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

[bobsyouruncle]

Amazed at the level of work and detail you're putting into this, Hendie. It looks superb. I've got pitifully lower ambitions, skillset and expectations for mine but am inspired by this to have a go at some bits.

I didn't want to have to, but will ask...do you think you'll be replacing all the external rivets for the raised ones?

I'm asking as I also loved the look of Mr Watanabe's Rescue Wessex at Telford, but noticed that he'd kept the recessed rivets ones on his. I really liked his end result though and am torn a little as I think it looks 'almost nicer than the real thing?' ('herecy!' I hear you shouting...). It was a sort of ready made excuse also, if I didn't wish to face that task but wondered about your take on it? 

Really enjoying watching this progress. 

 

 

[Martian]

1 hour ago, hendie said:

 

I get the "WE are doing xyz today!" announcement (normally as I have coffee in hand and walking towards the downstairs door) without any prior warning or notification.  Then I have to wait for an inordinate amount of time for her to get ready. Y'know - that length of time that just long enough to be really annoying but not quite long enough so that there's time for you to go and actually start anything useful.

 

 

You must have a different model of SWMBO than me.  What year is yours? I just got the base model, it sounds like you got the GLS

I think that's pretty much standard. I better not say too much more as Mrs Martian was spotted polishing the blurglecruncheon earlier today which means she knows where it is and I know by painful experience that she knows how to use it. 

 

Martian 👽

[hendie]

Well, the productivity couldn't last. Today came with a bit of a slow down though progress was still made.  Still crawling forward though which is always to be appreciated.

 

8 hours ago, airscale said:

real eye candy for those of us who love that sort of thing

 

Thanks Peter, coming from you, I take that as a terrific compliment. 

 

On 12/29/2018 at 1:29 AM, Bigdave22014 said:

You know you're going to remove that extra "arm" on the underside....

 

Ggrrrrrrr....

 

 

The unwanted forky bit has now forked off to the plastic scrap yard.  The area still needs a bit of tidying up but at least it's the right shape now.  I also had to replace the (SACRU?) cable box  (the grey/white sandwich) on the underside as that gave it's life up during the process -which was kind of handy as I realized that it was the wrong shape to begin with. Now fixed.

 

On 12/29/2018 at 5:19 AM, perdu said:

I don't believe the solid 'pipe' issue will matter when he slips the flared rubber pipes over the ends...

 

As our esteemed Bill says, so it is done.  Well, not done exactly, but at least I found some tubing that fits the bill (no pun intended!)  Now I just need to put that in a safe place.

 

 

I also found a little piece of tube which will come in handy when I get around to making the landing light... someday

 

 

Now to the part that caused todays slow down.  The windscreen.

I have been putting this off for a long time, but eventually I had to get around to it, for better or worse.  For those of you unfortunate enough to have followed this thread from long long ago, you'll remember I made my own etch for the instrument panel, and I also redid a lot of the cockpit area as Fly's interpretation was a little bit wanting.

I was conscious when doing all that work that it as likely to give me problems further down the line as a lot of parts were moved around from where Fly intended them to be and of course, I wasn't wrong. Nope, I wasn't.

It took a lot of sanding of the windscreen just to get it to fit into the available space, and I'm going to have to add some spacers here and there to take up the slack, but that's the easy part.

The difficult part was getting the instrument panel to fit on the same end of the fuselage as the windscreen.  Here is a quick 'what do I have to do here' shot and as you can see, the front end of the instrument panel coaming is sitting way higher than the bottom edge of the windows.  Ouch.

 

 

Nothing for it but to hack some off the front end of the coaming.  Then it was chamfered to allow the windscreen to slip past into place.

It didn't.

 

 

Eventually, after much chamfering and much more chamfering, and a bit more plastic removal etc etc. including chamfering the bottom edge of the windscreen, I got something that resembled a reasonable fit.

Now this is only a dry fit, so if I add glue, it probably won't fit any more but I felt I was pushing my luck and decided to come back another day when I am a bit less frustrated.

 

 

I think I can get that to work.  The coaming will take a little bit of modification to look half decent in there but nothing too drastic.

But what does it look like from the outside?

 

 

and without the flash, it doesn't look too bad at all.

 

 

After all that kerfuffle, there's a few repairs needing done in the cockpit to replace all the bits I broke during the session, but to be honest I was expecting a bit more damage, so I'll settle for what I got.

A few more bits were stuck on here and there - nothing worth photographing though. However I did come to fit yet another bit of kit plastic again - this strip just below the sliding window...  This is what Fly give you for the window to 'slide' on

Then I checked my references...

 

 

More on that after this short intermission...

 

8 hours ago, bobsyouruncle said:

I didn't want to have to, but will ask...do you think you'll be replacing all the external rivets for the raised ones?

I'm asking as I also loved the look of Mr Watanabe's Rescue Wessex at Telford, but noticed that he'd kept the recessed rivets ones on his. I really liked his end result though and am torn a little as I think it looks 'almost nicer than the real thing?' ('herecy!' I hear you shouting...). It was a sort of ready made excuse also, if I didn't wish to face that task but wondered about your take on it? 

 

Ehrrrr..... no.  Let me clarify though.   The only BM'er I know that's crazy enough to contemplate such an endeavor is Crisp - I just don't have the patience (or skill) for it

What I am intending to do though is add rivets here and there, where I think the structure calls for it.  I've already done one side of the tail, and will do the other side once I've recovered.  In the meantime however, I am doing small sections here and there where I think the rivets will add some visual interest. - such as on this strengthening panel just below the trans deck

(you can see the white strip I used for the sliding window runner here in this shot. Once again, Fly weren't even close - and it would have been so easy...)

 

 

My intention is to try and add rivets so it doen't look like I've added rivets (if you get my drift).  I don't want to draw attention to the riveting but rather have them as subtle 'texturing' over the airframe.  At least, that's my intention - lord only knows where this will end

 

 

Mr Watanabe did a fantastic job of his Wessex and it's definitely one to be proud of - I use his website on an almost daily basis for references - he's got some great photo's on there.  It was his model that gave me the idea for adding rivets.

Hopefully I will manage to keep somewhat of a balance and not go overboard. 

 

 

[heloman1]

Hi Alan, you've been busy. Before you go any further, wouldn't you like to check the positition of the landing light housing. I think you have positioned it too far aft. Looking through my reference, the rear edge of the housing should be on the nose bay shut line.

 

Colin

[hendie]

5 hours ago, heloman1 said:

Before you go any further, wouldn't you like to check the positition of the landing light housing. I think you have positioned it too far aft.

 

Thanks for the heads up Colin.  I'll check that out later today.  I'm certain I placed it within a "panel line' that Fly provided as a location - but that doesn't mean it's in the right place!

[bobsyouruncle]

16 hours ago, hendie said:

Ehrrrr..... no.

I only quoted the beginning of your reply, Hendie as I’m over at the mother in laws (near Valley) and I’ve not used my phone for britmodeller before. Phew! What a relief to hear that. I like the sound of this ‘subtle texturing’ thing and now I will no longer fret about that one. Loving watching this progress. 

[perdu]

10 hours ago, heloman1 said:

Hi Alan, you've been busy. Before you go any further, wouldn't you like to check the positition of the landing light housing. I think you have positioned it too far aft. Looking through my reference, the rear edge of the housing should be on the nose bay shut line.

 

Colin

Just to see Colin's point, XR525 in Cosford when she wasnt stuck up on a blimmin' plinth

And side on

It seems to me that the position Alan has used is OK but there are missing panel edges from closer observation

 

The opening panel edge at the back is too wishywashy

 

(oh no it isnt...Oh yes it is)

Merry New Year everyone

[Pete in Lincs]

Look at that, a wessex yawning at a Morris Traveller.

 

Lovely belly work, Hendie. Warts and all!

I also agree about the rivets. Keep it simple.

By the time you add wipers on the outside,

spares gloves and maps etc on the inside,

the coaming/windscreen interface will look fine.

[hendie]

you will all no doubt be happy to hear that todays update is a little bit smaller than those of the last few days.  That's down to the fact that every piece is taking so much longer to accomplish.

 

After all that belly fondling of the last few days I thought I had better give it a squirt of primer to see how bad it was, and it was actually a lot better than I thought.  Sure there's some rework and some micro meshing required but nowhere near as much as I had anticipated.

 

 

Some primer over the rivets to hold them in place.  It all looks a bit stark at the moment as there's no other greeblies in the vacinity.  Once other bits start to get added I think those rivets will tone down a bit.  I may also micromesh the heads just a tad to flatten them so they don't cast such a stark shadow.

 

 

The swing arm mounting plates are looking much better for the added stuff.  My riveting wasn't perfect by any means - drilling with such a small drill bit, in this case a 0.4 mm drill meant that if you weren't absolutely perfectly centered then it looked a mile off - no inbetween here I'm afraid.  However, once the swing arms are in place along with all the other carbuncles I think it will look fine.

 

 

 

13 hours ago, heloman1 said:

Before you go any further, wouldn't you like to check the position of the landing light housing. I think you have positioned it too far aft.

 

Colin, I checked and if anything, I have it just a touch too far forward.  The final position was really dictated by a combination of the inscribed panel line provided by Fly and the way in which it lay against the fuselage - with minimum gappage.

Some of the photo's above may have been misleading so I have penciled in the nose door shut line so you can see that the light s indeed sort of in the right area.

I lost a lot of panel lines when I was blending the bottom half onto the main structure so those will have to be reinstated at some point.   As Bill pointed out, a lot of Fly's panel lines are very wishywashy. (that's being kind!)

 

 

In other areas such as here on the tail, they provide a nice rendition of the strengthening plate, but it's absolutely devoid of any of the necessary rivets.   Guess what's next...

 

 

Yup, more rivets!

this sort of thing gets to be contagious

 

 

'cos there's just some areas that are crying out for big rivets!.   Actually, these rivets look just a tad on the large side now that I look at this photo. Darnit.  It's a lot more difficult to go down in size than it is to go up.  Again, some micromeshing to flatten the heads a bit will help here I think

 

 

And just to finish up todays adventures in Fly-land I found some kit bits I could actually stick on!  (Not without some rework though).  They're going to takea littl ebit of blending in before they look as if they're not just spare bits stuck on.

Yes I did drill the hole behind the fire access panel - and also opened up the rectangular opening for the upper intake

 

 

Then I spent an absolute age trying to get a decent looking splitter panel in the vent (as Fly don't provide one)

 

 

 

and I've just had orders from SWMBO so I have to go and get some messages in for Hogmanay

 

toodle pip and all that!

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Smart as paint, Mate.

Slotted screws over the beetleback. Mushroom head, so a bit of a rubdown won't hurt.

 

Happy Hogmanay! and best wishes for the new year.

[hendie]

OOps, silly me - I forgot what day it was...

 

to all and sundry

 

May the best ye've ever seen
Be the worst ye'll ever see
May a moose ne'er leave yer girnal
Wi' a tear drap in his e'e
May ye aye keep hale an' he'rty
Till ye're auld eneuch tae dee
May ye aye be jist as happy
As we wish ye aye tae be

 

 

 

 

[Martian]

8 minutes ago, hendie said:

           May the best ye've ever seen

Be the worst ye'll ever see
May a moose ne'er leave yer girnal
Wi' a tear drap in his e'e
May ye aye keep hale an' he'rty
Till ye're auld eneuch tae dee
May ye aye be jist as happy
As we wish ye aye tae be

 

 

 

 

A bit thundery Sir! (with apologies to the centurion in Mony Python's Life of Brian)

 

Martian 👽 

[TheBaron]

Please be careful with those rivets my friend.

 

Everyone thinks that they are in control until six months later they're micturating into a bucket at the bench and only leaving the basement to see if any more rivets have arrived in the post.

 

You are a (relatively) young man and still have much that you can do for World Peace.

 

[perdu]

A pig in a sash with Shamrock

 

Kinda denotes my childhood fears, where's my nightmare pills?

 

😨

 

 

 

HNY friends

[heloman1]

Hi Alan. Firstly happy New Year to you and your family.

 

Now I see the landing lamp housing from the side I see whay you mean. I was loolong at the joint line between the nose and the fus and not the shut line! As you say, a the Fly kit leave a lot to be desired, shame they could have done so much better. I offered help but thye didn't seen too interested!!!

 

Crack on then mate.

 

Colin

[CJP]

micturating - amazing what you learn on BM

CJP

[hendie]

well, here we are with my first wippy post of the new year, and I still haven't finished this darned thing.  Probably another year to go before I get anywhere near finished knowing my work rate.  Still, it keeps me off the streets.

 

So let's start with something a bit different then... ehrrr, no.  Let's start with some more brass.  I'm going to use a little trick that I stumbled upon in my (I think) Lysander build.  I need to create a number of vents that are missing on the kit fuselage. First step is to take a piece of brass and shape it to the necessary form.  In this instance, I've created a rounded end about 1.5 mm wide, and thinned the brass down a tad at the end.  This is going to be used to form the styrene into the shape I need for the vents.

 

 

Now, instead of plunge molding, or vacuum forming, I'm going to do the opposite... what shall we call this then ?  How about drop molding?  That sounds about right, because what I am going to do is heat up the brass with my gas torch then lay it flat on the bench.  Next step is to drop a piece of styrene onto the brass, then with a pair of tweezers, press the styrene down around the edges of the brass former.

Sorry - I didn't have enough hands to take photographs of that process, but look at this shot below and you should get the idea. 

When the brass is hot, you have about 10 seconds or so to form the styrene before the brass loses too much heat, in which case, you just heat it up again and have another go.

Leave the styrene in place for a minute or so then you can remove the brass and repeat the process as many times as you need.

 

 

The vents were then trimmed from the sheet, refined a bit more and then stuck on the airframe where Fly should have molded them in the first place.

 

 

Wait... what's this?   Fly did mold one.  Only 1 - there are 4 on the fuselage so if they decided to mold one, then why not mold the other three?

 

 

After some grumbling the other three vents were stuck in place.

I was on a roll here.  For some obscure reason I really like sticking greeblies on the fuselage.  It just seems so much more, oh I dunno... helicopter like. More functional and purposeful. None of that sleek boring plank wing stuff.  These are work horses, not joyriders.

Then it was time to start scanning the reference photo's again to see what sticky-outy bits need added.  One of the first ones to jump out at me was the tie down bracket for the blade fold.  All the more important because I will be folding the blades on this one. Check the kit... nope, nothing provided for this.

Now, ideally I should have photo etched this, but that is such a long process I try and avoid it if I can.  That meant I had to form the bracket by hand.  For such a small piece, my go to material is, you guessed it... brass.

Using a sharp blade I scribed a couple of fold lines and cut a small rectangle of brass out of some scrap sheet.  This was then folded, and a few holes drilled.  One hole to help secure it to the airframe and another two holes to hold the bar that the blade fold mechanism hooks on to.

 

 

I used some rivets left over from Pegasus as a pin to help secure the bracket, and a piece of stainless wire as the bar.

 

 

Then there was another smaller bracket which fits just aft of that bracket.  This one is for  one of the support shafts for the blade fold mechanism.

This was bracket number one.  I then had to make another 4 as I kept putting them down and then couldn't find them again.  Dottage huh!

 

 

These brackets were then fitted in place after drilling the fuselage to accept the rivets.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I am using GS-Hypo to batten things down.  I find it gives enough time to position things should you have to adjust anything, and because it's flexible, it will accept the odd bump here and there without the brass pinging off into oblivion.

The forward bracket looks a little bit oversized, but by the time the blade fold mechanism is in place, and the straps are attached, you really won't see this bracket at all.

 

 

Next up were the steps.  Fly actually do a decent rendition of the steps, but I didn't like the fact that they would be butt jointed to the airframe.  They just weren't going to last long that way.  Luckily, the top step has a small gap in the center of the mounting area, so I soldered a brass rivet into the gap.  Now I can pin it to get a much more secure joint.

 

 

The lower step was a little bit more problematic only having a single flange at the back, so I had to drill the flange to accept a rivet.

Once again, GS-Hypo'd into place

 

 

Last job of the day was to add the triangular support webs for the steps.  Fly do provide those in the etch set, but they were so flimsy, I opted to use small sections of styrene.

But wait - what's going on here?  Take a look at the top step.

There's a large space between the two footholds.  Fly wold have you fit 4 of those triangular webs - 2 on each side.  However looking at reference photo's, there are only 3 and that area between the two footholds is much narrower.  Darnit.

 

 

That called for some chiselling to remove the unwanted plastic.  I was a bit apprehensive about attacking that area with a chisel, but it went quite well and a few gouges later we have a narrower section.  Much better.

 

 

here endeth the first episode of 2019.

Hope you found something interesting in there.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2019 by hendie

[perdu]

Yes

 

A veritable feast

[Hamden]

 

Always something interesting in every update of your builds

 

  Roger

[Martian]

I entirely get what you are saying about adding the greebies to the outside of a helicopter. For me this is when a build start to come to life.

 

Martian 👽

[Brandy]

Plenty of interest as usual, don't fret on that one. I love that molding technique, I may well steal it for a couple of vents on the Battle.

 

Ian

[noeyedears]

blimey! i didnt know there was so much detail on a wessex.  lovely stuff 🤗

[TheBaron]

21 hours ago, hendie said:

Now, instead of plunge molding, or vacuum forming, I'm going to do the opposite... what shall we call this then ? 

Hendicizing?

21 hours ago, hendie said:

For some obscure reason I really like sticking greeblies on the fuselage. 

Even more obscurely, you have a ready audience for this sort of thing! 😄

 

Those surfaces are looking seriously realistic now. Lovely display of techniques to boot!

 

[phildagreek]

Fantastic!

[CedB]

Lovely stuff hendie and more tips for the files - thanks!