Sea Vixen FAW.1x2

[TheBaron]

I saw a ghost last night.

 

Story to follow after the mailbag.

 

21 hours ago, giemme said:

This idea of tracing panel lines with a pencil is incredibly effective on white, Tony! It just render a proper effect, including an initial weathering! Top job!   

Kind of you as always Giorgio.

Every time I use use tempera on a build now I think of you, you know.

Wouldn't have considered using it as an option until I saw your results.

21 hours ago, Brandy said:

I love the look of where this is going. Looking forward to seeing how you do it in practice Tony.

Thanks Ian: as a follower of the 'jump in and learn to swim' school of modelling, every build is also a test for the next one....

21 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

That sums up what realistic modelling is IMHO. Many strive for the effect, few achieve it. Looks like you are nailing it Tony.

Characteristically generous of you to say so my friend. I just have to make sure the nail doesn't go into my foot by mistake! 😁

17 hours ago, perdu said:

Well this ain't bad, you know.

Cheers Bill. It looks like the gamble is slowly paying off....

16 hours ago, Jon020 said:

Wow. Only just found this topic. Will certainly follow with interest. Superb modelling👏

Thank you Jon and nice to meet you.

You're most welcome here (though I apologize for my sense of humour in advance).

15 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Tony, Thanks for the mention. I've cleaned more than a few flying machines in my time, it's true.

The pencil lines look great, it's my preferred method too. I have to keep reminding myself of the size of this model!

No problem Pete: you're my go-to man on fluid stains (aircraft, aircraft you filthy swines at the back) plus, it was your encouragement with the drawing process the first time round that made me want to develop it further here, for which I thank you..

15 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Personally I think I would go the subtle route for weathering on the white. Some grubbyness on the flap, Airbrake & gear door hinge lines.

With, as you suggest, slight tonal differences between panels.

Agreed.

In fact I put together a mood board last evening from my visual research showing a characteristic set of views of operational FAW.1s that will help me average out the various effects within the bounds of reason:

^{(apologies to anyone who's image is included above - I don't have my original download sources bookmarked for many of these so if you work is present and you}

^{want it removed, please contact me and Ill do so immediately.)}

 

14 hours ago, Anthony in NZ said:

Tony, words fail me mate! This truly is next level modelling and quite frankly am in awe of your skills. Sometimes I scratch my head at using a pencil for panel lines but after seeing your execution I totally see your vision of end result…perfect 

 

ok I’ll give’QC’ stamp on this….carry on sir!

Thank 'ee guv'nor. 😁

 

Ghost Story

Whilst putting the above montage together last evening I found a cache of FAA related videos which I'd downloaded from various sources over the two years this build has been going on. Most of these I'd scanned in the early days of the build for potential reference images, but, being video - as well as with all the compression effects of various online services and formats - the lack of resolution in most cases makes them of limited value. I do however like to watch a particular aircraft in motion/flight as part of research, as it's not until you see one in turning in light and time that I feel you can really gain true sense of it as a physical entity e.g, occupying a volume of space and obeying the laws of physics (and also in the case of helicopters, obeying the precepts of occult magic).

 

One file I had was on old set of 'dailies' (i.e., the raw unedited footage from a film shoot) from Pathe news. There's a copy of it up here under the title 'With the Fleet Air Arm (1964)'. It looks to me like this material was shot during preparations for the Yeovilton Air Show that year as there's a companion piece also online there called Fleet Air Arm Display (1964).

 

At the 10:00 minute mark in the first of these films I was astonished to see XN708 emerging out of the greys of middle distance and taxiing up to the camera like a ghost from the past!

Here's a still from the 12:45 mark showing the wing number much more clearly:

In terms of where I'm at in the build at the present time there, are some wonderful close-ups of parts of the airframe tothat give an accurate sense of the condition of an operational Vixen of the period.

 

The grubbiness of the white undersides:

 

Wear and tear on the leading edge:

Paint wear around the Obs. hatch:

These are a great find at this particular moment in time however one set of images which I'm not posting here are those that show the pilot and observer of the aircraft getting out and smiling as they approach the camera. Shot just before Air Day that year means these rushes were filmed toward the end of June of 1964.

 

Five months later the pilot and observer grinning genially for the camera as they dismount may have been the ones killed when this aircraft crashed into Lyme Bay at night.

 

I mentioned toward the beginning of this thread that the daughter of the pilot killed in the crash is now a novelist and editor', who recounts the search for details about her father in:

Not knowing if she's aware of this footage I've reached out to her through her publisher.

 

Anyway. Ghosts from the grey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[hendie]

a bit speechless at the latest round of updates Tony.  The pencil markings are much more suited to this scale and as Giorgio mentioned, the non uniformity and tonality already provides a sense of weathering. 

 

Very thoughtful of you to reach out to the publisher.

[keefr22]

23 hours ago, TheBaron said:

This well-known Andrew Patterson shot gives a good example of what I mean:

 

I'd never noticed the state of the radome on that jet before, despite all the time spent looking at the pic in the past! 

 

Keith

[Brandy]

Wonderful pics there Tony and very thoughtful of you to try to contact the pilot's daughter.

Having said that, and after seeing the pics, you will now have to print a spanner too. Shouldn't be a problem, but how will you find out what size it was?

Looks about 7/8 to me, but it needs to be right!

 

Ian

[perdu]

2 hours ago, keefr22 said:

 

I'd never noticed the state of the radome on that jet before, despite all the time spent looking at the pic in the past! 

 

Keith

I did, ropey isnt it.

 

You would think these guys would look after these...  (Runs away blaming it on Keith Crisp, oi you two get out of the waaaaaaay))

[bigbadbadge]

Wow Tony the pencil work looks fantastic, great work.   Good to see the pics and love others have said thoughtful of you to reach out to the daughter.   

Can't wait to see the weathering progress .

Chris

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Another great update. The X files said the truth is out there, So, it seems, are the pictures. What a find!

[Fritag]

Another gem of a post Tony.  If it’s not envelope-expanding modelling it’s human interest history.

 

Must give that pencil technique a try n’all.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

That film is fascinating, especially for anyone who knows VL.  It was the only Naval Air Station of my era at which I was never based - full of Stovies & Junglies in my day - but I still flew that circuit often enough.  It looks to me as though the extension of the main runway is still pretty recent, and there are no hangars at all on the South Site (where Navy Wings now live).  Also slightly scary to think that the Swordfish was only 25 years old when that film was shot… but the film is almost 50 years ago.

 

The design of the single-man liferaft hadn’t changed significantly between 1964 and the 80s/90s!

 

I think - think - that one of the aircrew at the briefing is Sandy Munro, my neighbour (for whom I built my 1/48 FAW1).  Right squadron, roughly right time. Sadly, Sandy’s memory is deteriorating rapidly, but if I get the chance I will see if he remembers who the others are.

 

The airframes certainly look as though they were worked hard!

[Brandy]

By the way, Tony, (et al),  have you seen the wonderful 3d build in the maritime section of the SS Delphine?

Jaw droppingly lovely!

 

Ian

[AdrianMF]

7 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

but the film is almost 50  60 years ago.

Fixed it for you

 

Scary, huh?

[The Spadgent]

Loving the pencil panels. Very effective. 🙌

 

 Johnny

[TheBaron]

I had the whole of last week off work in the run up to Easter, so with with characteristically good timing we bought a sofa which resulted in the living room ceiling needing painting before it was delivered which then made the walls look shabby so they had to be painted as well and so it wasn't a week off at all really. 1:1 scale then instead of the 1:72 I'd initially originally envisioned, but at least that should last until retirement now:

I found some guy on the Y-tube who'd digitized a load of old Radio One shows from the 70s and early 80s so had four days at it in pop nostalgia overload. Now I need never bother again: truly the most bizarre period in modern British history has to be that in which Showaddywaddy were a semi-permanent fixture in the nation's acoustical consciousness.

 

Having to move all the furniture out also meant that for a brief moment, all the past builds were gathered together in a kind of temporal collision:

One of the unanticipated pleasures of having to clear the bookshelves as well was discovering the screenplay of this gem:

A work that made a huge impression on me when it was first broadcast and from which whole lines of dialogue still run through my head to this day.#:

Despite the diversionsof domesticity/memory, I did however manage to finish off the canopy:

This took a little longer than anticipated as  - possibly due to the Oramask being left on the transparency for several weeks in and around paint treatments - there were some visible residues affecting clarity that meant masking off the canopy framing one last time in order to clean these off with a cotton bud and IPA. This was followed up with a dip in Aqua gloss and then bunged into an ad hoc isolation chamber to keep all the sundry airborne debris that seem to infest the studio these days at bay whilst it dried:

A couple of minor touchups on the windshield framing needed as you can see, but from references I see no need to increase the *very* modest amount of wear and tear marks on the rear canopy:

 

 

On 10/04/2022 at 13:04, hendie said:

The pencil markings are much more suited to this scale and as Giorgio mentioned, the non uniformity and tonality already provides a sense of weathering. 

That would be my view these days Alan - the knack ( if you can describe it as such) in taking a drawing approach is I think to avoid the level of uniformity seen in moulded panel lines when trying to match the visual responses of such small features at this scale to those which daylight produces on the actual aircraft. Bit of a mouthful but hopefully you get the gist.

On 10/04/2022 at 13:30, keefr22 said:

 

I'd never noticed the state of the radome on that jet before, despite all the time spent looking at the pic in the past!

It certainly seems to have seen some life at sea Keith! Somewhere in that same series of photographs is a view showing a Vixen with a 150 gall. tank in pretty much the same state of wear.

On 10/04/2022 at 13:53, Brandy said:

Having said that, and after seeing the pics, you will now have to print a spanner too.

I'm but inside I'm 😭 Ian, on account of having a full set of drawings in the maintenance manuals showing a typical tool set for the aircraft and desperately trying to hide it from myself....

On 10/04/2022 at 18:11, bigbadbadge said:

Good to see the pics and love others have said thoughtful of you to reach out to the daughter.   

Thanks Chris: I don't necessarily expect to hear anything back as it depends how closely her publisher monitors their individual author's social media feeds, and what they deem appropriate to pass on. We'll see.

On 10/04/2022 at 18:48, Pete in Lincs said:

The X files said the truth is out there,

 - and you only have to dip into any of @Martian's threads to realize just how strange that truth is Pete! 😁

#theywalkamongus

#ontentaclesmostly

On 11/04/2022 at 09:33, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I think - think - that one of the aircrew at the briefing is Sandy Munro, my neighbour (for whom I built my 1/48 FAW1).  Right squadron, roughly right time. Sadly, Sandy’s memory is deteriorating rapidly, but if I get the chance I will see if he remembers who the others are.

Nice one Crisp. Please do let us know of any positive ID's.

On 11/04/2022 at 16:14, Brandy said:

By the way, Tony, (et al),  have you seen the wonderful 3d build in the maritime section of the SS Delphine?

 

I have Ian! I've been following Pascal's work since seeing his extraordinary SS Hydrograaf production and he's way. way, above my skill level when it comes to Fusion!.

On 11/04/2022 at 16:43, AdrianMF said:

Fixed it for you

*Mentally picturing the tour guide at Big Ben having nervous breakdown under questioning from Adrian....

On 11/04/2022 at 23:05, The Spadgent said:

Loving the pencil panels. Very effective.

Vogue needs to be on every modellers's reading list imo Johnny! 😁

 

On the subject of pencils, I've begun experiments on the airframe with some of Faber-Castell's graphite aquarelle pencils. I wasn't aware of these before but they're essentially a range of diffrerent grades of graphite pencils grading from HB to 8B, that are water soluble. Up at the 8B end they look a little too dark for the subtelties I'm trying to bring out here but 2B seems to be working out quite nicely. This is how it looks when freshly drawing in around the front fairing  of that cooling air intake at the port wing root below the airbrake:

Too stark in raw application, but when modulated with a brush and water over on the stbd side, the final effect is exactly that level of control which  I was hoping for but could never quite achieve with a pencil and rubber alone:

I've seen people using (very effectively) soluble colour pencils for weathering/staining effects on various vehicles of of course, but being able to produce tonalities alone like this is a grimy person's dream....

 

Yours in filth,

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

[Martian]

You're making a fine job of that canopy Tony.

 

However,you're missing a trick with that decorating. What you need to be doing is to make a complete banjax of the job, Mrs Baron gets so frustrated that eventually, she tells you to leave the job to her. A bonus of this particular cunning plan is that you are never asked to participate in decorating operations ever again!

 

Another solution is that you tell the Memsahib that you are going to invite the "Usual Suspects" round to do the job, which should have the same result as already outlined.

 

I accept that there is a very remote possibility that you actually enjoy decorating, in which case,I understand that help is available for this particularly distressing condition.

 

Helpful of Mars 👽

[Spookytooth]

Very nice 1:1 paint work went on then .

 

All looking OK from here Tony.

Judging wear and tear can be an fine art.

 

Simon.

[AdrianMF]

Not bad, but there should be a big soot stain above the fireplace, fading on the wall opposite the window and assorted scuff marks at the level of chair backs…

 

Adrian

[bigbadbadge]

Nice job on the decorating,  Nice landscape piccie too, I hope it is, or it will be a bugger putting up shelves!!!

Nice work on the canopy too and the pencil lining, just magnificent. 

Chris

[Pete in Lincs]

5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

to realize just how strange that truth is Pete!

How very true.

 

5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Yours in filth,

Snort!

 

4 hours ago, Martian said:

eventually, she tells you to leave the job to her. A bonus of this particular cunning plan is that you are never asked to participate in decorating operations ever again!

Did that years ago. 

 

12 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

I hope it is, or it will be a bugger putting up shelves!!!

They live in an inside out lighthouse.

 

Lovely penciling, BTW. You mentioned colours. Leaking hydraulic fluid eventually turns dark red & gelatinous. Awful stuff to get off.

 

Regards from the Near East. Oh, and if you could possibly hold that wet weather front over there for the next week? I'd be obliged. Ta.

[Cookenbacher]

9 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Having to move all the furniture out also meant that for a brief moment, all the past builds were gathered together in a kind of temporal collision:

Ahh, there's the Barracuda.

[Fritag]

Great canopy.

 

Great graphite panel lines (btw and fwiw (nowt) I am a major fan and user of the Faber-Castell perfect pencil for real-world usage  # just saying)

 

Great fireplace.

[John Laidlaw]

Great decoration, and the colour is wonderful. Edge of Darkness was superb, and Showaddywaddy... well, they were there. The canopy looks the absolute business, and here's another +1 for aquarelle pencils - they're great for filtering, too, when you branch out into other colours.

[philp]

Great job all around.

 

A trick I have heard of to help lower the dust of past relatives floating around the workbench is to lay out some newspapers (I believe you chaps call them broadsheets?).  Then using water in a squirt bottle you spray the area with a fine mist.  This, supposedly, attracts the dust to the water droplets which end up on the newspaper giving you a dust free zone, at least for a bit.  Now I have not tried this myself so no guarantees but I had a buddy once who swore by it.

[perdu]

My favourite graphite pencils these days are Derwent Graphic although I did have some aquarelles someplace, must look them out in the tallest cupboard.

 

The Vixen gets realler by the session Tony, do you hear ghostly Avons start in the nether hours? Just as sleep claims you in its arms?

 

Total awesomeness

[keefr22]

7 hours ago, philp said:

Great job all around.

 

A trick I have heard of to help lower the dust of past relatives floating around the workbench is to lay out some newspapers (I believe you chaps call them broadsheets?).  Then using water in a squirt bottle you spray the area with a fine mist.  This, supposedly, attracts the dust to the water droplets which end up on the newspaper giving you a dust free zone, at least for a bit.  Now I have not tried this myself so no guarantees but I had a buddy once who swore by it.

 

I do this in the spraybooth, but using kitchen roll instead of newspaper. It works, after a fashion, but still manage to get a few dust particles in my nice shiny painted model cars!! Full size car painters usually damp down the spraybooth before starting painting too.

 

Don't bother for aircraft and seem to get less dust in the paint - maybe cos it's mainly matt, as gloss seems to attract dust by the bucketload...!! 🤣

 

Keith

[giemme]

21 hours ago, keefr22 said:

I do this in the spraybooth

Same here, except that I don't bother using any kind of paper: I just spray a full airbrush cup of water in the air and all over my spraying booth walls. Works for aircraft, never tried shiny cars..  

 

Tony, looks like you had your hands full right before Easter  

 

Canopy and windscreen looking ace  

Ciao