A very British experiment, Marshall MA4.

[Head in the clouds.]

Hello fellow Britmodellers.

I have been chewing my own teeth for a few weeks now as to whether I should do this build as a WIP, having never done this before in the spotlight of everyone and being relatively new to the modern modelling scene but in my final thoughts I felt I had nothing to fear but everything to gain, both personally and build wise...are you feeling the love yet 😍.

We are all aware of that very special brand of aviator; the test pilot, Roland Beaumont, Geoffrey de Havilland,  Eric' Winkle' Brown and Chuck Yeager being the well known, some survive to tell us of their extraordinary tales but sadly, some do not, yet their contribution in no less. I would like to do this build in remembrance of one of those lesser known pilots and his very unique plane, a plane with 200.000 hole in the wing and just enough room to carry a lunch box and a drink yet this pilot and his observer crammed into this plane along with a gas turbine engine and all the associated test equipment. It crashed on the 9th March, 1966 killing both the pilot and observer near Fulbourn, Cambs before the programme had finished. The plane was a humble Auster T7, the prototype T7 in fact but heavily modified through 1960-1966 by Marshall of Cambridge.

 

The pilot was Brian Wass, the plane is the Marshall MA4

 

My start point is the very basic 1/72 Airfix Auster Antarctic, in my search for material for this build it soon became apparent that information on this individual airframe and model kit options are very limited indeed, the aircraft VF655 had a busy but shaded life after conversion so pictures are rare indeed but the first, obvious step was to find a donor kit which are about as rare as the actual plane, the only options being the above mentioned Airfix kit and the AZ and Airfix AOP6 kits,the T7 being a trainer version of the AOP6 on which the Auster Antarctic is based and having this in my stash it was begging to be used.

So this is my start point;

 

As can be seen the kit is a typical 70's kit, basic, with raised detail and some flash, although there are a few recessed panel lines, the door and engine panels being notable.

Probably 50-60% of what is in this picture may not be used, the wings, floats, vertical stabiliser, tailplane and wing struts all going to the spares box if they cannot be modified

for use.

 

This is the Marshall MA4 in it's early configuration yet it can be seen that it is an Auster but modified considerably for it's new task and this is what I am hoping to achieve.

 

I am still gathering material for this build and another I would like to do long term, this being my first WIP it may be slow, have I bitten of more than I can chew; maybe, will I finish it; yes; by hook or by crook but my reaearch material is far from complete and may never be so for it was a one off airframe which had a short life and as such this build will not be a rivet counting exercise but I do want it to be as detailed as is possible within my abilities.

I hope you will join me to keep me company and I have no doubt I will be tapping into the vast amount of experience that is Britmodeller.

Thanks for looking and here we go.......

[brianthemodeller]

I’m in! Can’t wait to learn more and see the build progress.

[mackem01]

Interesting project, looking forward to seeing it come together.

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Sounds like a worthy learning project im in 

[pipthepilot]

Interesting project, it will be interesting to see it develop.

[Head in the clouds.]

Evening folks and thanks for sitting in, despite all the distractions of this weekend( football, wedding and weather) I have managed to make a start.

Now, following with convention, I was going to start on the cockpit but with my best efforts I could not find one, the only furniture here was a slab of plastic moulded to the side of the fuselage which just would not do....so off it came. The stating point then became joining the fuselage which at this very early stage seemed odd but with a good open gap to work in didn't seem to present any problems. You can just make out the extensive cockpit detail on the bottom fuselage half.

 

After cutting some thin plasticard to shape it was inserted to become the floor of the cockpit. You can also see the nice gapping gap into which I will hopefully fill with all manner of aeronautical goodies.

 

The first item to make to populate the office was a couple of seats for the pilot and observer respectively then a centre instrument consul, I have a sneaky feeling there just may not be enough room for all 3 but we shall see, I have started to make them anyway.  You may just be able to make out the slightly different shape of the seats, the reason for this is probably because the seating arrangement was not conventional, oddly, the observer faced backwards as in a VC10 and being so close to each other the pilot and observer were literally face to face.

 

You can see the arrangement below;

You can see my concerns for the space with regard to the centre consul. The instrument panel coaming was made from some scrap milliput.

 

The last job of the weekend involved a little work to the external airframe, this was the addition of the cooling inlet on the nose, it being absent from the kit, an old Eurofighter Typhoon

wing tip pod coming to the rescue here, a little hollowing out and a small hole drilled and it looks OK, all being needed is to blend it in with a little filler and hopefully make a gauze plate for the inlet.

 

Thanks for looking and I will see you later.

Gary.

 

 

[Azgaron]

Nice start!

 

Håkan

 

[Head in the clouds.]

7 hours ago, Azgaron said:

Nice start!

Thank you, it is testing on the eyes though, everything is so small !

[Head in the clouds.]

At last, back to the bench after a week of family and work commitments plus a weekend in Cambridge which included a beer festival visit which was under the show circuit for Duxford, so seeing Sea Fury's and F4U's thundering overhead just put a non alcohol induced smile on my face.

On with the build.

 

While away I did consider how to finish off the cockpit because without the wing I had no height measurement to work to so I made this my first job. My first consideration was to scratch build a new upper cockpit or use the kit supplied transparency.  The kit item is too low and the wrong shape at the back and the wings are fixed to the side of it which is again at odds to what I need.  I started with that venerable evergreen and a few measurements later I was on my way

 

 

This will be the sides of the upper cockpit area, the MA4 had most of it's glazing removed and replaced ready to encase the Budworth 60HP turbine which was behind the pilot and in front of the observer!

This also allowed me to get the concave curve and gain the extra height of the wing which I could not achieve with the kit transparency.

 

 

Here is the finished items, port and starboard. The framing is made from evergreen L section and is there to allow simple fixing of the home made windows, giving them a lip to sit on for greater adhesion and once painted they will be almost invisible(hopefully). I also have the extra height, more of which later.

 

One consideration I need to make is whether to make a grill which sits on both sides just behind the door but which is so fine it is almost impossible to see on pictures of the real MA4, maybe just a little darker on the paint when it comes to that stage may be the way forward.

The wing will not actually sit on top of the cabin sides,  there is a fillet at the wing root which sits forward of the leading edge, they can be seen in the picture below;

 

Rightly or wrongly I have done these separate as the material used for the cabin sides was thicker, 1mm in fact, to give some strength and rigidity, the fillets are 0.5 mm and more in scale, I just hope it all marries up OK.

Here are the little blighter's ;

 

The reason for all this extra work is two fold;

1/  to raise the wing,

2/  to form the concave back to the cockpit area.

 

Whilst I have several photographs and drawings of various aspects of the MA4 I have no true dimensional blueprints or planes so everything is done off the photographs. One of those pictures was side on and came out at roughly( oh orrible word but needs must!) at 1/35 so this was used to get my dimensions, everything then being rescaled to 1/72 and checked against another picture, crude but when done everything checked out pretty much OK.

 With the wing being totally different it made sense to make the cabin from scratch. Using the thumb and one eye method mentioned above I make it 2.9 mm that the wing needs to be raised, in 1/1 that works out at approx 210mm which looks right.

See below on the prototype T7 where the wing sits in relation to the top of the door window;

 

Compare the T7 with the MA4 above and there is a substantial increase in the height of the wing above the top of the door, this also gives that drop at the trailing edge of the wing to the fusalage.

The sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed that the T7 above and the MA4 are the very same plane, VF665 being the prototype T7 before conversion to the MA4 by Marshall of Cambridge.

 

Onwards and upwards. Now the sides are done next up is the wing, being 40ft in span and 4ft in chord and punctured by 200.000 holes it is a very different wing to that of the T7 which is approx 36ft in span and 5.1ft in chord and cloth covered. I could find no drawings of the wing so I decided to glue 2 pieces of 1mm Evergreen plastic stock together and sand it down until it looked right to a scale measurement as above, however it may be a little thin so I will see how it looks in situ but I can still use it as a template of sorts if I do not use it.

 

Crikey, are they really my hands,I need to raid the good ladies vanity draw for some cream. That is the wing how it is now and below showing the difference to the original.

 

 

From what I can tell the wing sails over the top of the cockpit with a section removed which is what I think I can see below just above the vertical frame section to the left of the pic on the right. In fact it may be visible on both pics, am I correct?The left hand pic illustrates nicely the wing root fillet I made earlier and the extra height to the underside of the wing.

 

With the wing made I can now glue the side sections shown earlier into place with a little PVA to see how it all looks, but that is for another night.

 

The cockpit has not been forgotten, I have added some 1/72 instrument decals to the center panel and made a new instrument facia for the pilot using the same decals and made from a piece of old PE skeleton. Both seats have had a foam seat cushion made and painted, this is where I have used some more artistic license, I have no colour pics of the MA4 cockpit so after looking at other Auster cockpits I went for the chosen colour of brown and for the cockpit; Green, which seems very common on Austers. I will make some seat belts at some point to add a liitle more detail.

When it came to fit it all in it would not go so a little sanding of the seats on each side sorted that and it all fitted...much to my surprise.

To round off the the Bank Holiday Monday I made the the AVGAS filler neck from Albion Alloys brass rod, drilled and glued into place just under the windscreen location

 

 

Once the side units and wing are temporarily in place I can get some measurements for the instrument panel for the observer and bulkhead, this will hide the brass rod seen behind the pilots seat which is just there to give some strength while handling.

 

That's it for now, hope you found some of it interesting, more soon.

 

Gary

[Tomoshenko]

Lovely work. Please permit me to add a few relevant piccies of the Auster at Cosford. Apologies in advance for imposing myself on your thread.

Hope these help:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cngaero]

That's me on-board and enjoying the ride so far.

 

Do you have any idea what the colour scheme was on the MA4?

Edited May 29, 2018 by cngaero

[cngaero]

After a hi it of digging on PPRuNe, I've learned that the main airframe could have been orange.

You've probably already seen this. There was a further thought that the nose and wheel spats may have been yellow.  That would certainly make it stand out.

 

 

Edited May 29, 2018 by cngaero

[Head in the clouds.]

9 hours ago, Tomoshenko said:

Apologies in advance for imposing myself on your thread.

Hope these help:

No worries Tomoshenko, every little helps. The wing on the MA4 was higher and went full span above the cockpit so It is that detail I am looking for, however your pics show the window framework nicely which I can use.

6 hours ago, cngaero said:

Do you have any idea what the colour scheme was on the MA4?

Glad to have you on board cngaero.

I do indeed have info on the colour scheme. The photo you show is the MA4 in in't final version which I have plans for in a later build if I can find further research material, you are correct, it was orange but the yellow items never were; they were grey primer, I believe waiting to be painted the same as the rest of the airframe. Pity as yellow/orange would be very striking.

My MA4 which is the first conversion was painted Royal Blue.

[Martian]

This looks like a very interesting project.

 

Intrigued of Mars 👽

[Head in the clouds.]

5 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

This looks like a very interesting project.

That is what drew me to it in the first instance, and then the more I looked the more interesting Austers I found.

[mackem01]

Great little attention getter, and it's coming along at a fair lick. Learning time question - is the seating arrangement you have produced

peculiar to this machine or was it used on others?

 

 

[Head in the clouds.]

9 hours ago, mackem01 said:

Great little attention getter,

It is a little gem, for such a small plane they sure crammed in an awful lot.

 

As for your question; I believe the arrangement for seating was only fitted to this plane, probably to make the fitting of the relevant turbine controls easier to install .

 

[Head in the clouds.]

Well, the weekend beckons again so here is a cheeky little update as I managed to get a little more done this week.

 

After making my cockpit sides and the 2 little side protrusions at the wing root( I have no idea what they are called, any ideas anyone?)  the time came to test fit and to my surprise it all fitted well, a little being taken from the wing root 'thingies' .

 

I made some little plates to fit inside the unseen part of the airframe to give some added strength....seems to be a thing of mine, adding bits and bobs for added strength!

 

 

After looking at my research material it looks as though there is a bar that goes across the cockpit, this is where the window framing will be attached to.

 

AND it adds strength......

Visible are the stiffening plates mentioned earlier.

 

Next up was the cockpit window frame work. Now, in hindsight I think they are a little over scale but they are super glued in and they are staying in the hope that when the cockpit glazing goes on it my subdue the over scale look a little. I did try thinner copper wire but it just would not stay straight so out came the Albion Alloys brass rod.

 

 

Having a break from the cockpit I decided to go forwards to the front engine cowling.

Again, looking at my photographs the kit item looks to be a little to round across the frontal aspect, the result being I could not get the opening for cooling air the correct shape, in fact, trying to do so I removed too much material or to be more accurate it just fell away. Not sure what I can do with it other than repair and live with it.

This it before;

 

And after;

 

 

You can see the filler where the plastic disappeared  and the little piece of rod acting as the rocker push rod cover which is prominent when viewed from the front.

The hole at the bottom was always there and will be filled after fitting as there is a small lug that locates into that rather large hole.

 

That is it for now, more later.

Thanks for looking.

[cngaero]

It's looking great so far. 

[waylandsmithy]

Brilliant project! I love Austers anyway, so I'm definitely in. Used to watch one flying out of Finmere when I was a kid.

[waylandsmithy]

Would this be useful for research?

 

http://www.cahood.com/PUB4366aerplanemonthly.htm

[waylandsmithy]

This is the same aircraft, I think: what on earth is that undercarriage all about?

 

 

[Head in the clouds.]

49 minutes ago, waylandsmithy said:

Would this be useful for research?

Thank you, yes it is useful, I found a copy early on in my research, however, most of my information has come from 3 sources for whom I must thank; The International Auster Club, Marshall of Cambridge and Peter Stoddard of LCC, without their help I would not have enough material to take on this little conversion. I do have another, bigger project in mind but will need further material to start so that is something for the future.

There is very little information out there on the web regarding this plane...ask me how I know this😵.

[Head in the clouds.]

49 minutes ago, waylandsmithy said:

what on earth is that undercarriage all about?

G Bonmartini is the owner of that little idea, I believe it was fitted to aircraft for cold or snow conditions, there is also a pic some where of a Piper Cub with the same gear.

 

The drag must have been horrendous, I can see why it did not take off ( what a pun😄

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

On 6/2/2018 at 8:32 AM, waylandsmithy said:

This is the same aircraft, I think: what on earth is that undercarriage all about?

 

 

Its tracked undercarriage ... it was thought to be a good way to spread the weight out on very soft surfaces such as sand, snow, or freshly turned earth. It was attempted on multiple aircraft of the era. Ive seen P-38, P-39, & C-47. Im sure they tried it on others if you were to dig through the internet and volumes of books. 

 

Dennis