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Chewbacca

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  1. Really pleased this has climbed down from the shelf of doom Crisp and great work going on. I have had one of these in my stash for ages with the intent of converting to the earliest iteration of ARK V when she first sailed from the Tyne in November 1984 under the Red Ensign fir Contractor's Sea Trials...with the RNHF Swordfish embarked. I was OOW1 (and am on the bridge in the photo below), my last watchkeeping job before I started flying training in Feb 85. I must read this whole thread to properly get my head around the differences between the kit and early ARK
  2. Very nice. I was in Jadlam Models in Glastonbury yesterday and they had these slightly reduced but given the size of my stash I couldn't really justify it.
  3. Totally agree. IIRC, FOD guards were not fitted when the OAT was below 3 deg or there was any risk of flight in icing conditions. Any in any case, the RBF blank with no FOD guard was a foam insert. Well somebody's got to do the After Flight Servicing 🤣 Great work Bill. That's a seriously impressive model.
  4. Sorry, should have made it clear. The image of my partially complete flight deck is oriented with for'ard to the left
  5. There were a fair few differences between XX910 and the production aircraft but I don;t think that anyone will really notice. Even in my 1/48 version you can barely see the 3 man seat with both cabin doors wide open! Does this help for position of the ringbolts? I can't find any definitive image that shows them so this is the best I have come up with from the photos I have for a 1/48 base. It's for HMS BRAVE so a Batch 2B but the stuff around the harpoon grid is pretty much the same. If you can find anything better please do let me know so that I can grab a copy for my own archive! I presume you've seen these two photos on militrayimages.net:
  6. HAS 2/3, the tail rotor rotates anti-clockwise when viewed from port; in other words, the leading blade drives down into the downdraft from the main rotor disc. In the HMA8 they put a new tail rotor gearbox which reversed the direction of the drive. What difference does it make one might think? If the leading tail rotor blade flies up into the main rotor downdraft, it doesn't need to rotate to fast to generate the same lift over the blade. The HAS 2/3 tail rotor rotated significantly faster than the HMA8, which was the reason that you could frequently hear a Lynx from 6-7 miles away. It also led to a loss of tail rotor authority when approaching the operating limits. I'd always been led to believe that it was unique to the early Lynx variants and was caused by an error in the design shop. Until I was building my 1/48 Wasp and researched that aircraft to find that the Wasp was the same. I was also told that when they first reversed the direction, they did so by putting an additional cog in the intermediate gearbox, forgetting that the oil field in the tail rotor gearbox was worm drive fed and by reversing that, it sucked the oil out of the bearings not pumped it in. Apparently the gearbox disintegrated about 3 minutes into the first ground run. Pretty certain that the angled bar that you can see lined up next to the weapon frame is the hoist screw actuator strut which appears to have broken away from it's bottom mounting point. I think I can see the 3-man seat fitted up against the rear of the cabin but the fact that you can see the soundproofing on the far side of the cabin suggests to me there was no 6-man seat fitted. IIRC, the straps, which were 3 point shoulder/lap (like a car seat belt) were dark blue.
  7. Bill, That "blocky thing" you refer to is the control box on the side of the hoist in the background. The weapons loading frame was just that, a frame. The lifting gear was a separate bit of equipment, carried out to the aircraft and hooked into the hole in the top of the lifting beam. These photos show it very well.
  8. Thanks James. As originally built, she was built to the planned design of the other ships in the class but over the years she was altered as happens with any ship. I did think she wouldn't qualify. I'll think again.
  9. Several pages ago I suggested that I might look at scratch building the MEKO A-200 RN that was one of the two offerings for the RN Type 31 frigate programme that didn't make it through, with the award going to the Babcock Arrowhead 140 instead. Well there are a few artists' impressions in open source but probably not enough to scratch build from, and even though I can get access to the actual general arrangement drawings, unfortunately they have not yet been down-classified so I wouldn't be able to take copies. So, would HMS BRISTOL qualify? BRISTOL was the first of the Type 82 destroyer programme, planned to be the first of a class of 8 whose design specification was to provide anti-air warfare escort duty for the projected new aircraft carrier, CVA-01. But when the RAF managed to persuade ministers that they didn't need to invest in a new carrier, because their aircraft could reach every part of the globe in which Britain had an interest (only by moving Australia several thousand miles on a map mind you 😠), Denis Healey, the then Defence Secretary, cancelled CVA-01. De-facto, if there was no CVA-01, there was no need for 8 expensive escorts, and so the Type 82 programme was similarly cancelled. However, BRISTOL, as first of class, was still ordered from Swan Hunters and the decision was taken to continue with her effectively as a trials ship to de-risk future technologies which would eventually find themselves in the smaller and cheaper Type 42s. It would be a fairly extensive conversion from an Airfix County Class but certainly doable. But I'm not sure if it would count because although the programme was cancelled, BRISTOL herself was finished and did enter service. What do people think?
  10. Hi Mike, Good to see this going again. IIRC, the way I did something similar (but I concede less complex) in my Mayfly scratchbuild was to draw the frame. Extrude it (in my case 1mm) and then use the loft tool to join the inner sides of the frame to each other. Worked well for the nose and tail cones Think there'll be some fun trigonometry in there though working out the angles! Alternatively, one of the members of our local model club is a professional CAD engineer. I can ask her how she'd tackle it if you like?
  11. By a strange coincidence, while waiting for my wife to get back last night I was scrolling though YouTube and came across this short Westlands promotional video from the late 1970s: There's some really good close ups of the Harpoon/Deck Lock in operation from 2:07 to 2:45. And MAD being reeled in and out (albeit in a Dutch UH-14) from 4:36 to 4:50. Hope that helps
  12. I totally agree, but I've never seen them bent out at 180 deg to each other looking like cat's whiskers! Sorry this isn't a great photo but I forgot to take a better one before I took my trusty cutters to them. And after replacing with something a little more realistic: [/url
  13. Hi Bill, The grabby do dah thingamabob was originally called the Harpoon. When the Lynx landed on, assuming the Pilot got it vaguely near the grid (which to be fair they did most of the time), the call went out from the Flight Deck Officer on Helo Intercom "342 (or whatever the side number was) locked on deck, Harpoon engaged". And that was absolutely fine until about 1989, by which time HMS CORNWALL had entered service. Because of course CORNWALL was the first RN ship to be fitted with the Harpoon GWS 60 anti-ship missile system. And when the Captain, Chris Wreford Brown (of HMS CONQUEROR vs Belgrano fame) heard "Haroon engaged", apparently he went ballistic. And very soon afterwards, the order was issued that from then on, it was to be known as the "Deck Lock". Again in the early days of Lynx operations, as soon as the Harpoon was engaged, the Officer of the Watch could start manoeuvring. Until, I think it was HMS HERMIONE in 1990, was goffered by a wave after the OOW started his turn with the Lynx locked on deck but before the lashings had been applied, And guess what? The Harpoon failed, the aircraft rolled over and went over the side. Fortunately, both crew got out with minor injuries. After that the ship had to stay steady until 4 nylon lashings had also been applied. That Airwaves PE looks nothing like a Harpoon/Deck Lock. You're right in that it is a cylinder, about 80 mm diameter, that has a rectangular box attached to the side which contains the manual switches. When stowed the whole thing sits inside the rectangular housing with just the dissimilar length pincers showing. When on deck, the pilot presses a button on the collective which uses hydraulic pressure to push the Harpoon down and towards the grid. Between the two pincers is a microswitch which when activated by touching one of the ridges of the grid, it allows hydraulic pressure to close the pincers together which grips the grid and theoretically at least, will hold the aircraft in place. Apparently, though I've never seen a photo from the right angle to back it up, COVENTRY's Lynx was still secured to the grid by just the harpoon as she capsized. But COVENTRY survivors who witnessed it from the liferafts have told me and I have not reason to doubt them. I think the photo below is the furthest over I have seen her that clearly shows the cab still on deck with no lashings. The Harpoon in the Airfix 1/48 HMA 8 is a pretty good representation and hopefully this photo montage shows it reasonably well The reason that I haven't fitted this yet is that although the model is compete, the flight deck base and grid are not. I was going to fit this to the grid first then work out how much I need to lengthen it to allow for the head being extended. As for the MAD Operator's seat, I am not 100% certain, but I am 99% certain, that the MAD was operated by the Observer. There was nothing in the Lynx Aircrew Manual from back in the day that spoke about any single seats in the cabin apart from the Observer instructor's seat which fitted between and just behind the front seats and that certainly was never used for anything other than instruction. How the MAD was displayed to the Observer I do not know. In fact for that matter I don't even know if it had a display or just an audio warner if it detected something. Not Action Stations but Defence Watches. If they were at Action, the Anti-Flash hood would have been up. The Task Force was in Defence Watch for all of the time it was inside the Total exclusion Zone Normally I would expect it to be at the top. But given that all other markings have been erased, I would be surprised if there was one there at all by this stage of the war. Great work on that MAD winch/bird.
  14. Sorry Bill, as I said previously, this kit had been withdrawn from service before I started my Lynx conversion (or at least by the time that I graduated front line) and I've never seen it. I think the only photos I have that show it are the same ones of XZ729 that you have. That's absolutely correct. Notwithstanding that this photo is a Dutch SH-14B because it's the best illustration of an early Lynx underside I can find online (I hope I'm not breaking any rules by posting links to Alamy images) , the doppler is identical to both this and the HAS 2/3. The doppler is the square device on the centreline between the nosewheels and the radome with rounded corners and with a ridge down the middle which separates the transmit from the receive side of the aerial. It sits almost flush with the fuselage and is a sort of duck egg green colour. Of note, the two smaller squares on the port side, one in front of and one behind the doppler are the radar altimeter aerials. They sit very slightly proud and are aluminium in colour.
  15. That contains the MAD winch. Very good question. Looking at the B&W images, the MAD bird looks distinctly darker than the winch housing and the surrounding sponson, so if we assume that the airframe and the MAD carrier remained Oxford blue, then I'd say the bird could be either DSG or RAF BG. However, if the cab was Oxford blue, I'd be very surprised if they had supplies of DSG or RAF BG on board. I know when we had two Lynx in BOXER in 88 and one was DSG and the other medium sea grey. Our SMR had a devil of a job persuading the Jack Dusties (the Stores Accountants) that he needed both colours in case of the need to touch up either cab. Of course, they could have got it from one of the carriers which would have had both for the SHAR and Sea Kings. The only colour photo of a Lynx from the conflict that I have is PENELOPE Flight and it is definitely still Oxford blue overall. That photo was taken relatively late on because it is fitted with the Hampton Mayfair jammer which didn't deploy south until 10 May. I had a quick read through some of the stories in Larry Jeram-Croft's book, "Lynx, an operational history", to see if there was anything in there at all about airframe colours. Couldn't find anything specific to XZ729 but it did point me at another online search where I found a report from someone who was in BROADSWORD at the time. According to that report, the blast knocked off the tail of the Mk 44 torpedo and they did indeed have an Otto Fuel spillage on deck (really nasty stuff), which explains why the tail cone is missing from the torpedo. It went on to say though that one of the other BROADSWORD cabs, XZ728, which had been damaged by cannon fire earlier in the conflict, was eventually fitted with XZ729's tail cone before its fuselage was lifted off and onto Atlantic Causeway for return to UK. And importantly that the tail cone still had XZ239's registration number on it. So I think you'd be good to go with XZ239 on the tail cone but from the looks of it, overpainted in black. Hope that helps
  16. As far as I can tell from the photos I have (which I think you have posted similar copies on here earlier, though I think mine might be slightly higher resolution) XZ729 had no markings whatsoever at the time of the attack, other than a single large blue/red roundel either side of the fuselage which would be commensurate with a couple of other Corporate era Lynx photos I have. Surprisingly, I can't even see the registration on the tail boom which I thought was a legal requirement in time of war to demonstrate that it was a military aircraft. Equally as far as I can tell, there is no BT code on the knife edge fairing.
  17. Well that was fun! The worst part of repair to DANAE were the hundreds of broken guardrails but in 1/96, every one had to be replaced individually. At least there were parts of CAVENDISH, especially on the port side of the fo'c'sle where there were whole runs missing and thus could be replaced en-masse. Nevertheless, it was still a good few hours at the bench but I'm pleased with the result. It's such a nice model of a lovely old ship (I've always had a soft spot for the CA class destroyers after going on board HMS CAVALIER when she was still in active service at Chatham Navy Days in about 1969/1970). Good news was that none of the stanchions were missing. Bent, yes, but all there, because the way my CA was behaving, I would not have fancied trying to secure new stanchions end on. I did spot a fair few other broken guardrails as I went around that I hadn't spotted on first inspection, especially around the quarterdeck area, so they have all also been replaced. I started with Uschi van der Rosten line but in this scale, it is simply too fine and so I ended up using stretched sprue. Did have a bit of a 'mare yesterday when I managed to knock the ensign off the ensign staff and could I find it, could I heck. I means it's not as if it's a millimetric bit of PE, it's 10 mm x 5 mm and mostly bright white. But I spent a good hour trying to find it and just as I had resigned myself to replacing it with a 1/350 battleship ensign decal, I decided to have one final look this afternoon and found it buried on the workbench behind a small box. So the original is back in place. The astute amongst you will notice from the first photo that I haven't replaced the whip aerials on the for'ard corners of the bridge. They're not broken as such - that was how the model was made - they're just wrong. If you look at this photo of CAVENDISH taken in 1962, you can see that thy are pretty close to vertical and most importantly, not curved. (not my photo, I found it in Tim Webb's excellent Flickr site which has over 7,500 photos of historic and current warships, mostly RN. I can replace them with straight wire, but I will leave that decision with the model owner to make. It's not my call. Now back to finishing the flight deck base for XZ733, HMS BRAVE's Lynx in 1991 and then to start the Wessex HAS 1 for the Baby Boomers Group Build. Thanks for watching
  18. Sorry, can't really help with that. It had gone out of service by the time I joined 702 Sqn so have never flown with it. However, have a look at this photo of an early HAS 2 (BRAZEN Flt, sometime in 1983 at I think NAS De Kooy air day) which appears to have some hard points fitted at the front end of the stbd sponson and which I think might be part of the MAD mounting: Also interesting to note that it has the tail skid fitted which I have only ever seen fitted to one or two RN Lynx in the very early 1980s. That's exactly why I build in 1/48. Couldn't be dealing with that level of detail in 1/72. But why then, do I try to do so in 1/350? Looks much more like Oxford Blue to me
  19. About 6 weeks ago, fellow BMer @I Boland posted a request to ask if anyone could help repair a scratch built model of HMS CAVENDISH that he had bought as she was a sister ship to two other C class destroyers in which his father had served in the 1960s. Having brought it home, I gather that he dropped the model putting her in the display cabinet. Given that I managed to repair a 1/96 ship builders model of HMS DANAE after a Sea Cadet leant on its perspex case which collapsed and trashed all of the upperworks, I said I would have a look. He sent me some photos which looked nothing like as bad as DANAE so I said yes, and a couple of weeks ago, he dropped the model off to me. The damage is limited to A turret - made slightly more tricky by a part repair already - and guardrails. So I started with A turret. Managed to get it free from the hull though with the overhang from B gundeck, getting it back again might be tricky. First thing was to disassemble it to remove all of the glue which had been put on for the initial attempted repair. It was like being Kirsten from BBC's Repair Shop scraping away the old glue! But managed to get it into 3 major parts (only two shown below) and the majority of the glue removed: Then start to re-assemble: Which was easier said than done because I think my Zap CA might be on its way out because it did not want to secure thee parts together. In the end it is a mix of tiny amounts of 2 part epoxy and PVA white glue. I just now need to touch up the paint on a couple of those edges but the challenge is, what colour grey did the original modeller use? I'm going to start with Colourcoats Light Weatherworks grey and see where that takes me. Now onto the guardrails... Thanks for watching
  20. Finally confirmed that my entry for baby Boomers will be a Wessex HAS Mk 1 from Italeri in 1/48 to go with the 1/48 Wasp that I finally finished a couple of years ago and my old flight Lynx HAS 3 SGM, also in 1/48, converted from the Airfix HMA 8 that I finished with about 2 hrs to spare in the Here Comes the Fleet Air Arm GB last year. Unlike the Wasp that I flew in as a passenger extensively in 1982 as a young officer in HMS HECLA and the Lynx in which I have just over 2,000 hours, I have never flown in a Wessex 1 so this will be an all new journey of discovery for me. I have flown a few times in a Wessex 5, mainly on my Junior Officers' Air Acquaint Course of which my enduring memory was climbing up the steps to the Co-Pilot's seat during rotors running crew changes whilst desperately trying not to sear my face/overalls/other body parts in the jet efflux that exhausted just in front of the crew steps. I don't remember much about the rest other than thinking I was sat a long way up! Originally designed by Sikorsky and sold to the US Department of Defence as the H34 Choctaw, it was redesigned by Westland Helicopters in the late 1950s in which the major change was replacing the Wright Cyclone piston engine with a more powerful but lighter Napier Gazelle gas turbine. Originally designed as an anti-submarine helicopter with Type 194 dipping sonar, it first flew in May 1957 and the first operational RN aircraft 3 years later. When President Sukarno of Indonesia started threatening the British colony of Borneo in 1962, the Sultan asked for support from the UK and over the next 9 months British commitment to Borneo increased to 13 battalions of soldiers and Royal Marines, extending over 1,000 miles of jungle border, all supplied and supported by helicopters. Some of these included Wessex 1s with their sonar gear stripped out and replaced with troop seats. It was as a result of these jungle operations that the Royal Navy's Commando carrying helicopter squadrons gained the nickname, "Junglies", a name that persists today with the Merlin HC4/4As of the officially titled Commando Helicopter Force. It will be one of these troop carrying aircraft that this build will portray. Given my lack of first hand experience of the Wessex 1, I am indebted therefore to the advice given in the Chat forum in the run up to this GB by @heloman1 that the kit is basically sound and doesn't need a lot of fettling. That said, from looking at the sprues, I don't see much in the way of an interior so that will need some scratch building. Just to prove the kit is in my possession and had made its way downstairs from the stash: Nice to see that there's a small PE fret with the kit - saves having to source aftermarket. I'll almost certainly use the supplied decals rather than buying new, but watch this space. The start of the build will have a short delay. Firstly because I am still waiting for my copy of the Wessex Haynes Manual to be delivered (taken over a week so far) and secondly I still have a few other projects in their final stages and I prefer to clear the bench from one before I start the next. So I have HMA 1 Mayfly to finish - should have been yesterday but she slipped her moorings and fell over on the base. The base for my Sea Fury to finalise - just got the chains to add between the chocks and that's done And the base for the Lynx HAS 3 SGM to finish Oh and the small matter of repairing a scratch built 1/192 model of HMS CAVENDISH for a fellow Britmodeller. So it'll be a couple of weeks I guess before I really gets started. Thanks for watching
  21. Thanks Colin. That is a distinct possibility simply because I'm not a fan of masking for disruptive camouflage, but I I think I will go with the two tone scheme purely because I have nothing else like in in the display cabinet (that said, I don't have an overall sand either...). What's the recommended nearest match to that sand colour? I normally use Tamiya, Vallejo or at a push Humbrol, The book was dispatched early last week and was supposed to have been with me on Wednesday. Latest forecast is 20-24 Feb!
  22. Mayfly is now secured to her base. I was somewhat concerned that with all of the weight of the gas chamber resting on just two small footprints of the gondolas that there would be insufficient lateral stability and that any slight sideways movement when moving the model/base would se her fall over, so I drilled a couple of pilot holes in the base of the gondolas and pinned both with some brass wire when I could then press into the polystyrene base. Seemed to work as she stood up without any adhesive. Unfortunately I realised that I didn't quite get the gondolas at exactly 90 deg to the plane of the airship so I could either have the gondolas flat on the water, or I could have the cruciform control surfaces at the correct angle. I opted for the latter as it is more noticeable. Here you see her with Tamiya tape holding her in position while the PVA sets. You can also see some of the ancillaries that I 3D printed to go with her to show the size. If you look carefully you can see some 1/600 figures in there Mooring tower: And 50 ft steam pinnace: Just need to matt coat the whole thing then finish off the sea base with a couple of gloss coats and the wake from the steam pinnace. Thanks for watching.
  23. Lovely ceremonial name board. I tried to make those for my 1/350 HMS PUMA. It was not pretty under a microscope/macro photography!
  24. Thanks - didn't think to look at Hannants. Unfortunately they're out of stock so have put one on backorder and hope they might get some more. As you say, a much more sensible price. I was thinking the two tone sand/green Junglie scheme from the Malaya/Borneo campaign though a red/blue SAR cab is tempting. I also need to source the blade fold gear/tail pylon fold though I can probably scratch build/3D print if necessary.
  25. Thanks Colin. Coming from a Wessex guru like yourself that's good to know. Sadly I don't have the 4+ book and it's currently showing as from £40+ on Ebay and Amazon so I won't be getting one of those! I've got the Haynes Manual on order but my experience with those is very mixed when there are multiple variants covered in one book; for example the Haynes Lynx manual has only a couple of pages on the HAS Mk 2/3.
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