Wessex HC2 Crab Cabs Pt II (Fly Wessex - why on earth did I?)

[Martian]

It all looks fine to me Hendie.

 

Martian 👽

[CedB]

Marvellous Hendie. Almost makes me want to build one  

[Harley John]

Just caught up. Stunning work Hendie, absolutely stunning.

[petetasker]

Lovely work on both.

[noeyedears]

the tiddler is looking very pretty, the stripes came out well.

3year old masking?!!? .....blimey time does fly dont it! 😯

[Hamden]

 

1/72 Wessex looks superb a great result.

1/32 Wessex looks great in black

 

  Roger

[perdu]

Wont help with the build, but I hope this warms the cockles of your heart H

Saturday morning around ten fifteen-ish I think

 

So maybe there might be the wrong sized windows

 

Also maybe there's a god when  this can happen after so long

 

Static park later

 

Works for me

 

 

 

[perdu]

One more

 

Rock on guys

[chrislowe]

On 7/14/2019 at 9:20 PM, hendie said:

Goth her up.

Oh, go on then, if you must. 🖤🖤

[hendie]

Quick update to inform you that there is no update.  Modeling has been suspended due to my decrepit old body deciding to fall even further apart than it has been over the last few years with the reoccurrence of an old injury – the dreaded rotator cuff.  Woke up one morning and the old right arm just didn’t work anymore, and with a pain intensity approaching the level of inventing new sweary wordage.

(I’m putting it down to a Classic Airframes Vampire bite)

 

And it’s my right arm to boot.  ‘course it couldn’t be the one I use on an occasional basis… had to be the important one.  Typing single digit left hand as I write this.

 

On a brighter note – my transfer guy has actually been sending me emails with questions which suggests he is finally moving on my (Pegasus) request – stay tuned!

 

And just to finish off – have you ever noticed how all this modern technology and cutting edge stuff just has not been designed to cope with the venerable Scottish accent?...  There I was, driving along the road the other day… (yes, probably shouldn’t have been, but it was a bit of an emergency and unavoidable) and the radio was playing some really crap music.  As I couldn’t lift my arm to reach the on/off control I thought – Hey ! my car has this fandabby-dozy voice command technology thingamabob – I’ll use that!  

 

[activates voice command on steering wheel with left hand]….

Car: Please say a command…

Me: AUDIO OFF!

Car: …<pause>…(radio goes quiet)

Me: *thinks*  isn’t technology great?

 

Car: … [ding] ... Calling Duvall’s Lawnmower service…

 

 

Me:        AAaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!   

 

 

Technology will have matured when it can finally cope with Glaswegian, Dundonian, & Aberdonian accents – and not start a nuclear Armageddon 

(yes, we all know about the two Scotsmen in the lift!)

 

 

Okay, I’ve had enough typing now.  I shall return when it doesn’t hurt so much!

[Fritag]

I should quickly add that I 'liked' the post not the recurrence of the rotator cuff injury.  Nasty.

 

Physio?  Steroid Injections?  Arthroscopy?  (for the shoulder I mean......nowt can seemingly be done about the venerable Scottish accent? )

[hendie]

1 minute ago, Fritag said:

Physio?  Steroid Injections?  Arthroscopy?

 

Nah, over here they delight in sending you for an MRI, charging you $500 for the process then sending you off with "Sorry, nothing we can do... here's a sling and some painkillers"    "oh, by the way, the painkillers are $50 and the sling is another $100"

 

hopefully it will get back to normal in a few days (been a week now, but pain is receding, if somewhat slower than I'd like) and normal service shall be resumed forthwith'ish

 

 

[CedB]

Get well soon Hendie - sending best wishes  

[perdu]

3 hours ago, CedB said:

Get well soon Hendie - sending best wishes  

Exactly what my friend says H

 

Get well, very well soon

[keefr22]

Ditto to what the chaps above said hendie.

 

And as I thought it best to give your original post a sad face due to the injury, have one of these for the technology bit...  (voice recognition also struggles with Welsh accents too!!) 

 

Keith

[Terry1954]

That wee Wessex is just the biz, and the big black one is rather fetching too.

 

Hope you get well soon Hendie.

 

Terry

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

As a part time (amateur) Doctor and full time drinks distributor, I recommend a course of Leeches.

Oh, and the occasional large Malt. Get well soon.

 

Major and Minor Wessex looking good, and so does that full size one.

[Brandy]

I hope the shoulder's better soon Hendie. I guess you'll just have to stop chucking telegraph poles around!

 

Ian

[Hamden]

 

Sorry to hear of your medical problems, GET WELL soon

Wessex's looking superb hopefully progressing soon

 

  Roger

[heloman1]

Hope you are the mend Alan, no modelling must be a driving you barmy!!!

[Head in the clouds.]

Wish you a speedy recovery Hendie.

[hendie]

Thanks for all the well wishes - things seem to be almost back to normal although I'm traveling this week and airport security may be a bit iffy as I'm not sure I can raise my right arm above my head on command quite yet.  I can get it there but it takes some acrobatics, and generally some form of support to help get it above the shoulder line.

 

Moving on.  A rare and surprising event happened this week - I managed to get some modeling done.  Nothing groundbreaking but small progress and creeping towards the finish line, which can't come too soon after this build.  Y'know, it's been so long since I actually spent any real time here I have almost forgotten where I was (and can't really be bothered to go back through the thread and get my bearings so if I am repeating myself here... tough!

 

Let's begin by getting rid of small Wessex, warts an' all.  I don't really do RFI's so this is what you get... Front

 

 

Starboard

 

 

Port

 

 

a bit closer

 

 

and some other shots..

 

 

 

 

Little Alpha is now safely ensconced in the display cabinet out of harms way.

 

Moving on to Big Alpha, I was greeted with a surprise when I removed the masking around the canopy. Not a very good surprise though. Look at the windscreen on the port side here in this shot - see the big circular clear bit? 

So did I, and that means that the rest of the windscreen is cloudy too... all over the @$!!*!!!$  INSIDE!!!

 

 

No idea what happened there, it certainly wasn't like that when I sealed it up.  My guess is that there was some residue from the polish and it's finally clouded over. 

I was a bit peeved to say the least, however, nowt can be done about it just now.  I'll wait til I open it up again and will need to be a bit creative in polishing the inside of the windows.

On a brighter note, I did manage to get a good seam between the transparency and the fuselage, probably my best effort so far in this type of work.  It would have been nice if Fly had actually got the panel correct though.

 

 

The other side needed a little bit of additional work but cleaned up nicely.

Now we're getting to the point of scratching all those little items off the list that have been handing out there - either because I din't want to do them, they were too difficult, or I just plain forgot.   One of those was to rescribe the winch fold up panel in the trans deck door.  For this I used a tool which is fast becoming a favorite of mine - a 0.2mm scriber from somewhere in Asia I got cheap off you know where

 

 

Nice and sharp and does a fine job.

 

 

The door stop got replaced as I broke it off when handling during painting.  That will get the micro chisel treatment later to refine the shape.  (If I had cut it to size first I couldn't actually handle it!)

 

 

Next up were the handles to stop the drivers falling off the airframe when they were a bit tiddly.

 

 

Once the handles were in place, small length of styrene were added to each handle to represent the mounting boss on the base.  Fiddly but worth it in the end I think.

 

 

Dagnabbit!!!!!!  Why does this thing go and post when I'm in the middle of writing the darned post???

 

Anyways, I thought it was about time I started making some progress towards making a Wessex so it was time to attack the top end, gearbox and all.

I cleaned up the primer around the opening to make sure the glue was going to meet plastic and not paint. - Talking of which, when I finally got back to this I found that the Alclad black primer was very rough, very pebbly almost.  I had to take the thing up to the sink and micromesh the bejeesus out of it to get a decent finish.  I've never had that problem with the grey primer.

 

 

 

I used a brush handle to roll back and forth over the brass mesh, this induced a nice even curvature to the mesh

 

 

which then played nicely with the curvature of the kit.

 

 

But before I could fit the brass mesh, I had to get the MRGB in there hadn't I?

I know way back many, many moons ago, I actually had a plan for fitting this altogether.  If anybody can actually remember what that plan was - feel free to remind me!

In the meantime I had an inkling that I wanted the rotors removable.  Well, I know I did because I do this will all my builds. 

A brass tube will fit inside the MRGB which will support the rotors which will be fitted with a smaller diameter tube.  Now to make sure everything aligns, I made a styrene washer (I use the term loosely) which fitted over a Ø3mm tube.  This will give a sturdy fix inside the MRGB, and a Ø2mm rod will fit inside the 3mm tube, which in turn will be connected to the rotor head.  This will provide plenty support and prevent the rotor head from falling over.

 

 

Washer and tube now firmly adhered to the inside of the MRGB.

 

 

To get the final position for the MRGB, I had to fit the mesh.  Fly don't leave a lot of room here - they obviously designed it to fit their very own, very malnourished gearbox.  However we get there in the end.

Plenty epoxy glue was slabbered all over the inside of the gearbox which nestled onto an aluminum boss I glued in there several years ago. The mesh was then slipped over the MRGB and taped into position while the epoxy cured. 

 

 

Once the MRGB was firmly fixed in place it was the turn of the mesh itself.   I cut thin strips of masking tape which I used to follow the curvature of the mesh (you can just see a small piece sticking out from bottom center'ish here) and then followed up with some wider strips to catch the inevitable dollops of glue that I drop all over the place.

GS-Hypo was my glue of choice here - it's brass and plastic, with curves.  Super glue never works for me in these instances and I prefer GS-Hypo as it has some elasticity to it.

There really wasn't a lot of surface area to slabber with glue.  Fly made it very tight and you have to center the mesh panel over the opening to get an overlap on all sides - probably less than a milllimeter wide all round to use as a gluing surface.

Once the glue was applied, the mesh panel was placed in position and tape used to pull it down to meet the airframe.

 

 

Another of the things that I like about GS-Hypo is that once it's cured, you can run a sharp blade around whatever you're gluing and any smushy bits can easily be peeled off like this

 

 

Starboard side - a very small gap right at the rear end. Overall pretty good though.

 

 

Same with the port side - just a smidgin of a gap present at the back.  I'd call that a win for the GS-Hypo.   (that greasy bubbly bit is actually sweat from my hand - it's damned hot down there today, even with a fan blowing on me )

 

 

One other nasty thing I spotted today was that my floor panels inside have warped.  Not sure how I'm going to deal with that, but that's a job for another day.

 

 

While playing for time and not really sure what I was going to do next I added the small (static?) vent on the spine.  I know there's one there 'cos I distinctly remember having to climb up the spine during a monsoon to place a plug in there.

This was accomplished (since Fly didn't bother to include it) by filing down the end of a small brass tube to sharpen it, then rotating it directly against the plastic, then followed up by drilling 4 small indents around it.

 

 

Then to finish up today's adventures (well, the weeks adventures since I will be gone yet again for another full week) I decided that it was about time it looked a bit more like a Wessex

and stuck this on...

 

 

and there she lies awaiting a nice belly rub.

 

 

all that work has made me hungry - I fancy a roll 'n' bacon, which would be nice if I had any bacon, and even nicer if I had any rolls.

 

ta ta for now

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2019 by hendie

[Pete in Lincs]

36 minutes ago, hendie said:

 although I'm traveling this week and airport security may be a bit iffy as I'm not sure I can raise my right arm above my head on command quite yet. 

Okay, so which Airport requires you to do a Nazi salute? 

In other news, welcome back to almost normality.

Wessex Minor is looking fabulous and deserves a place of honour in the cabinet.

Wessex Major is coming along nicely again, shame about the windscreen but I'm sure you will triumph.

Travel safely and come back again soon, we miss you. 

[CedB]

Well you obviously haven't lost your touch - great stuff Hendie  

[keefr22]

Cracking update hendie, I really like 'ickle Alpha- lovely job!

 

Looking forward to seeing how you tackle the warped floors - my solution would be to close the cabin door....!!

 

Keith