SA. 365C-1 DAUPHIN from Heller

[Pete in Lincs]

And it's Goodnight from Walter Winch hell.

Nice one, Hendie.

[Martian]

The frame looks better now, clearly you made the right call.

Martin

[hendie]

Thanks guys - I am only glad that it worked out. It would have been a real pig if my second version had been worse than my first!

No photo update tonight I am afraid. I got the second undercarriage leg glued on, created a few more winch parts, and primed them. I didn't think that was worth a photo.

I ended up using the Eduard etch winch hook despite it being slightly over sized. I had a go at making my own but they just didn't work out. Still I have plenty of time to try some more as the hook won't get added until much later on in the build.

I have a couple of antenna to add, the tail fins, then a quick once over to see if I've missed any sticky-outy bits on the airframe, then it's mask and prime.

Now I am starting to get scared!

[hendie]

All of a sudden, life got in the way so I have hardly been on here the last few days - just a quick visit here and there to catch up.

And there was me thinking in my last post that I was almost ready to break the paint out, well, primer at least. - well, that wasn't going to happen this weekend!

I began this weeks build with fitting the remaining undercarriage leg. As it turned out, the concave section behind the leg did not match up with the curvature of the fuselage so it was a bit fiddly to try and get something that looked decent. In the end I got there, and there's still a lot more gubbins to go around that area, so a lot of it will be hidden (thankfully!)

Then it back to the winch briefly to make up the hook. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think this is a bit over sized but it's the best I have at the moment. I will endeavor to make a few others to see if I can get anything better.

Still with the thought of impending priming in my head, I started masking.... I knew I had to do it sometime... why not now? Out with the Tamiya masking tape and a new blade.

Sheesh.... that was hard! I spent a good hour masking everything up to my complete dissatisfaction before I remember I had some BMF hanging around from the DB5.

There was very little definition of the window framing showing through the Tamiya tape, so I started ripping off the Tamiya and applied some BMF.....

Big difference!

Although this is an old kit and the framing doesn't have great clean edges, the BMF certainly helped highlight the framing for me.

I have decided that I am not going to try and mask around the opening window - there's no way I'd be able to be that neat with a knife!. I have opted to try and paint that manually after all the main stuff is done.

Masking almost complete.....

and I decided to finish off here for the moment. I di leave Tamiya tape on the bottom window sections - I'll decide if I want to replace that with BMF before I actually prime.

and the uber observant among you will have notice that I finally got the tail fins in place. - and you can also see the wire I added along the spine to replicate the hinges.

After that it was time to start adding the aerials and all the other bits I am going to knock of before I get it primed.

I had one good aerial from the Trumpeter kit which I could use for above the cabin roof, but under the rear fuselage was another aerial... and I didn't have one.

Out with the remains of one of the Trumpeter rotor blades, chopped that up and then added a small base plate cut from scrap styrene.

a little bit of filing and shaping later and we have a passable aerial. (you can see it fitted under the rear fuselage a few photo's above)

I then remembered I still had to add two small deflector plates on the engine cowling.....

and back to aerials again.....

On checking my reference photo's, I found all sorts of stuff sticking out from the underside, particularly near the front end.

The first two go into place... I countersunk the hole around the "aerial" and flooded that with CA to help give some strength to the pin.

I re-tasked a couple of Trumpeter aerials for the Heller kit, but as there are no location features on the Heller, I drilled some holes to help align things with the aid of some pins.....

I also drilled some styrene rod, and took a couple of very thin slices off the end.....

which I then slid over the rearmost two pins shown here, and hopefully, they will look like mounting plates when all painted up.

I would have preferred to have made my own aerials for the front end here, but the things are so darned small I would have ended up cutting my bratwursts off or throwing the kit in the bin. Hey Ho.

I am a bit worried about the tail fins. I used styrene cement to give me some working time, but the actual mounting surface area was tiny, and I kept nudging the fin as I was working.

I am going to leave the kit overnight before I handle it again but I have a sneaking suspicion I may need to supplement the tail fin mounting points somehow.

[Nigel Heath]

Coming along nicely. It might have been an idea to put some doweling rods in the fins, like you I suspect they will break off before too long. Could you put a couple of rods right through the fuselage? That would give a nice strong job.

[hendie]

I might very well end up doing that. Unfortunately I am not going to get to it this week as I have to head off to New York tomorrow.

I'll see how strong the bond is when I get home this evening

Edited August 11, 2014 by hendie

[Martian]

This is really motoring along now Hendie, great progress since I last logged in.

Martin

[hendie]

I am getting there piece by piece... the rest of the build is, I think, straightforward (if the tail fins stay in place) - it is the paint job which is starting to give me sleepless nights

[hendie]

Checked the tail fins. One seemed to be fairly solid but the other did not seem to have as good a bond. I cleaned up what I could and in the end, I scratched a groove between the fuselage and the tailplane and filled the groove with superglue. That seems to have done the trick. It's such a fragile part/joint that even a perfect join would be susceptible to any knocks or dings.

I toyed with the idea of cutting a narrow strip of wine foil and super-gluing it over the join on the underside, nesting it right into the root. That would give some much needed additional strength, and would be very unlikely to be seen.

I spent a little time tonight working on the steps - coming along to plan, but very small and fidgety (surprise!). Also been working on the flotation gear... I need 6 of those boxes. Mounting them is going to be fun.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for spraying white?

I had a quick go last night on my test piece and the result was not very nice. It didn't cover the grey primer well at all.

I could go with white primer, but then it would be very difficult to see where I had sprayed, so I have opted to stick with the grey. Maybe I'll just need to do lots of light coats over a few days.

[Nigel Heath]

I can recommend the white Alclad primer, it covers well and I ended up using it as a finish colour on my Gotha winter camo finish (see link below) as I am sure you recall. It does not seem to have very good adhesive properties with Vallejo acrylics so maybe steer clear of them for any subsequent coats.

[S5 modeller]

I can recommend the white Alclad primer, it covers well and I ended up using it as a finish colour on my Gotha winter camo finish (see link below) as I am sure you recall. It does not seem to have very good adhesive properties with Vallejo acrylics so maybe steer clear of them for any subsequent coats.

I'll second Nigel on the use of alclad primers.

Just purchased some alclad white primer, with a view to using it for the finish on white landing gear and wheel wells.

Matt.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Coming along nicely. It might have been an idea to put some doweling rods in the fins, like you I suspect they will break off before too long. Could you put a couple of rods right through the fuselage? That would give a nice strong job.

Seconded; I lost count of the number of times my Gazelle horizontal stabilisers fell off before I bit the bullet and shoved a brass rod in there.

[hendie]

I'll need to double check what thickness I have available to drill through and then see if I have a brass, or similar rod to be able to feed through.

thanks for all the input guys.

I'll also look into the white Alclad primer. I am assuming that the primer is then given a gloss coat before any decals are applied?

HKG-1 has a nice white gloss finish which, for scale, I think I am going to try and use a satin finish - would I need to gloss coat, apply decals then apply satin - or could I use satin, apply decals then more satin?

thoughts?

[phildagreek]

This is looking the bizz, which is only right after all your effort with it!

[Nigel Heath]

I am assuming that the primer is then given a gloss coat before any decals are applied?

HKG-1 has a nice white gloss finish which, for scale, I think I am going to try and use a satin finish - would I need to gloss coat, apply decals then apply satin - or could I use satin, apply decals then more satin?

thoughts?

The Alclad white primer does have a slight sheen to it but I would apply a coat of Klear type varnish to it before decalling. I think decals are best applied on a gloss coat, you might get away with satin but why take the risk?

[infofrog]

why did you use silver foil tape on the windows ?

Rick

[hendie]

why did you use silver foil tape on the windows ?

Rick

because it is much thinner than masking tape, giving a better line definition of where I have to cut.

[infofrog]

because it is much thinner than masking tape, giving a better line definition of where I have to cut.

Ok

[infofrog]

Where u get that silver tape ?

I have hvac duct silver tape , but it super tacky . Pulling it off , it would pull model parts apart .thanks

Rick

[hendie]

Rick, it's called Bare Metal Foil and it comes in all shades of chrome and other metals - try ebay, i think that's where I got it from

Edited August 15, 2014 by hendie

[georgeusa]

Rick,

You might also look in any hobby store; not just one for plastic kits. Hobby Lobby and the like carry it in the craft sections.

[infofrog]

We have a hobby lobby

I have a Cobra heli going on now . I need to paint good part of the canopy.

Thanks .

Rick

[Nigel Heath]

Rick, get the chrome BMF as its alleged to be thinner than the other colours. Don't get the gold as I used that on my Flying Banana and it left a lot of adhesive reside behind. The chrome leaves some but its not so bad.

[infofrog]

Thanks Nigel
Sorry Hendie for hi jacking your thread , since Nigel shut down his chat thread . Well chat away in your thread , Feel free to chat anytime .
Heheheh joking
Rick

[hendie]

seems like it's been a while since I was around...trip to NY, volleyball season, and life etc all getting in the way.

(and I just spent about 30 minutes typing up my latest WIP and Firefox decided to take a dump on me and I lost the entire post!)

Here we go again....

Following advice from others earlier in this thread, I opted to remove the tail stabilizers and pin them with wire for added strength.. cue cruddy photo....

I managed to get a coat of white primer on the kit last weekend and everything went really well until I went to move it to a sheltered area.... I dropped it! Luckily I caught it so there was no damage per se, but the paint job was gubbed! - big mucky fingerprints and palm prints everywhere.

I really must pay more attention - that's the second time I have done that.

The last week has been spent recovering from the drop/catch - mainly sanding and filling. Despite my fingerprints all over it, the paint did enough to show me areas which needed more work so that's what I have been concentrating on.

So, once week later and this is where we are at.... the wheels are just dry fitted but I did get a great surprise to find that when the wheels are on, the whole thing is remarkably level - well, level enough for my eyes that is.

To try and keep me sane during the sanding and filling and sanding and filling and...... I made a start on the flotation gear. The RHKAAF Dauphins have 6 boxes fitted around the fuselage to contain the flotation bags.

I started with some scrap runner, and a piece of sandpaper taped to my workbench. Some finger print removal and several shortened fingers later left me with something which loosely resembled the shape I was after..... I then cut those to length, filed a chamfer on the sides, then drilled two holes in the back of each to accommodate the ever useful wire pins.

You can see the shape better in this photo....

Once they were all shaped, I cut some small squares of styrene and glued one to one end of each flotation box - adds visual interest and there is actually some gubbins hanging off one end on the real thing. They were then primed and set aside to dry.

Sanity restored, it was time for a couple of jobs that I had been putting off for some time. The first job was the hand hold on the tail fin. Neither the Heller nor the Trumpeter kit provided anything so it was back to scratching again.

To help keep the drill bit centered on the rounded front edge of the fin, I ran a three square file across the front edge of the fin - cutting a nice little vee notch - which gave me a nice centering device for the drill bit.

After the front hole was drilled the holes through the fin sides were easy. Forming the actual hand hold itself was a bit more involved.

I started by using a piece of scrap wire and very roughly bent it to the shape of the hand hold, then set it aside. I then took a new piece of straight wire, and taped it to my work bench with a piece of Tamiya tape. I marked the center of the wire on the tape, then using the previous scrap piece as a rough guide, I measured where the bends were and transferred them to the tape covering my new wire. That allowed me to mark the bends symmetrically on the new wire.

Then it was a simple case of bending the wire to shape with some thin nosed pliers.... like so....

... and here we are with the hand hold fitted in place. Note that I have very lightly countersunk the holes for the wire in the sides of the fin. That allows somewhere for the superglue to flow into and not remain sitting on the surface - and I believe it also gives me a stronger joint.

And next up was the real job I had been putting off (.. actually.. dreading it to be honest!) The cabin steps.

Here are the Heller supplied cabin steps.....

Unfortunately, they bear no resemblance whatsoever to the real thing. The small aerofoil shapes on the step will come in handy though.

This is my bag of bits to try and make some steps from.... a couple of rivet mandrels, some styrene rod drilled out, and the two aerofoil shaped parts from the previous photo

Looks simple enough yes? Ha! If only that were so....

I took some thing slices of the rod that I had drilled out, fitted that over the mandrel, then filed a flat on the circumference. That allowed me to glue the aerofoil shaped Heller bit onto the flat.

Several abortive attempts later, I scrubbed the Heller aerofoil sections and made my own (chunkier version) from the landing gear door from the spare Trumpeter kit. I used styrene for the rear supports. Everything was drilled out for wire pins to assist fitting to the fuselage.

next step was to drill the fuselage to accept the pins...

....then a quick dry fit of the parts to see how it looked.... not too shabby!

Some super-gluing, cursing and general temper tantrums ensued as I finally got the cabin step to play along and get into position.

Another side view....

I still have to attach flotation gear to each step, however, I decided to paint the flotation gear separately, and attach them all after the main kit has been painted.

A few more little bits of fine tuning, some minor sanding and we should be ready for another (and hopefully the last) coat of white primer

- right - I am posting this before FF decides to take another dump