Accurate Armour 1/35 Lynx AH7

[Lynx7]

So, fresh from Telford 2011 with more Lynx kits than I care to mention, I decided to eventually take the plunge with the Accurate Armour 1/35 Lynx. I had always been reluctant to add this one to my collection for a couple of reasons. 1. Price - Retails at £170. 2. From the limited photos I've seen of the kit, it didn't look quite right. The fuselage detailing seemed heavy to say the least and it looked like the riveting detail had been applied by Harland & Wolff. One thing that swayed my this time was the lower price on the AA stand at SMW - £130 for the Gulf version. And on initial inspection of the kit in the box, it did actually look pretty good. So I put my reservations to one side and went for it. Back in my hotel room that evening, I had a good look at the kit but to my horror found the fuselage halves to be badly buckled. I do appreciate that resin can do this and has memory if you place it in warm water bringing it back to its mould shape. The buckling appeared too bad for me to take that chance and at that price, I expected the condition to be better. I took the kit back to the chap on the AA stand the next day and he replaced it for me. On arriving home, I did a detailed invetory check of the huge amount of parts and to my constellation found several pieces missing. One part being the main rotor head! Email dispatched to AA so hopefully their excellent reputation will be upheld with replacement parts soonest!

Anyway, down to business. The kit is predominantly resin based with several bags making up the 200 or so parts (194 in my case...). A very good looking and comprehensive decal sheet and a very detailed PE sheet. Sundry brass rods and a sheet of acetate to construct the windscreen, lower door windows and cabin door window. One good thing I like is the main rotor blades, extension arms and other load bearing items are brass rod embedded resin which should give good rigidity (as you may be aware, one of my pet hates with Lynx models is droopy blades).

A surprisingly small box.

The bits (minus a few!!!)

Lots of very nice PE

Size comparison next to a Hobbyboss 1/72 Lynx

The resin fuselage halves are quite a soft flexible resin. Initial dry fit shows that a huge amount of cleaning and filling will be required. Something I'd expect from a 20 quid East European low volume kit.....

Panel and rivet detailing akin to RMS Titanic

Some of the detail is very nice but some is not and will be removed. Lynx noses do not have that amount of heavy detail!

I intend to finish this model as a Mk7 with either a GPMG or a M3M .50 cal fitted with IRCM exhausts. I'm not going to do it as the pink Gulf cab but standard green/grey. I am tempted to do one of the engine cowlings open and build a RR Gem engine.

Initial conclusions:

Good points. Size and scale. Very impressive and will allow me to go berserk on the detail front. There is some very nice and crisp mouldings and on the whole is pretty accurate.

Bad points. Cost. Quality of fit and finish of the fuselage (first one I got was very poor and even this replacement isn't what one expects for a £170 resin kit). Ridiculous riveting detail on the fuselage (nearly as bad as the Revell Shackleton)

This is not a kit for the faint hearted and I think I will be putting a huge amount of time and effort in to making this right and it will no doubt test my patience and skills to the limit! I am however looking forward to getting stuck in to it and chucking as much detail as I can. My target is to have it finished by SMW 2012.......

[AngloSaxon]

I've been considering an AA kit (admittedly, armour not aircraft) and couldn't decide whether they were worth the money or not. I must say I am rather pleased I haven't yet committed myself and after this write up will need some reassurance and hard thought before I do. I'm not saying this isn't a one off and mistakes do happen but as you say, it's not good for a kit costing that amount.

I look forward to watching the build and see how things work out

[Lynx7]

I've been considering an AA kit (admittedly, armour not aircraft) and couldn't decide whether they were worth the money or not. I must say I am rather pleased I haven't yet committed myself and after this write up will need some reassurance and hard thought before I do. I'm not saying this isn't a one off and mistakes do happen but as you say, it's not good for a kit costing that amount.

I look forward to watching the build and see how things work out

I dont know about their vehicle range. You'd have to ask on the other threads but I was always under the impression that their stuff was very good. Maybe its because its outside their usual sphere that this Lynx isn't quite up to what I'd expected? Dont get me wrong, on the whole, it appears to be good but the price doesnt seem to match some of the quality. Compared to the Belcher 1/48 Lynx (which also has its vices but in my mind it's quality is superb) this doesnt warrant more than twice the price 'cos its bigger'.

I also purchased the 1/35 AA .50 cal Browning as well as the Live-resin M240 GPMG from Accurate Armour. The GPMG is superb with lots of very good detail. The AA product is actually pretty poor despite the scale. I will either wait for Live -Resin to release their .50 cal or go with the Tasca M2.

[Mark C]

Dont know if its the pictures or not but the resin sort of has a soapy look especially the nose. Looks in the picture like its made of boiler plate complete with the rivets. Bit of sanding might take care of that though.

It will be interesting to see you finish the Lynx .Should look good in such a large scale.

Keep us updated .

Regards

Mark

[Lynx7]

Dont know if its the pictures or not but the resin sort of has a soapy look especially the nose. Looks in the picture like its made of boiler plate complete with the rivets. Bit of sanding might take care of that though.

It will be interesting to see you finish the Lynx .Should look good in such a large scale.

Keep us updated .

Regards

Mark

I think there is a lot of release agent still on it. When trying to dry fit the fuselage using tape, none of it stuck. I've washed and rubbed the whole fuselage down with 400 paper and it has taking the Flying Scotsman look off it a bit. An initial coat of primer will give me an idea how good or bad the effect is.

I've spent pretty much most of the day trying to 1) get the fuselage halves to meet which required hacking an awful lot of resin away and 2) trying to get the roof/engine deck area to fit/line up/get somewhere near being close to fitting on the fuselage. Still no where close on either tasks. I dont think I have ever seen such a shockingly bad basic construction or cast in my life. They seem to have placed the cast points at crucial areas where you need to have a precision join. We are not talking about a bit of flash but thick, solid spare resin in areas that its nigh on impossible to get a knife, file or paper to. Seriously unimpressed at this very early stage of the build.

For £130 (£170 retail) I would expect the box to open itself, a pole dancer to leap out, mop my brow, make me a brew and at least the elementary parts fit with minimal fuss. At this point, I would not recommend this kit to anyone. I shall however persevere as I'm a determined bugger and am staying focussed on scratch building lots of bits. To allow a good build, one needs a decent foundation to start with......

[dambuster]

A few photos of my WIP which has been in this state for over a year - fuselage sides are not yet fixed. It took a lot of fettling of the floor and sides to get a good dry fit. I am trying to work out the best approach to glazing the main windscreen as the supplied acetate (?) crazes where it bends to form the curved shape.

Interested to see how you get on.

Peter

[DaveJL]

Will be following this one mate, love heli builds! Always seem to give me ideas, though i could never hack a full resin kit like this. Maybe a few 1/35 carbines would spice it up

Looking forward to seeing if finished. Now where is that 1/35 Apache?

Dave

[Lynx7]

Pete, wow! An inspiration to me at any rate. That is looking very good indeed.

I hear what you are saying about the windscreen solution. When I bought the first one off the stand and went back to my clubs table to have a quick look through the box, I was somewhat alarmed to find no windscreen (apart from the badly bent fuselage...). I popped back over to the AA stand and asked the chap what the score was with the windscreen. He said 'ah, there is a sheet of acetate in there. Just sort of hold it against the frame and mark it out'. Hmm, so we now have to DIY it? Sorry, is this a £5.99 vacform kit?? Having done a search around the internet to look at other WiPs on the 1/35 Lynx, I have discovered from someone elses build that at one point AA at least provided a marked out piece of acetate. Mine is just a blank sheet of pretty pathetic acetate. Why the f*** haven't they even bothered to provide a vacform windscreen? The real screen is actually a fairly complex curve at its edges and a flat piece of acetate is not bloody good enough at this level.

Did they use to provide this?

[shark 64]

This kit has always been somewhat of a puzzle for me ....a good puzzle that is but somehow I could never bring myself to getting one.

I will be following your build with interest cause so much can be done with it.....And yes you have to display it with cowlings open and engine.

Good luck

Oliver

[Lynx7]

This kit has always been somewhat of a puzzle for me ....a good puzzle that is but somehow I could never bring myself to getting one.

I will be following your build with interest cause so much can be done with it.....And yes you have to display it with cowlings open and engine.

Good luck

Oliver

Fear not, Oliver. I've already made a start on hacking and slicing it up

Port nose bay. Battery, wiper washer bottle and some avionics will go in this side. Debating whether to do stbd side too.

Always a nervous time setting about a £130 kit with a hacksaw!

My plan is to make a resin cast of the engine cowlings then use that as a 'male' to make a 'female' master. This will give me an outer resin cast to then fabricate the engine doors out of brass, alloy or copper sheeting.

The bonus of slicing the top area up is that its now made fitting the main roof area easier (sort of...)

I intend to fabricate the engine decking area and firewall in the gap. May as well make two Gem engines whilst I'm at it! I think I'm going to produce one basic engine module and use that as a master to cast a pair then dress those with plumbing, accessories and wiring looms.

The fuselage seems to be getting close to fitting together to an acceptable standard so I will now start on the interior....this may take a while as I'm planning on putting as much detail as possible in to it

If I can get this to even 5% of your Huey, Oliver, I'll be happy!

Edited November 15, 2011 by Lynx7

[pte1643]

a £170 resin kit

WOOT...

I was doing alright reading down your post, until I got to this bit.

Crikey, that's some commitment.

[andy wood]

If anyone can get the best out of this kit, its you

[Andy K]

Good luck! I've heard that this kit is not the easiest to put together

[Lynx7]

Good luck! I've heard that this kit is not the easiest to put together

Thanks

Chopping the engine area off has helped the fit situation and after hours and hours of trimming, its almost like a kit now as opposed to lots of random pieces of resin. I'm not quite as livid as I was yesterday and am looking forward to starting on building the RR Gems.

[Giorgio N]

While I understand this is not going to be an easy project, I'm sure watching it in progress will help a lot of modellers ! Looking forward to see what you'll make out of it, the start promises something great is coming !

[robert26]

Looks like a challenge-will look amazing in this scale sitting next to a Landrover

[Justinjgy]

Lynx 7

Here we go again with another cracking Lynx model.I have often looked at getting this one but wish it was a Navy one.Will be getting the Revell navy one as soon as it comes out.

looking forward to seeing the progress.

[Lynx7]

Lynx 7

Here we go again with another cracking Lynx model.I have often looked at getting this one but wish it was a Navy one.Will be getting the Revell navy one as soon as it comes out.

looking forward to seeing the progress.

Hi Justin. I asked the chap on the Revell stand at Telford and he says it should be out 2nd quarter of next year at £19.99. German Mk88A and HAS3 types. Should suit you to do a HAS 2 in blue

I will be buying a few and converting them obviously. Cant have my Lynx looking like shopping trollies with silly wheels sticking out at all angles like the navy ones.....

[Lynx7]

Started on doing a bit of resin casting today and am pleased with the results.

This is the engine area I sawed off the upper deck area from the kit

Heres the initial mould I made

Happy with the crisp detail and no air bubbles

I then chopped the engine cowls in half

I then used each resin engine cowl to resin cast a female

At this stage, I'm just using kitchen foil sandwiched in between each resin cast.

I will use thin alloy, brass or copper sheet (or even warmed thin plasticard) for the final engine cowls but this shows that the technique is workable

I thoroughly recommend having a bash at resin casting. Certainly not a black art. I'm using a kit I bought from Sylmasta at Telford. Polyurethane G26 2 part resin with 390 moulding rubber. The kit has all you need for £31 (you also get mixing tubs, release agent and the rubber catalyst)

Couple of pics of the task I'm taking on!

Go from this;

to this x2;

Still undecided what weapon fit I'll go for but have a selection of .50 Brownings and a GPMG (actually an M240 but I'll redress the forward furniture to turn it in to an air GPMG). A good pal of mine sent me a handful of spare (many thanks Mark ) .50 cals so I decided to do a comparison of them (and chucked the M240 in to show the lovely detail). Anyone care to guess which kit manufacturer made each one?

[Iain Ogilvie]

Storming progress - have always wondered just how well one of these would scrub up - suspect we're about to find out!

Peter - yours looks ace too - any further progress?

Can't believe it doesn't include a vac windshield - that really is spoiling a very expensive ship for a ha'peth of plastic - unbelieveable...

Iain

[Lynx7]

Storming progress - have always wondered just how well one of these would scrub up - suspect we're about to find out!

Peter - yours looks ace too - any further progress?

Can't believe it doesn't include a vac windshield - that really is spoiling a very expensive ship for a ha'peth of plastic - unbelieveable...

Iain

Yep, I've been fuming at anyone who will listen today (and last night at club meeting) re the windscreen. I have a couple of ideas how to solve the problem. I've ordered some clear cast stuff from Sylmasta so will see if I can get decent results from that as a sort of cast thing (not too confident I can get a nice thin uniform clear finish) or have a bash at vacforming. Whatever I find works, I'll be sure to publish my results.

I'm hoping Pete is progressing. I want him to tell me all the pitfalls before I get to them! (plus, I can copy his homework )

[shark 64]

I agree. spending so such money for such a great kit. Accurate Armour dropped the ball on that one but then again modeling without hic-ups would not be modeling....Here I am going to embark on the same path with the same windshiled issue on the Huey. Still watching your build with great interest.

I love the engine photos.....thats gonna be fun to duplicate.

Oliver

[merlin9807]

Awesome work buddy. Great to see it coming together so well.

As for the windscreen, mine i used RC canopy PVA and glued it a bit at a time till i got to the curves on the out end. This was 2 years ago and the canopy and the sliding door windows are starting to pop out.

good luck and love the progress.

Cheers

Merl

[Lynx7]

I have a few ideas regarding the windscreen but favourite at present is vacforming the whole area. I'm toying with the idea of cutting the whole windscreen frame off (after resin casting that area as a spare first!) and playing around with it off board. It seems like such a faff trying to put fragile acetate in before both halves of fuselage are put together and the subsequent handling issues and potential to inadvertently pop them out again . To my mind, far easier to have the whole windscreen frame off just like a 1/72 Airfix Lynx then fix it in place later.

A bit more work on the tail boom. The photos dont show how crisp and clean my castings are (actually less air bubbles than the original....). I cast it in 2 parts (you can see the join). I felt it was easier to chop away the panels I needed if it was in 2 parts. Not only that but as I'm learning resin casting, doing the whole lot in 2 halves down the centre line would have been a bit beyond me at the moment!

A slightly more substantial strengthening solution that Westlands use..

You can see the access panels I've chopped off. The replacements will be made from thin shaped plasticard and brass sheeting.

Just blutac'd in to place for now to give me an idea of scales etc. I will need to measure the diameter of the real tail rotor drive shafts to get the correct size.

Here's what it will hopefully look like. Need to fabricate the IGB (Intermediate Gearbox)

Decided to recast the whole instrument panel too as I wasn't happy with the accuracy of the instrument coaming areas (it was also very thin and fragile). The kit has it as all one piece whereas the real one is 3 separate bits. Left, right and the CWP box in the centre. Cut them off my cast and applied thin plasticard and slightly built up the CWP box in the centre. I'll add all the other gubbins we've jammed on top such as MAWS, BFTetc, etc. Will need to place the RWR on the middle upper right of the centre panel too (just above the MASS).

Ive also discovered the rear cabin bulkhead is far too much rear set. In the kit, this forms quite a substantial bit of cross-membering. With it in the original position, the cabin was huge (AA probably listened to Westlands PR...)! I've moved it forward in to the correct position. In the old position, the rectangles you see on the outside are the main fuel tank inspection panels. Each main fuel tank sits either side of the 'broom cupboard'. You can see that if left to the original position, there is no way the fuel tanks could be on the other side of those panels. The panels are in the correct position btw.

[Giorgio N]

Great build, will be a good reference to add some detail in some smaller scale Lynxes

Have to say that watching all your modifications I've got the feeling you could have scratchbuilt the whole thing with less trouble !