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Airfix Seaking HC.4 - Almost OoB build - fiddly bits!


eng

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Few pics of my current build, Airfix new tool Seaking HC.4.

I'm afraid work and real life mean I'm not the fastest builder and my 'bench time' is (as I'm sure many others will agree) not as much as I'd like, so I'd struggle to maintain an interesting 'In Progress' thread but since this is a new tool, I thought you might like a peek at my progress.

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As for out of the box, I caved and added some seat belts from tape, comm's cables for the crew and a few wee bits of detail on the forward R/H 'broom cupboard' as I intend to have the crew door and main door open. I also added some prominent pipe work on the R/H sidewall and used tape painted in a darker colour to simulate sidewall panelling.

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With the interior done I buttoned up the fuselage with very little trouble. Due to the now well known tight tolerance issues with the new tool Airfix kits I dry fitted everything! Most of the window cut-outs required opening up slightly to get a good fit. The bubble window gave the most trouble and required the interior of the recess shaved to improve the fit, it's still not 100% but I can live with it as it is now.

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This afternoons challenge was drilling out the Lightning holes on the troop step!

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Not content with that I have also drilled out lightening holes on the jammer mounts on the fuselage sides

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Next up I need to get the cockpit glazing sections together and masked up, a job for my days off next week!

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Will post a wee update on any progress before then. Many thanks to my work colleague and HC.4 guru FAAKeith who has provided no end of info and guidance on detailing and what to watch out for.

All comments and questions welcome,

Thanks,

Eng

Edited by eng
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Nice work drilling out the holes on the step. How did you get such straight lines?

I find it very difficult to drill more than two holes in a row.

Truth.....probably luck more than anything! I drilled them by pin pricking the centre of each moulded indent on the kit part then drilling each with a drill bit just undersize from the moulded indent and then cleaning up the holes with the correct size drill. Seems to have worked. The jammer mounts were pin pricked and then 4 different drill sizes used to replicate the lightening holes, the very bottom one isn't drilled all the way through but will look ok once a dark wash is flooded into the recess.

Rgds,

Eng

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As Smudge infers the lines of holes require a far higher level of competence than you'd suggest

We know better

I do like the look of this and intend to get one from my local model shop (just to help keep him in business, I usually buy cheap and hang the consequences) when I get in there

(No not buying one at Huddy unless its my own LMS with a stall)

I love how you have done so far, I hope to emulate your work when I can

I'm along with popcorn and cans of beer :thumbsup:

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Just started this for the helicopter group build, and your post shows up one thing I stuffed up already, I've glued the seats in before painting the floor. I didn't realise the anti-slip looked like that so masking it could be a bit a pain now. Oh well, live and learn...

Excellent work so far, I'll be keeping on eye on this for tips.

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Looking good. I've been wanting to see how this kit builds as I've been interested in building a series of Seakings. Until recently I used to get them flying over my house pretty regularly, either Junglies or occasionally 771's HU5s. Sadly now all gone but the Navy and AgustaWestland make up for it with lots of Wildcat and Merlin action.

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Thanks for all the kind words folks, will try and get some more progress pics up middle of next week. Back to 1:1 scale aircraft building again today

Eng

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Looking very nice so far, I've got the same kit in the Helo GB, very nice kit although I have found that I am experiencing the same fit issues you had with the rear window. The step looks nice drilled out, I too tried that but have split between two holes so it is in need of a 'special' repair! Looking forward to seeing this one develop.

Bob

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  • 4 weeks later...

So it's been a while, for one reason or another I haven't done any modelling in nearly a month and was getting withdrawal symptoms! I tend not to model after work either as I'm prone to making stupid errors :0

Anyway spurred on by yesterday's email from Airfix letting me know that my 2 Seaking HAR.3's are on there way I thought I better get a shift on with this.

Last night I made a start with the front end glazing and installed the left hand windows. I slaved in the full clear crew door to give a bit of support to the fuselage roof at the forward left corner, I'll be using the open door option on this build. Dry fit of the left window section was pretty good just needing a gentle sand of the footwell window edges to get a nice fit here. The back edge of the window at the crew door did not want to sit flush and it took me a wee while to find out that the half bulkhead behind the left seat needed a gnats chuff shaved off the outer edge to allow the window to sit correctly (grey strip inside the green circle below). The roof join at the aft edge of the crew door also needs a small spot of filler to tidy it up.

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That was as far as I got last night. I was careful not to get any glue along the back edge of the window, just in case I inadvertently glued the crew door into place too, it's just popped into position.

This morning I fitted the right window section with very little trouble at all, just a very gentle sand around the edges for a snug fit. The windshield/roof section however required a bit more getting to get a nice fit. Firstly at the base of the windshield it would not sit flush across the central fixed nose section, the left and right footwell window upper corners sat slightly higher than this mid section. To get around this I carefully sanded 2 small notches in the lower corners of the windshield (circled yellow below). On my next builds I'll trim the side footwell windows instead as the framing will allow this to be hidden a bit better. One other thing to adjust at this point is the forward upper corners of the side window pieces needs slightly rounded off to match the profile of the corner of the upper roof/windshield, otherwise these will hold the roof section off and prevent a good fit.

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The other area that needed a bit of work was along the back edge of the upper roof. Dry fitting showed a step between the left hand roof section (above the crew door) and the right fuselage half, another bit to watch on my next build! I chucked a thin .005" shim in here to even things out a bit and this did help (yellow circled area in the pic below), but on final assembly with everything sitting very nicely there is now a tapering gap on the right side of the fuselage!? (red area) The main section wanted to pull slightly left at the back edge by the crew door (blue circled area) but holding in place for 10 mins as the glue set seemed to sort this out. Once all this has set, the only bits I will need to deal with will be the gap, and to glue the upper edge of the left windows to the upper roof section, fill a hairline gap at the left side of the windshield and the 2 lower corners of the windshield. I've found that glueing in small sections has allowed a bit of adjustment here and there.

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It's well worth taking your time to put this bit together as it's such a focal feature of the finished model and is a very characteristic bit of the Seaking family. I'm pretty pleased with this, but as I've pointed out above there is a couple of bits that will get done slightly differently next time. I may add a small very thin shim of plastic at the fuselage roof joint between the 2 intakes just to get a tidier fit all round but that might just be over exuberant trimming on build up of the fuselage by me.

Now I've got a rotor head to build! Oh, and mask all those damn windows.....

Feedback and comments always welcome,

Eng

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Nice work so far, when I built up mine I left the central canopy piece loose for the painting. It fitted quite nice but I hadn't fitted the overhead console to it at this stage. When I did fit it I noticed that the canopy didn't want to sit right. I removed the overhead console and the back of the mounting lugs enabling the console to slide forward a mm or two. In the bottom photo you can see it is very close to the rear cockpit bulkhead and that may be causing some of the problems. It seems to have done the job on mine so may be worth looking at the console fit in your next builds. Airfix have done really well with the fit of the parts but there a couple of places that the fit is very slightly too tight.

Bob

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You're quite right, I never mentioned it in my post but I did shave a touch off the back of the console to give that little bit more room for manoeuvre. It does help greatly in getting it all to line up.

Have you got an in-progress build on the go?

Rgds,

Eng

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Have you got an in-progress build on the go?

Rgds,

Eng

I'm backdating mine to the late 80's early 90's in the helicopter GB here

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234997456-mds-whirlygig-attempt-no1-all-coloured-up/page-1

Bob

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Quick update,.... I cheated with this one and had a go with an Eduard mask set, this has probably helped me keep up the momentum with this one because the thought of masking all that glazing without Eduard's help would have put the skids on this. Whilst not cheap, I feel I can justify the expense of these mask sets on aircraft with as much glazing as this given that I don't use them on most of my other kits.

Anyway 20 minutes work compared to a good couple of hours.....

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I airbrushed a light coat of Tamiya flat black over the glazing to ensure the frames were the right colour inside, it'll be fairly visible due to the nice clear plastic, and to check the joins. I need another slight smear of filler over the back of the roof section on the right hand side but the rest of it looks good.

Hopefully I'll get a coat of Tamiya fine surface primer across it all this week.

Rgds,

Eng

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  • 1 month later...

Fast forward a few weeks and I had the opportunity to throw some paint at my Junglie this morning.

Now I was fortunate enough to have a sample of the real paint which I used as a comparison to get a match from Tamiya colours through mixing Olive Green, Olive Drab and a touch of Flat Earth. Subjective this most certainly is because at the time it looked great and yet I look at this pic now and I'm not so sure anymore....too green and possibly too light. However as with pics of the real thing you change the light conditions and the colour changes too, you just can't win! I did always intend to show a slightly worn and faded finish and obviously took scale effect into consideration as well.

Anyway over to you guys for your thoughts and opinions......

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I did pre-shade with NATO black and the effect is just there enough but it's very subtle. I did almost loose it all together as I ran out of my mix when just about complete, and by the time I mixed another lot the first batch had dried and I could see several areas where I had to go back over it. I'm quite happy with it despite my reservation about the colour, I'm hoping a gloss coat might darken it down a touch.

Has anyone ever tried a drop of a dark coloured paint mixed in with there Future to darken the overall finish? Just a thought.

I also managed to get the rotor tips, and both top and bottom surfaces all sprayed today as well.....that was fun trying to get 5 equally matched yellow tips! This was later surpassed by 90 minutes of masking a "wafer thin" strip along the leading edge of each blade for the metallic leading edge......aaaarrrgh! The resulting blades now looking like this:-

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Hopefully get a wee bit more done as the week goes on and quite glad to have gotten back up and running with this build again.

Rgds,

Eng

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I went back and looked at the helicopter last night after my post and it definetly looks darker than the pic. The flash went on the camera when I took the pic which hasn't helped.

I can see myself still debating this even once it's finished and on the shelf!!

Eng

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That is a very nice looking cab! The green does look a touch light but I am assuming it was taken indoors with flash, which will bleach it somewhat. Take a picture outside, without flash for a more realistic comparison (obviously during daytime!).It doesn't look offensively light and I reckon you could get away with it. In the past I have used a dark grey mix of pastel dust which gives it a darker, 'used' appearance.

Great work though!

Bob

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Thanks for all the kind and encouraging feedback so far.

I seem to have gained a bit of momentum on this again and today spent all of my modelling time masking again! Patience and perseverance was the order of the day and on this occasion...... I won! Some experimentation and trials also paid off and here's where we got to -

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I know the kit is supplied with decals for these area's but with all the kick steps, lumps and bumps I wasn't convinced that these were going to play ball when the time came, not to mention the black of the decals was just a bit too black for my liking.

The big problem I had today was how to get masks cut for both sides that were symmetrical. I had read a post here on BM a while back about how to cut masks using the decal sheet as a template and I took this one step further.

1) I traced round the decals using the protective cover paper supplied with the sheet,

2) I applied a piece of wide Tamiya tape to both sides of a piece of very thin clear acetate so that both pieces of tape effectively overlapped each other, think acetate sandwich!

3) place the traced decal outline over the Tamiya tape and acetate sandwich and again using a pencil or ballpoint with a fine tip, draw round the outline of the decal hard enough to leave an impression in the Tamiya tape,

4) next simply (or not!) cut the shape into the acetate sandwich with a new blade. This bit will either work, or its back to step 1), I had 3 attempts at the exhaust shape but nailed the lower oval area's first time.

5) you'll now have a single piece of acetate with a left mask on one side and an identical right mask on the other.... ta da!! In this case I wanted the outline but this would work equally well if you wanted the middle bit.

You need to be quite gentle peeling the masks off, my oval ones curled and twisted but gentle handling and getting them onto the airframe will solve the problem.

In the above pic I hadn't yet masked the upper tail boom walkways or the top of the sponsons, these have now been done so tomorrow, hopefully, I'll get some NATO Black onto these areas.

Oh, remember my doubts over the paint colour last week, we'll check this out -

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Taken at exactly the same time as the first pic in this post with no change to camera settings, the only thing I did was turn the heli round to get a pic of the other side! Think I was worrying about nothing really.

Hopefully more pics to follow later this week.

Rgds,

Eng

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The masking might be a pain but the painted on black areas will be a huge improvement over decals.

Martin

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The masking might be a pain but the painted on black areas will be a huge improvement over decals.

Martin

My thoughts exactly Martin, the left exhaust area was going to cause problems due to the blister at the top, and the oval bits around the steps and struts,.... nightmare!

Eng

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A couple of hours to mask it but 3 minutes to remove it! Was it worthwhile......

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Got a couple of bits of overspray aft of the sponsons on both sides a wee bit below the crew entry door on the left, but I'll deal with those this evening, to be honest a bit of weathering would hide it but....I know it's there now!

Eng

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