Sikorsky S-61N G-BEWL

[manuel]

Hello, some progress here?

Manuel

[Gimme Shelter]

that's a very good point - where did the S-61 go - did it hover off somewhere !??

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Hi,

 

I can't be bothered making cabin windows for it so shelved it for a while.

 

Telford put me off not only modelling but life in general so am having time off for a while

[pinky coffeeboat]

Was Telford that bad?

 

Jeff

[Gimme Shelter]

2 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Hi,

 

I can't be bothered making cabin windows for it so shelved it for a while.

 

Telford put me off not only modelling but life in general so am having time off for a while

Too Much Telford - there is a vaccine for that but like the flu jab, it is not guaranteed to work and often has severe side effects ! I used Micro Crystal Clear for my windows, it worked a treat for me

 

Hoping to see your build come along more in 2019

 

John

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hoping to see your build come along more in 2019

 

John

 

 

 

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

1 hour ago, pinky coffeeboat said:

Was Telford that bad?

 

Jeff

 

The same thing came up on Facebook quite recently - it's pretty much 2 weeks of severe disruption to normal business with 20 hours of driving a van and 2 long days of mayhem in the middle. For the semi-retired etc it's probably a nice break from the norm but when running the business as a second full time career between one which provides all the family income, it does get a bit much to be honest. I seem to be surrounded by people who are looking for things to fill their time with. I've mostly spent the past 3 years trying to figure out what I can defer without causing too much trouble later.

 

There's probably something close to 50 litres of paint to be decanted now. I just don't want to do it. I'm not the sort of person who can do recreational stuff when there's a backlog of grown-up stuff demanding to be done, so, oddly, nothing at all gets done (except the primary career which is also manic and involving lots of over-nighters and general travel disruption).

 

21 minutes ago, Gimme Shelter said:

Too Much Telford - there is a vaccine for that but like the flu jab, it is not guaranteed to work and often has severe side effects ! I used Micro Crystal Clear for my windows, it worked a treat for me

 

Hoping to see your build come along more in 2019

 

John

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hoping to see your build come along more in 2019

 

John

 

 

 

 

Hi John,

 

I had tried a few windows using Humbrol Clearfix but they were unsatisfactory. I might procure some Krystal Klear and try it. Cutting out uniform rectangles with rounded corners sounds less favourable than a trip to the dentist tbh, but I suspect that anything less will leave me unhappy.

 

Wasn't this modelling thing supposed to be fun? I'm not convinced I actually enjoy it any more!

[perdu]

To be fair to the rest of us Jamie, just so you know it isnt just you, I have been like that

 

At Telford I voluntarily compiled our club stand, mostly successfully in my opinion but there was a fly in the ointment

 

A mate in the club constantly found fault with the planned displaying methods, which he did last time too but this year his carping made me resign the position and next year someone else can sort out making the display nice and uniform AND diverse

 

I will just go on Saturday and Sunday and grab one of the meagre supply of chairs and park my butt on it all weekend

 

Phew...end of minirant

 

I hope you can get back into it soon, we need your enthusiasm out here you know

 

As with our club stand many people fail to understand the pressures on traders too

 

 

And John, nice, very nice S-61N

 

The 'quarter union flag' tail is tempting but I think I am going to be into the 'red square' version

[rob Lyttle]

http://www.ashpole.org.uk/british-airways-helicopters-penzanceisles-of-scilly/

 

If I've done it right, this link should take you to a great read on the Scilly 'copter BEA/BA era.

Spent many years living under the flight path-- even when I was on the Scilly isles.

 

If I may make one observation on the brilliant model? 

The droop on the blades when stationery is quite pronounced.

Turning but idle they are straight out.

And the upward cone shaped sweep of the rotors when going for the lift is quite eye-catching and surprising the first time you see it!!

[rob Lyttle]

4 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

- it's pretty much 2 weeks of severe disruption to normal business with 20 hours of driving a van and 2 long days of mayhem in the middle.

Now that is a perspective that the average show-goer doesn't see or consider!!

No surprise that you're feeling disenchanted with the whole thing, and your mojo has gone Walkabout!!

 

Like the trivial disclaimer used on the online casino and gambling advertisements says.....

When the fun stops, stop!

Sounds like you got your hands full there Jamie.

Pick it up when you're ready.

 

(I do love that BEAH livery on a S61 though...)

(Just sayin...)

[dnl42]

I love it! 

 

I used to get taken by these out to platforms from Aberdeen and occasionally Sumburgh in the early '80s, so this brings back memories.

Edited December 1, 2018 by dnl42
Clear the ambiguity about travelling out to platforms; I was a passenger.

[Col.]

20 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Hi,

I can't be bothered making cabin windows for it so shelved it for a while.

Telford put me off not only modelling but life in general so am having time off for a while

Was that modelling or modellers, as a sub-section of the general public, which put you off the hobby in particular and life in general Jamie?

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

4 hours ago, Col. said:

Was that modelling or modellers, as a sub-section of the general public, which put you off the hobby in particular and life in general Jamie?

Just being there really Col. I've never liked model shows myself and never attended any before having the business. I just don't like the environment really.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

A little birdy (a whirly one) has told me that my cabin window woes will resolve themselves if I can but wait a bit.

 

In other news, I managed to motivate myself to do some modelling stuff yesterday and made some visible progress on something (not the '61 though)!

[Gimme Shelter]

That must have been a Whirly called Roger me thinks. You've generated 5 pages of forum interest on your build now so there are no excuses not to complete your 61 once you have your windows

[heloman1]

Come on Bill, tis' the season for good cheer and sitting in front of the fire and modelling...

 

Colin

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Out of a desire to start my next S-61 derivative (and I may have lost the plot slightly with the overall concept I have in mind for that) I decided to try Microscale's Micro Kristal Klear for one window. It's better than a previous Humbrol Clearfix test looked, but I'm not sold.

 

 

 

 

 

[71chally]

Fair dues fur sticking with this Jamie, more work than I'm prepared to do.  Really is time for a full injection kit of the S-61 by now.

[perdu]

On 05/12/2018 at 06:55, heloman1 said:

Come on Bill, tis' the season for good cheer and sitting in front of the fire and modelling...

 

Colin

Admittedly it has taken me a while to get re-stuck-in but 61ing goes apace

 

Although some of the later schemes are beginning to impress me muchly, we'll see

 

And the window issues are on my mind...

[Simtech]

I have some cockpit photos from G-BEWL if you'd like them, Jamie.

[Simtech]

https://ibb.co/G50BxFy Overhead panel

 

https://ibb.co/Qr9XsyY  Centre stand

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by Simtech

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

On ‎5‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 9:47 PM, Simtech said:

I have some cockpit photos from G-BEWL if you'd like them, Jamie.

 

23 minutes ago, Simtech said:

https://ibb.co/G50BxFy Overhead panel

 

https://ibb.co/Qr9XsyY  Centre stand

 

 

Thank you

 

As it happens, I started making a styrene mould yesterday. I've never done any casting at all but thought I might try it. I have a trial-sized quantity of clear casting resin and some silicone rubber. I didn't think it was worth wasting anyone's time posting here again until I had something better to show but maybe I will share my rubber moulding efforts here instead

[perdu]

Clear casting resin is on my to-try list too

 

Please do show us how it goes

[Simtech]

As you can see from the photos above, G-BEWL still exists.  The salvaged fuselage was cut up and turned into a Simulator that still trains crew to this day.  I run the Sim on behalf of the Owners.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

Righto. It's good to see that some things never change, and specifically it's the length of times that elapse between me doing something, putting it down for a break and picking it back up again. To be fair, my real job and second job are all about deadlines and timings and I'd rather go looking for fist fights in pubs than introduce time pressures to my model making too!

 

Anyway, I bought Whirlybird's new window set at Scale Model World last November and thought I'd give them a try today.

 

 

It turns out they're not going to be quite the lazy git solution I was hoping for, as they are in fact all cast a bit too big.

 

 

Better too big than too small though. What's required therefore is to sand each one down to fit the holes in the fuselage. Rather than risk popping them out later in the build (they are resin stuck in resin, and the only way of getting a strong bond with resin is epoxy resin and that's evil, stringy, messy stuff at best and positively asking for trouble gluing in windows), I'm going for a rather tight fit and have fitted the first 3 slightly proud of the fuselage, and stuck them in with medium CA glue applied with an acupuncture needle as is my ship-modelling SOP for precision gluing.

 

 

I then sanded these down flush with the fuselage exterior using an Infini Model 400 grit hard back sanding stick. I switched to wet sanding after this photo - I just wanted to make a dusty mess for illustrative purposes...

 

 

Once happy, I polished them back up to a see-through state using 1500, 2500 and 4000 grit Infini Model softback/spongey sticks. This took much less time than getting them to fit the holes did, incidently.

 

 

I found a few pin holes just below the surface - easy to fix

 

 

 

Whilst a bit more work is required to use these, the resin windows polish up very easily and once in they look so much better than Clearfix or Krystal Klear film. I am wondering if I might beseech @CedB to cut me some vinyl masks for the cabin windows???

 

 

 

 

[CedB]

2 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

I am wondering if I might beseech @CedB to cut me some vinyl masks for the cabin windows???

Of course! Send me the details and I'll get some cut.

 

I'm now entirely confused about what year it is - I found this thread and started catching up (like, like, like) until I saw 2017… 

2 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Righto. It's good to see that some things never change, and specifically it's the length of times that elapse between me doing something, putting it down for a break and picking it back up again.

Ah, that explains it!

Is the modelling room untidy again?

 

Nice work Jamie and a sobering back story.

Following now as part of me 'I might like Helicopters' clinical trial