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Of course, the Admiralty never formally called her Mayfly. Her official title was always his Majesty's Airship No 1, it was simply matelot humour which nicknamed her Mayfly and it stuck, especially after Winston Churchill, who as the First lord of the Admiralty, said in Parliament on 23 March 1913, "The mishap which destroyed the May-fly, or the Won't Fly, as it would be more accurate to call it, at Barrow, was a very serious set-back to the development of Admiralty policy in airships" (Hansard). At least a six-legged Mayfly gets airborne at least once which was more than HMA No 1 ever did. Work has continued. Firstly the cruciform tail surfaces are now fitted. Not perfect, but good enough for government work as is often said. I was expecting to see some sort of bracing wires between the cruciforms but nothing obvious in any of the photos I have. And the linen has now been added to either side of the keel: [/url I've also added the support bars for the control surfaces from 0.2 mm Albion Alloys nickel rod. No photos as yet as I am waiting the the CA to fully cure before I cut them down to the right length. I've also started top coating the gondolas. Thanks for watching

Despite best efforts, I failed to remove the keel. For once, the CA adhesive I use was actually working and although I did manage to loosen a few short sections. I also broke a good few more and quickly realised that there was no way that I was going to get the central longitudinal spare off without breaking it. So I will have to accept that it is fitted one frame too far aft. Therefore, having made that decision, I got on with repainting the silk covering, starting with a very light coat to represent where it was stretched over the airship frames. This was a mix of three parts Vallejo white 70.951 to one part Vallejo beige 70.917. After masking the frames, I then sprayed the area amidships and a couple of panels on the stbd side aft that the photos show as darker. This was two parts Vallejo white to two parts Vallejo beige to one part Vallejo London grey 70.836. And then finally those areas were masked and I sprayed the main linen colour three parts Vallejo beige to two parts Vallejo white to one part Vallejo sky grey 70.989. I have little doubt that the WW1 aircraft purists will say that it is incorrect, but to my untrained eye (I came second to bottom in my only full year in art at grammar school and was gutted that I didn't come last!) it looks about right for those natural linen aircraft that have seen at places like Shuttleworth. nd in my defence, there are no colour photos of Mayfly to compare it against. Next up was to paint the keel. There was no way that I could mask in side the framework so this had to be done with a hairy stick which meant that Alclad was out of the question; instead I used Tamiya flat aluminium. Not much of this will show because I have yet to add the silk covering which will be made from tissue paper. Now the observant amongst you may have spotted something in that photo that is not quite right. What is that all good tradesmen say? Measure twice and cut once. In modelling speak perhaps that should also be dry fit twice and cement once. I've started to add the cruciform tail pieces. These are cut from 90 gsm paper on which I had printed the outlines taken from the plans on this website. Once cut out I then added the frames from 0.5 mm strips of the same paper. After painting, I then dry-fitted each and applies PVA glue to the first and applied it. It was only when i came to add the next, some 6 hours later after the first had set that I realised my deliberate error. Have you spotted it? Yes, the whole section is facing the wrong way. However, there were some good things to come from this: I'd only used PVA glue and not CA so that I could, with care, get it off without damage, It proved that PVA glue would hold it in place perpendicular to the frame underneath it with just an edge to face connection; I spotted it - and corrected it, before I had secured all four in place. After a bit of a clean up to get rid of the old adhesive it was refitted the correct way around Which also means that the frames are now perpendicular to the airship centre line. Just another few hours to wait until has set sufficiently so that I can fit the next one. In the meantime, I have been trying to draw the propellers in CAD, given that my scratchbuilding skills may be quite good, but there is no way that I can carve 3 identical propellers. It's not perfect by a long way and there are many on here who are way better than me at 3D CAD, but it will do, I think, given that each propeller is only 7 mm diameter. Thanks for watching .

Great work. I was at the Defence Security and Equipment exhibition in London in 2021 on the day that it was announced that Australia would be pulling out of its previous contract with France and going nuclear in the tri-lat agreement with US and UK. So say that the French suppliers pavilion in the naval area was somewhat subdued would be an understatement!

I hadn't seen this in the southern Europe GB but I will go back an have a read. Great work as always Jeff. When I first looked at that picture O thought those barrels look a tadge on the large size before realising they were your mounting spigots before you cut them to length

Great work here. Don't we just love it when the designers at Airfix deliberately put these challenges in their kits to ensure we don't get bored! 😄

Only just found this thread. Superb work and as others have said, are we sure it's 1/72? To go right back to page 1 though when most of the discussion was about Lynx, BERP stands for British Experimental Rotor Programme/Profile. In essence what it does is to reduce the onset of the leading blade tip approaching the speed of sound which in turn provides increased lift and permits higher maximum speeds. I went to a fascinating lecture a few years ago given by one of the designers at Westlands and he took us through the maths behind it, but don't ask me to try to remember that! I sold my soul and returned to General Service in 1992 and to the best of my knowledge there were no operational Lynx flying with BERP blades then. I think the first ones started appearing around 1994. Distraction over, back to the Scout 🙂

I've started a continuationthread over in Aircraft WIP here:

Should this be here? Or should it be in maritime? She's an airship after all and she never properly flew but ended up in a watery grave when she broke up being moved out of its hangar in 1911 for her maiden flight. But I think this is probably more appropriate. If the MODs disagree, very happy to move the thread to wherever people think more appropriate. By way of background, this started in the recent FAA GB when I foolishly thought I could do 2 models in one GB. I usually struggle to complete one (as I proved this time around, finishing a 1/48 Lynx HAS 3SGM with 3 hrs to spare after a 2 week extension). So the first part of the build log can be found here: For those who are unfamiliar with the early days of Naval Aviation, Mayfly, or to give her her correct name, His Majesty's Airship No. 1, was the UK's first rigid airship. She was commissioned from Messrs Vickers and Sons Ltd in Barrow in 1909 by the Admiralty who wanted a long range scout to operate with the Fleet. Based around the designs of the German Zeppelins, she incorporated several supposed improvements which would offer greater range although some of these would prove to be her downfall. From the outset the programme ran into problems and it took Vickers over a year to construct a shed over its Cavendish Dock in which to build HMA No 1 when it should have been less than 2 months. Thus it was not until May 1911 that she was ready to be moved out of the shed to commence initial trials tethered to a 38 ft mast. Almost immediately the team and Vickers and their Admiralty overseers realised that HMA 1 was too heavy and that significant design changes would be needed to enable her to get airborne; the engineers calculated that around 3 tons would need to be removed. One of the major design changes that resulted from this was to remove the strengthening keel against the advice of one of the senior designers at Vickers who resigned in protest. Under considerable pressure from the Admiralty, HMA No 1 was next moved out of the shed on 11 Sep 1911 in marginal weather conditions. When half way out she was caught by a gust of wind, rotated through 90 degrees around her longitudinal centreline but as she righted, the lack of longitudinal rigidity caused by the lack of keel meant that she broke her back. There are also conflicting reports that the accident was caused by poor handling by the ground crew though the official BOI blamed the weather conditions only. Captain (later Rear Admiral) Murray Sueter, known by some as the father of naval aviation, wanted to repair her and continue the trials but there was little appetite in the Admiralty where the Navy had a new First Lord, Winston Churchill, who was not a fan of airships and refused any further investment; Thus HMA 1 was left to rot in the shed where she had been built. However, valuable lessons were learned which were incorporated in later British airship designs. This model is 3D printed using an Elegoo Mars resin printer with the various sections being drawn in Fusion 360 CAD software. When I realised 3 months ago that if I was going to finish anything in the GB, I needed to concentrate on one only, I had printed all of the hull sections, glued them together (with a few mishaps) and added the keel. She then received a couple of coats of Halford rattle can primer and a couple of coats of topcoat. There is much debate about her colour but the fount of knowledge of all things airship, @Martian, assured me she would have been natural linen which accords with one contemporaneous report but disagrees with another which said that she was silver on top. Given that I can see not no difference in colour from top to bottom other than that which would be caused by shadow, I am going with the natural linen look though having painted the topcoat, I am convinced that the colour is too yellow. I do need to repaint to reflect the slightly lighter colours around the frames and the one darker area on top just forward of midships (see bottom photo) Over in the GB thread I reported that I had misplaced the gondolas that I had printed. Well the beauty of 3D printing parts is if you do lose them, they are straightforward enough to reprint so that is what I have done. Always make some spares just in case so I have 4 gondolas, now primed and ready for first coat of topcoat. My plan is to portray her as she was on the mast in May 1911 as shown in this photo: Unfortunately I appear to have fitted the keel about 6 mm too far aft, which in turn will impact on the space for the rear gondola in relation to the cruciform tail surfaces. So I shall have to somehow get that off without breaking it. It will also make it easier to paint it in a duralumin colour prior to using thin tissue to replicate its silk covering. Thanks for watching

No, the Beartrap i unique to the Canadian Navy as far as I am aware. The RN uses a harpoon system. The difference is that with the the Beartrap, the wire is lowered down while the cab is in the hover and the rollers then effectively pull the cab onto the deck. With the harpoon that the RN and many European Navies use, the cab lands on deck above the grid and then fires a hook down into the grid to hold it there. The Canadian system is slower but allows big helicopters such as Sea Kings (CH-124s) to land on quite small decks (I landed a Lynx many times onboard HMCS SKEENA, a St Laurent class DDH and the flight deck was small for us, let alone a CH-124).

I think this is the latest NATO Unclass version of ATP 1C mentioned in @Sgeek's last post that is available online: ATP 1C Can;t help with the other ones I'm afraid as I'm not sure what was in the original

I had a very similar problem with an Atlantic Models HMS PUMA. Washed it all with soapy water as I normally do. Primed it with Alclad primer (because that was what the great and the good on here recommended as being best for resin), and then Vallejo top coat. Masked to paint the boot-topping and the masking tape (de-tacked as described above) lifted off both the top coat and primer. Thereafter I found I could just rub both coats of paint off with my finger. Eventually took off all the paint, re-washed ina stronger soap solution and primed with my usual Halford rattle can and afterwards was fine. Used strong soapy water and Halfords primer with the WEM resin HMS BRAVE and no problems; also no problems with that technique with 3D resin printed parts.

Reminiscent of an example of the Airfix 1/600 HMS TIGER in a near perfect Type 3 box that I saw at a local model show some years back. The dealer was asking £100 for it 🤯 and when I said I only wanted the two hull halves for a conversion to a Colony class cruiser he was utterly horrified that I might actually want to make the kit! This thread though does prompt me to ask the question as to why don't the manufacturers recognise the market in current cruise liners. Mrs Chewbacca and I regularly holiday with P&O these days and the number of modellers that I have met on board their various ships suggest to me that there is a market for them.

I've seen some of Roger's other work (we used to be members of the same model club before it folded a couple of years ago) and the quality is excellent, especially what he's achieving with filament printing that most of us cannot achieve with resin. But QE in 1/200? That's insane! It's no wonder that his website says there's a 2-week lead time for delivery. It probably takes that long to print!

Having landed a Lynx on the quarterdeck of both Missouri and Wisconsin off the Kuwaiti coast in early 1991 for refuel after Tripoli struck her mine and was out of action, a battleship is pretty overwhelming to a big boy as well! But back to the original post, I'd personally not bother with scratch building the rudder/screws. Just waterline her. It's actually not that difficult.

Been AWOL from maritime for a few months over in GB-land building my Flight Lynx helicopter so only just seen this and since no-one esle has responded, thought I would do my best. 3 is definitely a magnetic compass binnacle Based on that, and knowing that a binnacle comes up to mid chest on me, 1 is far larger than 20 inch. Not an expert in WW2 fittings but looking at that I would say it is at least 36-40 in diameter 2 does look like a pelorus, but did the Hunt class have peloruses (pelori?) fitted? 4 and 6 looks about right 5 I'm not sure about. They look pretty big to me to be binoculars even on a fixed mount, but then as I said, I am not a WW2 expert. Ask me one on the layout of cold war RN bridge layouts and I and much more confident!

And there was me thinking the whole purpose of a GB was so that we could ask for an extension. In fact. let me be the first. Can we have an extension please? Pretty please!

Thanks to everyone who got involved with this, especially those who took the time to corral us and encourage when things went wrong and all i really wanted to do was to see if a 1/48 Lynx could autorotate out of a first floor window onto concrete without any rotor blades Despite that I thoroughly enjoyed it even if the last weekend was a little stressful trying to get it to the finish line!

As I said right back in post no 1, I must be mad to think that I could do 2 builds in a GB. And I was. I did manage to finish the Lynx with a little under 3 hrs to spare but the cost of that was very little work on Mayfly in the past 3 months. Didn't help that we were away on holiday for much of October. I did manage to overcome the uncured resin and bits falling apart, got the hull back together and primed/top coated plus added the keel and painted the gondolas. But then Mayfly went no further while I concentrated on the Lynx. I will continue this over in aircraft WIP and link back to this for the start. First challenge though is to find what I've done with the gondolas. They've got to be around somewhere but I'll be blowed if I can find them! I also need to repaint the linen finish. It seems far too yellow to me.

My plan is definitely to join with something floaty but I'm struggling with the subject at the moment. I think first choice would be the ThyssenKrupp offering into the RN's T31e programme, the MEKO A200 RN with a 3D printed hull and scratchbuilt ancillaries. The challenge will be getting accurate plans because I think they are still classified. This is the equivalent platform built for the Algerian Navy: In 1/350 scale it'd be 345 mm long so not beyond the wit of man though I may have to print the hull in 4 sections Next up would be the proposed guided missile cruiser from the 1950s based around a TIGER class hull. Various designs were proposed; they all look something like this: Combination of an Airfix 1/600 TIGER hull, gun armament, White Ensign Models SeaSlug launcher and lots of scratch building! Or CVA01 But she's too big to do in 1/350 (>800 mm in length and with a beam of 160 mm, I'm not sure my 3D printer could even do her in 8 sections - it'd be more like 16 split down the centreline. I really don't like 1/700 and even then she'd be bigger than the T31. I've been drawing HMS FURIOUS in 1/350 (which is 5 hull sections) and on and off, the hull has taken over 12 months to date so sadly she's off the plot. But there's a few months to go yet so I'm sure I'll come up with something. Just a small matter of finishing off Mayfly (which failed to make it out of the FAA GB last week), a base for my Lynx (which did) and the Baby Boomers GB which starts in February.

Thanks Tony. Well it matches the timeframe inasmuch that it was taken in the period April to September 1982, because that was the only time to the best of my knowledge that Wasps ever carried red crosses. All 3 Wasps were painted slightly differently because there were no mandated instructions for how to do it and each of the 3 flights did their own thing. HECLA had small white boxes surrounding our red crosses. I think HYDRA had these larger white boxes on the nose and the area under the engine platform painted all white while HERALD's had a whole white nose and I think white either side of the engine. So I think that is HYDRA's cab - XT432 - though the accompanying image on the IWM website that is captioned as landing on board HYDRA is clearly incorrect because the deck code in ?R - which I presume is HR which was HERALD's code. HYDRA was HD. If you blow up the IWM image to 500% it looks like me to be an XS registration. I'm pretty certain that the IWM image is a training exercise which might explain why HERALD and HYDRA were cross decking. They sailed south together whereas HECLA went on her own from Gibraltar. I'm confused where the photo above is taken. it clearly isn't an H Class survey ship because the flight deck has twin concentric circles and all of the survey ships only had the smaller Wasp circle. There are also what appear to containers and a railway carriage in the background, so that would suggest alongside somewhere. They're also putting the casualty into the aircraft, which means almost certainly it is onboard SS Uganda. But as far as I am aware, Uganda never went alongside, at least not until well after the conflict period and Hydra's last casualties were taken to Montevideo in early July. It could be that it is SS Uganda and the Wasp has landed on facing into a Red 135 relative wind, and what i think are containers are the deck houses just forward f the flight deck on the stbd side. But I don't know. Must find my copy of Nicci Pugh's book White Ship Red Crosses to see if that has any better photos of the flight deck. I'd be interested where you read that. I've been researching for a book that I am trying to write on the H Class as ambulance ships and to the best of my knowledge, although we trained for and expected to collect casualties from the battlefield and take them to SS Uganda, in reality we only ever picked up casualties from Uganda once they had been stabilised sufficiently well to be transported to Montevideo for RAF CASEVAC flight to Brize Norton. I think it was the battlefield helicopters which were dodging the mortar shells to get the casualties to Surg Cdr Rick Jolly's team at the field hospital at Ajax Bay. But information about those ships is very sketchy (which is why my book is progressing extremely slowly!)

Just spent some time catching up with this after seeing multiple notifications dropping in to my inbox to say there were new posts. I'm lost for words to describe my admiration for the attention to detail you are showing. The major manufacturers could learn a thing or two here. But then if their products were as good as this, there'd be nothing for us to do other than an out of the box build. In all the times that I flew in a Wasp, they never had the doors fitted. Two reasons for that. Firstly, the aircraft had such short endurance that the weight of the doors could be replaced with extra fuel. Secondly, if the aircraft ditched over the sea and the flot bags activated, you couldn't open the rear doors so any passengers were effectively trapped inside. They were fitted when the cab was on deck to protect the inside from salt spray. I left mine on when I "improved" the 1/48 (1/50?) Fujimi kit simply because I felt the surrounding structure wouldn't cope with me trying to cut away all of the doors so I just removed the Pilot's. So very true. I have lost count of the number of times I have been there in my research. Do you have a larger copy of the image with the red crosses? When I built mine, which portrayed our cab in HECLA in '82, I thought I had found all of the photos of HECLA's/HYDRA's/HERALD's Wasps from that conflict but I don't think I've seen that one before. Definitely not HECLA's - the white box was much shallower.

IIRC, she was planned as a Type 41 Batch 2 Cat class frigate (HMS PANTHER), then their Lordships changed their mind and ordered her as a Type 61 Batch 2 Cathedral class HMS COVENTRY, but then both of these follow on classes were cancelled in savings cuts and the order was converted to a Type 12 Improved Leander class

Lynx HAS Mk 3 SGM, 829 Sqn 245 Flight, HMS BRAVE, Operation Granby late February 1981. Extensively converted using 3D printing from the Airfix 1/48 kit. Build log here: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235128295-148-lynx-has-3-sgm-xz733-brave-flight-op-granby-1991/

With less than 3 hours to go, I'm calling this finished - sort of! There are still a few bits to finish off when I put it on the base such as the lashings an the harpoon - I need to work out how long to extend the kit part by so that it engages the harpoon grid. the kit part portrays the harpoon stowed. There are some RBF flags to be added as well and I haven't printed those yet and I am not sure that I have fitted all of the Sea Skua cables. I'm sure there are a couple more to each missile. I also need to sort out the angle of the rotor blades. It always annoys me when I see model Lynx rotor blades drooping because they barely did, but because the fit on mine wasn't great, there are a couple of blades that angle upwards. I may need to separate them and pin then. You may recall a month or so ago I remade the nose Orange Crop aerials because they were too close together? Well unfortnately I realised this morning that in doing so I set them too low which meant there was barely enough room to get the "HMS BRAVE" logo on the radome (which came from Xtradecal 1/72 4 inch letters). So it is sitting too high. Anyway, it is complete as far as this GB is concerned. I'm now going to focus on finishing Mayfly and come back to the Flight Deck base for this in a few weeks when we have some dry weather at a weekend and I can get the circular saw out to cut the main base. Thanks for watching

Well here she is as she was in 1963: And here's what she looked like just before I joined her in 1988: So 4.5 in gun replaced with Exocet and 40 mm Bofors replaced with twin Seacat launchers on the hangar roof. The only structural change was lengthening the hangar to take a Lynx and extending the flight deck aft over the Limbo mortar well.