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DH 114 Heron 'Channel Airways'


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29 minutes ago, Neil said:

 

Huh? :shrug:  I have no involvement, and never had any kind of connection with that range of products. They are nothing to do with me.

 

Same name and great quality casting 👍😎 1+1 isn’t always 2🤪

 

cheers

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On 5/18/2019 at 9:22 AM, kev67 said:

Good work, what resin did you use

 

The resin is Sika Biresin G26, easy to use and very little smell to it. 

 

 

 

23 hours ago, FortyEighter said:

Hi Neil

 

Having followed your 720 thread, I'm sure this will be very informative too.

 

What did you use to make the masters for your resin seats and engines?

 

Mike

 

 

To make the patterns/masters you can use pretty much anything. The seat master is a modified kit seat out of the spares box (plastic) and the engine master is a canibalised and heavily modified engine out of the Heron kit, with pieces of tooling block (or tooling board) grafted on in places.

 

 

 

23 hours ago, Turbofan said:

Hi Neil,

Fantastic start, I'm really looking forward to following this.

Brilliant work on the replacement parts but after your replacement engines on the 720 I'm not surprised!

How do the decals look?

 

'Bite through the chocolate and chew.....real slow,' anyone remember Texan bars?

Cheers,

Ian

 

The decals arrived last week, and fortunately enough they are just the job, very pleased! :D

 

 

B)

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Just for a comparison, I temporarily tacked the port wing engines and overwing nacelles in position, and did the same with the starboard wing but using the kit engines. As mentioned previously, the inboard overwing section extends back towards the trailing edge by a couple of milimetres more, and the outboard ones by maybe 3 or 4mm, and they also finish to a sharper 'point'. The locating tab on the port wing is also trimmed so that it does not interfere with the seats when they are installed. The wing trailing edges are massively thick (as are the aileron ones) but I will sort those out later as I have now also decided to drop the flaps for a bit more visual interest. In the cabin portion of the fuselage, the 'corner' junction where the floor meets the sides was Dremelled out a little to make sure that the new floor/seat assembly fits properly. Have also included a front view of the port wing, to campare with the standard kit starboard one.

 

47828925502_dd67e726e1_o.jpg

 

 

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A strip of 0.5mm plasticard was marked out as the new cabin floor, and the seats glued in position. They are all spaced evenly but one thing worth noting is that the spacing for them is slightly more than the even spacing of the side windows, so the seats do NOT line up evenly with each window, something which is quite noticeable on side photo's of Herons. The small light blue object is a piece of loose tooling block with a chamfer on it the same angle as the seat backs, just as an aid to getting all the seats leaning back at the same angle when being fixed in position.

 

47880216491_78bd5cb8f3_o.jpg

 

 

 

 

Did a dry-run of placing the floor assembly inside the fuselage, just to check that it fits. All hunky dory so far, quite happy with that. 

 

47091523394_23a3cf3e73_o.jpg

 

 

B)

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55 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

The seats look really good from inside and out. Excellent thread.

 

Terry

 

 

Now if I had my thinking head on, I really ought to take that seat/floor assembly and mould it as is .... it would then be a one-piece casting and not 14 x separate seats and a floor to assembly. ;)

 

Thanks for all the comments on these past couple of pages by the way everybody, much appreciated. 👍

 

 

B)

 

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On 5/19/2019 at 10:43 AM, janneman36 said:

Same name and great quality casting 👍😎 1+1 isn’t always 2🤪

 

cheers

 

Then why write complete nonsense and a blatant lie about somebody, if you have not even bothered to check if your facts are correct in the first place?

 

Neil.

 

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2 hours ago, Neil said:

 

Then why write complete nonsense and a blatant lie about somebody, if you have not even bothered to check if your facts are correct in the first place?

 

Neil.

 

Well it wasn’t a lie as it was  only a assumption from my side that you also where the other Neil from AIM72 and as we all know assumptions are the mother of mistakes and not a blatant lie...

 

cheers and love what you are doing,  Jan 

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On 5/19/2019 at 9:02 PM, Neil said:

 

 

Now if I had my thinking head on, I really ought to take that seat/floor assembly and mould it as is .... it would then be a one-piece casting and not 14 x separate seats and a floor to assembly. ;)

 

Thanks for all the comments on these past couple of pages by the way everybody, much appreciated. 👍

 

 

B)

 

Sounds a very sensible suggestion, but a few wxtra seats for fitting out the Amodel Dove/Devon would be very welcome!:clap2:

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I would be interested in a set of engines etc. as I have the kit and some S&M?decals for the Queens Filght and an Aeroclud set of props and undercarriage. 

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The kit cockpit interior is sparse, to say the least, so added a few things to fill it up a little, not for the sake of accuracy but simply to avoid the 'totally empty' look.Cockpit sidewalls and two separate, modified, control columns were taken from a couple of spare 1/72 Tamiya Mosquito BIV's I had, and two more resin seats that I cast with added tape seat-belts were installed in the cockpit. In truth, very little of this will be seen on the finished model, but at least 'something' is in there. Both underwing undercarriage bays were blanked off with resin/plasticard, as the retractable undercarriage is redundant because my aircraft was fitted with the fixed, non-retractable undercarriage (to be added later). The White 'coffin-lid' thingy is the cockpit entry door, cut from plasticard, which will probably be posed in the open position, and also note that the kit flaps have been removed from the wing trailing edges, these are now in the process of being made and will also be cast in resin, ready for installation on the model.

 

47974459947_b69a26d518_o.jpg

 

 

 

 

The kit transparency fuselage windows are awful, very thick and chunky, and with horrible sink-marks in them from the moulding process, but ironically they are pretty much bang-on size wise regarding the fuselage window opennings in which they fit. However, because they are exactly the right size, this does pose a problem. If the transparencies are glued in position there is a visible glue 'join' mark where they meet the fuselage, which will be visible if the windows are masked off to exact size when the fuselage is airbrushed. To avoid this unsightly join mark, the fuselage window area was openned up slightly larger than the total window area, and an oversized piece of 1.0mm clear plastic glued in place of it, and sanded flush with the fuselage outer surface, then polished, so when the windows are masked and sprayed, no window-to-fuselage join line will be visible. (The port fuselage half, in the pic below, has been modified in this way, with the oversized clear plastic piece superglued in place, ready for masking when the model is at the painting stage). The small square windows to the rear of the starboard fuselage side windows, and also on the entry door, will also be given the same treatment. The rudder tip also needs to be heightened.

 

47974469978_a53747d4b3_o.jpg

 

 

B)

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Really tidy work there Neil and excellent photography of the build too. I'll follow along if I may to pick up some tips for when I dust off my kit.

Also interested in the resin pieces if you were to choose to go into production at some point.

 

Edge

 

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25 minutes ago, Neil said:

The kit transparency fuselage windows are awful, very thick and chunky, and with horrible sink-marks in them from the moulding process, but ironically they are pretty much bang-on size wise regarding the fuselage window opennings in which they fit. However, because they are exactly the right size, this does pose a problem. If the transparencies are glued in position there is a visible glue 'join' mark where they meet the fuselage, which will be visible if the windows are masked off to exact size when the fuselage is airbrushed. To avoid this unsightly join mark, the fuselage window area was openned up slightly larger than the total window area, and an oversized piece of 1.0mm clear plastic glued in place of it, and sanded flush with the fuselage outer surface, then polished, so when the windows are masked and sprayed, no window-to-fuselage join line will be visible. (The port fuselage half, in the pic below, has been modified in this way, with the oversized clear plastic piece superglued in place, ready for masking when the model is at the painting stage). The small square windows to the rear of the starboard fuselage side windows, and also on the entry door, will also be given the same treatment. The rudder tip also needs to be heightened.

 

47974469978_a53747d4b3_o.jpg

Neat solution indeed Neil, and one which I think will make @perdu feel rather pleased with himself, cos he has done something similar recently as I recall, although it was a on a Pelican not a Heron! 😁

 

Terry

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Thank you kindly. :)

 

Both fuselage halves are now modified with the clear plastic insert, including the small window on the starboard side to the rear of the cabin windows. In their present state, the fuselage transparencies are slightly reminiscent of the Avro Anson, but without the framing! Have also now decided to leave the passenger entry door open too, so the clear window on that piece will be tackled slightly differently to the fuselage ones, because as it will be open, a 1.0mm thick transparent window in it may look quite noticeable, and not quite right, scale-wise. So, the window in the door was openned up to a dimension of 5mm x 5mm (it will now be the same height as the main passenger windows) and all detail was sanded off the kit door surfaces and then a piece of 0.25mm clear sheet bonded to it's outer surface and overlapping the doors external dimensions. This clear piece will be sanded down so that it is 'just' slightly larger than external door dimensions, so that it gives a similar appearance to the door on the real aircraft: a thinner outer face with a slightly smaller, thicker inner surface. Hopefully with a more scale-appearance window thickness too.  The link below to the Jersey Airlines Heron may show what I am trying to achieve with the passenger entry door:

 

http://aviationanoraks.co.uk/Archive/2011/2011_04_16 DH Sea Heron G-AORG/slides/IMG_4710.jpg

 

 

The two horizontal pen lines across the entry door openning in the pic below, on the Port fuselage half, indicate where all of the passenger windows, and the entry door window, should line up when finished. This indicates that the door openning itself is not quite tall enough, the curved upper section to it will need raising just a fraction.

 

47986096812_5a12899f6c_o.jpg

 

 

B)

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Bit of colour at last. Interior has a couple of shades of Grey and the passenger seats given a coat of Dark Red, with the antimacassars (see, told you I would mention it @Mike H :D ) in White on each headrest. This aircraft also had Orange curtains, and these are replicated with strips of grooved plasticard, the masking tape on the port fuselage half is to give me an indication where the window frames will be, to aid in the positioning of the curtains, and gives an idea of how they will look from the outside. Just about ready to close the fuselage up now.

 

 

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B)

 

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On 6/9/2019 at 4:30 PM, Turbofan said:

Any passengers on the flight? Or crew doing some preflight checks?

Ian

 

Nope, afraid not :D.  Flaps will be dropped, elevators 'kicked' slightly and passenger entry door open though. I have a good picture of the passenger entry steps too, so may make those also (very different to the kit ones). 

 

 

B)

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Fuselage halves are bonded together, so now the stage which I find probably the least enjoyable, the panel line engraving/scribing. The wings and tailplanes have been engraved, being relatively flat they were not too much of a problem, and most of the panel lines on the fuselage will be mainly straightforward too, except for one panel line which is right at the tip of the nose, and because of it's location is surprisingly awkward to engrave. I tried holding curved templates in place but that was impossible, and even thin strips of plastic tape placed in position, to scribe against, did not work either. 

 

Fortunately, the panel line in question is perpendicular to the fuselage, so the fuselage was temporarily fixed to a small engineers square with a few small drops of superglue (easily detached later) and that in turn was then also fixed to a flat piece of alloy sheet, so that it is held squarely and vertically in place, and will not move. A sharp scribing tool was then fixed to a small flat piece of tooling block, so the tip is at the same height as the panel line that is to be engraved, and holding the tooling block flat against the alloy sheet, the tip of the scribing tool is lightly drawn around the nose, making several passes until a visible engraved line appears. The whole process does look a bit 'Heath Robinson' to be honest, but it does work!  It is one way to engrave straight lines on compound curves and such. The rest of the panel lines on the fuselage will be relatively easy though, and will not need this method.

 

 

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48066321628_eece2c403f_o.jpg

 

 

B)

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