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Funny Looking Wessex - XL722


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Proper naval colours and a odd looking “sort of stubby nosed Wessex", how could I resist adding one of these to my collection!

This is Hobby Boss' H-34 kit, transformed into the development aircraft used by Westlands and the Royal Navy to develop the Wessex helicopter.

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I have depicted the aircraft in the scheme it wore during demonstration flights 60 years ago, just before the nose was lopped off and the Napier Gazelle gas-turbine engine fitted instead of Sikorsky's Wright Cyclone. It only flew like this for a short period and pictures of it with both the RN titles and the short rounded Sikorsky nose still fitted are hard to find. On delivery from the US it was reassembled at RNAY Fleetlands in June 1956 and flew to Westlands factory at Yeovil in civil markings. The military serial XL 722 was allocated in July 1956 and it conducted a number of test and demonstration flights with RN markings until December 1956 before being converted to carry the Gazelle gas turbine in a rather longer and lower nose, with which it made its first flight in May 1957.

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Only two and a half years after the S-58’s first flight in the UK, the initial UK-built Westland Wessex HAS.1s entered RN service as the first mass produced gas-turbine powered helicopter and until the arrival of the mighty Sea King, the most advanced ASW platform anywhere in the world.

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The build was very straightforward. As a kit, it is much less fiddly than either the Matchbox or Italeri equivalents and has enough basic detail for most modellers. Paint is my normal Humbrol enamels, and the decals come partly from the kit and the rest from out of my spare decal box. The pre-bent blades are a bit of a nuisance in my opinion as they always seem to have too much and too even a bend, as well as being very difficult to straighten enough to depict folded.

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......and here are some of my previously-built Wessies to compare nose shapes! :

 

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FredT :)
 

Edited by gengriz
Undoing the damage that Photobucket inflicted
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  • 2 weeks later...

As a somewhat disappointing postnote to this, it has been observed elsewhere that the main rotors on this kit go the wrong way around!

I claim complete innocence on this as they are pre-bent and that is the only way you can fit them (easily). But they are rotating the wrong way. :( I even checked the tail rotor direction (which seems to be correct), but assumed that the main rotors would be OK.

I knew I should have folded them like the rest of my recent helicopter builds! (but they are pre-bent so that is why I didn't). I'm still mulling how or when I could resolve this fairly major shortfall, but it wont be easy.

Maybe I will just keep them that way. Ho hum. Anyway, this is a warning to anyone else thinking of using the Hobby Boss kit - check the direction of main rotor rotation first!!!!

Fred T :) (p.s. currently on the bench - another RN helicopter that will definitely be folded!!!

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