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1/72 Airfix Sea King HC.4 - TimV1969


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I'd like to join in on my first Group Build with this kit, the Airfix Sea King HC.4, which I will be building as an early machine, either in the delivery scheme (big white letters, etc, which I very much like the look of) or in the Falklands scheme with black lettering, badges painted over, etc. Thanks to some helpful answers to my question posted in the 'Cold War' forum, I at least know how I'm going to start, but for now, all I have is a photo of the opened box!

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Looking forward to making some progress, and taking some pics, tomorrow and over the weekend...

Tim

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Thanks for your welcome! A bit of progress last night and this afternoon: obvious interior sink holes filled and sanded, bulkheads fitted to cabin/cockpit floor, seats painted - well, canvas and frame anyway, I've left the masking on the top of the backs for when I paint the yellow/black stripes where it goes in front of the window(s?) - presumably the emergency exit(s)? Centre console fitted to the instrument panel and painted black (and test-fitted to cockpit floor).

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Next steps:

decide whether Humbrol Grey primer passes for Dark Admiralty Grey or not - and if not, top coat of something appropriate on the interior;

mask and paint the anti-slip bits on the cabin floor;

paint yellow/black stripy pole (see above).

Tim

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Weekend progress: I decided I didn't like just the Halford's grey primer inside, so I have used Holts HGREY04 as an approximate match for Dark Admiralty Grey, on the interior. Once that had dried I dry-brushed it with a little Revell Steel (91) to simulate paint chipping, then masked the flooring with Tamiya masking tape:

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and then brush painted Revell Anthracite (9) over the anti-slip matted areas, and cockpit floor. This seemed to go on fairly smoothly although looking at the photos now I see I need another coat on the piece behind the port door:

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I also finished painting the starboard seats - painting the pole in front of the emergency exit gloss yellow, then once that had dried, 'painting' the black stripes with a Sharpie pen. The other bit of progress was sanding off the tailboom reinforcement plates (thanks, Dervish, in the 'cold war' thread!) and scribing a panel line in their place (using dymo tape to mark the edge to score against) and trying to match the depth of the surrounding panel lines (see above). Finally I added the instrument panel decals.

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Little bit of progress over the last couple of nights: light wash of cabin floor, cabin seating finished (I think!) and installed, cockpit seats painted, survival pack painted and fitted to base (inspired by Moaning Dolphin's build!), rear padding of seats painted dark green (difficult to tell the exact colour from photos but this looks about right to me), control columns, pedals etc painted and fitted to cockpit. Toying with the idea of adding crew, so dug out one painted Revell pilot from spares box (think he failed the audition for the pilot of the Rotodyne I built last year!) and one generic Airfix pilot, unpainted as yet. Also will do something for the sheepskin seat covers (borrowing from Jon's build!). So, photo here:

IMG_8896.jpg

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Little bit of progress over the last couple of nights: light wash of cabin floor, cabin seating finished (I think!) and installed, cockpit seats painted, survival pack painted and fitted to base (inspired by Moaning Dolphin's build!), rear padding of seats painted dark green (difficult to tell the exact colour from photos but this looks about right to me), control columns, pedals etc painted and fitted to cockpit. Toying with the idea of adding crew, so dug out one painted Revell pilot from spares box (think he failed the audition for the pilot of the Rotodyne I built last year!) and one generic Airfix pilot, unpainted as yet. Also will do something for the sheepskin seat covers (borrowing from Jon's build!). So, photo here:

Its looking really good now, and those figures will help to fill that cockpit as well. I think I used masking tape for my covers and painted the 'sticky' side with an off white and then when nearly dry just 'fluff' the paint up a bit more to give a furry appearance but I do also like the other suggestions above. Great work!

(inspired by Moaning Dolphin's build!),

:thumbsup:

Bob

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The bit of felt I used cost all of 50p from Hobbycraft. Oh, and the rotor blades are in the post!

Thank you very much for those! and talking of rotor blades... the picture below shows, from top to bottom, the new Airfix blade (which seems to match photos of the latest composite blades pretty well), the Revell blade (as you can see, a slightly different profile), how to modify the Revell blade to match the original Sikorsky/Westland steel blade, and lastly, the original Airfix blade.

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To work out how to modify the Revell blade, I found a photo online of the original blade structure, which suggested there were 22 complete 'root pockets':

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and therefore that the tapered bit was the 23rd pocket. Looking at photos the taper seemed to reduce the depth of that pocket to 2/3rds of the total - since the depth of the pocket (to the straight bit of the spar) is approx. 4mm this meant the end of the tapered bit is approx 2.5mm. Only after doing this did I find a thread on britmodeller http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234919782-revell-sea-king/ that comes to pretty much the same conclusion!

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I've wondered about that, I guess it doesn't bother me that much but then I'm not a Sea King expert. Did machines used inAfghan retain the Carson blades when they returned? And do all Carson blade equipped cabs have the five blade tail rotor?

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Some more photo gazing (and insomnia) later, I'm beginning to think the modern Airfix blades look like a pretty fair reflection of the blades fitted today, where the "slope" looks considerably longer and rather more shallow than on originals. It may be wishful thinking on my part, but it increases my view that I'm happy enough with the kit blades for a "modern" UK based machine.

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I too have been looking at lots of photos! I think the new Airfix blade does look more like the composite blade, but on some photos, depending on the angle, one blade will look more like that one, and another will look more like the Revell one... I also notice that in their instructions for the 45 years SAR Sea King Mk.41, Revell give directions to back-date their blade (for the 1986-scheme option), which roughly accord with what I found above - cutting their blade 21mm from the root, which is the boundary of the 23rd/24th root pocket.

As far as I can see, there should only be three types of rotor blade - original steel ones (part number WD4529-00002), Westland composite ones (part number WD01-29-90250), and Carson composite ones (with the swept tips), So the new Airfix and the Revell ones can't both be right! The thing that slightly confuses me about the the Revell blades is whether they should have the 'ribs' if they are composite?

So I'm happy back-converting the Revell blades to make the steel ones for my early HC4, I just have to worry about whether the two Revell ones I've built (HAR3 and HU5) look right!

Another link I found, not directly relevant to my build but may be of interest, was this:

http://www.mod-sales.com/news/116/Just_arrived_-_Sea_King_MK_4_Helicopter_%28Quantity_3_available_for_immediate_delivery%29.htm

where you can see the Carson blade tips in one shot. Also a lot of Tamiya masking tape on the windows!

Tim

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Not a huge amount of progress over the weekend, but I have: cut the Revell Rotor Blades to fit the Airfix hub; cut the roots off the (folded) airfix blades and assembled them to the hub, drilling both the blades and the roots so that I can assemble them easily later (see photo); and nothing to do with this build, but I also combined the revell hub with the old airfix shaft etc, ready for restoration of the old Airfix S-61:

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I also, having retrieved the two pilots from the old S-61, realised how good the moulding was (also prompted by a build of the classic kit on here), so I stripped the paint from them and have repainted, and combined with the Revell figure I had previously, and an Airfix generic 'Jet' pilot figure from the spares box, formed two crews, one for the 'old' S-61 (or rather, SH-3) - with the white helmets - and one for the HC.4 (Green helmets, obviously). All painted slightly differently - the S-61 pilots looked like they were moulded with flying jackets, so No.1 figure (on the left) I painted with a Revell satin green to represent that slightly shiny Alpha Industries/flying jacket material. The other figures were painted basically in Humbrol 86 Light Olive, with Dark Green (or white) helmets, khaki drill belts or straps, etc.:

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Also I fitted the cabin roof to the port fuselage, assembled the tail, and have started tinting the roof glazing...

Tim

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Bit more progress - have finished tinting the roof glazing (no photos of that yet though), including some of the tinting creeping under the masking tape and needing to be polished out - nervous time! I have drilled out the holes in the 'commando step' and added various bits to the crew step, and drilled holes in that (referring to reference photos including in the walkarounds on Britmodeller. I have added some detail to the rotor head - an upper swash plate (cut down from a spares box leftover) and control rods (0.5mm brass rod). Might not be entirely accurate but it makes the rotor head look a bit 'busier' and should blend in when all painted extra dark sea grey (also drilled some holes to add some hydraulic lines once the rest is painted). Nose panel has had its holes filled, smoothed etc and primed to make sure it looked ok. Also I drilled out the lens on the nose, so I can later paint it silver/chrome (or baremetal foil it, if that works) and drop some clearfix into it to make a lens. I fitted the two crew to their seats (I used tiny bits of self-adhesive felt for the padding, which is now invisible once I super-glued them onto it) and then fitted the seats to the cockpit. I had to break and re-set the co-pilot's arm to get him to fit. (he's originally a Revell fighter pilot, hence the square cut of his jaw, which is my attempt at resculpting him after cutting off the facemask he had originally). Masked, primed and painted the inside of the doors, although they probably won't be visible on the finished model. So, photos:

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Tim

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Slow progress this week as well, but I have painted the main rotor blades (painting them overall gloss yellow first, then masking the sling marks and tips, painting overall satin black, and finally masking the underside and painting the upper surfaces satin Dark Green (Humbrol 163) which all looks pretty effective than me, and better than using decals. I also hand-painted the tail rotor but wasn't happy with the results so I stripped all that paint off and started again with a similar method - sprayed the whole thing gloss white, then masked everything that shouldn't be black, and sprayed that gloss black. (as photo below). The next steps will be to mask around the red bits, paint the red, then paint the hub extra dark sea grey, and the tips (and strip on leading edge) silver...

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Looking at reference photos, I can see the early HC4s had a flat rear port window (rather than the bubble window that they had by the time of the Falklands), and I suspect this matches the interior shots of the early helicopters which have two 'troop' seats on the rear port side, as opposed to the single forward-facing 'crew' seat that later photos, and the kit, portray. Since I have decided to do a very early HC4, I found a suitably-sized flat window in the spares box and fitted it, and removed the crew seat that I had already used, filled the holes underneath, and repainted the floor. This left me needing two troop seats, and although I had a pair left over from a Revell kit, using them would have shown up the slightly simplified seats that Airfix portray. So I scratch-built two more seats to match the rest of the Airfix seats - using 0.8mm rod, 0.5mm sheet (and a bit of 1.6mm channel to reinforce the join at the back of the seat), and painted to match the others. Also painted the bar above the seats yellow and drew the black lines on - not entirely clear from the reference photos but I assume this is right as it is front of what should be an emergency exit:

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I also fitted the floor to the port fuselage half:

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Probably slow progress this week as well as I have encountered a couple of set-backs: Firstly, I thought I had a pot of Xtracolour RN Helicopter Olive Drab in my paint box, which I intended using. Well, if I ever had it, I have lost it (or thrown it out, which seems unlikely as I haven't needed to use it until now), and the only Xtracolour helicopter green in my paintbox is the Olive Green for Army Helicopters. Hannants don't seem to do the correct colour at the moment anyway, but a bit of experimentation indicates that Humbrol 116 looks a reasonable match? I had thought the original colour was a gloss olive drab but reference photos of HC4s early enough to have the large white lettering and squadron badges makes the finish look Satin at best, so I'm hoping airbrushed Humbrol 116 will look right? Finally, I found the jar of Maskol I was going to use to mask the cabin windows had dried-up, so even once I have assembled the fuselage, no air-brushing until I get some more!

(Edited to add that glued the floor to the port fuselage half first, so I can now fit the new troop seat in place - as it doesn't have locating pins, if I'd fitted that first, I might not have got the positioning quite right).

Tim

Edited by TimV1969
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