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MPM Wellington 1C - FINISHED


AdrianMF

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Hello All,

I thought I would pitch in with an MPM Wellington because - it's classic Bomber Command and - I have one in the stash, bought from Hannants London second hand pile several years ago.

Here are the parts:

MPM_Wellington_parts_zpse1eecf89.jpg

It's a curiously unloved kit, with issues (to my knowledge) of:

* Undercarriage bay too narrow for undercarriage

* Turrets are messed up/mislabelled

* Canopies too wide

* Lots of others, including "it isn't the Trumpeter kit", which by all accounts is excellent, albeit with its own flaws

Here's some sticking together (including separate cylinders!) that hasn't engaged the brain:

"Hey I'm a model fighter guy and I've just stuck 30 parts together - is it time for the paint shop?"

MPM_Wellington_basic_assembly_zps9fdebba

You can see that the undercarriage strut is too wide for the wheel well. You can also see industrial sanding to the wheel wells to clear the top wing half, and more sanding to thin the trailing edge - it is in itself quite thin but the joining surface rises up a few mm before the edge, preventing the edges from meeting.

Pressing on regardless, I took the liberty of assembling the rear turret (checked the number call outs many times). It's too small for the rear but it fits really well at the front:

MPM_Wellington_more_nose_turret_zps3d4d9MPM_Wellington_nose_turret_was_rear_zpsb

Here's where I got to today:

MPM_Wellington_subassemblies_zps494626fa

Note that I have drilled out the landing light ports. You can also see that the wheel would never fit in the well when retracted - good job I'm modelling with gear down! Next up will be an interior - I want to represent all the crew positions visible through the windows, but I don't want to go overboard.

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

Edited by AdrianMF
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You've done a running start with this one! I'm going to follow this closely as I wanted to follow my Mosquito with a Wellington Mk.II (those Hampdens and Beaufighters will appreciate the spare radials)

The nose/tail turret came out really nice, the trained fleas did a good job of holding the parts together for cementing... XD

One word of advice, on my sample the fuselage is warped. Forewarned is forearmed they say.

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Hello again,

I can see why people don't do more bombers! Too much like hard work...

MPM_Wellington_fuselage_structure_zps448

So, today's progress:

* Stuck in all the inlaid transparencies by trimming to fit and running liquid cement around the edges - surprisingly painless

* Added the internal framing to the side windows by cutting narrow strips of self-adhesive aluminium tape, sticking it on inside the window and trimming off the remainder

* Painted internal fabric in Hu70 acrylic, gave it a dark wash and painted the geodetics silver (badly, but it's hard to see anything inside!)

* Built a bomb bay ceiling/fuselage floor for the basis of some more detailing

* Added the cockpit boxes and a new floor for the pilot

* Added some wedges (white) in front of and behind the cockpit to make it the right width for the canopy.

* Started on some rudimentary bulkheads and partitions (still hard to see anything inside)

Tomorrow evening's target:

* Finish internal details - pilot, wireless and nav stations, turrets, bomb aimer position, flare chute, Elsan, wing spar, lots of wires for spurious but hopefully convincing detail

* Close up fuselage (don't forget tail wheel well!)

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

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Looking good Adrian,.....the self adhesive silver foil for the geodetics crossing the windows was a good idea and looks really convincing,...where do you get that from mate?

Cheers

Tony

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Hello All,

Well, I'm a day late with finishing the interior, and I didn't even get to the turrets!

Here's where we are at. A bunch of scratch build details, with a lengthened cockpit floor:

MPM_Wellington_interior_1_zps4d8302fd.jp

MPM_Wellington_interior_close_zps52e188d

I haven't read the group build rules very closely, but I have an Elsan, a flare chute and a very clunky navigator's reading light, so I think I've met all the criteria for a "proper" bomber build!

You just about see the light and the navigator's table (I should have a map, probably) through the window when it is closed up, but everything else is pretty invisible, even under strong light. The fuselage frames are painted quite impressionistically just to suggest the built up structure, and I think it's going to be good enough.

One of the things that sidetracked me was thinking about the mechanics of it all. Long wings, short wing tabs and a fuselage made out of inlaid strips of clear plastic sounded like a recipe for disaster (flexing and splitting) later on, so I knocked up a spar out of sprue with the dihedral bent in and some spare strip, and cut slots in the fuselage and wings to take it. In fuselage it's kinda-scale-ish but outside the fuselage it's designed to hold the wings tight. If I was doing it again I'd skip all the interior detailing and just do the spar.

MPM_Wellington_wing_spar_zps626cd48a.jpg

You can see the flare chute exit here too. The spar abuts the undercarriage wells in the wings so it's quite solid, and I feel confident about the fuselage join now. I can adjust the dihedral when everything is together by sanding the spar a little.

So, turrets next and then I can close up!

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

Edited by AdrianMF
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Tony,

Maplins do a roll. This is the one I use, with backing paper. It may be easier to use the one without, and stick it onto clean glass for cutting.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/aluminium-tape-50mmx457m-n46cf

Regards,

Adrian

Cheers Adrian,

I might get hold of some of that then, it looks very useful. I love the extra detail that you`ve added and I`m looking forward to seeing this one progress,.......as you`ve already discovered the turrets on this kit are the bugbear,.......they should be the same yet one is much smaller than the other but from what I can remember about the three which I`ve built I swapped them around as you`ve done.

All the best

Tony

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Thanks for all the good words gentlemen!

Tony - three? Blimey, I think one will do for me. Although the mkII does look tempting...

Bonehammer - I have a week off so as long as stuff gets done around the house (shelves yesterday) I have a free rein! I want to do an Airfix Roland CII for the WWI group before that finishes so I need to crack on!

Chris - love that car colour. They don't make blues like that any more!

Pete - I haven't found it challenging yet, but I have been forewarned, which definitely helps on things like canopy width. I can imagine what a pain that would be if you found out later... I'm going for the V*AA option from the kit.

Turrets today!

Regards,

Adrian

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Excellent work. It's a good few years since I wrestled one of these into some type of submission but the areas I recall needing care, aside from the ones you have already identified, are:

  • getting the turret interiors to fit inside the transparencies
  • positive location of the engines inside the cowlings
  • I might be wrong but I think the cylinders also need reducing to fit inside the cowlings at all
  • getting the long fuselage transparencies to stay attached - there's a lot of scope for flexing in there!

John

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Thanks for the pointers John. I have just spent a number of hours getting the turrets straight. I had already sanded the bases down to fit, but I've since done a pile of scratch building to get something I'm happy with.

The engines fit at the back of the cowl but not the front. Given that there is a big blanking plate, I think I'm going to put the engines in the spares box and dummy something up out of cocktail sticks and card. Strange that MPM don't provide the two oil cooler inlets.

I added a spar to the wing because I was worried about flexing and whatnot too!

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

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Hello All,

Turrets. Hmmm.....

Well, I discovered (or rediscovered, after generations of shocked modellers) that if you put the front turret in the back and vice-versa, they fit snugly. The back one is wa-ay too big for the back turret space, and fits very snugly in the front. I actually think that they should have given us two turrets of the smaller size, as you can see there's quite a gap between the front turret and the fuselage in the real thing. I contemplated this for a bit, and then decided to ignore it in the interests of having a quiet life and getting the kit finished!

So, what do the kit parts look like?

MPM_Wellington_low_gun_mount_zps35658af2

The gun mount actually sits rather low in the turret, so I decided to lift it up. The holes in the mounting wheel and the wire frame are the start of my changes.

After some wire and plastic card work, I ended up with this:

MPM_Wellington_scratchbuilt_turrets_zps7

I'm going to add the final glass plate and the whole of the pair of guns at the end. The pair of guns is made out of the undercarriage bracing arm, which I had previously established to be too wide for the undercarriage. And with the ends hollowed out, it's no worse than the kit gun barrels. I've added the kit breeches too.

So I'm now ready to close the fuselage. I added some masking tape belts (now all painted) and the "blue compass" in the navigator's window. I narrowly avoided a superglue disaster when sticking this on. There is now a map, so I think I now have everything (reading lamp, Elsan, map...). You can't really tell but I've painted up the instrument panel (very monochrome in real life) and added the throttle levers. I'm very pleased with the turret framing but I imagine there will be more touch up than original paint by the time I'm done!

MPM_Wellington_ready_to_close_up_zps040c

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

Edited by AdrianMF
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Hello All,

Couldn't resist another couple of shots of the interior...

MPM_Wellington_penultimate_interior_zps7

MPM_Wellington_last_interior_zps78e5b88b

And now it is stuck together, seams sanded and filled, being painted up:

MPM_Wellington_stuck_together_zpsd464059

Points to ponder:

* I've built up the chin with a bit of two-part filler to make it look a bit less, well, chinless...

* The tailplanes to me look a bit too inclined - ideally they should be a few degrees less but I'm not about to cut 'em off and start again!

* I was warned about warps and didn't notice I had one, but now if I look head on I can see that there is a slight twist between nose and tail. Not enough to jump out at you but I know it's there.

Now to colour schemes. I was going to do the kit scheme of "AA*V", the machine on which Arthur Ward won a VC. However, it turns out that that it was "AA*R" according to several sources, so I don't trust the kit scheme now. I'm having a look in the Warpaint Wellington book, at decal sets from Hannants and on the web. I have generic decal sets for roundels and codes so I just need to choose!

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

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