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Sea Vixen FAW.1x2


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1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

Are you man enough for one that big?

OOH Matron!

The fogtigue seems to have affecteded your typoing skulls tooo. But my loptop has autotronslate so I mananged to understood mist of it.

Is that a single or twin tail rotor jet?

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1 hour ago, Navy Bird said:

We need to get someone to show you how to make a model. Jeesh.

🤣

Doubt we'll find anyone here to do it Bill - bloody place is full of comedians...

1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

OOH Matron!

The fogtigue seems to have affecteded your typoing skulls tooo. But my loptop has autotronslate so I mananged to understood mist of it.

 

A cuple of spelling mistaken and everyone's a cricket....

 

But My God you're right Pete: I hadn't realized how embarrassingly messed up my thought processing had become until rereading that last post. Still. Back to work on Monday in my job as chief translator at the United Nations.

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15 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

OOH Matron!

The fogtigue seems to have affecteded your typoing skulls tooo. But my loptop has autotronslate so I mananged to understood mist of it.

Is that a single or twin tail rotor jet?

Are you related to a certain Officer Crabtree by any chance?

 

Curious of Mars 👽

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Awesome work! and before you ask; no. I still don't understand a bit of it!

 

Technically Challenged of Mars 👽

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8 minutes ago, Martian said:

Are you related to Officer Crabtree by any chance?

 

 

Eee, iss win orf ma alltim eros, zat mon!

 

Teeeery frum over de heels

 

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5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

I'd completley fotgotten about the tail rotor....

:rofl2:

 

some lovely intricate work on those wingfolds Tony. They are going to be simply stunning by the time the crayons are put away.   

 

I hope you feel better soon

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I was on one of my 'hiding in the grass pretending to have a picnic' under the approach at Boscombe Down way back in 1970. I hasten to add that I was hiding my trusty Pentax camerea and 200mm lens from the MoD plod patrols. Then suddenly I was astounded as this wierdly painted half black, half white Sea Vixen arrived in the circuit. Of course it was FAW.1, XJ481 that I duly captured on Kodachrome. I was so intrigued by this that I converted an old FROG DH.110 kit to represent this aircraft. I just filed the nose flat on an angle to represent the nose camera, andf added the 'pipe' that ran down the tail boom. Alas it was devoid of a Martel missile or camera pod, but the finished model certainly attracted attention when displayed as no one had seen this before.  Interesting to know the reason for the colour scheme?  

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Ruddy Heck, Tony! Great work on those wing-folds - those have more parts than most models I actually finish. Glad to hear you're recovering from that Covid thingie.

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason

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Glad to see you're on the way for a full recovery, Tony! :thumbsup:  Those wingfolds and details various are simply amazing! :worthy:  :worthy:

 

Ciao 

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Wingfolds! I forgot to mention them. Doh!

Epic stuff. They look like they'll work perfectly. Beautiful micro modelling.

I've been thinking about the PX-7. A small brush, used to dab thinned semi gloss red acrylic onto any moving parts*.

I doesn't want to be over, or underdone. Just enough so that a bored Matelot can say he's done it to Chiefy. 

*F'nar. There, that's saved Ced a job.

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1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

I've been thinking about the PX-7. A small brush, used to dab thinned semi gloss red acrylic onto any moving parts*.

 

If I remember correctly, the first coat was quite translucent, but on subsequent applications it got darker and darker. By the time Nimrods came in to ASF or NMSU, that PX7 could be any shade between light translucent red and deep burgundy.  So in one area there could be a myriad of shades of red

 

(Or am I thinking of something else?  ... Am I going senile Pete?)

 

 

 

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39 minutes ago, hendie said:

Am I going senile Pete?)

Don't ask me, my Wife, and several of the blokes at work think I'm already there!

Apparently I'm crazy to still be doing what I do at my age. I've tried to explain to them that they'll also need to work on,

as their pensions will be virtually worthless, but it's looked at as a bridge to be crossed at a later date by most of them. 

 

I remember PX-7, I think we only used it on the Wessex? but not on the Puma.

I can't remember using it on anything else though. 

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4 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

I can't remember using it on anything else though. 

 

urghhh. Confirmed senile then.

 

PX28 was the WD40 stuff that we sprayed Wessi with wasn't it?   The stuff I'm thinking of was used to paint over valves and what have you in hydraulic systems. I remember slathering it on while working on NImrods, but now (obviously) I can't remember the name.  Maybe it wasn't even a PX at all.   

Any other Nimrod bashers out there that happen to remember what that stuff was?

 

 

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Sunday evening and some secular vespers for wingfold lubricant enthusiasts.

 

First though, let's look through all these leaflets shoved in the letterbox.

On 09/06/2022 at 21:46, Martian said:

Are you related to a certain Officer Crabtree by any chance?

No.

I inherited the moustache from my mother.

On 09/06/2022 at 23:48, AdrianMF said:

Wingfolds do look amazing it must be said. Fits right in with the rest of the model!

 

Merci Adrian.

I just have to stop handling the model by holding it on the edges of those wings and rubbing all the paint back off now!

On 10/06/2022 at 00:17, AMB said:

Interesting to know the reason for the colour scheme?  

Ditto Adrian: likewise what was the rationale for XJ488's different scheme when both worked together on the Martel trials?

 

The fact that both are painted in such a high contrast scheme with a pronounced directionality to the design would certainly makes both aircraft stand out against cloud/mist in terms of orientation when observed or filmed from a distance during trials, but I've no evidence to support this guess.

 

There's a frustrating lack of curiosity in aviation literature when it comes to discsussing 'why' rather than the 'what' of such matters: lots of descriptive tracts and chronologies but minus primary research of the kind that Nick Millman puts into his work on paint and colour, for example.

 

PS: Your picnics are way better than mine, I only attract midges not Vixens! 😁

On 10/06/2022 at 00:40, Learstang said:

Ruddy Heck, Tony! Great work on those wing-folds - those have more parts than most models I actually finish. Glad to hear you're recovering from that Covid thingie

Cheers on all counts Jason! 😄

Hope you're doing ok yourself?

On 10/06/2022 at 01:16, CJP said:

Absolutely fabulous

Dahhhling...that's just impossibly sweet of you. 😄

On 10/06/2022 at 07:19, giemme said:

 

Glad to see you're on the way for a full recovery, Tony! :thumbsup:  Those wingfolds and details various are simply amazing! :worthy:  :worthy:

Likewise Giorgio - far too kind.

On 10/06/2022 at 18:37, Pete in Lincs said:

I've been thinking about the PX-7. A small brush, used to dab thinned semi gloss red acrylic onto any moving parts*.

I doesn't want to be over, or underdone. Just enough so that a bored Matelot can say he's done it to Chiefy.

 

On 10/06/2022 at 20:06, hendie said:

If I remember correctly, the first coat was quite translucent, but on subsequent applications it got darker and darker. By the time Nimrods came in to ASF or NMSU, that PX7 could be any shade between light translucent red and deep burgundy.  So in one area there could be a myriad of shades of red

Thanks Pete & Alan.

Both of you confirm what I've been able to identify from the comparatively small number of colour images showing PX-7 in use on FAW.1s. The best photographic reference out there seems to be this:

52138140605_5279538d90_b.jpg

 - a blowup from this Andrew Patterson shot showing an 890 Sqn. aircraft (XN699) on deck. It cetainly tallies with your recollection of a translucent red shading to darker tones Alan.

On 10/06/2022 at 20:52, Pete in Lincs said:

I can't remember using it on anything else though. 

What happens in the hangar, stays in the hangar...

Say no more.

nudge_nudge.jpg

On 11/06/2022 at 01:06, hendie said:

Any other Nimrod bashers out there that happen to remember what that stuff was?

'Nimrod basher'

I turn my back for five minutes and this thread becomes a torrent of innuendo....

 

 

Err. anyway.

 

Before attacking the wingfold, I forced myself to complete some of the remaini ng fiddly little paint jobs I'd successfully been avoiding up until now, to whit the 'Danger/Emergency' lettering along the rain shedding ducting below the canpy:

52140086207_ba6694b686_b.jpg

 - along with the white lettering in front of the windshield that my faulty memory tells me says something about how to clean said glassworks. As previously, this lettering is just hand painted on in tempera and looks bloody awful in close-up like this, but from viewing distances gives a decent representation of lettering that's too small to read at this scale.

 

Same procedure used for the notices on the outside of the observer's door, along with the red handle:

52141125288_5541b46186_b.jpg

I found the trick to getting these right is to squint at the actual text with your eyes half-closed in order to get a sense of how the visual 'weight' of the lettering appears for various words and phrases, then to reproduce this weight and rhythm with tiny brush strokes. This can then be further tightened up once dry with some judicious strokes from a sharpened cocktail stick.

 

Another perfunctory detail that's repeatdly tickled my detail-radar is the lozenge shaped 'Explosive Release' notices on both sides of each pylon, which you can see in this maintenance drawing as 104/106:

52133026522_ac87fb8bd8_b.jpg

These seemed to discolour quite quickly in service to give a lightish tan appearrance in many photos, making them just prominent enough that they too needed reproducing in tempera:

52141125313_3125a5a9e4_b.jpg

Those pylons do in themselves contain a number of additional panel details but to produce them at this scale would require exagerrating their prominence to a degree out of keeping with what I've tried to maintain as the overall visual 'feel' of the aircraft in 1/72.

 

Not having had an accident in a while, shortly after finishing these jobs I decided to drop a bit of airbrush cleaner onto the trailing edge of the stbd wing at the most awkward of places (where the red 'no step' rectangle meets trailing edge). I didn't notice this had happened until after it had a chance to eat through the both grey and red areas of paint right down to the resin, leaving a noticable 'crater' in the paintwork that wouldn't simply ppait back over.

 

Annoying, but not fatal. Some wet sanding to level out, followed by several blobs of EDSG applied with a brush and allowed to dry to build up paint in the crater to the level of the surrounding paintwork. Letting these blobs dry before adding the next one took an anxious hour or so in total but thankfully it all sanded and Micromeshed out successfully in the end Here's the red being airbrushed back on first:

52140086307_5795c57ffb_b.jpg

Then masked and a couple of passes of EDSG, sealed with Aqua Gloss:

52140086347_32da79cb59_b.jpg

You'd never know the crater was there...not that I'd wanted it there in the first place.

 

Paint-trauma avoided, I couldn't put it off any more: the big gamble on PX-7ing the wingfold finally had to play out. As on many prevous occasions, I prefer to mix colours directly on the aircraft as a process, rather than trying to get them in a single mixture beforehand. Having a Vixen-mule around the place meant I'd been able to experiment previously with different paint types and mediums, finally breaking it down into:

52141106371_263c3e2915_b.jpg

In the above order then, here are some shots of progress as it developed.

 

X7(Red), diluted with airbrush thinner and dabbed on with an 000 brush:

52141591805_0520978b2a_b.jpg

OMG, totes disaster &etc, but thankfully I had tested this process previously. Still bricking it off course in the sense that this was the final model and not a test.

Step 2:

X7 (Orange) diluted and airbrushed as filter layer:

52141125338_ce6f29be96_b.jpg

 

52140086252_dc8c176fd5_b.jpg

Step 3: (this is where it gets all subjective and instinctive). Red tempera & X7 mixed together in Winsor & Netwon Galeria Satin in varing ratios, applied with 000 brush:

52141125398_15a16709d7_b.jpg

 

52141344069_b2d3f1b3a0_b.jpg

 

52141125403_1a8964450a_b.jpg

I had that photographic rreference shown earlier blown up on the tablet in front of me on the bench the whole time I was doing this, looking at it and the model for equal periods until I felt that the overall impression of looking at both was the same.

 

A lot of fiddly work later to join these bits together but <shudder> one step at a time:

52141591915_34e847d1d4_b.jpg

I deliberately used W&N satin for the last layer as in terms of achieving that greasy/translucent effect Alan had spoken of, paint alone would have been too 'chalky' a finish, and varnish ove the top too shiny on it's own. With the pigment suspended in the varnish there's just the detailed variation of colour depth(s) I was hoping for:

52141106466_253aaaa124_b.jpg

Is that

On 10/06/2022 at 18:37, Pete in Lincs said:

Just enough so that a bored Matelot can say he's done it

Pete? 😁

 

Need to pick out the locking pins in chrome later of course and might add some graphite/grime accents to some of those details, but not too much.

 

I'll live with it for a while first and see what it says.

 

A very good evening to all of you.

:bye:

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Looks great.

 

Glad to see proper modellers use acrylic paint as filler too ;)

 

FWIW I quite often mix varnish and acrylic colour together on engines and cockpits to get the impression of layers of gunk and/or shadow piling up in the meniscus (meniscusi? meniscuses?). If I just use water and acrylic there isn’t enough medium for it to play nice and it dries funny all over the place.

 

But you have well and truly nailed it anyhow.

 

Will the model be declared finished when you have nowhere else to pick it up by?

 

Regards,

Adrian

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Your whole update is commendable, Tony, but the paint job on the wingfolds is simply superb! And ingenious too! :worthy:  :worthy:  :clap:

 

Ciao 

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55 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Need to pick out the locking pins in chrome later of course and might add some graphite/grime accents to some of those details, but not too much.

 

And with that... you'll have nailed it.

Excellent update Tony, though we've come to expect nothing less of you.  

 

All that's missing now is the wirelocking :D

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Looking great.

 

Are you going to mount it on a base (some suitable looking flight deck maybe) when it is done?  This would make it easier to move around to shows, etc.

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More gorgeous stuff Tony; those tiny details are really raising the bar, again :) 

 

1/24 scale? Too much man for me Sir, I like little and often (snurf).

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Impressed with the analytical approach to solving the problem of PX-7ing of the wingfold Tony.

 

And super save on the trailing edge.  ‘Annoying’ you say? I can think of several adjectives that would better describe my feelings in such circumstances, but then I probably lack the Baronial emotional control :D… or mastery of understatement as a narrative device :whistle:

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