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Having grown up in Fareham, HMS Daedalus in Lee-on-Solent was close enough for me to be have become quite familiar with the sight of the Royal Navy SAR Wessex’s doing their thing in the Solent. Building this for the Salty Sea Dog helped recall some fond memories. The WIP can be found here; The Coles Notes version is that I built this mostly out of the box with the Eduard PE set for the exterior. I used most, but not all of the PE. The markings are all painted except for the stencils. The paint itself is artist acrylic mixed as required and sprayed, thinned with Windex. The main rotor was simply placed on its shaft and consequently moved a little during the photo shoot - in some of the pics it appears tilted very much forward. This is the second of these I’ve built and it was as enjoyable as the first. It’s quite possible I’ll build a camo version one day to go with this, the and the overall green one I built for the Falklands Anniversary last year. The finish pics... Thanks for looking. Cheers.

Growing up in Fareham, Hampshire I spent most of my summers at Lee or Hill Head. Occasionally we’d venture further east to the slightly posher Stokes Bay. The late 70s into the first half of the 80s are filled with memories of bicycle rides to the beach; initially with mates hanging out for a the kind of dumb good times teenage boys can create at will. Later, we were more focused on impressing girls, sometimes even conjuring up the courage to talk to them. Hindsight and experience tells me they were as nervous as we were. In later summers the bicycles were replaced with motorcycles, mopeds to start with (my mates on Fizzies, me on an AP50) and then real motorcycles. Side note - I contest to this day that the greatest internal combustion engine ever conceived is the two-stroke twin, and the Yamaha RD250LC the highest evolution of the species, especially when ported, K&N filtered, Boysen Reed Valved and of course, Micron Expansion Piped. But I digress…. Those days at the beach were often enhanced by the sight, hopefully near enough to shore to really get a good view, of a Lee-on-Solent based HMS Daedalus Royal Navy Wessex in its striking red and blue paint rushing out to rescue some hapless yachtsman or women. Teenage shenanigans would pause to watch them fly overhead, and in later times even awkward attempts at chatting up girls would [usually, gratefully, while we used the time to think of something to say] pause while a Wessex thumped it’s way out to sea. When we were at Lee we often saw them come low over the esplanade as they sped out over the usually calm waters of the Solent. It’s an indelible memory of teenage years. In memory of those summers my contribution to this GB is a Lee-on-Solent SAR Wessex. I’m using the Italeri 1/48 kit with the Eduard exterior detail set. I built one of these last year for the Falklands anniversary GB and at the time I decided I’d do another in the iconic red and blue. This GB gives me the perfect reason to do it now. The kit is likely familiar to some, I'm using the most recent boxing. Last time I put some effort into the interior which this time I won't as the door will be closed. What I will do this time though is some of the corrections and detailing I wasn't aware of or didn't bother with last time, for example the winch access hatch needs to be moved. There are some other things to do too, I'll cover those as I go. I'd love to show you some progress on this project but here is the current state of my bench... My bench is currently serving as an airfield for several of my completed builds awaiting a replacement display cabinet for the one which was outgrown. The replacement will be delivered this weekend, though hopefully progress doesn't need to wait that long as there's certainly some basic assembly I can begin while sitting at the kitchen bench. Incidentally, my first Wessex is visible at the back of that lot, here's a better shot. As I was pleased with how that one turned out, I'm hoping I get lucky enough to do it as well this time. Glad to be in on this one. If I make good progress I have a couple more builds I'd like to try and get in as well. We'll see how that goes. Cheers.

Dear all, Last months I've been working on an Italeri Wessex HU5 in 1/48 scale. Some info on the Wessex: Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_Wessex The kit from Italeri is not too bad, but also not really good. Details are soft, especially on the top. And some basic details are lacking. The fit is ok-ish. I used the following: 1. Italeri Wessex UH5 kit no 2720 (the 'UH5' is an error by Italeri. It should be HU5...) 2. Eduard mask 3. Eduard interior PE 4. Paints from Gunze for airbrush and Vallejo for brush painting 5. Weathering products from van Gogh, 502 abteilung (oils), AK Interactive line with e.g. grease, oil, dust etc 6. Uschi van der Rosten rigging wire 7. Some copperwire and evergreen for some of the details I've added I decided to portray the Wessex in the form of 84 Squadron, based in Cyprus (according to the kit info) in 1987. Here are the pics. You can see the build log here. I will now be starting on a Hobbyboss 1/72 Tomcat. Cheers! Jurrie

A few pics of my recent Italeri Hu5 Wessex with Eduard PE.. Regards John