cruel to any of the angles which are wrong to any appreciable degree. Rather than trying to juggle all the balls at once, I concentrated on the rear set of MRGB pylons first, where they meet the three-way mounting post: I mentioned about evolving ideas earlier and here, although I had initially intended the pylons and posts to be separate parts that could be locked together with brass pins, even at 1/24 those parts would be so thin individually that I've eelected now to print them as a combined structure for strength. This decision inevitably led to other - in a positive sense - discoveries as it helped me rationalize an effective assembly sequence: - one allowing the MRGB to be slotted into position on the engine desk in one go as a fully supported structure. Broadly similar but of a somewhat more complex set of orientations is the forward set of pylons. I initially thought that like the rear set, there were just two of them to worry about. As you can see here though a closer inspection of shots taken from inside the cabin (with its rear central recess removed) as well as a particularly fine drawing in the manual quickly made me aware of the presence of a third pylon mounting front centre of the gearbox: This fresh ( for which read 'there all the time if I'd been paying attention') information required me to go back and correct the design of the front of the gearbox to include the mounting for this third pylon: Odd set of shapes that will be explained later when you see the pylon angle. Front and rear pylons for one side nearly completed: Not forgetting the 'outrigger' on the rear set that runs out the edge of the desk: The front set of pylons completed - you can see below the addition of a mounting point that will enable this part to be located firmly and accurately against the gearbox: - whilst at the top the more robust mounting points on the pylons can slip ito position on either side of the brackets around the tp of the gearbox: As per my original idea, such pylons can be locked into place on the MRGB at the top of using metal pins for strength. At this point the assembly does rather look as if it should be testing the lunar regolith some time in about 1967... Seen from the 'about to be ex-seagull by rotor blade' view you can see why getting all those angles drove me mad: Also added at the back to test assembly sequence is the front mmountng of the ECU and its mini ski-jumps: After make-up: In fact the designs for this scale have already acccumulated more detail than previously on the Vixen: So much so in fact that I'm beginning to experience Fusion crashing more readily than usual due to the size of the project in RAM - it definitely doesn't like sharing memory with too many other programs open at the same time so much like I had to on the Vixen, I'm on the cusp here of having to break future work down into smaller projects that focus on just one area alone, which means I won't be able to do so many ensemble renders like this quite soon: I don't know whether to continue in a rod vein and work on the servo systems for cyclic and collective (as this would inevitably involve moving on to the rotor head) or to return to the engine and finish adding all the required bits to it. Might make more sense to get the engine done and then move forward from it to rotor... Thanks for stopping by, I hope your weeks have been good to your so far. Tony

Update 9/11/2022 The first batch of these kits has now sold out but I will continue to produce further copies in response to demand. Tony

Enjoying your work here very much Andrés. Colour work is lovely but those extra handles are really going to add something special to the final feel this aircraft Regards, Tony

I can't think how I managed to miss your updates so comprehensively over the last couple of months P. Thoroughly enjoying those wood works evolving.

A splendid realisation of a very quixotic aircraft. Very nice work Nick.

At the risk of over-exciting people, I built some tubes and rectangles recently. 😁 Now this is what I call a set of exhausts.... Image credit: Chris Foss I should start by saying that I hadn't intended to do any of following bits yet as I was really intent on building the starter, the trumpet-like appendage that blares out along the stbd topside of the Nimbus. In the process of eyeing it up though I realized that there was still some significant work to do producing a correct profile for the section immediately behind the air intake, in order for it to look more Nimbous in shape: Because it's not the most visible region of the engine on either side (due to intervening structures) I hadn't noticed the much more eleborate nature of that penultimate profile until now - particularly that sticky-out bit at the three o'clock position with is where the front ECU mount bolts it into place. So that's why no starter, as once I'd corrected that I immediately noticed a whole load of other consequences to do with how both the MRGB and her Nimbosity are bolted to the deck through common points. Whilst there's a spatial elegance in how they designed all these bits to go together, it's still a bit of a London Underground map working out how and in what way these structures interface with one another in three dimensions. This 'ere upright is the reason why I was horrified to discover an error in my MRGB design: You can see here how that flared traingular section of the MRGB bolts onto it. Well, at the start of today's session my flared triangular bit didn't exend far enough out laterally to meet it, being shy by a good 2mm. At least I've grown savvy enough to crudely block in shapes first of all in order to establish such critical meeting points - otherwise there would have been a lot to dismantle later on: It came up short initially today because I actually had it right in my original design for that section of the MRGB and then a few weeks back thought it looked to extend out too far and so 'corrected' it inwards - a perfect example of how you should trust your visual instincts sometimes....or maybe just look a bit more closely before changing something! Anyway, this upright is a sort for miniature 'Grand Central' for pylons which emante from the ECU, engine deck and MRGB. You can see that from the bit of iit which the MRGB bolts on to, that it's already gained two additional mounting brackets - one for a pylon eextending out to spread the load of the engine to the side of the deck, and another pointing backward onto which is bolted the angled base of the forward ECU: That base is deuced hard to see amidst the structural tangle around this region but luckily I had some critial high angle views and a decent drawing in the manual to correspond to one another. Here's the ECU mount itself that takes the load of the forward part of the Nimbus: I added a couple of locating lugs at the bottom of it at either end to help position it securely in the base plate during assembly: I know this kind of looks like one Cyberman being looking shocked by the other one smoking a cigar: that big Havana is a visual stand-in for a bit of 0.7mm brass tube that will allow the engine unit to plonk down securely at the correct height and alignment: I haven't mirrored the base and upright across to port yet as there's still another bracket for the MRGB pylons to add to the ensemble and then I'll need to replicate the pylon ddesigns around the MRGB in a single operation, which will be 'interesting' enough a process that it'll keep until next time. As this is 1/24th I can - in strength terms at least - print a lot more of the pylons than would have been the case at smaller scale. I'd ummed and ahh'd a lot in recent weeks about how many of such features to build from resin as I've a passion for the brass that knoweth no bounds. Here I think the big pylons will be printed - partly from easily creating a standardized part that can be replicated - but the smaller cfor rods and the rotor blade servos/linkages may well work better in terms of sharpness of feature as brass fittings. A closer inspection of the crow's nest will be required to look a the feasibilty of such intentions... A couple of portraits of current progress to finish with tonight then: A good evening to all of you. Tony

A fine repertoire of techniques and processes in those last two updates Giorgio. I particularly like those warm hues on the air brakes - a very rich accent.

Neat little update Pete - that's one hell of a width of dashboard. Must be nearly an acre on the real thing? Colour scheme on that interior has a great period feel.

Just gets better and better! 😁 The surrealism of some pre WW2 French aircraft is breathtakingly unorthodox: it was impossible for an aircraft to have too many windows!

Looks like he's holding something in place whilst the glue dries in that photo. Some things never change....

😁 It's like when I look at modelling tools on the web and then some arrive in the post a week later; there's just no rational way of explaining such improbable coincidences.

What better way to celebrate the quality of that last post than Paris? Bon voyage mon fauconnier!

Our messages must have crossed in the clouds Colin. Thanks for the kind words. Can you recall what your painting was of?

And cheap, apparently... - and beautifully told Bill. Grateful for you sharing that treasure - I have Mr. House playing out loud in an empty house here as I write. I do like a mystery, even if it's not possible to resolve it entirely.... 😁 Gah Bill! You're a pal for going digging like that! Ditto - which made me rue the absence of p.101a.... Well, if that gets a vote of confidence from you Bill, then it's fair to say that I'm satisfied with yesterday's work then. If you asked me to put money on it anything this stage, my 50p would be on that 'D'-shaped tubular form which the caliper is bolted to at each end (boxed in red here on your original) is somehow involved: It's a specifically-shaped feature with no evident function but if the right hand one in this picture extended backwards toward the centre of the gearbox, it could in theory be bolted onto something. Would such a single mounting point be strong enough though given the forces involved when the caliper engaged? I'm certainly not qualified to speculate.... Even it that was the actual means of support, it would still be too fragile at this scale to replicate as a viable solution so I'm covering my posterior by staying with the existing PE compromise... 'I've been communicating with the ship.Wasp.' 'What did it say?' 'It says it wants more parts.' Bracket, one of: Plate and a (message garbled) connector: Bracket, triangular: Bracket, upright, octagon for the support of: Octagon, thermocouples for the connection of: Gearbox, motive force for the reduction of: Assembled: Portrayed: Concludes: Thank-you. Tony

With sleep patterns disrupted in recent weeks I was up in the middle of the night for the familiar ritual of a pot of tea and a sleepy pondering of books that can't be settled on. Mainly though, thoughts kept drifting back to the utterly trivial matter of how a brake caliper might be fitted to the back of a helicopter gearbox. Possibly the only thing which this problem has going for it is that it is quite specificand can only have a very limited number of potential solutions. As no no stills photography had thus far given me enough confidence to take an informed guess, this inevitably turned into a detective story sifting through videos online in oder to see if they afforded that crucial glimpse - no matter how fleeting - which could lay the matter to rest. On the evidence of last night, the 'Nimbus scene' seems to consist of a bunch of mad lads either letting their engines off in front of the neighbours or else dramatically engulfed in clouds of smoke. Something almost heroic about it, in a quite bonkers way. By a process of elmination I think I can say with some confidence now that there is nothing to the rear of the brake disc for the calipers to attach to, so they must be attached to the gearbox somehow. This is a still from the definitive video source: Image credit: Jettech7 Such footage was in many cases of dire quality so this picture had to be washed through an AI program to clean it up for posting. You can clearly see that with the engine running and calipers on there's nothing this side of the brake disk to hold them in place. Another video here, - although seeming to have a non-standard caliper attached - does give glimspes of some kind of attachment linkage to the rear of the gearbox, though never gets in at a useful enough angle to be a ble to work out the exact nature of it. Given how concealed that fitting is in real life, this information was going to be enough for me to to be able to knock up a piece of brass PE that will serve to hold the calipers in place without striking a false note to the visuals of the area: That quixotic shape is simply to allow it to be firmly atached to the gearbox in the correct orientation, like so: With the brake disk on, that fitting is as hidden as its real-life counterpart: A couple of other modifications were also carried out at the same time. The exhausts hollowed out further back into the solid lump of the forks so as not to look too odd, as well as the inner facing profile of the calipers being corrected after I noticed that they aren't a squared-off box profile as I'd originally produced: For printing purposes that gearbox will be split to match the seam lines of the real thing: IYou're right that those locating lugs look oversize but I learned on the Vixen that wee ones tend to get lost amongst the printing supports and make clean-up a real pain. Some extra 'business' was also added forward of the gearbox where it disappears in through the forks to head off in the direction of the turbine: That top centre cylinder with curly edges overhanging the brake disc has a bracket and some gubbins to go on it stiil and then I'm calling that component finished (this side of plumbing and wiring it all up): Image credit: Phil Defer Progress on the .stl library for the Nimbus to finish: Take care until next time. Tony