We Three Kings...

[hendie]

wonderful.

[Massimo]

WOW!!!!

Nice progress in here!!!!

Well done!

Massimo

[Head in the clouds.]

Thank you hendie and Massimo.

[Head in the clouds.]

As promised it is now time to apply the decals, again I have to you a mix of decal sheets, new and old, there are some decal sheets out there but most are missing the smaller stencils,warning or instruction plates. Thanks to @Pete in Lincs I had an Airfix decal sheet which had many of the smaller decals I needed to bring 506 to life.

I feel a good decal sheet with these smaller items would be welcome by many a modeller and offer the chance to build many of the interesting Sea Kings out there.

 

First job is to lay down a gloss coat, in this case Alclad Gloss Kote, my first weapon of choice. This went down well so decaling could start, biggest first. This is the moment of truth to find out whether I measured the mask for the main fuselage roundel correctly;

 

So far so good, what about 't'other side;

 

Thank heavens for that, too many times I have come to apply decals only to find after they are opaque, especially with a dark demarcation line behind it such as here.

 

You may also notice that during this last post small items will be added as I go just to save a little time and keep it moving forward rather than doing a post for each aerial, nic-nak and wot-not.

 

Once all the decals were on another coat of Alclad was applied and I had a think about weathering, now there is word I rarely use, most research aircraft are kept spotless to make sure any data collection is flawless but I decided to use a little artistic licence. Although the pic I have of ZB506 seems to show a clean airframe I have seen this aircraft with the common Sea King sooting on the airframe behind the exhausts so I decided to do this to add a little interest.

Where the soot sits on the airframe it shows up the panel lines but I did not want to scribe them at this stage and I personally think it is almost impossible to get scale panel lines in 72nd scale so I decided to use a sharp, soft pencil and draw them on. This was done fairly easily, breaking the line in places where soot had not settled.

 

Another coat of Alclad gloss and a splash of black Hubrol wash;

 

Now it was time to remove the temporary crew access door, how many of you thought I had gone trigger happy with the paint......?

Although I had painted the outside earlier;

  I forgot to do the inside;

 

So this was done but as you may have noticed I forgot to take photos several times in this last push for completion

 

You may also have noticed that up to now 506 has been rotor less but fear not, they have not been forgotten. When I built my first Sea King I was a little confused by the differences and colours of these items and there have been several posts here on BM to help clarify this issue and while it is reasonably simple to decide on early or later blades the colours can be a little harder due to weathering fade so the best advice here is do your research from your library of pics. For ZB506 they are the later blades being painted dark grey on top and light grey under with alternate coloured strap marks. Gentle weathering was done with AK pencils. As I mentioned way back in the beginning of this build

the crew access door was to be open and the rotors in the stowage position;

 

 

With the helicopter being built as it was pulled out the hanger at Farnborough it would also have the exhaust covers fitted, again from the Eduard set and painted Tamiya Lemon Yellow;

 

Those handles were a pain, for no other reason than being awkward to handle.....done it again, another pun crept in.

 

Then next job was going to be equally fiddly, I had to make two pins from 0.5 mm brass rod at approximately 3mm long;

 

 

No, that's not the hard bit, fitting them took more than 20 minutes;

 

A little out of focus the the pin can clearly be seen.

 

I also added a little more detail to the Heli Tel housing, mainly 4 small decals to represent latches and a pencil line to represent the two halves of the housing.

 

The last job was to build the flotation devices...again, but this time to the correct way but it still took another couple of attempts. They were made using craft beads and Evergreen plastic;

 

For some reason I hated doing these, don't know why, just did. I don't think they are 100% accurate but I had no close up reference pics so these will have to do...needs must!

 

One other thing to do is the cable on top of the X box 'thingie', this was made from lead wire and coloured with a black permanent marker, bent roughly to shape  and fitted with flexible CA.

 

Throw it all together and ZB 506 is finished.

I know this build is long in the tooth and not finished yet with XV371 to complete but thanks to all you whom have followed and commented along the way.

[perdu]

Nicely, very nicely done.

 

She looks excellent and 'right' to me.

[Head in the clouds.]

Thanks Bill, appreciate that.👍

[Pete in Lincs]

Got there in the end, Mate. And very nice it looks too. Nice subtle weathering adds to the effect.

[Head in the clouds.]

Thanks Pete, patience is a virtue after all.

[Head in the clouds.]

And just like Halley's comet we are back, not 76 years to wait but nearly 2 full years to the week....crikey!

 

I have not been able to spend much time at the bench of late but I have committed to clear the bench as much as possible before moving on to new projects. With this in mind XV371 was a front runner, the only thing holding me up was the sourcing of white lower case letters, they are rare creatures indeed but not extinct. After hours on the web I finally found some on a railway model site in the USA, with no hesitation at all I ordered them.

 

Now these letters are small, being only about 1.8mm in size and each one had to be applied separately, this was going to be a painstaking process and the only way to do it was freehand. I did try using masking tape to create a straight edge to work to but upon removing the tape the letters came with it. So freehand it is.

 

The most notable difference on this Sea King are the 3 sensors at the front, one of which is suspended from a flange under the nose, the other two mounted either side of the nose. The one mounted on the port side is an early 'low light camera', the other two I have yet to identify. All three are made from a combination of brass and plastic with a bit of PE skeleton thrown in for good measure. These were made earlier as was the rotor blade assembly.

 

This is basically a quick final summery of the build to bring it to a conclusion having built all three Sea Kings, so here are a few pics taken tonight, again, just to wrap it up so the pics are a bit utilitarian rather than photogenic.

 

Before I wrap up the masking tape on the plastic glazing had been on for over a year and to my surprise came off easily, however, it revealed a lot of dust that had migrated into the cockpit. Rather annoying to be honest, but it just will not shift so there it will have to stay! The glazzing was by far the hardest bit of this build, this early kit is known for it's poor glazing and this was no exception.

 

Hope you like it.