Karel Doorman The Last Cruise, Grumman S-2A Tracker and SH-34 Helicopter

[Martian]

I only returned to the hobby a couple of years ago (when my wife gave me a Hasegawa Sea King for Christmas; still in the stash...) and my experience of fellow modellers has been universally positive; people share information, photos, experience, tips, give parts to one another, provide constructive advice and lots of praise. Unfortunately, as your story from 1989 illustrates, there are occasional prats in all walks of life, even ours.

I have flown a Wessex 5, albeit only sitting in with a Junglie mate. Whatever your idiotic critic might have thought, your models are an inspiration to many, and this particular one looks spot on.

Thanks FAAWAFU, I was a lot younger then and only just getting into showing my stuff so it really dented my confidence. I agree that 99.9% of people n this hobby are great people but I have never forgotten that jerk. I suspect that he is one of the type that slags off other peoples efforts and never finishes anything himself.

Thanks Perdu, I have been wanting do this project for a good while now. Much to my surprise and unlike the stringers on the Tracker, I found doing the fishplates very therapeutic. I this thread does inspire anyone, then it will have bee worthwhile regardless of how well or otherwise the two build turn out.

Martin

[hgbn]

Looking great Martin Anything in white styrene draws my attention.

[Martian]

Looking great Martin Anything in white styrene draws my attention.

By lucky hap', I am about to make your evening as this very night I have been thinning down the inside of the transmission fairing as much as I dare and adding structure to the thing. I have also added some more structure to the floor of the transmission deck as it looked really bare. The Sh-34 manual is not that forth coming as to the appearance of the structure so I just added what seemed logical to me. Now that it is done, doubtless a picture of the area in question will surface!!

Sorry about the quality of one of the pictures but I had to hold the model at an awkward angle as steady as possible in one hand while trying to hold the camera steady in the other.(Oh to be Zaphod Beeblbrox!) Hope fully you will get the idea as to what I have been up to.

Thanks for looking

Martin

[Martian]

Just when I thought I was clear of cutting on the SH-34, the model decided to bite back! I was putting it away last night and noticed that this panel looked a bit odd:

A trawl through my references and YouTube clips on the Karel Doorman carrier showed that this area was in fact open and just covered by mesh. The knock on effect of this is that the area between the forward cabin bulkhead and the engine firewall will need to be much more detailed than I had anticipated as just about everything will be seen. "Oh Pooh" says I. Well, those who know me will appreciate that it was far stronger than that!

Anyway, half an hour's carving and a sliced finger tip later, we ended up with this:

This of course, means a whole lot more of white plastic needs to be added to the kit. At least hgbn will be leased! No more to report tonight as I had to work today and am bushed.

Thanks for looking.

Martin

PS: Sorry about the pants picture but I am too tired to do another one right now.

[hgbn]

That's the challenging part of all those references available today. One thinks, hey I'm good to go, then some new info surfaces.

There is no doubt in my mind that modelers of today, have the ability to produce much more accurate models than earlier due to these tools On the other hand it also cause severe cases of AMS.

Looking forward to see more

[Martian]

Thanks Henrick, if nothing else, it all means that you get to see more white styrene on grey styrene!

Martin

[Martian]

For those who have been wondering what I have been doing since Friday, the answer is that the layout of the engine bay had been confusing me big time. This was brought on by the necessity of opening up the meshed area mentioned in my post on Thursday. I could just not reconcile the shape of the cut out in the engine bay floor with the shape of the mesh opening. This all resulted in several hours of surfing the net and pouring over my references until I found a couple of pictures that indicated that the kit manufacturer had got the shape of the cut out wrong, a double check with photocopies from the manual which had not previously been clear to me, now showed this to be the case.

Accordingly, the shape of the cut out was corrected and a quick dry fit now showed that things lined up. The gap between the floor and the mesh opening was then walled in with plastic card and drilled as appropriate. Ejection pin marks on the cabin forward bulkhead were then filled. The model has now been set aside for Miliput and glue to dry and everything will get a good clean up either tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on what mood the Miliput is in and I can then get a good session in detailing the bay..

Time to do some more stringers on the Tracker now methinks.

Thanks for looking

Martin

[hendie]

Hey Martin - can you stop it with all this detailing stuff!

I had high hopes of doing a detailed Wessex in the distant future and you are making my plans look more and more crud with each post you make. How can I ever compete with this???

Seriously though, this is looking like an excellent build and will a stunner when finished. Seriously good scratching

[Martian]

Thanks Hendie. Of course you can do your Wessex build, I for one would love to see it. Just take your time and split what seems to be one big complicated build down into lots of small simple steps in the way we were having a discussion about a few posts back . Understanding the geometry of the engine bay floor opening has been the only difficult part thus far on this build and that didn't actually involve any modelling at all.

Martin

[tomprobert]

Just spent a happy few minutes catching up with this project - I'm loving all that detailing. You cannot beat a good session with Evergreen strip and liquid poly Let's hope plenty will still be visible once the fuselage halves are together - on both models!

Tom

[Alan Kelley]

Fantastic work, Martin. This scratch building is brilliant.

[Martian]

Thanks Guys.

Tom, I think I might have used too much liquid cement for too long today as I do feel a bit light headed at the moment, its either that or lack of beer!

The reason for the above is that I have spent nearly all day applying the stringers to the starboard fuselage half of the Tracker (over 150 of the little sods per side). Still, at least I can now get on with something a little less repetitive!

So, lets cut to the chase, and here are the pictures, they must be a veritable feast for Henrick!

Thanks for looking

Martin

[heloman1]

Coming along nicely Martin, I do like the fishplate detail in the H-34. I think your light headedness was a lack of beer, most solvent fumes fall to the floor being heavier than air, he, he.

Scratching around in my stash the other day looking for something else. I came across a half started Tracker I was converting to a Tracer... Solid Perspex radome, I hardly think the u/c legs will stand the weight! I think I might have one I started to convert to a Trader too...

Colin

[Martian]

Thanks Colin, convert the Tracker back into a, err, Tracker. There are more colour schemes available for it than you can shake a stick at. Go on, you know you want to!

On reflection my light headedness probably was lack of beer. Situation remedied in readiness for this evening's session!

Martin

[mobydog]

Displaying remarkable modelling skill as usual Martin. You have a fantastic eye for detail

Andy

[Martian]

Thanks Andy.

[Martian]

Last night's update, sadly, did not appear do to a recurrence of the lurgy that my sister in law kindly brought back from North Korea. Even the beer that had been got in to lubricate the modelling session was left untouched!!!!!!! Proof, if ever it was needed, that there is a fiendish plot by the Beloved Leader (no I don't mean Mike!) to sabotage Britmodeller!

Putting such worries temporarily aside, I have managed to get some more done on the SH-34 today. I have been working on the bay between the cabin and the engine bay, I am sure it has a proper name, and the cabin front bulkhead. This has what I have always assumed to be steps either side of the large access panel. At least, many moons ago when I was much younger, far fitter and considerably thinner (I will set Danni on anyone who dares say anything about that!), I used the structure as such to access the cockpit of a Wessex HAS3 at Lasham, by dint of raising the pilot's seat pan and wriggling up into the cockpit. I am sure Heloman can enlighten us all on that point.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the pictures of today's progress so far and I'm off for that somewhat delayed beer!

Thanks for looking

Martin.

[Martian]

I nearly forgot to extend the fuselage structure up to the engine mounting frame. So, whilst it was still in my mind, I added said structure and associated fishplates before I packed up for the evening. Wouldn't want to remember that lot after I had buttoned up the fuselage!

Thanks for looking

Martin

[Breaker]

Man, last time I checked this thread you were at 4 pages. Loving watching these come together, the additional detail is the nuts. Wish I had the skills to manage it to this degree.

[Martian]

Thanks Breaker, I suspect that you probably do have the skills. I would say that 90% of these type of projects is being able to reduce them to a number, albeit large, of simple steps. Have a go, you will probably surprise yourself.

Martin

[hendie]

ok, I am officially in awe of the quality of scratch building going on here. Seriously impressive.

[Martian]

Today I decided to start work on the Tracker radome and associated equipment. Things started badly when study of references revealed that the lower part of the radome was not detachable, this preventing display of the radar dish itself. Research also revealed that the fuselage surrounding the radome was fitted with a floor that the dome extends and retracts through. That will teach me to examine my references more carefully! Nothing lost however, just a waste of my time in fitting the structure in that area.

It was also discovered that the kit radome part is too shallow so a laminate of plastic card was glued to the top of the part.

When set this was carved and sanded to the correct exterior shape.

This was then polished to remove any scratches and imperfections on the outside.

The interior of the laminate was then chain drilled out and then ground down to an exact match to the kit part interior. This was also sanded smooth. I had expected the laminate to fly apart at some point during the process but, no, it all went fine first time.

Finally a 10 'thou band of plastic strip was glued round the top edge of the radome and the main triangular mounting frame attached to the interior. It was very important to get the frame at exactly 120 degrees as it provides a reference point for the radome mounts. The mounts were then fabricated from 30 x 30 'thou plastic strip. These will engage with sections of channelled plastic strip. Tests show that everything fits so far but I know enough by now to expect that this will not be the case when I come to bring the whole assembly together!

Thanks for looking

Martin

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Your work is SO neat; I am in awe! (Great subject, too)

[Martian]

Your work is SO neat; I am in awe! (Great subject, too)

Thanks, I find that forcing myself to keep things as neat as possible at every stage always makes thing easier later on in a build. It also helps to have things looking nice as you go along.

Martin

[Martian]

Struggling to sleep, I spent much of the night pouring over the Tracker parts manual, all 761 pages of it! This however, was counter productive as it showed a different system of raising and lowering the radome to the pictures I have. Food for thought there.

Putting this conundrum to one side, I decided to crack on and build the floor for the radome mechanism to fit through and much drilling and carving later I ended up with this:

My first attempt was a perfect push fit but I felt that this would be too tight when the radome was painted. So, a little fettling later it was a drop fit, thus:

The opportunity was then taken to add some structure to the bulkhead in front of the radome assembly, which ended up by giving us this:

All this seems to have cured my insomnia, I think last night's was caused by me laying awake worrying about sorting the floor out. Would it be strong enough to take the abuse it was going to get from the necessary drilling and grinding it was going to receive?

Off for a zizz now and thanks for looking.

Martin