TheBaron

You'll never guess how the film opens... 😁 Only Fools and Horses completely ruined HMS Rodney for me...until I saw this: Image Credit: Simon's Scouse and all jokes page Gemini/Titan @ 1/24 = 154.3cm height. Exactly how big is your display case Terry? How on earth you found that film I don't know James (secret travelogue buff? ) : the cimematography was of such high quality that I felt compelled to do some digging around and surprisingly for a travel film of the period it was shot on 70mm (Superpanorama 70) stock. I can remember shorter and poorer quality versions of such films shown as B-features before the main movie in cinemas back in the 70s. Still aesthetically-scarred by one on Devon that was shown before - iirc - The Incredible Melting Man at the Granada in Kingston: possibly the only occasion on which an audience has booed a travel film... Good to know you're pleased with the results it gives. Ooh you lucky beggar Keith - I longed for that Action Man setup! RIP Major Tom: Today's update is by way of a benchmark in that the Waspertional Nimbus - along with all its associated fittings & fixtures - is now finished. Having plumbed in the fuel surge dampers earlier along with air supply for the inlet vane guide actuator, I have thankfully (all Gods be praised) at last run out of features which can be realistically expressed at 1/24th to build as physical entities. By way of a summary then, some renders of the completed Nimbus ensemble (basically antything that sits on or is attached to it in some way): Off to lie in a darkened room and gibber for a bit. Tony

Having received a detailed tour of a Sea King at Yeovilton from this gentleman, can confirm that he knows each rivet personally, if not by indeed by their first names... Looking forward to this immensely Crisp.

Egad! He's training it to jump through hoops on top of everything else. Oh my giddy gondolas!

What an exquisite Wasp!

The blend of personal history and technology involved here make this an utterly fascinating endeavour Ralph. The very best of luck with what I'm sure will be an exemplary build (helmets and all!)

Apologies for the breath today as ganetting on peppered mackerel for lunch. 😁 No roof = Irish solar panels. (Sunlight heats the bathwater directly!). Horror story is right Ian : regrettably it's not uncommon to find such domestic wreckage across the landscape here. Add in all the more modern 'ghost' houses and estates still unfinished after the banking crisis and it's no surprise that there's a housing crisis in this country. Criminal isn't the word. Thanks Terry - amendments to be unveiled in a moment.... 😄 That's why you never see a wasp eating a fish supper... Gotcha Pete. I'm the same after three mugs of coffee... Be prepared for lots of angsty pipe bending in due course Giorgio! 😄 😁 I suspect some kind of mental health exam will be mandatory for all who have followed this descent into the (detailed) maelstrom Noel! With the Wasp laying open its engineering in such a bare bones fashion Crisp, it has enough in common with sculpture for me to just about comprehend the physical features and functions involved. When it comes to the Lynx and onward to Wildcat though I suspect my technical graps would be rapidly exceeded. That said, producing a large-scale helicopter here has proven so fascinating/maddening/enlightening that I must confess a Sea King at similar scale has an equally large gravitational attraction to it as a future subject... I'm growing rapidly less comfortable at using 'traditional' resins for printing tbh Pete and am going to trial one of the plant-based water-washable ones soon. Or as you suggest, get a chocolate printer even... https://cocoapress.com/pages/gallery *Entering the Westland archive of a morning... 😁 3d-printed brownie points to anyone who can name the film this still is from! Is that why he has all those <stage-cough> *rivets* on his Defiant? Ralph that is enormously kind of you and please expect a slew of 'likes' to show up on some of your other threads in due course (Lynx included). You've built so many of the subjects that interest me. Am in full scale-sympathy with you! 😁 I suspect The Cognitive Psychology of Helicopter Structures to be one ofthe great unwritten volumes of literature... A Hecla in the audience. Empathy for the Devil. James I think it's pretty safe to say that my obsession with the Gemini missions makes this a certainty. Have you read Mike Collins? Of all that NASA cohort he remains the most human and original of them all at trying to express the extraordinary (experiences); this copy has been in my bookshelves since I was 15.... When I do a capsule it will have to be Gemini X, Young & Collins' mission: On the contrary James - an invaluable set of images to add to the reference mosaics. Thank you!, Oblique progress to report today, as with a build of this extent, I'm having to painfully and incrementally learn a new magnitude of organizational skills in order to keep track of everything. In this respect you find that you are fighting your own instincts to just plough on with the addictive iteration of parts but instead, have to force yourself to stop and begin to inventory what you already have, remembering the small decisions that can get lost in the overall gestalt of the thing, and so forth. The cloud account now has several growing folders of existing parts that need to be inventoried to check that they contain the latest versions, alongside which I've been having to go through each design section to pluck out the brass components to begin the process of turning those folded parts back into planar designs for the PE plates. This is a (false-scale, oversize) contact sheeT of where I'm at so far in that particular task: Exporting PE designs is something Fusion frankly stinks at, whereby you have to export each PE design as a .dxf file and then spend ages cleaning up things like line-weight and fill colour in Illustrator (or any other vector graphic program that can handles this filetype) - grossly time-consuming. At present these tidied up drawings all reside as separate .ai files, later they'll be gathered together on one sheet for design of the photoetch plate. When the time comes I think I'll talk to PPD over in Argyle about them handling the etching as they did such a superb finish on the Sea Vixen stuff last time around. I think I mentioned in the last update also that there were a couple of features on the hydraulic system that I wanted to revisit so these were attended to around the etch stuff. First up there's now a printed pressure gauge on the side plate next to the accumulator: The dial will have a decal (oh God I'd forgotten I'd need to do decals to...) and can then be glassed in. I left the holes for the mounting screws of the gauge open as it wasn't possible to add a 3d printed part for them alone - these can be added from scrap brass of platic rod easily enough during assembly. Also addressed was a redesign for the hydraulic fluid reservoir in order that the sight level gauge for the fluid have a reasonable physical expression: Yes I know it looks like Trevor the Talking Toilet Cistern chatting to his friends the pipes but the optimistic idea here is to whack a bit of white plasticard over that circular opening on the interior, drip a little hydraulicky-looking fluid onto it (enough to fill the window up about 4/5 of the way when vertical) and then glass it in with a bit of transparency on the outside to produce this kind of visual: It's either that or fill the whole bluidy tank and ah'm no made of money... Net result of those two amendments is then hopefully something which gives a more complete expression to that region: Digging around behind the cushions looking for stuff that's fallen down the back of the Internet recently I happened across a French film from 1965 - Le ciel sur la tête (Skies Above) - and have to say it is pretty excellent of its kind. Being filmed almost entirely on the Clemenceau it's chock full of period detail regarding Etendard and Alize carrier operations that will be of interest to many on here, but in addition has a gripping psychological plotline that makes it worth watching as a film in its own right. Think Ice Station Zebra / The Bedford Incident but with Gauloise and proper dining facilities. There's a trailer for it here: Anyway, if you haven't seen it and French naval aviation is your thing, worth tracking down. Thanks for looking in and hope you all have a good end to your respective weeks. Tony

Congratulations Heather. A splendid piece of work.

It looks a lot cleaner than my Skoda's windscreen if that's any comfort! Don't know if it helps in anyway Bill (apart from the usual top-notch cutaway drawing) but I've left a copy of the original 1957 Wessex article from Flight magazine up here.

Can confirm not dissapointed. 😁 (And if possible looks like some of your best yet Ian. ) My apologies for not noticing this thread sooner!

A delightful catchup on the last several updates Bill and this: is what in a restaurant would be up on the board as the chef's special. Exquisite.

Looking forward to the app being available on Android and iOS too! Like Tinder but for people with Zeppelins...

Sincerely hoping it's aircraft-related and nothing to do with nasal hair removal Terry... Jocularity aside, a real pleasure to see such a fine series of etch pieces emerging from your bench, amongst other engrossing processes. Lovely stuff. Most grateful for that info on lead wire too - I didn't know that particular company existed and see some in my future.

Icebergs, rivets and mottling. Not sure I'd trust them as a firm of lawyers but a characteristically rich couple of updates from your good self Steve. As G. says: Continued best of luck with the next phase.

That looks great Heather. Fingers crossed for you the masks come off ok - always the bit in painting that gives me the most discomfort (and corersponding pleasure when it's fine!)

Good evetermorn all. In peak irony last week I got stung simultaneously by several wasps. Clearing out nettles in the front garden I didn't notice the opening of their nest in the mound in front of me until the contents emerged in a squadron scramble. Before you could utter 'Oh dear, this is quite unfortunate' (or words to that effect) they'd lashed a few barbs into the Baronial carcass. I was brave though and didn't cry, whilst Mrs. B dressed the wounds with vinegar. Nearly as painful as trying to work out the hydraulic system on a big Wasp, of which more in a moment after we draw the curtains and link hands in the gloom to see if the spirits are with us: 🤣 'At my signal - unleash Hell Bod!' I reckon by late summer Pete: there a currently so many parts for print or PE that I seriously run the risk of losing track if an inventory isn't organized soon. It makes sense to do so once the engine deck and rear fuselage are completed, by which stage I calculate this should be between 50-60% of the design work completed. Do you reckon if I play an airbrush on the rotors at the right angle it might produce enough lift to raise a wheel off the ground Terry?😀 It's a bit lof an archaeological dig isn't it Bill? You find yourself uncovering layers of the past in terms of how somebody imagined a thing and then built it. Our objects travel forward in time without us for others to decipher. Thank you as always Giorgio. You were in my thoughts yesterday reading about the dire Italy/Sicily/Sardinia heat levels: most sincerely hope yourself and family are doing ok. Sonorously put Pete. Bit of a literary cove yourself there, doncha know. Isn't it? And I agree Ian. Vivid picture of you coolly leafing through an Arabic phrase book whilst the pupil flies the aircraft inverted through a thundercloud.... 😁 Thanks Alan - so am I! 😁 Kind of you as always Chris. Colin - in relation to the above, have you read Richard Sennet's The Craftsman? It's a fascinating study of the way and why of making things. For not dissimilar reasons I follow Marlène Aviation over on (what's left after Musk's tantrums) of Twitter: the sheer brio of French aircraft design has been a revelation to me. Also, what's not to like about an aircraft that looks like an Arado Ar234 trying to mate with a Hampden whilst it's trying on a pair of clogs: Image credit: Marlène Aviation Anyway. Hydraulics. Why does that word always make me laugh? Prossibly because of its Milliganesque rhyming properties. Either way this is the destination of today's update, that steampunk Tower of Medusa squatting to port of the main gearbox: (The gauge on my one will go up to 21 of course.) As on so many occasions with this helicopter, the maxim 'it looks simple enough until you try to reproduce it' applied in spades here, a quick working drawing being required to synthesize the view from all angles in order to comprehend the key features: My early assumptions of this being a solid structure with just a few projecting features to worry about were rapidly demolished by finding it to consist essentially of a sheet metal carcase adorned with an absolute V&A of fittings and pipework. Taken en masse, the level of detail required at 1/24th is routinely overwhelming so in this situation (as in so many others on this project) the most effective way of banishing fear was simply to start from the bottom and work up gradually in terms of complexity - in this case, integrating the base as surface detail onto the engine deck: The addition of those mounting slots then allows the interlocking parts of the metal base to be accurately set in place: The detailing for the pressure gauge (Mk.14 H) on the outer face of that feature I've currently drawn up as an embossed surface detail on the PE, though I may revisit this decision and turn the dial into a printed part. Tucked in the front of this is the cylindrical form of the accumulator: - whilst on top sits the reservoir for the hydraulic fluid, complete with sight gauge on the rear face: As that tank will be printed hollow, in theory you could stick a transparent panel on the sight gauge and have it actually filled with fluid @Terry1954... With the two main components in place as a sort of visual boundary marker (for alignment & scale in relation to the surrounding features of the region) you then have a reasonable basis to begin adding smaller features to the inboard: - and outboard faces of the array: At this point in proceedings it begins to dawn just how many pipes and hoses are going to be involved in the next step. Again, when intimidated by number, just start adding one at a time and let the total take care of itself in due course: As in previous instances, I''m using 0.3mmØ as the minimum practicable diameter to build things like hoses later from using jewllery wire and a bending rig. That Ankh-like hoop should ceretainly be fun to get right... The bulk of the hoses are accounted for in fact by the three cyclic control servos added in the last update: Over to starboard was a deck feature which I hadn't noticed until now - a mounting bracket set into the deck at an angle to hold the hoses at the correct height and angle so they thread through the structures beneath the MRGB: That whole network is driven by this hydraulic pump on the bottom port side of the MRGB pyramid: T. L. Ciastula's seminal 1964 article - The Development of the P.531 - contains an outstanding description of how this pump draws power from the main drive shaft via interlocking gears in terms that even this layperson can understand. To finish then, some synoptic views of the whole maze of hoses in terms of how they intermingle with the surrounding features of the Wasp: Aside from a couple of runs of oil pipe along the port side of the Nimbus (to do with those saucer-like surge fittings mounted above the oil cooler) that really should be just about it now for Nimbus detailing. I see from the Flickr timeline that it's been about 3 months now since this phase of the work started. The remaining tasks to complete in this region are things rivets, sockets etc. around the rear fuselage; time-consuming rather than complicated, and with less scope for being ambushed by hidden detail! In contrast to the furnace in other parts of Europe, its Atlantic edge here is typically howling wind and rain at present, rather summed up by this photo I caught during the week: Thanks - as always - for looking in. I hope your own works are going well. More anon. Tony

Fret not Daddy M, you'll be grand (and have the goodwill of all of us behind you).

Much appreciate you posting this information as it deals with a problem I'm no stranger to either: I've used a similar process on long thin items like rotor blades. @Serkan Sen on this forum has developed his own strategy to great effect on his own builds as well that are worth seeking out.

No need to wish you luck with work of this quality Alan, it speaks for itself. Superb.

My forum visits are no longer as frequent these days as they have been in the past Bill yet it's still dreadful to have missed such an extensive aircraft receiving your usual impeccable level of attention. Wishing you the best on daily health and in vigor on your Hawaiian anabasis.

A classic 'shredding the top secret documents before the mob enters the embassy' shot Ced. You don't have a passport in the name of Jason Bourne as well do you...? 😁

There is something deeply satisfying but hard to express about your work on those blade tips Colin. Lovely work, as indeed is the whole thing!

Every best wish for a successful exhibition Martian, I'm sure the work will look absolutely fantastic.

Things proceeeding at a geological pace these days but happily some further progress to report on the understanding of structures; I think also I may have a mutant form of tinnitus as Dr. Feelgood's Roxette has played on a continual ear-loop for two days now... My pleasure Bill. Cheers Colin. Yes that's exactly right: or rather they're printed using a resin that's formulated so it will burn out of the mould exactly as wax does in the lost wax process: This is the before and after state as it were, with some of the the Alu test casts mounted onto the hub to check the droop angle remains accurate (thankfully it is...). I've no idea if the purple colour of the resin results from the formulation of the mixture itself or is just an affectation to mess with your eyes. Luckily I photographed it on a yellow background to make it even harder to look at... You are a very kind man Cookie - thank you. I found a great section in the manual detailing cockpit equipment like signalling lamps and flare guns so expect the full package of extras in due course! Most kind of you Kev. I've said it before but is worth repeating that it's less the software and more the ability to draw what you see. It helps too that even in the limited time I've been doing 3d printing, the quality of printers and resins has come on leaps and bounds so that these days I spend less time trying to get a result and more on thinking how it can dovetail with things like PE, vacforming and casting. I seem to recall finishing off the last update by stating that I was going to finish off work on the hydraulic system, a blithe assumption soon disavowed by paying closer attention to all those lovely rotor control mechanisms hidden away in shadows beneath the MRGB. Initially I thought 'J, M & J': it was impossible to make sense of the - at best - glimpses which you get in most photographs of the region, none of which in themselves are enough to form an accurate picture of what's going on down there in 'the trough'. There was nothing for it but to read the maintenance manual carefully in order to actually understand what and how all those control linkages work on the real thing. Lacking the depth of authority that Steve and Crisp bring to describing such matters but in (very) simple terms it seems that the pilot's inputs via collective and cyclic are translated backward from the cockpit via their respective control runs into a z crank/hub assembly situated on the bottom of the helicopter between the fuel tanks and directly below the MRGB. These control inputs are in turn passed upwards via two rods - for cyclic and collective inputs respectively - through the underside of the MRGB where they connect with the spider hub and piston skirt up inside of the MRGB casing. This leads to some very odd and confusing-looking arrangements down there so I had to sketch out the respective cyclic/collective arrangement in order to distinguish what I was seeing: You'd be forgiven for thinking that seeing how much of this structure will eventually be hidden as comprehensively as it is in the real world, why obsess over this level of detail? The fact is that I twigged quite early on in this stage that it could provide the perfect solution to a problem which up until now I hadn't found a satisfactory solution for, namely how to provide adequately-braced support for all that weight of the gearbox, hub, and main rotors? I knew that the existing MRGB support struts weren't in themselves up to the task yet didn't want to have to bodge up some spurious support feature that would undermine visual authenticity. By reversing real-world logic though, the control rods here could do service as support braces instead! Boiled down to the essentials, there were three servo control units, twin bell cranks, a control beam and the aforementioned control rods to produce. Whilst the parts in themselves were complex enough in their own right, an added complication was the necessity for accurate alignement, both with each other and with the existing components of the Wasp: as I've done on previous such occasions, I initially drew out a simplified control grid of alignments in three dimensions, or as I liked to think of it in this instance, a set of Westland ley lines... That done I started work on the port bellcrank and servo unit for the cyclic pitch control: Yes, I know it looks like some kind of weird medieval catapult but bear with me on this. Once you see its starboard twin in place, hopefully it becomes a bit more apparent how the two servos sit either side of that cup-shaped twin-taper roller bearing in the centre: That bearing is the one feature I had to make slightly oversize in order that it be strong enough to hold the control spider spindle in place, like so: At 0.9mm Ø that spindle will be made from brass and act now as the central load bearing support for the gearbox/hub/rotor assembly perched on top of it. But what's that you say? There's a second control rod for the collective pitch control to go up inside there was well? Indeed there is and this one is atached to a collective pitch control beam which not only sits on the floor of the engine trough and has a vertical servo of its own ataching to the front of the MRGB: - but also angles backward to port, attaching to the base of the hydraulic pump situated on that side of the layrub coupling: This was one of the trickiest structural elements of the Wasp to discern so far as frankly I just didn't believe that it could look like that until finding it confirmed by mutliple visual references in the Wasp's manual, as well as in a couple of photos taken with the back of the cabin removed. As a result of that angled displacement of the collective beam, you can see how the control rod for collective pitch passes upward from it on the diagonal to enter the MRG casing like so: From stbd, hopefully you get a clearer idea of how these brass rods - along with the bellcrank and servo assemblies - will function to brace and support everything sitting above them: As an X-ray you can see how the MRGB sits on both these control rods now: As alignment is critical in this area for all those features to meet at the correct angles in space, I added locating lugs onto the bellcranks and collective beam in order to ensure they can be fitted onto the engine deck accurately: A couple of renders to finsih then showing the MRG with its support struts fitted - you can see how spindly they would have been on their own without the enhanced level of support the above assemblies have now added: It's no minor matter either that those supports now sitting on the engine deck will help to make the eventual assembly of the parts above them less of a white-knuckle affair... Digging through some old back issues of Flight recently I happened across this brief report and find myself in complete (miniature) agreement: Well said Mr. Petter. 👏 Yours in chaos and a mass of impressions... Tony

Handsome work Chris. Congratulations on another cracking FAA subject.

That interior looks very compelling already Roger - lovely work. I still have various technical references I used on my own Annie sometime back lurking on the hard drive: if you need information on a particular detail just shout, otherwise I'll just quietly enjoy this unfolding. Good luck! Best, Tony