Jump to content

Sea Vixen FAW.1x2


Recommended Posts

Went for a walk one lunchtime during the week to visit a site near where I live that's long intrigued me - a tumulus-like mound above Ballinasloe on which squats this Doric launchpad:

51649501339_2d89992c92_c.jpg

Turns out to be a memorial to one Archdeacon Charles le Poer Trench (built in the mid 19th C) but it was the surnname that caught my eye as I I vividly remember seeing it on books (usually remaindered) like this back in the 1980s:

0426121406.jpg

Turns out one of the later family members, Brinsley, 8th Earl of Clancarty, used to be part of that whole Flying Saucer/Ancient Astronaut/ Bermuda Triangle literature bitd: naturally I had to snap a classic 70s UFO book cover photograph of the monument in homage:

51649064943_e66b313e34_b.jpg

Bet it's on a leyline...

 

Speaking of ancient astronauts:

On 30/10/2021 at 18:12, Pete in Lincs said:

I did wonder how easy it is to cut off all those supports. Looks like the answer is, it isn't.

Take your time, no rush, the end result will benefit from it.

It's one of those things you have to think ahead on when  prep'ping the parts for printing Pete - a constant juggle between orienting the part(s) to print as smoothly as possible, holding them in place firmly enough so they don't move during printing, and trying to find the most economical number of supports to use. Paradoxically the most effective equation is usually one that uses a lot of smaller support arrays rather than one using a smaller number of large supports, in terms of minimizing surface cleanup.

 

I don't have regimental tie I'm afraid. Will me woggle do?

On 30/10/2021 at 20:11, Spookytooth said:

A slow process ahead but hopefully no problems.

Pretty much sums the week up Simon! 😁

On 31/10/2021 at 07:00, Fritag said:

What a fabulous box (and two tea tin lids) of bits…..

Tins of tea are my fetish...well, one of them anyway.

The house tea here is:

81t965ZTx2L._AC_SX522_.jpg

 - which produces one of the strongest and most flavoursome brews I've ever encountered;  basically the all-day breakfast of teas... :laugh:

On 31/10/2021 at 07:00, Fritag said:

 

The photo has made me realise what a sad psychological case I am though - made me twitchy to have the ‘port’ tin lid to the right and the ‘stbd’ to the left. P’raps it’s a head-on shot….

This makes perfect cognitive sense Steve given your background.

On 31/10/2021 at 07:00, Fritag said:

Fancy making some Adours?  

They look like a cleaner version of the Avon with a tumble dryer drum stuck on the back, shouldn't be too hard... :devil:

 

Anyway, that's UFOs and beverages dealt with so down to the necessary. Cleanup on engines and undercarriage is completed. Whilst doing a part inventory for the nosegear I realized that I'd forgotten to include the mid-door of the bay as part of the print. I'd designed the part but forgotten to include so that print section has now been updated. In this insane though  couldn't be bothered putting a print on for something which is essentially a small slightly curved rectangle, so I made it from brass and added it here for priming:

51660335707_72e9826e94_b.jpg

Those parts then received the Alclad black treatment:

51662015780_358f8fe044_b.jpg

 - along with the lallies:

51661142236_7078d495a5_b.jpg

The it was time to switch attention to the tidied-up engines:

51662015765_f76974b60c_b.jpg

Two front ones are for the actual aircraft, two behind are failed/aborted prints that I'm going to use as mules for engine metal effect test. Having recently acquired some of Alclad's grey variety for use on the airframe, I decided to trial it here also to see if it would give any problems:

51661820134_b6872dcaf8_b.jpg

I'm going to put some glass black over these Avons for obvious metallic reasons:

51662015845_de4fcd618e_b.jpg

 - but have to say that the Alclad primer polishes up to a nice satin finish in it's own right:

51661142226_40fb7c7330_b.jpg

I'm going to detail these engine in a pretty clean/new look, so twitching to get that boss looking nice and shiny:

51661369388_e701513682_b.jpg

When it comes to further colour and lustrework on these pieces, I'd lost all my original mood boards for the U/c and Avons due to a hard drive failure about 12 months back, so reinstated them again yesterday:

51662015830_a2d753d4b5_b.jpg

 

51660335722_1b525e5ae7_b.jpg

Silver lining on the job as it turned out due to discovering a few images that I'd overlooked the first time around.

 

Thanks for looking in as always and hope you've had a good weekend; am off to read about the everlastingly cool bird lady:

2226314768.jpg

:bye:

Tony

 

 

 

 

  • Like 18
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

They look like a cleaner version of the Avon with a tumble dryer drum stuck on the back, shouldn't be too hard... :devil:

 

:hmmm:  ‘cleaner version’ as in derated for vacuuming carpets? Now that’s just perpetuating myths…..I thought more highly of you than that Tony :winkgrin:

 

Have to agree with Ian about how good them engines look btw.

Edited by Fritag
  • Haha 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, Martian said:

And before anyone starts; I didn't do it and wasn't their! :nono:

 

Paranoid of Mars 👽

Cross-dressing won't save you from being picked out in the line up down the nick....

 

  • Haha 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

along with the lallies:

Ooh, Get 'im, Mr 'orne! Got the Polari down pat, but 'is riah's a mess and not a word about that postcard from the Marines!

 

Lovely, nay, scrumptious engines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Seriously impressed with those Avons Tony.

 

4 hours ago, Fritag said:

 ‘cleaner version’ as in derated for vacuuming carpets? Now that’s just perpetuating myths…

 

And we have to go easy on the boy Tony, cos those Adour's were perfectly adequate unless you had a Spey powered F-4 on your tail........... Ooops!

 

 

Terry

 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Cross-dressing won't save you from being picked out in the line up down the nick....

 

And that's not me either, as people will see when I get my tentacles out at Telford!

 

Martian 👽

  • Haha 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, Martian said:

And that's not me either, as people will see when I get my tentacles out at Telford!

 

 

I think that is the bit I will miss the most this year 😭

  • Haha 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

 

I think that is the bit I will miss the most this year 😭

A private viewing can be arranged for a not so small consideration. And for a very small extra fee, @general melchettmight be persuaded for do his pole dancing act to complete the cabaret.

 

Helpful of Mars 👽

  • Haha 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

So much for this being a family site.

(Disgusted and shocked of Lincs)

How do you spell disingenuous? :rofl2: Anyway, you haven't met my family and they're cool with it. 

 

Martian (Somewhat surprised that he spelt disingenuous correctly without using spell check) 👽

  • Haha 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Gondor44 said:

Cartoon series on ITV back in the 80's? :rolleyes:

 

Gondor

Or even an emergency substitute for scotch in the more northerly latitudes of the UK, I am given to understand.

 

Martian 👽

  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/7/2021 at 11:53 AM, Martian said:

And before anyone starts; I didn't do it and wasn't there! :nono:

 

Paranoid of Mars 👽

You may be able to fool an ordinary Earthling, but not a Space Ranger! That's just what a Martian on a reconnaissance mission would be expected to say!

  • Haha 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quote

 general melchett might be persuaded for do his pole dancing act to complete the cabaret.

 

For a minor stipend, a new battalion pancake tutu and a bottle or two of Old Scrotum (1914) I'll happily dance on a pole for you. Just make sure it's comfortably warm and well greased.

 

Quote

Turns out one of the later family members, Brinsley, 8th Earl of Clancarty, used to be part of that whole Flying Saucer/Ancient Astronaut/ Bermuda Triangle literature bitd: naturally I had to snap a classic 70s UFO book cover photograph of the monument in homage:

 

Good lord, that name rings a few bells, I remember wading through this stuff while heavily under the influence, listening to Hawkwind's Space Ritual on Dunstable Downs wearing nowt but a tin-foil hat and gold wellies back in heady summer days of the mid-seventies. Other names that resonate from that time are those of Joseph Blumrich and Jacques Vallée ....oh, my misspent youth...where for art thou?

Edited by general melchett
  • Like 1
  • Haha 8
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Space Ranger said:

You may be able to fool an ordinary Earthling, but not a Space Ranger! That's just what a Martian on a reconnaissance mission would be expected to say!

Don't tell him your name, Pike!

 

2 hours ago, general melchett said:

 Other names that resonate from that time are those of Joseph Blumrich and Jacques Vallée

Inventors of the Acme constant temperature Cricket box. Sadly they couldn't keep up with wartime demand from the Luftwaffe on the Eastern front

due to the effects of aviation fuel on the Yak leather.

  • Haha 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, general melchett said:

Oh, my misspent youth...where for art thou?

About 200 years in the past, when you used to be known as Toast Rack minor at boarding school.

 

Martian 👽

  • Haha 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Feck me but you lot have gone haywire this week: there'll be psychology conferences held around the last few posts alone...

 

Then Came the Last Days of May November and the final crop of chiles was gathered in:

51676860509_7c6f58f2b9_b.jpg

Insane these are still growing in this neck of the woods...

 

'It's said the West is nice this time of year
That's what they say'

 

First patient then nurse please.

On 07/11/2021 at 18:46, bigbadbadge said:

The Avons look absolutely awesome Tony, great job can't wait to see the paint effects on them .

More in that vein in a moment Chris. My thanks as always.

On 07/11/2021 at 19:03, Pete in Lincs said:

Ooh, Get 'im, Mr 'orne! Got the Polari down pat, but 'is riah's a mess and not a word about that postcard from the Marines!

 

Lovely, nay, scrumptious engines.

Ooh ta Pete.

You're a dish for saying so!

On 07/11/2021 at 19:53, Terry1954 said:

cos those Adour's

Ever since Steve's post I keep misreading that name as 'Ardour' Terry and thinking what a wonderfully passionate name for a big whooshmaker.

'Where's Fritag?'

'In the hangar letting his Ardour cool...'

On 08/11/2021 at 08:56, giemme said:

Those engines!

I know G.

My dreams are full of heated metal.... 😵

On 08/11/2021 at 12:30, hendie said:

remind me Tony - were those Avons printed on the Mars or the Mars 2?   Beautiful job regardless of which printer.

In this instance the engines were knocked out on the Mars 2 Alan.

 

There's not a huge difference compared to the original test prints that I did on the original Mars about a year ago - both used the same layer heights though with necessarily different exposure times - at least not enough difference to be that significant in photography. To the naked eye though the M2 *just* edges ahead in terms of yielding crisper edges.

On 08/11/2021 at 17:48, Martian said:

And that's not me either, as people will see when I get my tentacles out at Telford!

Mother of God.

#evacuatethehall

On 08/11/2021 at 18:29, Terry1954 said:

I think that is the bit I will miss the most this year 

Mercifully I won't be seeing any of his bits! 😆

On 09/11/2021 at 15:47, general melchett said:

Good lord, that name rings a few bells, I remember wading through this stuff while heavily under the influence, listening to Hawkwind's Space Ritual on Dunstable Downs wearing nowt but a tin-foil hat and gold wellies back in heady summer days of the mid-seventies. Other names that resonate from that time are those of Joseph Blumrich and Jacques Vallée ....oh, my misspent youth...where for art thou?

Indeed! 😁

To my knowledge nobody has ever adequately explained why so many of our non-terrestrial visitors chose to visit Warminster so regularly back then. I guess it was just more appealing than Swindon.

On 09/11/2021 at 18:51, bbudde said:

Marvellous Tony! Worth every visit here, even with not much time on my hands at the moment.

Thanks Benedikt. Hope you get some free time soon. :thumbsup2:

 

Knowing that my brain is not entirely my own for the present I've been avoiding any major construction tasks and experimenting with colour - or more accurately, lustre and anisotropy in metal.

 

Over the last couple of months I've produced a kind of boneyard over on the windowsill of the studio where I've been carrying out various experiments with simulating metal appearances in daylight:

51677065965_8f0501e7fb_b.jpg

The piston head thing was a baseline to give me something 'real' to balance reference photographs of the Avo against when trying out various combinations of pigment and process. Shown above are a combination of Vallejo, Jacquard, Alclad products. (Out of curiosity see if you can guess which of the parts above is painted with which manufacturer's products...)

 

The results of these tests reinforce something that I'd routinely felt when producing metal effects on my  past builds: there's no single manufacturer's products that entirely convince me at this scale in my work when applied on their own followed by weathering/toning. If you've seen some of the previous stuff I've done you'll know that I like to work back into paint on the aircraft to modulate surface appearances but I've never gotten round to doing some more exhaustive tests for metal effects until now.

 

I'll not bore you with any detailed waffle about these experiments but after doing some final tests this morning on an Avon mule I the sequence I find gives most pleasing metallic lustres for the engines is:

 

  • Alcad Black Primer
  • 2500 W&D
  • Alclad Black Gloss base
  • Selectively polish
  • Jacquard silver aclohol ink base layer
  • Selectively polish

This gives a basic working metal subsurface:

51677065920_bfa95b41be_b.jpg

I forgot to add that this mule didn't receive the same level of sanding and polishing prior to painting that the actual ones have received, hence the rougher texture here. (Should add also here that the photographic references I'm  relying on most for establishing accurate appearances for the Avons all come from shots taken in the Navy Wings hangar when hauling the engines out of XP924 for maintenance. These operational Avons contrast significantly with the condition of the engines in static display aircraft that show the effects of sitting unmaintained for so many years.)

 

That base metal then provided the starting point for trying to produce those diverse and transient/subtle effects that metals can have when viewed from different lighting angles. To try and express this, the combustion chamber and exhaust areas werer built  up using blended mixtures of Alclad Chrome and Exhaust Manifold over the silver ink in various places, selectively polishing these areas between very light applications with the airbrush:

51675385192_5580689031_b.jpg

That's nearly ready to have a go at the real thing next; the colour variation of that tertiary staining need to be increased next time so alongside blended Manifold, I'll airbrush some heavily diluted oil paint of the Umber and Sienna varieties. It's only the rear of the engine behind the black compressor casing that really requires modulating to this extent - the starter/manifold regions up front (along with the visible compressor blades) are relatively cleaner for the most part and will therefore need a different kind of attention.

 

Really all I'm doing here is groping for a way to produce a more heterogeneous expression of various metal surfaces comprising the engine in a manner that takes account of both colour and lustre effcts (the latter something that I've neglected in the past due to the anxiety that learning to work with metal paints can produce). At one point I even rubbed in a little Vallejo Duraluminum in with a fingertip here, so I wouldn't dignify this process with the term 'work sequence' so much as a set of subjective responses to what you see when turning the part in the light.

 

Thanks for putting up with the yakking - sorry there's not more pictures, I did take more but as they really just unexciting interim steps where it's not always easy to see what's changes, I thought it would be less boring to show just the main steps to give an overall idea of where this is headed.

 

Have good weekends and as always: peace be upon you and yours.

:bye:

Tony

 

Addenda:

I did some further work earlier spraying and polishing W&N ochre oil paint over the rear section of the mule and I think that's now got things to the stage where it looks visually close enough to the actual engine in this region.

51677218604_87c2f3f47c_b.jpg

Next step is to apply what I've learned here to the two I'm actually using in the build.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Like 22
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...