Fairey Rotodyne - Airfix 1/72

[Mike N]

Here’s my entry, the Fairey Rotodyne:

I only have a handful of references for this project. By far the most comprehensive is the book by David Gibbings, who worked on the Rotodyne.

The Fairey (later Westland) Rotodyne was a demonstrator for a proposed vertical take-off airliner for city centre to city centre routes. It was a compound helicopter; that is it had a powered rotor for take-off, vertical flight, hovering and landing, and in forward flight used engines aligned in the direction of flight, with the rotor in autorotation (unpowered) providing 50% of the lift.

The rotor was driven by air taken from the two engines, ducted to the rotor blade tips where it was mixed with fuel and burnt in small tip jets to drive the blades round. During transition into forward flight, the tip jets were shut off and the ducted air stopped. As the rotor was not mechanically driven by an engine, there was no torque to be counteracted by a tail rotor as in conventional helicopters. The tip-jet system was however very noisy, which raised concerns about the Rotodyne’s use in city centres. Noise trials were carried out, and while everyone agreed it was noisy up close when the tip jets were burning, in flight it wasn’t all that much worse than other helicopters or sources of noise found in cities. Indeed, one observer on the ground said he couldn’t make a proper assessment of the Rotodyne’s noise as it was being drowned out by the road traffic! There was interest from various civil operators, some placing orders, and the US Marines were also interested (an order for 200 machines being mentioned).

In the end, there weren’t sufficient firm orders to justify the continued development, which still had some way to go. The Napier Eland engines were not providing the promised power for the demonstrator aircraft, meaning that the tip jets had to use a richer fuel mixture, which only made the noise worse. For the larger Rotodyne Z production version, Fairey/Westland looked to use a different Rolls Royce engine but that would require a large investment which RR weren’t prepared to make. The government had funded the project thus far, and although the RAF had agreed to include the Rotodyne for assessment for its medium transport requirement, it opted for the Andover which was cheaper. A quote from Westland to a government request for 12 RAF and 6 BEA Rotodynes was not acceptable and funding dried up. Civil orders, from North America and Japan (approx 30 in total, including options) were cancelled without the military order. BEA were wary of the noise problems, but more fundamentally were unwilling to contribute to a large proportion of the development costs and pay higher unit prices. Faced with this stark picture, Westland, with several other projects underway, couldn’t justify continuation on a private basis and stopped work immediately. The sole Rotodyne, which was the property of the government, was sadly (and disgracefully) scrapped.

In his book, Gibbings describes how the production ‘Rotodyne Z’ would have had various modifications, such as extended wings, more powerful engines, and redesigned clamshell doors incorporating a loading ramp on the military version. There were also different tip jet designs and silencers in development which it was believed would cut the noise significantly. He also identifies how a present-day Rotodyne would benefit from modern materials and technology. If only…

For this build I’ll be using the venerable Airfix kit in 1/72.

I believe it dates from around 1960 when the real aircraft was flying, but my example was reissued sometime around 2000. The kit has surprisingly nice rivet detail which will inevitably suffer during construction clean-up. I’ll start by sanding the parts smooth and later scribing replacement detail. The kit also has noticeable sink marks, flash and ejector pin marks, but hey, it's 50 years old!

Here’s the kit’s contents:

The Rotodyne didn’t fly in many colour schemes: a basic overall NMF as first flown; in airline style colour scheme with first Fairey, and later Westland Rotodyne stencilled on (the former with large company logo on the rotor pylon); and finally with RAF insignia (which it apparently should always have done since it was funded by the government). There are always What If schemes to tempt us as well. In line with my other prototype builds, I’ll be modelling the machine at first flight.

This will require a few modifications to the basic kit as, in common with most prototypes, it underwent some changes during its life. Thankfully these are relatively minor, consisting mainly of removing the upper tail fins, adding bracing struts to the main undercarriage, and adding some flight test instrumentation black boxes in the forward cabin. I had braced myself for the major surgery of modifying the wing incidence, which changed from 4 degrees to zero during flight testing, but to my relief the kit is based on the initial design.

The real work will be in adding detail. With relatively large windows (the fuselage was unpressurised), I’ll need to add a bit of an interior, the cockpit being basic and in the cabin there’s nothing! I’m also going to pose the clamshell doors open. The forward engine panels were left off at first flight to improve cooling, so this will mean I will have to scratch-build representations of the engines. The scheme will also mean another foray into the Alclad world. At least the markings will be simple, comprising just the serial number.

I’m certainly eager to build this one, and compared with my previous Comet and Vulcan prototypes this should be relatively straightforward (haha!!)

Mike

[D1fuN0]

Oh that is soooooooo cool.

Ive never seen one of these built, so looking forward to this.

Steve

[Mike N]

Well, I made a start first thing today. To start with, I'll show some of the 'features' of the kit.

Where there are think mouldings, such as alignment pins, the exterior has sink marks:

Notice also the nice rivet detail though!

The fuselage has zero interior detailing:

But it does have ejector pin marks!

The clamshell doors are designed to be operable:

Those features will be removed as they were not on the actual aircraft!

There are a couple of pilots provided, even moulded in airline attire:

So, the first thing I did was to sand off the rivets, a tedious job along with cutting back the flash, ejector pins, and other anomalies.

To sort the sink marks, rather than trying to expect filler to stick in the shallow depressions, I sliced some slivers of sprue and using liberal quantities of glue pressed them into the divots:

Quite a few parts needed this treatment...

Unfortunately, after sanding them down, most showed small blemishes still. I'll treat them again at the joint clean up stage.

The only construction so far has been to start the detailing of the interior. The cockpit bulkhead got some simple boxes attached, which also hid a couple of ejector pin marks.

Using photos in the Gibbings book, I made up a bit of the roof where the wing spars pass through. This is the upper side that will be hidden once in place:

Having punched out all those lightening holes, I decided to use the discs as dials for some flight test instrumentation banks:

That's about as far as I've got to now. This is the first model where I've attempted to scratch-build an interior so I'll be taking some time over it.

Thanks for looking!

Mike

[triumphfan]

Great progress. I love this aircraft although I have never owned the kit. I have seen a few built examples and they do look good.

Will be following your build.

Steve.

[BritJet]

Good work so far

Steve

[heloman1]

Fantasic choice, may I reccomend you glue the rear cargo doors in place the fit is less than desireable! Glad to see you sanded off the rivets too.

Colin

[snapper_city]

This should be an interesting build. Hooked already.

[rwoolven76]

This is possibly the coolest idea for an aircraft ever. As an idea it wouldn't have looked out of place on a Luftwaffe sketch pad in 1945. It's certainly a bit more exciting than my entry. ;-)

Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Richard

[Gajman]

This is one of the more unusual builds in the GB. Good work so far.

Gary

[CarLos]

Very interesting project. I'll follow it very closely as finally I acquired the kit.

The Gibbings book has scale drawings?

Carlos

[Nigel Heath]

I'm building one of these at the moment, done as you have, scratch built the cockpit and cabin interiors, sanded off all the rivets, rescribed panel lines etc. I bought after market resin wheels as the kit offerings have as much detail as a Smartie. I will have all the doors open and steps down. Good luck with it.

Nigel

[Seahawk]

Nice work. Saw a what-if example at a show once, with 1970s era RAF markings: DSG/Green, tactical roundels, etc.

[Bengalensis]

Will be nice to this one making progress. It's one of those kits I remember so well from the old Airfix catalogues but have never built. Fantastic machine.

[Mike N]

Many thanks for all the interest, hope the build lives up to it!

Fantasic choice, may I reccomend you glue the rear cargo doors in place the fit is less than desireable! Glad to see you sanded off the rivets too.

Colin

I'm planning to have the doors open, want to show off the interior detailing! So far I've kept the rivets on the doors as adding them after to the compound curves will be a pain.

Very interesting project. I'll follow it very closely as finally I acquired the kit.

The Gibbings book has scale drawings?

Carlos

It only has a 3 view GA, but there is a cut-away for some of the detail. There are also quite a few photos. It's probably the best book there ever will be on the subject, and not a bad read too.

I'm building one of these at the moment, done as you have, scratch built the cockpit and cabin interiors, sanded off all the rivets, rescribed panel lines etc. I bought after market resin wheels as the kit offerings have as much detail as a Smartie. I will have all the doors open and steps down. Good luck with it.

Nigel

Nice one Nigel! Which wheels did you go for, as I'm assuming they weren't specifically for the Rotodyne?

The build is moving along slowly, I'm currently adding interior structure to the fuselage, which is taking ages and is painful to the eyes after a while! No further pics yet but will post some soon.

Mike

[CarLos]

Thanks Nigel! Already ordered the book.

Regards,

Carlos

[Kallisti]

I agree its a very useful and interesting book. Have one of these in the stash as I used to work next to the Wite Wltham airfield which is where Fairey did a lot of their testing, particularly for the Rotodyne.

[Nigel Heath]

Re. the wheels; there are no specific aftermarket products for this kit at all so I ordered six or seven different sets from Hannants which looked like they were the right size, profile etc. I then selected the best looking ones for the nose and main landing gear, I can't remember which ones I used but will check my records tonight and hopefully let you know tomorrow. Of course I returned the unused ones to Hannants for a refund - no problem.

Nigel

[Nigel Heath]

I have now worked some of this out from my back order history with Hannants.

The main undercarriage wheels were the nose wheels from a set for the Bae Nimrod: https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/MST72002 you need two sets of these and you will have a few wheels left over to add to the spares box. They do look the business though.

I can't see what I used for the nose wheels, maybe I got them from somewhere else, I will have a ponder tonight.

Nigel

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Great choice! A completely barking aircraft in so many ways, and I always wanted the kit as a kid in the 60s. I will be watching with keen interest.

[Nigel Heath]

_{I can't work out what I used for the nose wheels, they look a bit like the smaller wheel here: https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/CMQ72100 but this can't be correct as these were among the ones I returned. Maybe I got them out of my spares box - but that's not my recollection.}

[Nigel Heath]

I don't know if you are interested but I have made new decals for the serial number "XE521". On the sheet in my kit they were printed in blue but they should be black (as shown on the box art). I have made loads so would you like a couple?

My example comes from a 1980's release, interestingly when I opened up the box from a 1960's release (at a model show) they were printed in the correct black.

[Mike N]

I don't know if you are interested but I have made new decals for the serial number "XE521". On the sheet in my kit they were printed in blue but they should be black (as shown on the box art). I have made loads so would you like a couple?

My example comes from a 1980's release, interestingly when I opened up the box from a 1960's release (at a model show) they were printed in the correct black.

Thanks for the offer Nigel, very kind. I'll have to check my decal collection to see if I already have some of the right size, but may well take you up on it!

I'm also struck by the idea of replacing the wheels, unfortunately the big H has only 1 set of the Nimrod wheels... I'll have a browse for some others that may be suitable.

Here are a couple of pics of the detailing inside the cabin so far:

It may not look like much but that's a few hours' work there of squinting and trimming! It's also not strictly accurate but in this scale it's good enough for me I hope it will pay off when suitably painted and with a subtle wash.

Mike

[D1fuN0]

Nice work Mike

Somewhere in the mouldy recessess of my mind, I recall seeing a pic of one of these in camo, may have been a kit, just cant recall.

Steve

[Nigel Heath]

Ah that cabin framing brings back memories. I put a fairly big piece of lead sheet under the front of the (scratch built) cabin floor to prevent any hint of tail sitting.

[snapper_city]

The ribs look good. 1000% better then the blank canvas you started with. What was the inside of this like? Was it a cargo space or fixed seating or something else??