perdu

Steve Small puddle of cyano on a sheet of sweetie paper (think crackly Quality Street type wrapper, thin and flexible) hold etch aerial upright with tweezers breathe heavily on surface of puddle so the moisture makes the cyano 'set' let dry for a bit then remove puddlyaerial from the sweetie paper Then trim puddle near to the size of the aerial and "hi unca bobby" Small mounting plinth for the aerial at its base that will take a fresh drop of cyano for model fitting poipoises (well its what I am planning to do for these ridiculously underscale thickness devices)

That looks like a Rotodyne it has the look and the feel of it Really nicely done thanks for showing her to us

Oh boy I do love spotty dopply german camo Nigel Let the good times roll b

love it so far luck? Don't think you will need it smashing subject matter (thinks … does anybody say smashing any more?)

suits you sir suits yoou!

I think he'd have just glued a thick enough piece of plasticard across the arch at the front and carved it away gently when set We've seen him do that sort of thinking before after all Looking bloody nice too, shall I sub out the instrument backs on my Scout to a certain high powered, powerfully visually acuitied legal eagle? I love the compass and meters you are knocking out on such an industrial scale (As an un-needed aside. I've dumped my allegiance to the 3 now. Too many 'folks who KNOW' have rallied round the 5 and convinced me) b

Aaron, if you want to represent the engine and all its wires pipes and lumpy bits the Airwaves/C-scale engine will do I don't see you being happy with it though, it's awfy beefy in cross section I think that the master modeller for C-scale tried to make the unit inclusive of pipes, hence its thickness I prefer to start with the right size then detail SOME of the pipes etc My name isnt Spartacusmilktrip I wish I'd had that Skeeter though, I feel a new scratchbuild approaching after Chrimble Must find drawings, I have some photos from Stondon museum b

Funny you should mention Gazelle, Sioux and Bolkow Miggers me old bean They're on my shelf and on the soon to do list too, the Bolkow was a part built given to me by a club member with antilittlemodelitis However I know my limitations, I'll try but never get to the degrees of intricacy that they and most of you can achieve I notice a tendency to get sloppy when finishing off, one reason I'm trying out etch That must take a higher degree of self control to get it looking right I have been polishing the side door moulds, stuporgoo is great to achieve a shiny polish on Pretty poor pictures my first moulded pieces were too thin and much too large to really fit the holes. Now they're thin enough for when there is acetate there too Here's the mould tools sitting atop two of my favourite 99p shop buys 4 Manicurists buffing blocks for 99p, they have 'file', 'smooth', 'buff' and 'shine' faces and work very well The mould tools are ready for the first 'pulls' All the grain has been filled by cyanoacetate and sanded and buffed to a nice finish I use a tea light flame to soften the acetate, try not to get too close to the wick 'cos 'blackness' happens if you do This acetate was too bluey and the colour was visible in the plastic uh uh discard The chosen one This was from the newly thinned and polished mould, tacked into place with Formula 560 canopy glue It won't need it but it is going to have 24hrs to set before I trim out the inside excess plastic from the moulded bubble the bubble being tacked into place I'll trim it tomorrow Tonight I'm playing at etchmeister Well playing with the etch morelike! wish me luck

Tonight I feel better about this new game Thanks guys Now to work out which parts don't need to go on the Scout (Looks like most of them) thank you for your help

This all sounds very well but I'm about to use etch for the first time And it's got me petrified The destruction sheet says prime before cutting out Should I? With what? Humbrol model primer, Halfords grey primer or fairy tinkle dust? I'm worried whether the primer will obscure the delicate detains in the etch (Thinking Airwaves Wasp/Scout set) Or should I just dive in and then just paint when finished as my (treacherous) instinct keeps telling me? Heeeeeeeee......elp

Sound We would love you to record the engine at first start up I jest, Old Man but this really has the look and 'feel' of the real thing It is a superlative lesson in 'Aeronautics, Old And New' This isnt scratchbuilding This is building, making less of modelling and more of art I am in awe of your talent b

broken wrist NOT GOOD every single other thing I've read here OUTSTANDING Brilliant Tom, utterly mind bendingly heartrendingly wonderful Hope the wrist is OK as quickly as possible

Guys don't apologise for entering in with this, I love the way BM gets the chatter flowing into/through our builds Any more for anymore? I love it all. Now then This arvo I have been doing 'non chemical uninvasive modelling techniques' 'cos of Mrs P's nasal intolerance regime (always awful at this time of year with pollen and other sniffy whiffy airborne nasties) Time I thinks, to hack out the rear doors ready for moulding the bubble dome doors I'm adding to Scouty A dollop of modelling clay (eight colours from LIDL, £2.99 I couldn't find yer actual Plasticene TM) onto the modelling pad and the fuselage half slubbed down on to it To make the fuselage half less likely to bend or break when cutting the doorway out Tiny holes to mark the corners then cut out a vee of line ( \ / ) with the Swann Morton number one blade I think the actual moulding of these little birds is superb considering the size and age of them No side panels were distorted during this uberphysical operation, look how thick that plastic is Now with both sides opened out I've taped the halves together so I can see what access I'll have if I close up before adding the etch stuff. The part finished top panel pops on easily and it looks as if I could add the etch trimmed floor after closure Not yet sure about that, advice sought chaps. There is quite a lot to do first. The Airwaves instructions advise priming the etch pieces before making them up Will that not make finding the closures and bends more difficult to do? I'm really quite worried about this stage, my first time with etch With the door holes cut out and more accurate trimming on for tonight I began to make the blown doors I was going to mix up two dollops of Milliput, knead them into the rough shapes then polish So that's an hour or two shaping, a few hours setting time and more time fettling and polishing I didn't like that idea much so went back plan A from 1980, what I always did do for moulding First take a large wooden clothes peg, a plan and a pencil A saw and Xacto knife And a six inch half round second cut file And get working The result of about an hour anna huff this arvo When the Roket superglue is hard on these I ought to be able to pull a few door mouldings off I used Roket because it isn't aggressively fumey and should save my missus's and MY nostrils from cyano killer nose ache I really do need advice about the etch section of this build, when I close the fuselage I can get detailing the pipes, filters, motors and pumps that abound on that upper deck. And just a tad of work on that bijou rotor head Only a tad mind, I can't work as small as milktrip does Hope you like this

LOVL I was going to suggest doing the white overpainted - black scratched out - technique too TBH I rather think it will be the best way to do it Hi-tech doesn't ALWAYS rule tha' kens.

I'm, never going to be able to keep up with you pair Esoteroric masking skins wasnt it? The nag lights look ace, Ace and the faired in screen is fair as can be Looking good dude

Been looking at the Airwaves etch set with a view to building a helicopter It seems there were two styles of driver's seat, basic framed tubing and/or with a pierced side boxing for the back rests I'm wondering if the pierced sides one is for Wasp and may contain survival gear for use if ditching happens I wonder if anyone has more info before I comit to hacking lumps off the etch seats, which do look as if they will be awesome if I ever get the hang of gluing them together There also seems to be redundant stiffening structures for floor and wall that are not obvious inside any Scouts that were photographed. Are they 'Wasp only' parts too? I found many more engine and deck photos last night so the deck area is being better detailed now Pictures later

Thin Mr S with IPA? I'm not overkeen on Mr S but I have used IPA on it and it works well More great stuff again Steve b

If I have that trouble I have achieved a kind of success by setting the font to BOLD which gives better resolution I suppose you will just have to paint it in with a thin brush or not

i'm still gobsmacked at your work Mark, art and science perfectly blended I'm not asssuming I could do anything like you do, but I wonder if you have given up on 304's hand made panel number? I use MS Word to do these things It is almost dreamlike in its simplicity Say I wanted small (very!) stencils in white letters on black I would write the XH304 in a suitable font. I used comic sans to practise with and there's hundreds to choose from select highlighted text and use black as the highlight colour and type XH304 on the screen Then highlight the text and select text colour white in the highlighted section The lettering then appears as if by thingy, magic Then whilst still highlighted select font size which gives you numbers down to 8 points But here where we get technical, while it is still highlighted in the font size box, input the size YOU want I have printed 1 point or 2 points before when making aircraft stencilling then change the paper upper margins to the minimum and you can print wot you made on a strip of decal paper without losing lots of the sheet at a couple of squids a throw Just a thought that you might like to try out b

Hi Thomas Google images found them eventually They look like ex-Aviation News/Scale Aircraft Modelling drawings to me Copyright Bob Hunt

A few weeks ago at 'club' a mate slid up to me rustling a small placky bag "Fancy this?" he said as I peered inside I could see a pair of Y shaped mouldings, all shapely and too darned skinny for their own good AH HAH Airfix Scout with transfers and instructions but no header or box, he knows my affinity for all things rotarial of course so I am usually a bit of a captive audience. "How much" I asked expecting damage to a couple of tenners at least, it does build (if done careful like) into a pretty good model. "How about three quid?" says my man (cheers mate) as I stuffed some metal in his pocket and whipped it outside quickly to hide it in the boot of my Midget I remember my friend Ed Deeley used to sell conversions from C-scale and one they did was the Wasp conversion kit. I built a Wasp many years ago using Slater's rodding and lots of little wheels and the Airfix engine always looked too skinny butthe C-scale wasnt around those days I looked at the Kits And Bits in Ebay, no C-scale or Airwaves Wasp bits but I could get the Airwaves etch set from Hannants, (so I did) As I looked around the net I saw a few models that had been made using the C-scale engine but didn't really like them either. From my 'Bill's eye view' the C-scale unit looked as over beefy as the Airfix one looked undernourished. So I stopped looking for the conversion, I wasn't much interested in building a Wopse anyway as my unit had a Scout attached to us on an excercise in Scotland in 1976 and I thought it time to pay homage to Army Aviation So I began making a new RR/BS Nimbus engine to stick on the rear decking, drawings were trawled from the interweb and checked for scale sizing Evergreen tubing came to my rescue at once when looking for the basic raw materials You can see how thin the kit bits are here laid over the drawings, apologies for crap lighting and blurry picture the shapely curve of the combustion area is the front of a large bomb I found in my weapons box (I don't have a useful spares box like the rest of you yet, I threw all my treasures from many years of modelling away when I stopped playing in '85) The larger (front) compressor stage is an old drop tank piece and the ribs round the rear turbine stage are from Slater's strip. The rear tube is the Evergreen tube I started with The front intake ring was part of an F4 drop tank skimmed down to suit Here's the basic engine Here is a piece of the puzzle for you to ponder 'til later What is he using the depth charge for? This won't make you wonder for long, if you know what I like to do Beginning to detail the basic unit now, Evergreen strip being curved round the casing and glued on Glue fingerprints are later reduced honest Gubbinses being tacked on the outside now, I'm buggered if I know what they are. Maybe Fozzy can tell us More gubbinses port side this time. It looks like these doodahs may be fuel injection ports, style of thingmy with some kind of control box too check size for fit on the rear deck, fine so far but need to keep checking for size creep during the task Tailpipes and a (?) vent tube added now, reaching the end of the 'make' phase the distinctive intake dome now in place And now on with paint, The jetpipes given pastel dust coats over Tamiya Flat Brown XF-10. Yellow ochre, golden yellow, black, grey, green and white combine to give the burnt, heated metal effect. Hope it works for you Can you see what I used the rounded off depth charge for? Yup crash moulding the mesh dome that sits over the intake duct. I moulded it from clear acetate trimmed to 'sit right' then took it outside well away from my missus's asthma zone and sprayed a couple of coats of Flat Varnish from Tamiya. This dried out slightly opaque and gives the effect of looking through a fine grey mesh shield This Nimbus isn't perfect but it IS a better look to me than either of the commercial alternatives So this is where I am so far, I have to learn how to manipulate etch next Join me for loads of fun---- NOT anyway here's Nimbus in its latest test fitting, deck over the plan and engine over the deck What do you think, do I need to remake it or is it what I hoped for? (p.s the deck is slightly undersize to the airframe but looks OK on the model) When Photbucketof ditched us and countless pictures I didnt keep a very reasonable list of locations for pictures so I am still trying to locate all the ones I used, this is the best I can do for now but further digging will, I'm sure let me put in the missing ones Note the drawing of the Scout's tail section next to the Wasp plan view, the pencilled outline is where Airfix moulded it. The proper outline will be added when I get that far IF! Hope you enjoy this one b

with my rebuilt knees I can't bend the knee up as far as pedal top without excruciation Boy I wish I could I'd be biking again like a shot Simply sublime model working sah! The screen fitting using stuporglue still has me shuddering, that stuff scares me I expected fogging even though you have Klear coated it all, scaredycat me love the meters b

Thank you guys Steve I could do an "how I did it" but there was so much tatting about inside it would not be a useful show certainly not a pretty sight If you like though I can print some of me photos as it came about I did enjoy salt weathering, great fun and a fine new technique edit for forgetfulness Steve, dad was Sunderland crew (tea boy and cook he said) and as his mainstream job was armourer from days in Gladiators in 39/40, through Fighter Command at Hawkinge in BoB and armourer air gunner in Bombers and Coastal in the late war I suspect his main role was bunging another depth charge outboard in Sunderlands He liked the occasional foray in the Cats though, it must have been quite a war

The MAD boom looks great Martin Now then, when will you be inserting the electronic ghubbinses to make it work? I do so love watching your builds unfold for us brilliant

Aah, you just have to love the Britannia, a gorgeous shape. I'm in the 'lucky to have flown in one club' too, back from exercise in Germany in 75 or 76. Courtesy of 'Sitting Backwards Airways' for me after flying out in a sand and brown Herc. The model, which is why we're here. Absolutely wonderful model, and the Viscount too they make a magnificent set. I'll just sit back here in the corner asking myself why I just cannot ever make a finish look as good as yours. Thanks for showing it to us, I love it.