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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