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

[Brandy]

I had to post my last twice as the site went dead on me. I thought it was my connection, obviously not!

 Looking good so far, the phrase "I can resist everything except temptation" comes to mind.

 

Ian

[hendie]

*cough*  It's been a little time since I posted anything of the 'here's bits I stuck together' nature.  I hope to rectify that this evening with a bit of an update. First though I need to read back through the last page or so to find out where on earth I was and where I (thought) I was heading. The two don't always coincide.

 

Let's start with the tiddly one ('cos not really much work got done on it's bigger brother), and hope I can remember why I took each of the piccies.  Bear with me as I'll probably get some of them out of sequence as well.  Old age doesn't come alone.  No doubt I will have missed out some important aspect of the build as well.

So, anyways...  I harvested the primer farm I planted the other week and most of the blooms had flowered into color - saving me a lot of painting.  I did remember to make my own fire extinguisher

 

 

then got as far as sticking it on before I discovered that the pavla resin bits came with a fire extinguisher... 'doh!    All the throttle handles had broken off (if they were ever there in the first place) so I cut a small length of rod, stuck that in place and painted it blue.  Stand far enough back and it's almost convincing.

Bill - how do you do this on a daily basis ? I mean work with these devils eye strainers of 72 scale?   My admiration for you increases the more my eyes hurt... and as for painting the darn things... ouch!  Shaky hands and poor eyesight do not a good paint job make.

 

 

I slapped some other shade of blue on the back seats.  The blue is a bit ehrrr  vivid in these photo's but not as lurid in the flesh.  They do need toned down with a bit of clear matt though.

 

 

and in my dotage I only just remembered to make the small map/doc holder about the drivers seat.

 

 

Looking at the outside of the Wessi I realized that since I am using the H34 version then the fuel caps were in the wrong place and I needed to add Wessex ones.  I also need to cut off that sticky outy bit just aft of the rear window.  A carbide drill soon took care of the new fuel filler positions

 

 

Fuel fill points opened out with a needle file, and the incorrect parts filled with uhmmn... filler.

I did look at the Italeri "Wessex" version of this and the fuel filler points are still in the same place... wrong.  All they did was open up the windows to change it from a Sikorsky to a Westland.  Some body should really take a trip over there and tell those guys...

 

 

Some plastic was shaved off the inside - so I could get closer to the outside - then filled with scrap plastic sheet

 

 

Which then allowed me to drop two little slices of rod into the recess to make an illusionary filler port in (hopefully) the near enough correct position.  Well, more correcter than Italeri ever managed.

 

 

Small transparencies were glued in place.

 

 

Then I realized that one of them didn't quite come flush to the outer skin - thankfully I had only glued them in position with Formula 560.

The offending article was levered out and much fettling was then performed to get the little blighter to fall into line with the others.  Once I was happy with the fit, it was glued in with the white stuff, and when that had cured, I dribbled CA around the join to make it a bit more secure - one side at a time while the window was protected with masking tape.

 

 

By now I was getting bored with the interior and added the droopy snake.

 

 

along with the heater ducting along the floor

 

 

and finished off by adding some lengths of scrap wire... and that's ALL I'm doing.   This is an Out Of The Box build you know!

 

 

Unnecessary bumps were removed from the outer skin, which reminds me.... must go to the doctor to see about those skin tags

and the redundant holes filled up above were sanded flush again.  Starting to look a bit more like a Wessex now.

 

 

Brass mesh was brought into play to tidy up the tail where I had removed italeris attempt to annoy me.  The mesh is just pressed into place - if I add glue it's just going to wick into the mesh and block it up.  I'm hoping friction and paint are going to do the job for me here.  I may live to regret that.

 

 

Now things get a little more exciting.  Continuing with my out-of-the-box theme, I pulled some brass tube out of the box and started cutting it.  First though I ran the cutter around the tube without completely cutting through it.  I just wanted a small groove in the brass.   Why ?

 

 

Because I'm making a couple of these... Exhausts.  I had to do this on my last Wessex build as the kit supplied parts are just rubbish.

No going back now

 

 

The kit parts aren't anywhere near round, and there's no way you can achieve anything like scale thickness with the kit parts.  Here the brass is thinned down just a bit on the outer edge, and already looks way better than the plastic.

 

 

Dry fit shows that it may just be possible - provided I remove a bit more of the plastic seam, and the remaining ca that's wicked around the seam.  Still better than the kit part though.   In case you are wondering - that seat is not for this kit

 

 

Remembering that Italeri also got the direction of rotation on the tail rotor wrong, I decided that instead of removing each individual blade, I would just cut out any bits in the center and reverse those instead.  That was followed by drilling out the linkage attachment points. ( hint - kit parts are rubbish again)

 

 

Now for something completely different.  I made two of these little fellows. Nice aren't they?

Once slice of strene rod, followed by a sliver of a smaller diameter rod, then topped off with a slice of square rod which has had all four 'flats' fluted with the end of a needle file.

Sort of looks like an unhappy little blue-tac creature here

 

 

But things get better when these are turned into the seat belt clip holder thingy.  I'm having a bash at making the seat belts from aizu tape.

 

 

Once more paint is thrown on the clip mechanism it looks a lot better

Fly actually provide for these in the kit - etched parts in fact.  Unfortunately one part is a flat circle, and the other part is a flat circle with a bit hanging off it - both way overscale and utterly unconvincing.

 

 

Unfortunately Fly's seat belt clips are also way oversize, though I may be able to use the smaller ones shown here

 

 

Aizu tape painted some German blue color - seems a decent color match for the real thing.

 

 

Now the hard part.... buckles, or as we modelers call them.... wire wrapped around a narrow thing

 

 

It looks like the Fly smaller seat belt catch is going to work, but I'm not convinced about my buckles.  I'm also not convinced about the tape as a substitute for the belt

 

 

I'll need to mull this one over.  More experimentation required methinks.

 

 

Now I can get back to some train work.... more color sanding tomorrow and maybe a touch of Pullman Umber before the weekend is over.

 

 

Toodle pip

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

4 hours ago, hendie said:

I'm also not convinced about the tape as a substitute for the belt

Close enough for Government work.

They look good to me, Hendie.

And, did someone mention OOB?

 

4 hours ago, hendie said:

seat belt clip holder thingy

[Hamden]

 

Nice work on baby brother, as for the belts on big brother they look good to me

 

  Roger

[perdu]

Yes

That works a treat, nice exhausts and I'm glad you remembered the pilots plastic overhead magazine holder

What would he do sitting round on an R.V waiting for the grubby blokes to turn up, without Cosmo or Vague to read?

 

😉

 

Fancy you finding lots wrong with an Italeri model, almost unbelievable

 

He he

But really good detailing, might get you enrolled in the Seventy too Club yet huh

 

I do like the seatbelt release catches, excellent excellent stuff

 

OK I'm off to see if you've done some man pulling yet

 

😀

[CedB]

I'm a great fan of OOB builds and this is a great example of one that's... not! Great stuff Hendie, as always

[huvut76g7gbbui7]

9 hours ago, hendie said:

the back seats. 

Are you changing them to Wessex seats (see page 1 of thread) or is this the only OOB bit left?

Interesting to see how you seamlessly transition to the proper scale ( )with almost as much detail.

[Martian]

Nice work Hendie, I particularly like the way you have tackled the exhausts.

 

Martian

[hendie]

7 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

And, did someone mention OOB?

 

well, bits of it did come out of one

 

5 hours ago, perdu said:

But really good detailing, might get you enrolled in the Seventy too Club yet huh

 

don't rush me Bill, those birthdays are already approaching far too fast

 

6 hours ago, Hamden said:

as for the belts on big brother they look good to me

 

I'm still not convinced though - it still looks a bit scrappy to me.

 

3 hours ago, Scimitar said:

Are you changing them to Wessex seats

 

Nope they are staying faithfully true to Italeri's ignorance and incapability to just look at a few pictures

 

in Italeri's own words....

 

Quote

Historical Research
Accurate research is the basis for design and production of all of our models. Before developing a new project, Italeri puts great effort into the historical research of details for the scale model. Attention to every little detail, information about the historical use of vehicles, paint schemes, colors of uniforms, and so on, allow our customers to create models that accurately portray all the periods with the highest realism possible. We want to turn a fun hobby into a cultural statement.
 

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Martian Hale said:

Nice work Hendie, I particularly like the way you have tackled the exhausts.

 

I'm just lazy - it seemed an easier option than trying to fix Italeri's offering

 

 

[perdu]

Ita-phooie

 

😧

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Seat belt clip holder thingy = QRB (quick release... box? buckle? brick?).

 

Nice exhausts.  I couldn’t agree more about the scale; how do Bill and them others do it?  (And as for 1/144...)

Edited April 21, 2018 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[TheBaron]

Worth the price of admission for the brass exhausts alone. That last update was a corker hendie: I like these moments when you take us on a walkaround of the aircraft doing various jobs.

On 21/04/2018 at 1:27 AM, hendie said:

I'm also not convinced about the tape as a substitute for the belt

In its raw 'fresh off the roll' state I would tend to agree with you - at 1/72 I find it a bit 'vinyl silk' in finish: scraping a scalpel back and forth along a few times not only abrades the surface nicely to introduce a note of fabric texture in the visual finish, but seems to reduce the tension in the material give it the 'sag' of fabric also.

[hendie]

14 hours ago, TheBaron said:

scraping a scalpel back and forth along a few times not only abrades the surface nicely to introduce a note of fabric texture in the visual finish, but seems to reduce the tension in the material give it the 'sag' of fabric also.

 

Nice tip Tony - thanks.   I think I found what the issue was - I'm using Aizu tape, not the Tamiya masking stuff.  On a closer inspection today I found that the Aizu tape has an almost waxy finish to the non sticky side - very flat with no discernible texture to it at all.  I tried the scalpel scrape but it didn't seem to make much difference.

More of that later, but first the mundane stuff.

 

With the Itsa-ey kit, you have to install the tail rotor before closing up the fuselage.  Rather than opt for the kit method of gluing a plastic disc to the rotor shaft on the inside - which I couldn't since I had already cut it off so the rotor could actually rotate IN THE CORRECT DIRECTION (yes italeri, that note was for you...) I chose to use a small brass tube.  I had already fitted a brass shaft week or two ago - all I had to do was cut a small length of tube and slip it over the shaft. I put a drop of ca on it to hold things in place, then my distrust of ca kicked in and I opted for a simpler method - just squeeze the tube with my sprue cutters - but not cutting all the way through.  That provided a nice secure joint.

 

 

The fuselage could then be closed up though not before a moment of panic set in.  I thought I should put the roof on the cabin first - I picked up the instructions, saw the roof, then proceeded to search for it... fruitlessly.  I checked the instructions again - there it was... part something or other on fret C.   Now where had fret C gone to?   I checked.  I checked again.  No fret C!  Checked both boxes, still no fret C.  Damnit!   How can I lose a whole fret?   Small parts yes. Even big parts, yes, but a whole steenkin' fret?

 

Check again.

 

Oh.

 

Pick up the right instructions this time... NOT the Fly instructions. Ah... there's no cabin roof on the italeri version.  

I might stick one in later though.... as long as it comes out of a box.

Then it was time to close up the fuselage to look like some creation fit for a poorly made SyFy channel C movie.  How long before I break that tail rotor off?

 

 

After the panic had settled down I decided to pick my nose.  This one.  From Italeri.  Crap innit?   Nice sharp angles when there should be smooth roundness. Imaginary panel lines, and general wrongness.

That got beaten to death with a sanding stick. (then promptly forgot to take an 'after' photo.)

 

 

But now back to 1/32ness.  QRB's and stuff.  This time I think I got it.  I really didn't like my earlier attempt at the buckles and had to do something else... anything else.

After ratching round everything - my spares box, my PE spares box, another box, and still finding nothing approaching suitable I hit on the idea of lead wire. Mmmnnnn seemed promising.

I took a piece of 0.03" lead wire and went to flatten it in my vice.  Then remembered I broke my vice last week      I ended up holding the wire in the (broken) vice and slamming the jaws together until the wire looked flat enough.  (Note to self - buy new vice!)

Once flatness was achieved I dropped a small puddle of ca onto the flat wire then laid 3 pieces of 0.0.1" wire across it.  I end was cut adjacent to the 0.01" wire and I left a little bit of flat wire showing when I cut the other end.

This looks a little better than my previous attempt I think.

 

 

and actually looks worse once painted up

 

 

The 'danglies' were left over bits of 'webbing' ca'd into position.

 

 

and from t'other side....

 

 

I have since added the lap belts and forgot to take visualistic evidence for you lot.  One seat down, one to go.

 

Progress though innit.

 

 

 

 

 

[Brandy]

Very nice, blue, danglies you have there Hendie!

 

(Ced?)

 

Ian

[Pete in Lincs]

6 hours ago, hendie said:

(Note to self - buy new vice!)

Oh, all right then. I'll say it....

Get one Fed Ex'd in from Miami?

 

Nice webbyness.

 

The 1/72nd seems to have been imagineered by Italeri though. Glad I never bought one.

[TheBaron]

14 hours ago, hendie said:

This looks a little better than my previous attempt I think.

Belt and braces I would have said.  That new buckle is state-of-the-art defining....

15 hours ago, hendie said:

Then remembered I broke my vice last week

You need a smaller hammer hendie:

 

One day there is going to have to be an Aircraft Seating GB with work of this quality around on the forum!

 

[Pete in Lincs]

I'll borrow Darby's shooting stick to sit on while I'm watching that.

[CedB]

Lovely stuff Hendie, those buckles look very nice to me, but then I also think the little chopper is looking good too...

 

On 23/04/2018 at 01:47, limeypilot said:

Very nice, blue, danglies you have there Hendie!

 

(Ced?)

Ian don't encourage me, I'm trying to be a reformed character (but he DID mention shafts earlier in a very suggestive way... snurf snurf... and I said nothing )

[Pete in Lincs]

9 hours ago, CedB said:

but then I also think the little chopper is looking good too..

Rude!

[hendie]

well this thread got buried pretty deep, way back on page double figures.  Seems I have a bit of catching up to do.  As always, getting time to enjoy the guilty pleasures of modeling has been hard to come by but a moment here and a moment there.... is just a coupe of moments here and there.

I'll warn you in advance that this thread may become a bit picture heavy - and mostly in no particular order, nor particularly exciting.  I've taken so many photo's in the last week that I have no idea why I took half of them but I'll have a bash at creating some kind of sequential build string (or not).

 

Seems that when I was last here I was doing something with seats, so I may as well begin with a continuance of that theme.  Seat belts made from strips of tape, bits of lead wire, scraps of plastic and whatever else falls into view more or less.

 

 

Both front seats now completed, or as completed as I am going to make them. Lap and dangly belts secured in place and from a distance should fool the majority of folks if they squint their eyes.

All dust and modeling detritus shall be removed before flight.

 

 

I should really persist with the seating theme since you can catch a blurry glimpse of cabin seating in the background there, but I'm going to hold off on that for the moment. Let's shift focus for a moment from Big Wessi to li'l Wessi... there was a li'l Wessi kicking around there somewhere wasn't there?

Italeri in their particular way of doing things decided not to include a ceiling in the cabin which meant that if perchance you happened to look in there, you could see right up to the rotor head.

They did omit the ceiling didn't they?  It's been a long time since I looked at the instructions they provide.

 

 

As per Big Wessi, I used the embossed/debossed foil to simulate the sound proofing on the ceiling which you shall find it completely impossible to tell based on this poor attempt at interior photography.

It's there... honest!

Also, apparently by the time I had taken that last shot, I had also glued the fuselage sides together (I think).  And added the bottom panel according to the shot below.

Now, whether it's my ham-fisted modeling methods, or because I am kit bashing two different (but related) kits here, but things are not going together as smooth as one would hope.  This is an italeri kit(s) after all....  The bottom panel was a poor fit and some serious filling and sanding was required... several times

 

 

However, once the beast had been subdued, I could glue in the cockpit (and seemingly, the beetle-back as well).  Maybe it's just dry fitted here, I can't remember.

 

 

But since we mentioned the beetle-back... Surprisingly Italeri made a better job of the beetle-back on the 1/72 version than they did on the 1/48 version.  The 1/48 version was a big lump with no hope of ever opening up the vents unless you had some serious OCD, which none of us modelers have do we?

Anyhoos, it was a relatively simple job to open up the vents in the 1/72 version - here doing both so I can pick the best, which, as can be sen in the shot above, is the grey one.

 

 

Then for some light entertainment after all that filling, sanding, scraping and cutting, I decided to add some hydraulic hoses to the rotor head (after gluing it together.  Be warned!  I am not filling in the trenches on the rotors - remember this is an out-of-the-box build... warts and all!

 

 

and this is where continuity goes for a long walk... just bear with me and we'll try to get through this together.

After all those shenanigans it was time to begin adding a proboscis to li'l Wessi.  After some haphazard dry fitting I determined that either the fuselage was slightly twisted, the nose was slightly twisted, or my universe was warping slightly before my eyes.  It wasn't for fitting.

Choosing the path of least resistance, I glued the starboard side after lining everything up as best I could and left that overnight to cure.

 

 

The following day I had to twist almost everything to get the port side to line up in any semblance of order resulting in a rather nasty joint.  Guess we'll be filling and sanding that one too then won't we.

Oh! looks like the nose has been glued on as well.  Funny how these little things sneak up on us isn't it?

 

 

The tail on the seventy twoeth version is a bit of a lump, with many of the features only represented with a vague nod to reality.  Sometimes with only a vague nod to what someone at italeri who saw a photo of a Wessex many many years ago can actually remember.

In order to bring a smidgen of HC2ishness to the tail,  I decided to drill out the grill on the top. Well, sort of a grill

 

 

Followed by hacking this bit out before thinking ohbloomin'eck how on earth am I going to fix this bit?  Seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

 

However, after several aborted attempts at meshing I arrived at this solution.   This involved hacking out the plastic around the opening with a chisel so I could recess the wire mesh to make it flush with the skin. That (the mesh) was then glued in place and the ever useful aluminum tape was used to create the frame.  I really should have taken a before and after shot.

 

 

Now back to the beetle-back, and the upside down vee shaped venty thing drooping out over the fuselage.  For some reason unbeknown to me, I happened to have some very smallish brass angle in my supplies. It seemed appropriate to use as it's been there forever and I have no idea why I bought it in the first place.  Being so small, it was an easy job to form it over the fuselage - just have to make the cut outs in the beetle-back.... wait a minute. That beetle-back can't be glued in yet 'cos I still have to make those cut outs

 

 

Which I duly did, and glued the brass angle in place with horror glue.  I think the beetle-back is glued in place by now - but it may not be - who knows?

 

 

And I have no idea why I took this shot - may be to show that the rotor head mesh panel clicks nicely into place, and looks bloody horrible.  Thanks Italeri.   That's a ponder for a future day.

 

 

So, here's the current state of play on li'l Wessi.  Some tail bits glued on. Lots of filling and sanding ahead of me, as well as cutting yet more bits out and generally ignoring the instructions as best I can.

Actually, it's more of a FrankenWessi now

 

 

Then back to Big Wessi.  Thankfully.  In a scale more designed for human interaction.

By this point, it looks like I have added the seat upper rail against the cabin wall and painted it some shade of green. Makes sense I guess.  However, another bit that Fly missed in their kit was the transition piece (tunnel?) between the cabin roof and the front bulkhead - seen here in flat sheet form.  (Hhhmnnn, that glove is looking a lot better than I remember making it)

 

 

Then the tunnel is given some three dimensional bits to make it look a bit more, well, three dimensional.  I should mention that all of this hacking and bodging is throwing things a bit out of whack, or may be they were never in whack to begin with, I'm not sure.  This will become more apparent in a photo or two.

 

 

Mounted on this tunnel is a small frame which holds some piece of electronics or other. Radio or X-Box or summat, or maybe just the Loadies play-piece

I grabbed some brass sheet or to be more precise, some really grubby brass sheet. A few lines were scribed in the sheet with the back edge of an old knife blade.  About 4 or 5 light scores is enough to produce a feature good enough to fold, and 5 or 6 heavy scores provides enough of a gouge to fold back and forth and provide a good clean break

 

 

Some holes were thrown in for a passing nod to accuracy and you can see where things are going slightly awry.  I made the width of this tunnel the same width as the center console - which, if you look at photo's of the 1:1 is how it should be. The (brass) frame should be almost square according to those same photos. However, when I made the frame square it was obviously way too large. and covered most of the tunnel.  So I reduced the length of the frame - still no good, then reduced it a bit more and now it looks a bit strange - but without reducing the width of the tunnel by about 1/3  I'm never going to get it any better. Aside from that, - if I do reduce the tunnel width, then you'll see the cockpit rear console overhanging the sides of the tunnel.  Stalemate!

 

 

That being said, once it's painted up it doesn't look too obvious. (X-Box now added with knobs on)

 

 

Followed by the make me feel good dry fit.  Nice glove though eh?

A few electrical cables and bits shall be added to that in due course once it's fitted for real.

 

 

Which now brings us back to the seatery theme.

After messing about with all sorts of materials and failing badly time after time I resorted to my old fall back of aluminum tape. I think you saw the basic frames and the bum supports before, but seat backs were not available at that junction.  Because of that I have been unenthusiastic about working on the seats - which in turn is preventing me from closing up the fuselage on Big Wessi  - which is preventing a whole bunch of other stuff - most of which escapes me at this time

 

Despite my reluctance to use the aluminum foil for the seat backs I could find no better alternative.  Couldn't. Nope. Just couldn't. Tried. Failed.

We've got to start somewhere so let's begin with one.

 

 

Then five

 

 

Then a whole Wessex full of the blighters.  That was the easy part.

 

 

Then I remembered that I couldn't fit the seats if the floorboards weren't in place.  Which they were - but only after they were grubbed up a bit.

 

 

That allowed a quick test fit. (might need to trim just a touch off the bottom of those legs though)

 

 

After all that it was time for paint.  It's remarkably difficult to get aluminum tape to look like anything other than aluminum tape, but after a good half hour of twisting, bending, furling and you guessed it - unfurling, I'm hoping that these look a bit more seat like than they do aluminum tape like.

Nice lurid blue isn't it?  I have no recollection of how I arrived at that color.  I think I used a standard gloss blue, with a bit of dark gull grey, some light grey, and who knows what else.

 

 

But once dried, the color does tone down a little bit

 

 

And here's where it counts.  I always have trouble trying to match colors and have never been particularly successful.  It's always very much a hit or a complete miss with me, mostly the latter.

So I have no idea how I managed to get this close this time around.  Here's the (dried) paint job next to a photo of the subject in the 4+ book.  I doubt I'd ever get a better match than that.

(Caveat: I am completely and purposefully ignoring all the countless threads and arguments about using a photograph as a color reference. I'm not going to happen upon a Wessex seat anytime in the near future, so the photo is good enough for me!)

 

 

After color comes grubby time. Flory dark dirt

 

 

Cleaned off, sealed in, and glossed for the last touch of weathering. Flory's sand colored dirt

 

 

I always find that the dirt wipes off a gloss surface too easily.  This time I flat coated the seats and then added the final Flory wash.

They do look very grubby don't they?  I doubt you'd ever see seats like that in service.  A damp cotton bud was brandished in the general direction of the seats several times until...

 

 

They looked like this in-situ.

 

 

Still a bit overly grubby but any less than that and I doubt you would actually notice anything inside the cabin once it's all buttoned up.  I may add a light skim coat of satin finish on the seat backs - they look just a little bit flat in the photo.

 

And that's us all bang up to date (bet you're all glad this post is over aren't you!).  Now I just have eleventy seven seat belts and buckles to make somehow - anyone remember how I did that on the last Wessex build?  Then there's only 48 straps (and clasps) to make for the seat backs and somehow fit them all in place without breaking anything.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bigdave22014]

Nice work Hendie, good to see you back.

[CedB]

Seconded!

I thought the first photo was the big one at first - great stuff Hendie  

Nice glove…

[perdu]

Gloves schmoves! Nice everything

Having suffered countless nightmarish nights working out how to make the pax seats in various Wessii over the years yours gets the "Oh bloomineck why didn't I do it like that?" award H, good colour too

 

Marvellous work inside the cabin entirely, both sizes

 

The little feller worries me though, great cooling vents round the tail rotor gearboxy device but the nose...

 

Neither Italeri or Matchbox made a nose filter box that I can be happy with, I think I've mentioned it before

That blimmin thing looks like a bulldozer blade hanging off the front of the curvy bit

 

To my eye it looks to have the intake hole way too wide (and the moulded filter grille they gives us) which makes the back edge of the upper filter body curve in wrongly

 

The 4+ drawings of the filter box show that it is much smaller at the hole than the kit's hole as moulded

Kinda needs to look more like this for me

A course, then you'll need the wire filter cover, this shot shows how distorted the Italeri cover is

The bit behind the intake is nowhere near as sharply curved back into the join. ☺

 

And the...

 

Seriously though I reckon Fly ought to be buying your expertise and asking you to come aboard as a consultant, your magic has made it come to life

And you haven't even closed 'er up yet

 

[TheBaron]

Truly blown away by this last substantive update hendacious one - this photo of a real Wessex (presumably taken at a dump somewhere?):

8 hours ago, hendie said:

 

shows just how close to the actual thing your model is starting to look.

 

I actually don't have hyperboles hyperbolic enough for work of this quality: the structures and colouration here are just visually 'so'.

 

Made my morning looking through that. Bravo!

 

 

[keefr22]

Lovely glove in that there Wessex hendie, great bit of modelling....

 

And I suppose the rest of the bits aren't that bad either....!!

 

Really most excellent work, truth be told!

 

Keith