Chewbacca
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Posts posted by Chewbacca
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Count me in - I've got the Hasegawa FG1 and a set of F4-K decals so back to the old ARK ROYAL here we go. Unless of course by then Airfix have done the decent thing and scaled up their F4-K to the proper scale!
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Fortunately I found last night that Hu trainer yellow enamel is a near perfect match for the yellow so have touched up the wing stripe leading edges and put a first coat of yellow down on the fuselage. I must confess I couldn't face masking the whole aircraft and going through he rigmarole of cleaning the airbrush after spraying enamel so after masking the front and rear of the fuselage stripes I brush painted it to see what the result was like. It'll need a good flatten down with some 1000 grade wet and dry before a second coat but I think it will be okay. Provided I can smooth it off sufficiently with the wet 7 dry I will spray the top coat now that I know that it works. Looks like I'll be painting the jet pipes for a third time!
Curiously I also fitted all of the stencils last night and one is very interesting. No 30 reads:
HOOD JITE SON
BRIAN WINDOW
PULL 10 RELLASE
I wonder who Brian Window is? I think it should read HOOD JETTISON BEHIND WINDOW PULL TO RELEASE
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Latest on this is that I have been in email contact with the museum and I am visiting to view the BULOLO model next week. the curator is also going to have a search through the archives for any other information they may have on her. This project has a fighting chance of coming together.
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On 04/06/2018 at 21:34, Chewbacca said:
I knew there was something that I would forget to do! Brought the Seahawk in from the spraybooth to start masking for the EDSG and remembered Tom Cleaver's review on Modelling Madness when he reported that the fuselage Suez stripe decals don't fit and that you should spray the stripes first. Bu**er. My hat goes off to Tom for managing to mask around that complex jet pipe area and still get the stripes straight. After over an hour, there is no way that I can get anything that vaguely resembles vertical. Then I thought I would try another tack and cut the decals from the sheet and dry fit them to see how they fit. Initial thought is that they don't look too bad - certainly I think there's a fighting chance that they will look better than trying to mask those complex double curves. If not then back to square 1 and will have to mask. You've probably gathered by now though that the thing I enjoy the least about this hobby is masking. I rarely get it right.
Should've persisted with the masking. Tom was right, the fuselage stripes don't fit, but then neither do they conform to the complex curves either wrinkling at every opportunity. This is the top decal that is perfectly lined up on the port side with the top of the jet exhaust and in line with the aft edge of that, yet it's at least 2mm out on the stbd side and ripped in about 4 places. None of these stripes would slide once they were in place despite a goodly coating of Microsol beforehand.
Furthermore, the wing stripes don't fit especially well either. These are lined up with the fwd end of the flaps/airbrakes:
I'll finish the rest of the decals tomorrow, get a couple of coats of Klear over the top and then mask again and spray the strips. It's a shame as the other decals went on really well.
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Wet and dry paper is by far the best solution for British flight decks picking the grade depending upon the scale. I think I used 320 grade for my 1/32 Sea Venom and I'm currently finishing a couple of 400 grade decks for a 1/48 Firefly and 1/48 Seahawk. Probably 600 grade would do 1/72 but I don't do that scale anymore so have never tried it!
However, as you rightly observe, USN flight decks are far, far coarser than Royal Navy and they do have those stripes. I think the first time I landed on-board a US carrier (NIMITZ herself IIRC) I was slightly shocked by how grainy it is but then when you're manoeuvring 18 ton aircraft on a wet, slippery deck, you need all the help you can get (she was full of F14s when I was there).
The wet and dry paper technique is far too uniform for a US carrier deck. Personally I think I would go for a reasonably fine sand sprinkled over the board that is already covered in wet PVA. Whilst it's still wet you could try combing it into rough lines and then with an old household paintbrush scrub lightly from left to right at 90 degrees to the combing to break up the uniformity. Shake off the excess and spray the whole thing with dilute PVA. It may work, it may not.
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I saw this in AMW and was seriously impressed. its not until you see that last photo that you realise quite how much has been packed into a tiny space. but then these were small cruisers. 50ft shorter than the Leander class and 100 ft shorter than BELFAST. I've been looking at how I could create one in 1/600 but the surgery required to a BELFAST hull is simply too great. I might get away with it on an AJAX hull but they're like hens teeth.
Now if only Flyhawk would scale it up to 1/350th...
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On 15/05/2018 at 13:47, Colin W said:
This has been on my list for many years having built the first swept wing landing on a carrier (S 510) and the first twin landing on a carrier (Mosquito), I have to do the first true jet landing. All flown by Brown I believe.
I was privileged 2 years ago to get a VIP invitation to Winkle Brown's memorial event at Yeovilton. A fantastic day to remember the achievements of undoubtedly Britain's greatest aviator with all of the great and the good from the last 50 years or so of the Fleet Air Arm (so I've no idea why they invited me!). Why Winkle was never knighted I will never understand.
This build is looking really good so far. I'm looking forward to seeing how it progresses.
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Thanks Rich. I 'm very aware of the fading issue but most of the period photos taken around the time of Aden seem to show them being in pretty good condition. What concerned me was the quite stark straight line under the Tamiya tape that had darkened; that did not look at all realistic. But it was soon cured with a light blow over from the airbrush as about 5 psi to blend it all back in. Unfortunately in doing so I then also lost the contrast panels that I was trying to create.
So its now had 36 hrs to harden. Next step a couple of coats of Klear and let's see how the decals perform.
Meanwhile, time to turn some attention to those 3 inch rockets. I think it was Seahawk who said in his thread they were pretty nasty: he was right. Arguably the least representative 3 inch rockets I've seen in a long time. But since I'm doing this in a wings spread configuration and with the Seahawk having such a low ground clearance, I think I will get away with it.
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19 hours ago, cngaero said:
What a wonderful explanation of the intricacies of this aircraft. I had to read it two or three times to grasp the mathematics, but I think I got there in the end........I put it down to age!
Thank you to both you and your son for taking the time to explain the process so clearly.
I've actually printed it off to keep for future reference.
Apparently he enjoyed it. To quote: "it was a refreshing break from gas turbine thermodynamics revision"!
10 hours ago, CedB said:I think Trevor might be referring to the bow pen - I had a go with one a while ago and found it difficult to get acrylic paint to flow properly, but that's probably just me not trying hard enough. Must have another try, one day...
I was stuck on a train to London today for a meeting unable to get internet connection on my work laptop and so having read about bow pens on here I thought I would Google them on my personal phone. To my utter amazement I discovered that they are those funny screw devices that I inherited from my father in his engineer's drawing set. I never had any idea what they were! They say that everone learns something every day, that was it for me! Thanks to Heather for introducing them in this thread.
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Okay it's back from the spray shop and I must confess I'm not overly impressed. The curvature on the demarcation running up to the tail isn't great so that will need to be redone and for some strange reason after I contrast painted a couple of the panels in EDSG with a drop of black added to break up the monotone, the original paint reacted to the Tamiya tape and went even darker. Will have to respray that. Plus a little bleed through to touch in with a 000 hairy stick. And there was me thinking I'd be adding the first Klear coat tonight.
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On 12/06/2018 at 22:15, Dave Swindell said:
Wikipedia says the Bulolo was built in Glasgow. There may be plans or a builders model of her in one of the Glasgow museums, possibly Riverside?
Good news - a quick search on their website shows they have a 1:48th scale builders model of her on display!
Wiki gives basic dimensions, if you can get good photos of the model you should be able to scale from them.
Hadn't thought of that - thanks. I'm in Glasgow on business in few weeks time and my hotel is only a mile or so from the Riverside. Just need to engineer some free time one afternoon.
On 12/06/2018 at 22:26, longshanks said:What scale are you intending to build to?
Kev
Probably 1/600 though I may look at 1/350 depending upon what I can come up with
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On 11/06/2018 at 22:32, Kirk said:
To drift a little off the topic of the build, what was the physics behind the ram jets on the rotor tips? Presumably, the rotor is limited aerodynamically to subsonic speeds (I half read something complicated about rotor blade motion by John Farley once...) so does all the complex plumbing offer efficiency advantages or what?
Confused of Hove (actually)
Without wishing to hijack this fascinating thread and excellent build, I thought this was worthy of a bit of exploration and fortunately my son is currently studying aeronautical engineering at one of the UK's top engineering universities so I thought I would summon his help. As a former Lynx Observer, I have a pretty good idea about the aerodynamics affecting rotor blades including the blade tips approaching supersonic speed, the effects of retreating blade stall etc, but I had no idea how to calculate the amount of lift from a given rotor disc with blades of a specific aerofoil section at a given angle of attack, or how to calculate the amount of energy you needed to accelerate them and then maintain a constant speed. And after an hour on the phone last night in which he explained a whole raft of stuff involving differential equations, I'm still not entirely sure, but in a nutshell, it is this.
The speed of sound at sea level in a standard ICAO atmosphere, is give or take, 1,100 feet per second (fps). An aircraft travelling forward at 100 kts is around 165 fps, at the Rotadyne's cruise speed of 168 kts it is 280 fps. You then have to add the forward rotational speed of the advancing blade. Given that the effects of compressibility start acting around M0.85 (actually they start lower than that but they become much more noticeable at that M number), aircraft designers aim to keep the maximum speed of the blade tip below 935 fps (1,100 x 0.85). That means that at cruise speed the maximum speed of the rotors can be 935 - 280 = 655 fps. That in turn with a 45 ft blade equates to a rotor RPM of about 140. The next bit of maths I didn't understand but essentially 140 RPM with that rotor blade aerofoil section cannot generate sufficient lift to get the aircraft off the ground. To achieve a vertical take off, a minimum rotor speed of around 200 RPM would be necessary. This equates to 940 fps.
Since the rotor disc itself is unpowered, it acts like an autogyro. In other words, the disc only generates lift in forward flight. And so to get that 200 RPM, you have to somehow drive the blades.
After this he had to make some assumptions about rotor blade mass (early rotor blades were extremely heavy; Rotadyne blades had a cast steel main spar) and the likely energy available from the compressed air bleed. Based on a main spar of 25mm x 50 mm, 3 mm thick, the blade would weigh ~ 60 kg. It's important when advancing the rotor speed to do it as quickly as possible to avoid the phenomena known as droop when the blades drop down below their normal flight path and can hit the airframe. The YouTube video of a Rotadyne engaging rotors seems to show it going from stopped to full speed in about 15 seconds although I suspect its actually slightly longer and the video has been edited. Either way the torque needed to accelerate the tip of a 60 kg blade from zero to 200 RPM in let's say, 20 seconds, is around 690ftlb. The next bit got very hazy as he lost me in the maths, but essentially the compressed air fed alone would be insufficient to accelerate the blades up to 200 RPM and therefore needed the added thrust afforded by the fuel injectors - a sort of early afterburner if you like.
Of course once the Rotadyne starts to transition to forward flight, it benefits from transational lift and the energy needed to drive the rotor disc reduces. At this point the fuel supply to the jets can be cut off and the compressed air supply withdrawn. At that point the rotor disc generates lift but only in forward flight. It's actually a very simple and neat system and although the pipework would be an engineering challenge, its a lot simpler than adding a drive from the engines to a main rotor gearbox (and then a tail rotor gearbox to counter the torque) or a separate lift engine (again with a tail rotor),
Hope that helps and once again apologies if this has hijacked. Back to the build!
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Thought I'd post this here as maybe a few more maritime experts might see it that may not otherwise see it over in Group Builds.
I've been promising myself for a number of years now that I must build a model of HMS BULOLO in memory of my father who was a Chief Electrical Artificer and who served in BULOLO under Lord Louis Mountbatten from 1945 to 1946 during her Far East deployment. He was present when Lord Louis took the Japanese surrender in Singapore. The forthcoming Pacific at War GB gives me the perfect catalyst to get this project going but I am struggling for reference material.
BULOLO started off life as a cruise liner operating between Australia and Papua New Guinea but, when just over a year old, was taken up from trade - I think they called it requisitioning in those days! - and converted initially to an Armed Merchant Cruiser equipped with seven 6-inch guns, two 3-inch AA guns, depth charges and close range weapons. For the next 2 years or so she was employed on convoy escort duty in the Atlantic or used to scout out German surface raiders. In March 1942 she was again taken into dockyard hands and her main armament stripped off as she was converted to an amphibious command ship, an idea proposed by Lord Louis when he was appointed head of Combined Operations. She served with distinction throughout the amphibious landings in North Africa and Italy before returning to UK to prepare for D Day where again she was the amphibious command platform for Gold beach. Another communications refit followed and my father joined her as she departed for the Far East in early 1945. She continued her headquarters ship role and it was from her that the victory in Malaya and Burma was coordinated. She remained under the white ensign until December 1946 when she was returned to her former owners, Burns, Philp & Company in Sydney and she resumed her peacetime role for the next 22 years before she was sold for scrap in 1968.
That much I can find out. I can find a series of photos although most seem to be of her time in the Mediterranean, preparing for Overlord or after she was returned to her commercial duties . I'm struggling, however to find anything that's sufficiently detailed from which I can draw up a set of plans. I'm hoping that the maritime expertise on here may have some suggestions where I could get some better information, or if any of you have any experience of trying to draw up plans from photos taken 20-40 degrees off the bow!
It's also the first scratchbuilt ship that I've attempted since I tried to make a 1/72 HMS AMAZON from balsa wood when I was a teenager in the 1970s and that was a dismal failure! I've done a lot of scratchbuilt superstructures so that side of it doesn't worry me but it's the compound curves around the bow and stern that concern me, especially without detailed plans from which I can draw up some plasticard frames to skin. So I'm thinking it might be best to go for a balsawood hull and plasticard upperworks. The other thought I had if I can draw it in CAD is to 3D print the hull. Again, I'm open to people's suggestions from those who've gone before.
http://www.navyphotos.co.uk/Combined ops assault and landing ships/images/bulolo2b.jpg
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Not only seriously good bit of modelling but amazing that it took only 84 hours. The rigging alone would have taken me that long!
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Okay thanks. So I guess my challenge over the next 3 months is to start drawing up some plans. If I can create them in CAD, I might have a look at 3D printing the hull.
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Forgive my ignorance of the general GB rules but are scratch builds allowed? My father served under Lord Louis Mountbatten in the HQ ship HMS BULOLO in 1945 in the Far East and was on board in September 1945 when Lord Louis accepted the Japanese surrender in Singapore. I've always promised myself that one day I should make a model of her in his memory, even though my "whole-ship" scratchbuilding skills are as yet untested. The hull might be interesting without any lines to work from! I wondered if perhaps this GB might be the catalyst. Details are pretty sketchy but I've managed to cobble together a range of photos. One example is this one: http://www.navyphotos.co.uk/Combined ops assault and landing ships/images/bulolo2b.jpg which shows her festooned with comms aerials and which I think was her SEA configuration.
I won't be offended if someone says it has to start from a kit.
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14 hours ago, Colin W said:
As built these were good looking ships but the helicopter conversion was not pretty.
I have to disagree on that. I think I first saw BLAKE or TIGER as a shipbuilder's model in our local Navy careers office in the mid 1970s and remember thinking then that they looked very purposeful, much more aggressive than the original design. A couple of years later I went to Portsmouth Navy Days and one of them was there and open to visitors - unfortunately the queues were horrendous and it was a choice of queue for one ship or visit five of six others. I chose the latter which with hindsight was a mistake because they were withdrawn from service just as I joined. That huge hangar/flight deck area is just so impressive. Must have been an utter swine to put alongside though with any sort of beam wind and no tugs.
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Thanks Rich, hadn't thought of that May have to do it if the decals are as bad as Tom C reports. Note to self - must take tracing of the decals before immersing in water!
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I'd love to have a go at one of these but having built TIGER a few years back as built, the next one from that hull is HMS BLAKE as a helicopter cruiser and there's no way I can do that in 3 months!
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I knew there was something that I would forget to do! Brought the Seahawk in from the spraybooth to start masking for the EDSG and remembered Tom Cleaver's review on Modelling Madness when he reported that the fuselage Suez stripe decals don't fit and that you should spray the stripes first. Bu**er. My hat goes off to Tom for managing to mask around that complex jet pipe area and still get the stripes straight. After over an hour, there is no way that I can get anything that vaguely resembles vertical. Then I thought I would try another tack and cut the decals from the sheet and dry fit them to see how they fit. Initial thought is that they don't look too bad - certainly I think there's a fighting chance that they will look better than trying to mask those complex double curves. If not then back to square 1 and will have to mask. You've probably gathered by now though that the thing I enjoy the least about this hobby is masking. I rarely get it right.
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Been having a think about what to do for this. I think the only thing I have in the stash that I have even the vaguest chance of finishing in time would be the 1/32 1914 Dennis Fire engine or 1910 B Type bus if I aim for nostalgia and do it straight from the box with no embellishments/detailing (if I can force myself to do it). My version of both is the 2005 twin boxing but as far as I can tell from Scalemates, the sprues are unchanged from the 1966/1962 original releases. I presume therefore that they would count?
I first remember making the fire engine in about 1972 on my grandmother's dining table and knocking over a pot of bronze paint when painting their helmets!
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Thanks Peter, I'm looking forward to seeing how this one turns out. It'll certainly put mine to shame.
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Clearly my attention to detail over the shape of the nose failed - I thought the kit version look about right until I saw the difference in yours. Great job.
I note you haven't pre-fitted the jet exhausts. I couldn't work out a way of fitting them after the fuselage halves came together owing to their curvature. Did I miss something? It's a real pain having spent ages spraying them with Alclad only to have to overspray them and start again because masking was nigh on impossible.
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Thanks both for your thoughts.
First coat of sky airbrushed. Hopefully in this weather I might be the second on tonight as well and can then start masking for the EDSG
1/48 Trumpeter Seahawk FGA6 - Finished
in Carriers Ahoy! GB
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Well that was a frustrating evening. Flattened the hand brushed paint (in fact I almost took it all off) but every time I loaded the airbrush with paint, it sprayed one pass then clogged. I would then spend 20 minutes cleaning it out. Reload, one pass then clog. Happened about 4 times with 2 different Iwata airbrushes. I tried playing with the density of the paint mixture and it was either thin and watery, which would spray, or add just one tiny drop more to thicken it and it blocked. To make matters worse I managed to break the nosewheel door and bend the main undercarriage. I'm thinking I should have stuck with the handbrushed and gone heavy on the weathering.