The African Queen

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

1 hour ago, perdu said:

I should mention for your information

 

ZJ128 was built in 2001 as an HC3 and was transferred to the Royal Navy and given advanced applications including the folding tail and various other alterations to make her into presumably a HC4

Well I did warn you I wasn’t an expert!  Since there are still plenty of Merlins flying around in Bunglie green colours, I had assumed that the grey ones were new build Mk.4s, but clearly not.  I guess they spray them a proper Officers’ colour (it’s a well-known fact that gentlemen don’t live in ditches) when they go in for the foldy conversion work.

 

The ASW Merlins are very patchworky, but if anything the Junglies look even patchier.  There are some unusual details, too; AC, for instance - what’s with those grey window and cargo door surrounds?  Replacement seals?  Weird ‘low-vis’ white ensign / RN badge, too; why bother, on the assumption that if you’re flying in a hostile environment you’re going to paint over your RN PR patches pronto.

 

P.S. 8 Fritags...  is that like a month of Sundays?  Oh, the horror!

Edited July 16, 2019 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[perdu]

As one to whom ditch dwelling is a more familiar environment if I didnt have a handy shovel I suppose you may be right Crisp

 

The green ones must be due to cameroneconomics (spend nothing on governing but pack morons into the House Of Lords instead)

 

The low-vis black and white navy stickers, look awful cheap and nasty to me but I do have a few colour versions I might be tempted to use instead

 

I don't really understand the FAA painting junglies grey when green is an obvious colour, but I suppose someone is desperate to differentiate between RAF and RN machinery for a while

 

Steve, the different shades of green

 

not quite as catchy as shades of grey, but I have thought about that very thing

 

 

 

[Terry1954]

29 minutes ago, perdu said:

I don't really understand the FAA painting junglies grey when green is an obvious colour,

I'm all for this sort of scheme on the Junglies myself ...........

 

 

First Wessex I ever laid eyes on for real was in "spinach and sand". It was love at first sight.............

 

Terry

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

1 hour ago, perdu said:

I don't really understand the FAA painting junglies grey when green is an obvious colour, but I suppose someone is desperate to differentiate between RAF and RN machinery for a while

It might be that, but I think it’s just a neutral camouflage colour; Falklands (& Northern Ireland) apart, the Junglie Sea Kings very seldom actually operated in an environment for which green was a suitable camouflage.  They were just green because they were green.  In use, arctic white stripes, desert pink...  

 

As and when the Merlins get sent somewhere naughty, I expect they’ll end up a different colour - but for now Pusser’s Grey is good enough for any aircraft whose home is broadly the sea.

[perdu]

Reasonable

 

 

Fairynuff, there must be plenty of colours available

[perdu]

In a hopefully timely revivification of this thread I have begun preparations to slightly refine the given shapes of the big sponsons preparatory to getting a decent canopy fit

A photo of a mould box follows

 

The sponson castings are being readied for a fresh casting which I hope will allow me to add filler details and lamps

 

Fingers crossed, I dont want to risk damaging the ones Colin kindly sent me

 

Work proceeds at a relaxed pedestrian pace

 

Stroll with me, later

[CedB]

 

Strolling…

[perdu]

Be prepared for scenes of devastation as we stroll along Ced

 

I have been pondering this build a lot lately and had a braynestorm...

 

I cut the nose off again

 

From above the thing looked like a fairly straight banana but was just off centre to the left which caused the whole thing to look odd

 

There will now be a far shorter than previously intermission, whilst I reposition the nose to the right

 

Grrrrr buggritt n'stuff, sass'n frasssssen

 

Grrr

[perdu]

Oops I dropped the ball, big time with this and have been agonising on what next

 

I managed to get a set of S-61 transparencies to work with but...

 

Quelle domage and other possibly made up epithets

 

This is NOT NICE

 

Insides fogged and dustbowled to beggary

Wit an awful fit too I had decided to try the Way Of The Martian here

 

To top up the outside glass to complete the levels with cyanoacrylate glue then file and sand and polish with newly acquired Novus Number One polish in an attempt to circumvent poorly executed by Airfix, on the older Sea Kings, canopies

 

I am at a loss for now on how to proceed any advice?

 

Beginning to look like 'whip-it-off-and-try-again' time isn't it?

 

><....><....><....>< 

 

[Terry1954]

2 hours ago, perdu said:

Beginning to look like 'whip-it-off-and-try-again' time isn't it?

I tend to agree especially if you have internal "debris". Is it time for a replacement "Bill made" vac formed jobby?

 

Just saying....

 

Terry

[perdu]

11 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

I tend to agree especially if you have internal "debris". Is it time for a replacement "Bill made" vac formed jobby?

 

Just saying....

 

Terry

Tried that twice, miserable fail each time

 

But we still have that option, we shall survive!

[Heather Kay]

 

would it be possible to drill holes in the bodywork - not the canopy - large enough and in places that will be easy to fill and hide later that you might be able to get a vacuum cleaner to suck the muck out? 

[perdu]

Heather I am hoping, not with a high set of hopes that when I put the ceiling in the cabin there will be a way a thin piece of flexible tubing might go in and through from the rotor head hole

 

It is kinda academic really because I have just plastered the port window with cyano and then zapped it with Zip Kicker in an attempt to follow to the letter our dear alien buddy's cyano window 'trick'

 

We shall see

 

Tomorrow

[perdu]

I did a shot looking down a bit like the one Jamie did on his S-61N, first ever look at what we will be getting.

 

But quite a while away at the mo'

 

Still, doesn't hurt to look to the future on occasion does it?

 

Long way away though.

 

Urgh!

 

Too gruesome for a Thursday morning before breakfast?

 

Tell me...

 

 

Still there is plenty of meat for SIHRSC here

 

 

Hmm, lots of pudden to eat before anything is proven.

 

Miles to go before we sleep.

[perdu]

Tell you what, Zip Kicker stinks when you file kicked cyano

 

Yeukkk!

[perdu]

Oh deary, angry kicked in

 

 

The further I delved with filing and polishing the less like the proper shape was happening with the canopy so I hit the tools trail.

 

One plastic handles needle file to bodge the hole in, and needle ended pliers to break it all away because the glue was too strong.

 

Of which more anon, now in fact.

 

 

I glued the canopy on with a mix of clear epoxy and the stuff that is supposed to set under ultraviolent lighting, that is the epoxy being pulled away from the polystyrene canopy.

It looks as if a reaction happened inside the fairly airtight fuselage, cockpit end and caused the crazing.

 

As you see I do have one last Airfix canopy piece to stick on, so it is going to be stuck on with Gator's Grip Thin Blend as my last experiment on  this model.

I want Colin to see a finished job before time's winged chariot has me away one day.

[hendie]

ouch.  sorry to see that Bill.

 

good luck with the rework.  Fingers crossed for you

[CedB]

…and here  

[perdu]

This was back there a bit, sixish pages in three days, anyway with a pleasant warm glow across the island I havent been doing much sticking or cutting so I thought to have a go at graphics, like Neil with his Halifax.

 

With all the available choices of colour schemes to choose from I decided it could only be a S-61N from British airways with the radar nose which took away the option of  the  Red Square BEA scheme.

 

As I was working towards the BA schemes, scanning a web-wide supply of pictures of the same I picked on G-ATFM  as seen all over the place

 

And here is the basic sheet I have been playing with

 

 

 

For some wonderful reason the design wallahs at BA decided to pick on a standard font which I (we?) have in the font bank.

 

The font is Baskerville Old Face, in bold and has been de-dotted by printing it in Paint Shop Pro as a .png file..

THE FONT OF COURSE ISNT BASKERVILLE BUT TIMMAS HAS DRAWN A REPLACEMENT IN AN ACCURATE FONT. IT IS LOVELY AND I SHALL USE IT.

OF COURSE.

Printing it as a drawing allows all kinds of non-wp tasks, specifically here by letting me take off the dot over the i and slide the airways part below the British part to form the logo used on the S-61N at the time.

 

Inserting the logo as a picture into Word 2010 allows me to adjust the necessary size for the transfer, obviously you people to whom numbers do not induce panic-block can probably work out the size to make the image straight off but that happy band doesn't find me a paid up member so I do it the slow way.

 

Which has proven itself to work OK for me.

The aircraft identity letters are printed straight from the font bank since I downloaded Helvetica font for such duties.

 

Here I used Helvetica emboldened which looks OK to me in comparison but I will be adapting the font a little for the finished codes, a tweak upwards here, a minor widening of spacing there which along with the little white and blue codes will make the bulk of the sheet ready-to-use.

 

Helvetica was adopted by many organisations as the go-to font for many public notices, I think it might even be the standard font on Motorway signing too.

 

Based on a vague memory from a leaflet I picked up at Her Majesty's Stationary Office in Broad Street in Brum, way back before it became the entertainment pulse of Birmingham night life.

 

 

They tell me, I haven't trodden its Walk Of Stars for a long, long time.

 

Ah look the rain is easing off and I need to trot off to the local shop for essential supplies, I need Kronenburg and orange juice*

 

*(not the late great Pete Postlethwaite version neither, sadly)

 

[Heather Kay]

10 minutes ago, perdu said:

Helvetica was adopted by many organisations as the go-to font for many public notices, I think it might even be the standard font on Motorway signing too.

It’s very similar, but the UK road signage uses a specially designed typeface called, surprisingly, "Transport". It was created by Jock Kinnear and Margaret Calvert, who also came up with the "modern" road signs we’ve now had since the 1960s. 
 

 

I must get my head round creating my own transfers. How’s the grotty transparency problem coming on?

[perdu]

Thanks Heather, being old I was probably drawing on a memory of the discussions ongoing back in the sixties when I became interested in the mundane minutiae of everyday stuff.

 

Transport

 

I must look it up for my font bank

[Timmas]

14 minutes ago, perdu said:

For some wonderful reason the design wallahs at BA decided to pick on a standard font which I (we?) have in the font bank.

 

The font is Baskerville Old Face, in bold and has been de-dotted by printing it in Paint Shop Pro as a .png file..

Not wanting to be picky but the BA font was actually a slightly modified version of Plantin, not Baskerville.

Heather is right in that British road signs use Transport.

[perdu]

Again happy to get the facts but on the scale I am using Baskerville seems to work

 

I love this place there is so much stored information

 

Off to see if I can find Plantin, I failed to find any font for British airways though but as this is beginning not an end we shall see what happens next

[Heather Kay]

5 minutes ago, Timmas said:

Not wanting to be picky but the BA font was actually a slightly modified version of Plantin

Careful now. You’re awakening my typography nerdism! 
 

(I was an erstwhile graphic designer for many years. Typophilia is a common affliction.)

[Timmas]

1 minute ago, Heather Kay said:

(I was an erstwhile graphic designer for many years. Typophilia is a common affliction.)

Me too. I still am, but almost retired now! 😉