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Modelling Nightmare A 1/48 Hampden


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It's one Fonderie kit that I don't have. I do poses the Contrail /Sanger Vacform and I think that it is one of theirs which might present  less problems when I come to build it.  Your build is coming along very well but,  If I might suggest trying to  get transparencies either in or  at a point where their fit can be relied upon, then I@m sure that will  help aleiviate stress further along the road.

 

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8 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Always ready to support a Hampden build. :thumbsup2: 

Having no experience with Fonderie stuff myself I sense a somewhat cool tenor to some of the informed comments above that leads me to suspect that they might be an enjoyably masochistic experience.

The kit - not the correspondents - obviously...

Oh dear Baron...

You must try at least one...

Enjoyable is the word !!

But the way you did with an old Matchbox… You will make a gem of a kit even with a Fonderie one.

Find a Griffon II as an example … :evil_laugh:

Sincerely.

CC

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9 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Always ready to support a Hampden build. :thumbsup2: 

Having no experience with Fonderie stuff myself I sense a somewhat cool tenor to some of the informed comments above that leads me to suspect that they might be an enjoyably masochistic experience.

The kit - not the correspondents - obviously...

You're half right; they are a masochistic experience but it seems that FM forgot to add the enjoyment bit in the kit I bought.

 

Martian 👽

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Hat off for the General !!

Did you have a WiP for the Griffon ??

As I start mine now, it will be great...

I think the more challenging part will be the representation of that really particular engine....

If my memory did'nt fail, The atar is hanging on the center of the Stato's pipe...

 

My feathery hat is well and truly off CC...I'll have a look to see if I have any WIP piccies, it was started some considerable time ago. The engine parts were scratch built, using a spare Atar from somewhere, as you say suspended in mid-air. The real challenge will be achieving the highly polished aluminium finish to the pebble dash and filler surface of the thing...Darling will have to break sweat on this one!

Quote

they are a masochistic experience but it seems that FM forgot to add the enjoyment bit in the kit I bought.

 

Fairweather modellers eh.....where's your spirit of adventure man, your je ne sais quoi? To be serious though, it's a tad unusual to build a model where virtually nothing fits and every single part needs serious fettling...(especially when it comes to the glazing). Even the wing roots have different depths! The fact that the kit's fuselage is dimensionally all over the place doesn't exactly help matters but a good set of drawings, a power grinder and the old 'Blitz Spirit' will see us through.

  

Edited by general melchett
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33 minutes ago, general melchett said:

My feathery hat is well and truly off CC...I'll have a look to see if I have any WIP piccies, it was started some considerable time ago. The engine parts were scratch built, using a spare Atar from somewhere, as you say suspended in mid-air. The real challenge will be achieving the highly polished aluminium finish to the pebble dash and filler surface of the thing...Darling will have to break sweat on this one!

 

Fairweather modellers eh.....where's your spirit of adventure man, your je ne sais quoi? To be serious though, it's a tad unusual to build a model where virtually nothing fits and every single part needs serious fettling...(especially when it comes to the glazing). Even the wing roots have different depths! The fact that the kit's fuselage is dimensionally all over the place doesn't exactly help matters but a good set of drawings, a power grinder and the old 'Blitz Spirit' will see us through.

  

Thanks a lot Dear General,

I make my mind on that way too, I will take the nose of a HB ATAR from the Mirage III,

Since ATAR 9 of the Mirage is just an evolution of the ATAR 101, German made french engines...:whistle:

But I'm searching for a bit of plastic pipe of the right diameter.... It will reduce the task of the polished interior

Plus it will erase the inconvenience of blanking the wing roots and the upper part of the fuselage.

And maybe help for the fitting of the half fuselages... Finger crossed...

Thanks again !

Sincerely.

CC

 

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You are a brave man.

When the FM Hampden came out I couldn't wait to get my hands on one, and I did. What was in the box was a huge disappointment. The plastic was very brittle and tended to shed slivers of plastic when sanding. The winghalves

when seen from the front were not a constant taper but instead tapered down towards the nacelle on both sides creating a "sunken"  nacelle look.  Apart from doing some work on the fuselage I gave up and it ended up on the SOD and

later in the bin of despair.

Having made three attempts at building the Halifax I am not a great fan of FM kits, although I still think the Halifax was a basically sound kit let down by poor production.

Cees

Edited by Cees Broere
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But I'm searching for a bit of plastic pipe of the right diameter.... It will reduce the task of the polished interior

Plus it will erase the inconvenience of blanking the wing roots and the upper part of the fuselage.

And maybe help for the fitting of the half fuselages... Finger crossed...

 

Yes, that's exactly what I did, a length of UPVC conduit fitted to the inside of the fuselage, which eliminated several problems..sanded down the outer surface so that it was a snug fit.....good luck that man!

 

 

 

 

Cees, don't really blame you, it's a lot of work, and yes the plastic does shed when sanded or damaged in any way....almost everything needs work...I think the tail wheel's OK though!

 

 

 

 

Pierre asked me to post images of my Hampden in concert with his build so for anyone interested here's what I've done so far, (thanks to Pierre for scaling up the Huntley drawings),

 

 

 

 

Some of the reference material used,

 

image.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These images hopefully show how far out the fuselage parts are. The length is good but the cockpit, dorsal and ventral turrets are all in the wrong place and needed moving, the nose glazing is too far back and needed moving forward and the tail boom too long and needed shortening, (this, in turn, affected the trailing edges of the wing roots).

 

And yes, I'm going to scratch the bomb bay too...:doh:

 

Here the forward fuselage is pretty much lined up, but see where the dorsal turret is!

 

image.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And if you line up the turret the whole nose area is out of kilter.. :rage:

 

image.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once everything was worked out the fuselage was hacked up ready for reassembly

 

 

 image.jpg

 

 

 

And the parts laid out to check alignment...

 

image.jpg

 

 

 

 

After shortening the booms by 5mm, strips of plastic card were added to reinforce the fuselage/boom joint.

 

image.jpg

 

 

 

 

Once the cockpit was moved a fillet of plastic card was added, shaped and sanded into place. The dorsal turret was moved forward 5mm and the boom blended into the fuselage side. The ventral turret was reduced in height and moved back into its proper position, (the bottom still needs to be curved up slightly to meet the glazing) and the upper fuselage behind the turret needed a lot of sanding to bring it back to shape and blend with the boom. Plastic card fillets were added to the window cutouts as all the glazing needed moving forward.

 

 

image.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once put up against the drawings things look a lot better....time to move on to the interior...

 

image.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by general melchett
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  • 5 weeks later...

I dug up this kit today while looking for my Airfix Blenheim. This has to be the biggest plastic kit challenge one can do. I think I might play with it in the background.

My fuselage looks like it has been in the ground to long and the worms have been chowing the edges. All sorts of flesh hanging off it. Oh, happy days....

This kit is well beyond me, so I'm in. 🙂

Edited by Greg Law
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Hi !

Thank for showing your progress Dear General !

Come on Guys !! Keep calm and build FM Hampden 

I think that my interiors can be called done !

WP_20180810_13_05_07_Pro

Includind that weirdos of a reinforcement plate, a plate that is visible inside AND outside.... Why so simple ??

And now the other side...

WP_20180810_13_05_00_Pro

Since my camera is dead, and my cell phone did'nt like the macro pics, I post it with CC 

Obviously, all these internals are checked continuously for the fitting of the fuselages...

And here's the result,

WP_20180810_13_04_42_Pro

See the reinforcement plate !

and now from above 

WP_20180810_13_04_51_Pro

As my Tollerton is about to be finished, the next call will be a RFI !!

More to come soon !

BS103

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Hello BS and @general melchett

Wow ! great looking Hampden flight, If I find one I will make a CC one (This time meaning Coastal Command)

Congrats to you 2 !! :partytime:I think that I found a tubing in white metal for my Griffon !!

I will try this soon !

Great job on here in the FM Hampden club !

The BC Sig table will be full of Fonderie kits in 2019 !!

And some empty bottles Under the table me think !!! :guitar:

Sincerely.

CC

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9 minutes ago, corsaircorp said:

Hello BS and @general melchett

Wow ! great looking Hampden flight, If I find one I will make a CC one (This time meaning Coastal Command)

Congrats to you 2 !! :partytime:I think that I found a tubing in white metal for my Griffon !!

I will try this soon !

Great job on here in the FM Hampden club !

The BC Sig table will be full of Fonderie kits in 2019 !!

And some empty bottles Under the table me think !!! :guitar:

Sincerely.

CC

Sounds like a jolly good plan...both the FM display and the empty bottles!!

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Good job Pierre, as the sun's been shining I've managed a fair bit of progress on mine too, I'll post some more images tomorrow for those interested.

 

CC,glad you found your tube lad, it'll come in handy.......how about an FM group build? now that sounds fun...(maybe combine it with Mach 2 and Unicraft just for laughs!)

Quote

And some empty bottles Under the table me think !!! 

 Empty?...BC never keep empties...

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Having had a good look at my kit yesterday, I'm wondering why you went to all the trouble scratch building the interior when it is already in the kit.

I now the parts will need work, but it looks quite good from what I can see. Is there something I don't know. 

This is not a criticism of your work. Just an inquiry. You are brave to do all that cutting. I will have to think long and hard before I do that.  

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6 hours ago, general melchett said:

Good job Pierre, as the sun's been shining I've managed a fair bit of progress on mine too, I'll post some more images tomorrow for those interested.

 

CC,glad you found your tube lad, it'll come in handy.......how about an FM group build? now that sounds fun...(maybe combine it with Mach 2 and Unicraft just for laughs!)

 Empty?...BC never keep empties...

Sound great !

Are we allowed to have a 2 years span of time GB on BM ??? :rofl2:

CC

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Hi chaps, as mentioned here's my progress on the FM kit. Thanks to Pierre for the great interior images of the Cosford Hampden...very useful stuff!

 

I was going to start a separate thread for my build, but two things, firstly it might be useful to see two separate builds of the same kit together at (roughly) the same time and secondly, I'm so busy with magazine stuff I'm not sure I could sustain all updates to the bitter end! (nothing new there of course),  even though it should be finished in time for Telford.

 

 

 

A visit to my local model emporium provided a mixture of suitable plastic 'O', 'T' and 'U' shaped Evergreen strips to be used as stringers for the fuselage,

 

Work has commenced on the fuselage frames...

 

 

1-_DSC_1846.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here a majority of the longitudinal stringers have been fitted, The kit's white metal cockpit sidewalls have been fitted into place using White Tack to check clearances, I think this, along with the I/P and seat will be used to save time. In fact, the white metal parts are the best part of the kit being a totally different standard than the plastic!

 

2-_DSC_1855.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here...well, they've all been fitted...are you following at the back?  all relatively straightforward really, most of the time was spent measuring the distances between the frames.

 

3-_DSC_1877.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The left tail boom was slightly longer than the right so was cut and trimmed back to fit, then the tailplane halves were sanded to shape as these were way too thick as provided and steel pins fitted to hold them in place.

 

4-_DSC_1922.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fuselage taped together to check fit. A problem presented itself when this was placed over the drawings in that the fuselage was 4mm too wide. Fixing this is very straightforward and simply involves a big file and sheets of 400/800 grit 'wet and dry'...the problem is that the glazing will now be too wide! so a compromise will have to be made, unless I opt for simply making my own to fit...which will also be a lot clearer!  :hmmm:

 

5-_DSC_1923.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

A(nother) major flaw with the kit is the different depths of the upper wing halves between the wing root and engine nacelle, (the right is OK but the left is 2mm thinner and too angled from the root to engine nacelle with the leading edge also being too sharp) so a workaround was needed to widen the specific area without affecting the rest of the wing, or root depth.

 

1-_DSC_1848.jpg

 

 

 

 

The best answer was to cut the wing along the inner edge of the engine nacelle along with several small cuts into the face of the wing mating surface so that the leading edge can be 'bent' to the correct shape. To help maintain the shape a resin spacer was fitted about 2cm back from the leading edge and CA'ed into place. The leading edge was then gently heated via hairdryer and 'rolled' into shape, assisted by the cuts and a wedge of scrap plastic fitted to the gap nearest the nacelle. Once in position this was CA'd into place and help in a clamp overnight. The resultant gap along the nacelle was then filled with Plastic Putty and sanded to shape. The gap along the leading edge was filled using white Superfine Milliput and once dry wet-sanded to shape....the wings now matched..hoorah!

 

6-_DSC_1882.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

While I was at it I cut off the weak locating tabs and replaced with 5mm thick styrene sheet CA'ed into place inside the wing with a piece of card underneath to give decent strength.

 

7-_DSC_1881.jpg

 

 

 

 

The finished wing which now matched the other...much to the relief of the crew! The engine cowls are just taped into place to check their shape. Initially, these were flattened, more of an oval but after the hairdryer treatment and being wrapped around a piece of suitably sized UPVC tubing, they became perfectly circular and fitted well. The landing light box was also cut out and replaced with card section into which a 4mm clear Little-Cars lens will be fitted along with some wiring.

 

8-_DSC_1920.jpg

 

 

 

 

All components dry fitted. The wing roots needed a great deal of sanding to fit flush but we got there in the end...  

9-_DSC_1925.jpg

 

 


Next will be the flooring and cockpit details followed by mid-upper turret.........cheers Melchie  :cheers:

Edited by general melchett
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Amazing work General. That is real old fashion modelling you are doing. However, you have convinced me to put the kit away for now. I will just follow your build and look at another project I found in the deep recesses of my stash. This is another tricky kit, but less of a problem. Just rather big and German...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Chaps, just a little update on my build. I managed to find a bit of time to scratch the interior, mostly going by images from a couple of reference books shown earlier and Pierres collection from Cosford, Although that particular airframe is being restored and much of the internal gubbins has been removed, the placement of the equipment can plainly be seen and matches several wartime photos of production aircraft.

 

Anyhoo the fuselage interior is about 75% done, most of the other parts will be added once the interior has been painted, still a way to go yet.

 

FM's white metal parts are the best part of the kit although some of the items such as the Elsan 'dunny' are way undersized. It must have been a real nightmare trying to move around inside this thing in flight, God alone knows what it was like in combat or in rough flying conditions!

 

 

 

 

4-_DSC_2047.jpg

 

 

 

Ladder came courtesy of the spares bin. It was used to allow the pilot to descend via the port wing...

 

 

5-_DSC_2051.jpg

 

 

 

The wings are pretty much complete too. I boxed in the landing light area and used a couple of size 6 lenses from the Little-Cars range. The undercarriage had to be fettled slightly to fit but in the end, everything lined up perfectly

 

 

 

1-_DSC_2039.jpg

 

 

 

2-_DSC_2041.jpg

 

 

 

The moulded in wingtip nav lights were cut out and lengths of clear runner carved roughly to shape and added, 'bulbs' were drilled into the pieces prior to fitting and filled with the relevant paints, then the parts sanded to shape and polished using Micro mesh 12.000 cloth. same went for the rear formation lights.

 

 

 

3-_DSC_2045.jpg

 

More soon when I have time.

 

Melchie

 

 

 

 

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I was quite happily scrolling through the first couple of posts, admiring the handiwork and wondering what the problem was with this kit, when I saw the first test-fit of Pierre's fuselage halves. I physically reacted in a way nothing model-related ever has! I practically dry-retched! I'm enjoying the work after that, but wow...what a shocker.

 

General, sar!: lovely work too! It's a treat to get two builds for the price of one.

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