TheBaron

Pete I was extolling your virtues recently to a friend who is a sculptor but used to make models as a kid and after seeing your current build here, we both agreed that your house will have a blue plaque on it in the near future. It remains to be seen what the plaque will actually describe you as, but it will definitely be blue. Another fantastic fantasia from the Lincs lad.

I'm unable to better Cookie's sentiments here Bill. Quite magnificent.

Alan: you're a diamond. Thank you for that, they look just the ticket for reliable shipping.

Pale sublime Bill, but in Ancient Greek.

I hope that your exquisite work here is generating plenty of orders Alan. I sympathize/agree/applaud: it takes me a similar amount of time preparing the Sea Vixen kit for despatch. In the mid 80s I worked briefly for Gresham Lion near Heathrow who produced computer gear for the MOD and got put in a tiny room producing the foam mouldings for monitors to be packed in for shipping (pull thin plastic 'skin' down off a roll to line the moulding box, squirt in a load of liquid foam, slam and lock lid whilst it expands to fill volume).* Looking at all the parts on the Wasp I'm seriously wondering if it might be worthwhile considering a scale version of this process. *Can confirm that most small objects not bolted down can be successfully embedded in foam for the surprise and confusion of recipients, including on one occasion a much-loathed supervisor's packed lunch. Never 'dare' the temporary agency hire...

Likewise. I worked with them on the PE for my Sea Vixen kit and they are great people to work with, plus there is excellent (illustrated) info on their sight about producing full and half etch, along with the tolerances for different thicknesses of metals. Exactly right - you just need to make sure that you have the thickness of the metal sheet in Fusion set to match the thickness of the metal sheet youll be using for the PE so that the folds will be accurate. Once unfolded to generate a flat pattern for the part in Fusion, export as a .dxf file to a vector graphics program like Illustrator which can read such files in order to produce the etch layouts. I found the tutorials on PPD's site invaluable for that stage of the process. Hth, Tony

That has to be the most accurate looking Morrischenkrieger I've ever seen. Dont forget the doll's eyes on the dashboard now... Top work Pete.

Good afternoon again. As I write the sun is out here for the first time in weeks and to celebrate my youngest son has half the back end of his car distributed around the driveway in kit form as he replaces the shocks and brakes. It's doubtful we'll be able to leave the premises before nightfall... That sounds like a lyric discarded from the first draft of The Human League's 'Don't You Want Me'. Makes perfect cognitive sense in such an environment - Pete I love these bits of experiential folklore! That and discovering these guys in Dublin a couple of weeks back: It's basically a coffee bean library tucked away just up the road from the Taoiseach's office on Upper Merrion St . I counted at least 30 varieties (all roasted on the premises by Dan) where they give you a free shot of any variety you're interested in. After much discussion with the brilliant staff I plumped for the Ethiopian blend from Galeh and have to say: if you've ever been fitted with a supercharger that makes you taste sugarcane and plums, you'll recognize the flavour and effects... Anyways, enough of the Anthony (blessed be he amongst humans) Bourdain impressions and on to matters largely electrical in character. Forwards of the IP on the Wasp is a place very similar to the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the moon in that it remains in permanent shadow no matter where the sun is. From photography you do get occasional oblique glimpses in through the cheek windows (often marred by reflections) and partial sightings of shapes looking up under the IP, but no complete view with the bonnet up that I've seen anywhere online or in print which has sufficient clarity/resolution to rely upon for accurate detailing. Before venturing into that night though, there were a few items on the port side of the IP/console to complete, starting with this odd feature tacked on to the right hand edge: You can see it here on this image from the helcopter Museum: Image credit: Mike Reading It's a kind of push/pull knob (rather like the choke on an old car) but unfortunately I've no photos in which you can clearly read the label in order to identify its function, and it's not present in the PNs. As soon as I wrote that sentence I realized there's a similarly mysterious switch affair sticking out from the right hand side of the AUW presetter above it which I've missed until this moment in time. I'll put aside some time to add that later before it gets forgotten... I also finalized a way of mounting that presetter and the IFF box next to it on top of the console via simple registration shapes on their undersides: You can see also in the museum photo above the two larger boxes which sit to the left of the central console. These are in order: - the missile switching box, on which are mounted various switches for cutting the missile control wires along with the capability of jettisoning one or both AS.12 missiles and their respective launchers. Directly above this is a big black box called the missile amplifier: Given its name, and that fact that the casing resembles a large heat sink with radiating fins and four large cables snaking out of the rear, my best guess in absence of PN descriptions is that it amplifies the control impulses input by the missileer out along the control wires to the approx 7-8km of the missile's range. Like I said though, this is just a guess. Both items in place; note how the lower unit is angled upwards more in relation to the general angle of the IP and how this is reflected in the brackets attaching them to the framework: To cope with mounting those two items in their correct locations I devised a 'fore and aft' set of cutouts which wouldn't weaken said framework unduly in any one place: That was basically it for the main items of equipment along the IP frameworks in front of the two crew members: The next phase of involved entering the more mysterious area which lies behind them. In order to detail this region I wanted to make sure that anything which could be seen through windows or under the IP was present in the model, but not at the expense of inventing fictitious or innacurate detail. This meant that only items verifiable from a correlation of maintenance manual drawings with the small number of unambiguous photos available showing inside of the nose area would be considered. In itself that doesn't of course constitute an exhaustive inventory of every item concerned, limiting you instead to those items which the evidence permits for a reasonably accurate depiction of the aircraft's equipment during the historical period under consideration. Taking on this area, the simplest policy was to start from the ground up and straight away, details I hadn't noticed before over on the port side of the nose became apparent: It's almost become a cliche on this thread to remark on how often you can examine photos and never notice a particular detail until the moment you come to create things in drawings or CAD, and this feature was no exception: For printing purposes this needs to be a separate part and by this stage, you can already see the asymmetric nature of the front part of the cabin floor: From the limited listings in the maintenance manuals, nearly all of the gear inside the nose seems electrical in function so I'm not sure if the rubber rings on those four big mounting pillars in the floor are there for insulating or shock-absorbing purposes. Either way you can see the differing floor profile on that side in order to accomadate them. The reason for that framework on the port side becomes apparent when the battery is installed: This is a large alkaline affair that comes in two versions, a large capacity one for offensive operational flying and one of lower capacity for ferry duties. Directly above this item sits an equipment shelf: On the real thing this attaches to two longitudinal ribs on either of the nose but that isn't feasible as an assembly strategy in kit form so I added a locating tab for it to be fixed firmly into place on the front side of the central instrument console: With only a very small number of items in the nose like the battery being present in the maintenance manual, others like this large box with a single terminal on the end have been reconstructed from photos without me being able to describe their function: Mounted on the side of the girder directly below this is what wild guessing tells me might me a fuse box of some kind: Althought it might not be either... Another mystery box sits on the shelf on that side: Items such as this are necessarily present because you can see a small part of them in photos revealing details under the IP, otherwise they remain necessarily incomplete on those sides hidden by the nose or shadow. The mounting slot in the other end of the shelf is for this rather H.G. Wellsian electrical box of tricks: My design of that part is based primarily on the rather basic drawing in the maintenance manual correlated against glimspes of it from under the IP on the port side. One item which you can clearly see in photos looking up under the IP on the pilot's side are these two resistors with perforated casings: Being metallic rather than black boxes they're easier to see in photos and clearly labelled in the manual as Teleflex/Teledyne units. I'm hopeful those perforations will reproduce in 1/24 though less so at 1/32. That's progress up until now. Very slow due to the level of care needed in clearly identifying what should be present from the sparse number of visual references but enough to ensure that any of those bits which peek out into view match what can be seen in photos of the real thing. Rendered views to summarize progress: A sunny evening so I'm off to feed the tomatoes in the greenhouse and chill with an Ethiopian brew. All the very best to all you in your own works. Tony

Agree entirely. It will however prove invaluable on the walls of your UFO moonbase build... What is that shallow cylindrical feature top right (and to the rear of) those two lighting rows Crisp?

Many thanks Crisp and assurances of more to follow. Cheers Bill! Pick a card...any card.... Ta for your kindness Ian. Not sure about actually flying a Wasp but I'm pretty sure I could change the oil and attach a torpedo if one landed in the back garden.... For clarity: I don't actually own any torpedoes... Don't be silly Alan. I'll print somebody to do that for me.... Kind of you Serkan, thanks. Yes, I'm expecting such features features to reproduce, although not sharply defined perhaps due to the 'slot' down the centre of them. With the Saturn 2 printer you can happily print raised surface features down to 0.15mm in height: In the image above you can see how the rivet detailing of that height is clearly visible at 1/24 - my biggest surprise though was that details of that initial size remain visible even when the same part is reduced down in size by 25% in order to print at 1/32! I should add that the layer height used for printing these large fuselage parts is 0.05mm, so much greater than the 0.03mm layer height I generally use on prints of more detailed parts like the IP. That smaller LH necessarily produces a crisper rendition of smaller features than that seen above. Clearly untrue. Cheers - that's very kind of you. I'm a bit of a geek about such things so loved seeing all the graphical techniques which the technology of the time used to depict the moving sub/helo/ship relationships... From my less-than-comprehensive reading of naval matters it seems quite a lot changed post '82 - particularly ship design - but your knowledge is far greater than my own in this regard Chewie. Gracious of you as always Terry. I've had so much help with documentation and people going and taking photos for me *nods toward Wareham* that I regard it as a debt of honour to pay such kindnesses onward into the modelling community. That's never a problem Keith and thank-you. I certainly find that after a while on the forum you become conscious of wanting to compliment somebody on a great piece of work and then when going to write it down, inspiration flees! Still. At least AI will enable us to produce emojis that have been stolen from other websites and given seven fingers... Evenin' Pete! Brilliant - I had no idea how they actually worked. Thanks as always for the inside track.

Congratulations to your son CC - now he will be able to buy you more kits for your birthday and Christmas!

A magnificent sentiment Bill. To match the quality of your attentions to the subject here. Bravo!

Not sure where this summer is going but the weather is certainly of another season in this neck of the woods. In the face of continual overcast is doesn't feel as criminal to sit in a darkened room by the glare of screens, so there's been some more work completed up front of the Wasp to display. I'm thinking of printing a 1:1 version of the sight and mounting it in the roof of our VW to keep the passenger occuppied whilst stuck in Galway traffic.... Thanks Crisp. The Wasp certainly feels like a living engineering model demonstrating basic principles in action (at least, when designing a replica of it!) yet it fit into the whole frigate/MATCH system with admirable effectiveness didn't it?. I hadn't been able to unearth any detailed written accounts explaining the cognitive connections between the various MATCH elements but this from Hampshire Prints popped up in my Ytube notifications during the week to answer those questions in full: That guy has a lot of great naval-historical films on his channel! Same with me and herself in the car after the other one's used it.... Not for the first time either Giorgio! The apex drug-dealer.... When last we met, the IP was still a proverbial blank slate so it's no surprise that the reference imagery for the forward region of the cabin has snowballed somewhat of late: As front views of the Wasp clearly show a lot of detail behind the IP, I divided the job into two stages, first developing the instrumentation on the pilot-facing side in order that forwards-protruding instrument casings then ended up in the rcorresponding locations. This also let me put off any decisions about how to mount the IP onto the console pillar until later, but nobody needs to know that... The side of the panel directly facing the pilot has quite a number of raised surface features aside from the instrument dials themselves, so working on the principle that the biggest/most complicated feature on the IP was a good place to start, I began with the G4F compass: As you can see, this has quite a lot of ins 'n outs in relation to the surface of the IP. Only slightly less so is the dial for the STR40 radar altimeter, which lies at the one o'clock position in relation to it: The two bulbous button-like features directly below it are magnetic indicators for the flotation gear - one each for manual and auto. Those features are easy to see on the real thing due to their zebra-stripe markings. With those in place as a visual baseline I then started blocking out the other dials across the IP: Although at a cursory glance many of these look indentical, as is often the case a closer examination revealed they had a variety of dial elevations/depths and bezel profiles. The process of building and adapting them was numbingly repetetive so I didn't bother imaging until all the main pilot-facing dials were in place: At this point I was thinking 'Great, that's that lot done' as the above matched closely the layout illustrations in the PNs. As we all know from bitter experience though, such satisfactions are not infrequently the modelling equivalent of whistling on the bridge of the Orca at night as a brace of barrels head directly for you out of the darkness. I immediately ran into problems reconciling photography with the labelled PN diagrams! Some features, like collective pitch indicator and torquemeter, seemed to exist in a different locations in various photos, whilst a mysterious blanking plate was shown in place of a dial on a number of airframes. In other cases certain instruments are missing altogether and one dial is never labelled at all in the PN illustrations, muddying the water further. Reading through the Chapters 5, 7 & 8 in the PNs to cross-reference with the Mod index at the front of the manual provided a way of finally sorting out the confusion. Essentially, the cockpit illustrations in the manual should be treated as the initial instrumentation layout only, in contrast to individual features which were subject to later relocation via these Mods. The most prominent 'wrong' feature in my image above is that rhomboid feature sitting atop the centre of the IP. This was the initial location of the collective pitch indicator, subsequently replaced by a smaller version lower down with its place being taken in turn by the PTR 466 IFF unit. The rotor rpm unit was moved to where the pilot's missile heading indicator was initially installed in the mid-left section of the IP (that PHI itself becoming a separate unit installed atop the shroud, as will be seen later). The initial rpm indicator location was then replaced in turn by the torquemeter. Got all that? The corrected* IP layout incorporating these Mods should look like this (minus a rhomboid): The labelled version: I actually mislabelled the G4F compass as Mk.4F in that last image (apologies) whilst the dial I mentioned as not being identified in the PN layout diagram at all was identified in the written texts as being the Mk.6J standby artificial horizon unit over at the right hand side. After a while it becomes apparent that there is a decidedly Old Testament feel to some of the cockpit instrumentation: With these ecumenical issues sorted I then started filling in the instrument protrusions on the forward face of the IP, beginning with the aforementioned standby AHU bottom right corner: The final result: Those holes are obviously for adding all the necessary wiring during construction, in conjunction with which I also added the corresponding holes in the central console pillar through which many of these enter the airframe. I didn't feel that the tubular framework shown above would be sufficient in itself to hold the IP firmly in place(especially when handling during building and painting) so stretched a couple of the instrument casings (which wouldn't be seen in the final assembly) forwards beyond their normal extents in order that they would provide a simple, strong mounting mechanism into the pillar: Next item to receive attention at this point was the box for the PTR 466 IFF unit which - as previously mentioned - goes in the original location of the collective pitch indicator centre-top of the IP: Sitting to the left of this unit and angled toward the pilot by about 10° or so is the big box containing the fuzing control unit for the torpedoes. This unit - also known as the AUW presetter - enables torpedo selection along with setting a range of parameters such as initial search depth, floor depth and so forth. Photos as well as the PNs show you need to be careful here as there are two different versions of this box - a Mk.1/2 which could only handle the Mk.44 torpedo and the subequent Mk.3 capable also of handling the newer Mk.46. I've no documentary evidence as to which one XT778 carried but went with the Mk.3 AUW on the fairly safe grounds that this photo taken of XT778 on Ambuscade in the period 1976-78* clearly shows her lugging a Mk.46 around: Image credit: David Marchant Anyways, this is the Mk.3 installed: Following on from this I added the side panel and shroud which shield both sides of the IP: This was a total blackguard to design - due to the conjunction of compound curves and angled surfaces - but after several false starts it was eventually subdued and incorporated into the existing tubular framework so that it can be printed as a single unit for easy assembly: With that feature in place the PHI (pilot's heading indicator) which had originally been located on the left side of the IP (but post Mod 5171, was relocated to the top of the shroud) was also produced. From the written description in the PNs, this instrument functions so as to allow the pilot to keep the helicopter aligned with the direction in which the missile aimer has the APX sight pointed. To me it looks like a bug-eyed and very alarmed-looking face shouting at the pilot to keep things aligned or there'll be trouble: Due to the thinness of the parts concerned I built a little concealed shelf below the shroud on the front side of the IP onto which the base of the PHI can be mounted during assembly: Seen from the front that shelf should remain invisible: The now-completed IP in place: A bit closer in: The next set of jobs involves spending time over in the left side of the cabin to add the various boxes and fittings for the missile system, before moving on to the APX/BEZU sight in the roof. I think I've mentioned before that I find this sight an exciting propect to model for reasons which I would ask you not to speculate upon for the sake of your own health and wellbeing. Maybe I can distract you from that with some pictures in the meantime.... Cheers for now and look after yourselves until next time, Tony PS. *Mark Piacenti has this excellent period view of her on Ambuscade in 1979 carrying AS.12s as well:

I doff my hat to the draughtsmanship at work here Crisp. Quite, quite extraordinary.

Crisp, it is indeed most excellent to see this blend of craftsmanship and knowledge flowing again; I can only apologize for not having noticed recent updates sooner.

Thnx Pete - it's always great to hear these small details that never get recorded in historical accounts, yet which added together make up so much of that daily experience. The Thing was indeed most excellent and I re-watch it every few years though in a double bill with Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World! Many thanks as always Roger. Never been called a cad so nicely before Chris! Worst 'adult' film ever.... That packaging looked like a flexible carapace Ian. Is it possible @Martian sheds his skin every few years to transform into his next stage? Might try a film tie-in Pete! Chewie: firstly thanks for correcting my nonemclature regarding aircrewman/observer - at least I didn't call them the 'navigator' here as I did in my early days on the forum and received forthright correction by @Ex-FAAWAFU! You raise a valid point over the seat. I have to say that if general photography was my only source for visual references then I doubt I'd have noticed any difference at all. However, both the PN's (AP 101C-0601-15) and drawings in the parts manual (AP-101C-0601-3A) confirm this contrasting arrangment. The PNs state that the starboard aircrew seat was adjustable for 'rake and height' in contrast to the port seat not being so but which, interestingly, was reversible (I'm guessing to allow seated medical personnel to attend to a stretcher case laid out along the back during casualty evac?) The parts manual is the clincher though; Plate HA-35 (illustrating both of the aircrew seat mounting arrangements onto the airframe) clearly shows three vertical locking pin holes on the front and rear mounting brackets of the pilot's seat (allowing for the aforementioned rake/height changes) whilst the brackets on the port seat have only a single locking pin hole in each bracket - allowing for reversal of seat only. Unfortunately most Wasp photography doesn't clearly reveal these regions on either side but photos of scrapped/derelict airframes are frequently useful in allowing for closer scrutiny of underlying structural details: As to the APX/BEZU sight - this is adjustable in the vertical dimension, hence the concertinaed cover above the handgrips. I bought a copy of the spec sheet for the sight from SFIM in France a while back: - and if my poor French is up to spec: 'reglage de mise a poste a la convenance de l'operateur' is saying the same thing! Love your velvet interpretation of sheepskin - very effective at that scale! Tony

Good evening all. Another chapter in: Having run out of large items like seating to do around the cabin, over the last fortnight my focus has shifted onto the various control systems of the helicopter. More specifically, making sure that they are the right size at the right angles to each other in the right places around the cabin interior. This cybernetic network gives plenty of room for error in getting things like the cyclic or tail rotor pedals to stand out like a sore thumb against the surrounding features if wrong. I've mentioned before in this thread (with regard to visual references) about the unreliability of wide-angle photos in enclosed spaces, so needed a more resilient way to maintain accuracy over this suite of features. At the turn of the Millenium in a bookshop near Richmond station I came across this wonderful Italian book entitled 'Modulo Sperimetale Libero'. Basically it's a research project produced for FIAT (published in 1970) by the Pio Manzu Research Centre. It analyzes in detail the volumes of space occupied by the human body in various orientations within vehicles of different types, in relation to both visibility of environment and practical locations for the various controls: Pilots and engineers on here will be well familiar with the notion of cockpit ergonomics of course, but for a non-pilot/engineer such as your correspondent, drawings from the book such as that shown above (exploring the person-machine interface) stuck in my head. These images have subsequently proven the book to be a wise investment as I decided to copy their process in three dimensions with the aid of a proxy mannequin downloaded off of the web: Items marked in red were the intial construction points I needed to establish accurately in an array around the pilot; seen from overhead you can see why this step was necessary in such confines: There has for example to be room for both rotor brake and collective along the left side of the pilot's seat (another reason why until now I haven't decided on how those seats will be mounted onto the kit during assembly), along with the wheel brake and IP right and front. It also of course has to be possible for the pilot to reach them as they would in the real world! Having these basic dispositions established allowed me to settle on a simple scheme for accurately gluing the seats into place, slotting them downwards into the latitudinal frame at the rear, with corresponding location recesses in the floor on either side at the front: I then decided to start laying out the various features which sit on the cockpit floor between the pilot and IP panel, starting with the absolute little darling of a fire extinguisher mounted directly in front of the right hand seat: - followed straight after by the ribbed protective 'boot' for the cyclic: This latter feature (being semi-regular) was easy to do up in the 'Forms' section of Fusion using essentially the same method which I'd used previously on the MRGB's spider arms. Forward of this in the image above you can see the initial blank for the tail rotor control pedals, which - with a little embellishment - turned out like this in the end: There's a crank and control rod mechanism leading down inside there for transmitting inputs from the pilot's feet back down the airframe but for the purposes of kit-building, I terminated the pedal shafts where they enter the cabin floor so that as individual parts they can be easily and accurately stuck together: There's also a protective set of short brushes running either side of those channels in which the pedals move back and forth. Presumably these are to stop dirt and debris entering the control runs and will be more realistic added from a line of fine brush hairs at the construction stage I reckon: The upright directly in front of the pedal box is a vertical support for IP framework: At this stage I've only roughed out the main dials on the IP, whilst the extra drawing on the right shows where I had to correct the shape of the IP at that end. Here's more IP mounting frame filled in and seen from the front: In the majority of photos looking forwards toward the IP it doesn't look like you need worry about to showing very much of that detail in front of it at all as it all looks covered in by the top of the IP 'dashboard'. Cees Hendriks' excellent image of a RNN Wasp demonstrates clearly though just how of how much of the IP's reverse is actually visible from the front: The forward bracing of that framework mounts directly into the front edge of the windshield, for which a locating hole has been designed to receive it: Perversely, one of the things I was aching to make on this aricraft ever since I read through the manuals for the Wasp was the signal pistol! This bulky item - a 'No.4 Mk.1' signal pistol - is clip-mounted to the right edge of the IP framework on the pilot's side, like so: The flare cartridges themselves are stored at the rear of the central console, for which there are two different versions to complicate matters; more on that when I get onto the console in due course. An additional modification which resulted from beginning to finalize the position of features like the rotor brake was the scalloped-out recess in the rear floor. On my original design I had this dead along the centreline but realized from more intense scrutiny of the area that this feature exists to accomodate the base of the rotor brake assembly: the faces of it were moved to the right in the design accordingly: Starting to get busy inside of there now: Next stage has to be some work on the IP instumentation, generating both the rear-facing dials and with their various projections forwards toward front windscreen. For now though, some parting renders of the progress to date: Until next time, all the very best in your modelling: Tony PS. We had an air fryer delivered in this protective material during the week. I'm getting strong John Carpenter's The Thing vibes...

If it please the gods Ian we would like that very much. Great work so far!

*Captain Pugwash theme plays* That's one heck of a great looking paint scheme in that last photo Pete. Good luck with the next phase. I swear you write this stuff on purpose.

😂🤣 All of the above. Sheuching behaviour. Last time I'm going to acknowledge sailors' buttocks in a build...

But luckily you can hum along with it...

Lincs police have been posting this message on social media all week in an attempt to reunite owners with their items.

The gall of the man. Mocking us. Seldom have tyres and seats been featured to such compelling effect Alan. Great to catch up with every every twist and turn of progress here.

Good to hear you're back in harness on the Victor Bill and equally great news on the condition of your own airframe. You bear the unthinkable with such grace sir.

I see you've added extra ribs to enhance the pleasure. That painstaking plastic strip magnificence is peerless Your Eminence - always a joy to witness the results of such patient immersion in the craft. Barber (brushing the last few stray hairs from the customer's collar): 'Something for the weekend sir?' Customer (studiously avoiding eye contact): 'Dark Blue Dutch Mariner'