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Sea Vixen FAW.1x2


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2 hours ago, giemme said:

I'm very curious to see how the printout of the front section will come out, with all the slots and carves for canopy sill and actual cockpit structure

:thumbsup2: I'm not anticipating there being any major print issues regarding the openings around the forward section Giorgio - as long as the piece is optimally oriented on the printing platen to avoid having a forest of support structures in unfortunate places....

1 hour ago, 71chally said:

For that period the seat cushions were proper chunky brown leather things that didn't feature a top covering,

Who said soft furnishings were easy James? Based on that description I went hunting and realized there was another smaller image of a Mk.4 on the Martin Baker page that seemed to match that cushion appearance:

eject4.jpg

and amended the shape of mine to something similar:

50417094268_e4df0c245d_b.jpg

(The closest leather texture I could find in Fusion that didn't look like elephant skin at 1/72 scale is this Rover 3500 upholstery! 🤦‍♂️)

1 hour ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Welcome back from the brink, and with such lovely seats too.

Take it easy at work! We are but Human, (well, most of us) and as such can be frail at times*.

 

*Especially after even a short period in Hospital.

Where possible I shall delegate the unimportant stuff and ignore all emails except those offering Belarussian money that new friends wish to rest in my bank account.

(Had my first 'check out our Christmas range' email from a company yesterday as well: particularly bizarre given that it was from a company herein Ireland that sells laboratory chemicals... I guess it's going to be a particularly odd winter.....

 

 

 

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Crikey good to see further progress and the seat renderings look great.  Back to work,  should you not be resting  and being waited on whilst wearing your Toga and laurel crown whist eating grapes!!!

Hope you're feeling better 

Chris 

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Amazing work on the seat Tony. Seeing it turn into a printed part should be very rewarding ....... and I don't just mean for you, I'm talking about all of us!

 

Terry

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Your seat renderings (ejection type, that is; the less said about the other type the better) actually look comfortable. But I pity the poor observer down in that "coal hole." What were they thinking???

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14 hours ago, Space Ranger said:

But I pity the poor observer down in that "coal hole." What were they thinking???

...surely every observer in the Fleet Air Arm, between 1959 and 1971 must have inwardly muttered the same thing.

 

At the time of the conception of the original DH110 as a night fighter, the AI radar options had dim display scopes which required its operator to be seated in a dark place.

de Havilland opted for the buried side by side layout, while Gloster opted for a tandem seat arrangement where the pilot and navigator sat under a single canopy for their GA.5 (Javelin).  On the GA.5 the navigator had small portholes in the otherwise metal portion of the canopy, while DH provided a small window in the cockpit stb'd side, and one in the entrance hatch.

During the protracted development of both these types radar displays improved (slightly!) and the Javelin gained a clear tandem canopy for both crew, this completely changed for the good inter crew communication, and as vitally, navigator awareness of combat and normal flight lookout.  This layout would become the norm for twin seat combat jets, think Tornado and F-15 etc.

 

However DH stayed with it's buried layout, during a project progress review by the Admiralty in the early 1950s the one thing that it severely objected to was the poor crew seating layout, but the manufacturer resisted, possibly on the grounds that a major redesign at that point would have delayed the project.  A tandem layout would have increased the aircrafts' length, perhaps by more than was acceptable for carrier lift use. 

The sad thing is that very early in the 110 project, in the late 1940s, the original design had it as a side by side seated layout with the crew at the same height under a single canopy, in the same way as the tremendously successful Mosquito NF, and the Vampire NF, Venom NF/Sea Venom FAW.   

Had DH proceeded with this layout the crew communication and co-ordination between them for combat and normal flight would have been outstanding, the radar scope could have been hooded or use a rubber scope boot to create the right lighting levels.  This layout would have been along similar lines to the A-3 Skywarrior, and A-6 Intruder, and what the Russians seem to appreciate with the SU-24 and versions of the 27.

 

It actually got slightly worse, as a mod was introduced very early in the DH110 Sea Vixen's service life, whereby the side window was to be covered by a black blind and the canopy window painted over form the inside. 

This rendered the observers' view out as useless, after his initial radar guidance work his contribution to any combat would be useless, and apart from a small instrument panel, awareness of inflight progress and emergencies were woeful.

Just reading details on the accidents, and the attempts by either crew to free the observer during emergencies is shocking reading in this day and age.

Some 'quick fixes' were introduced to help, like making the side window openable so that if the aircraft ditched on a carrier take-off the cockpit would flood with sea water far more quickly (can you imagine, in that hole), equalising pressure and allowing for a better chance of hatch removal and ejection, the chances of escape for both crew didn't become relatively satisfactory until command ejection and then the frangible access hatch was introduced during the mid 1960s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by 71chally
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Ye Gods / Dogs / Troggs,

An absolutely insane week at work with all the restrictions involved in operating with groups of people; coming home most nights and falling asleep by 9pm so today was the first day the Vixen even had mental space to be considered.

I have though been able to get through a few pages of Christopher Clark's:

687780009.0.l.jpg

before Morpheus descends and most excellent it is too.

On 10/4/2020 at 4:58 PM, Pete in Lincs said:

When you have Whiskey?

Full marks for spelling Pete! 😁

On 10/4/2020 at 5:00 PM, bigbadbadge said:

should you not be resting  and being waited on whilst wearing your Toga and laurel crown whist eating grapes!!!

Aaaah, those were the days Chris. I do miss them so. <sighs in Latin>

On 10/4/2020 at 5:54 PM, Terry1954 said:

Amazing work on the seat Tony. Seeing it turn into a printed part should be very rewarding ....... and I don't just mean for you, I'm talking about all of us!

Kind of you  - as always - Terry. :thumbsup2:

I do indeed sense the necessity for another test print in the near future! :nod:

On 10/4/2020 at 6:07 PM, Space Ranger said:

Your seat renderings (ejection type, that is; the less said about the other type the better) actually look comfortable.

I've often wondered just how comfortable these things are Michael, though the prices for decommissioned ones are outside my budget to be able to find out....

On 10/4/2020 at 9:28 PM, 71chally said:

Some 'quick fixes' were introduced to help, like making the side window openable so that if the aircraft ditched on a carrier take-off the cockpit would flood with sea water far more quickly

It's not at all clear who's side the Ministry of Defence is and was on.

 

Not a great deal of mental energy left over for an intense bout this weekend but I have been obsessing this morning over the letters AU and PAS.

 

Because my intention is to build the main cockpit floor/fittings and slide them into the front section from the rear pressure bulkhead, I need to treat both the pilot's seat and panel AU as separate entities to the rest of the cockpit fittings as they stick up through the cockpit opening on the port side and thus won't be able to slide in from the rear. The plan for these is to mount the pilot's seat in from the top after the cockpit is in place, whilst for panel AU tp print this as part of the  top fuselage itself like so

50444871317_a2417ff74f_b.jpg

I don't have any clear photos of the section directly in front of the panel, but at this scale (and due to the fact that the canopy will be covering/shading it anyway, it only needs some representative expression of detail to be glimpsed through the transparency. On many preserved aircraft, shots, the forward covering in front of the IP seems to have perished to expose structure that wouldn't all have been normally visible so it's reasonable to assume that you can be mislead into adding bits that wouldn't necessarily be seen on a period aricraft. One thing I won't be able to add at this scale is the top lip of the coaming that extends backwards over panel AU (presumably to shade it from sunlight?) - I did build it just to see but at a printable thickness it just gives the pilot's side an unholy monobrow, so best left to the imagination of the beholder I think.

 

As I want to experiment with PE on this build I've also incorporated into the design a brass panel that can be added to hopefully generate some surface detailing for dials & etc.:

 

50444871297_c9c647c8ab_b.jpg

 

Most of today's session though was taken up with putting in as much printable detail as possible at this scale for the PAS (Pilot Attack Sight):

50444871352_020b4d004e_b.jpg

I designed a meniscus shape into the top (for what I imagine is the projector lens) so that a blob of CA or something similar can be added later to simulate the bulbous lens profile. The PAS assembly is I must confess not the most straightforward  structure in the world to address with the asymmetry of outlines in three dimensions. There's a lot more I would have loved to add but that simply would be too fragile to print. Still, I'm hopeful that there'll be enough visible  here at 1/72 to give a feel for the busy-ness of the resion:

50444871337_f71961fc96_b.jpg

50443998513_ef02829bed_b.jpg

 

Not as much done as I would have liked today but that's a good start to be going on with.

 

Every now and again I like to type 'XJ481' into the Engine of What to see if it throws up any new links or ones I might have missed and I found a cracking couple of shots of her over on Roy Cochrun's website:

faa-012.jpg

 

faa-010.jpg

Image credits: Roy Cochrun

These are by far and away the best quality and most detailed shots of '481 in Martel period garb,. What's even nicer on a personal level is that these photographs were taken in 1976: we were living in Somerset at the time and visited Yeovilton in about '75 iirc correctly, so without realizing it I must have seen her looking like this (she arrived at the FAAM in 1974 I think) when I was 10.  The second shot in particular contains some beezer visual evidence to help with building the cut down nose, whilst the first photo shows a delightfully tiny serial number on the tail that is going to give me a nervous breakdown trying to reproduce later.

 

I hope that all of you are are doing ok - expect burst transmissions like this for the forseeable until/if/when there's any let up in thepace at work.

 

Bon chance until next time.

:bye:

 

 

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Utterly, er astounding Tony

 

(Must admit I am astounded at you thinking the tiny serials will be a problem, they're simple.

Install the RAF font in your font bank on the pooter then set font size to... maybe 5 )

 

XJ481 but tiny font

 

XJ481

 

Print...

 

seriously mate whatever size you need will be easy

 

 

 

;)

 

 

 

 

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Cracking post, your Baronship. I hope you get some rest this weekend, don't worry yourself unduly about us, we can wait.

As for the spelling, I deliver the stuff on a daily basis and enjoy the odd nip at the weekend. (Tonight it's bourbon)*.

 

*Stuff from the colonies I know, but the bottle was forced upon me. Hey, waddya gonna do uh? 🍷

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PAS, Pilot Attack Sight.  PAS's were somewhere between the original gunsights and Head Up Display units, they got their information from a computer module ( Master Reference Gyro) which fed flight and radar information to the display glass in the pilots view point.

The cockpit panels were all arranged in letters, A being the main instrument panel, AU the Upper one.

A bit of paper might suffice for those panel glare shields, they were very thin.

 

Those pics are new to me aswel, nice find!

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I've got roast potatoes in the oven so better not get too distracted by today's post....

 

On 10/10/2020 at 1:37 PM, giemme said:

Glad to see you managed some modelling time, Tony

 

On 10/10/2020 at 2:25 PM, CedB said:

... and some posting time too! More great detailing going on, lovely stuff

 

Thanks Giorgio & Ced - amazing how rusty you can get just in the space of a week isn't it? 😀

Went at it hammer and tongs today though as my last chance until next weekend to push things on.

 

On 10/10/2020 at 4:03 PM, perdu said:

Must admit I am astounded at you thinking the tiny serials will be a problem, they're simple.

Not having used decals on the last two builds Bill I'm not intending to use them here on the Vixen either: there's a number of markings on both these two  versions that are going to test the resolution of my painting skills! 🤪

21 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

I hope you get some rest this weekend, don't worry yourself unduly about us, we can wait.

Kindly sentiments Pete and I thank you for them. 🤗

Don't let @Martian hear you say that however or he'll be drawing that Canberra out for another couple of years in between dredging hapless mariners from Poole harbour in his tentacles...

17 hours ago, 71chally said:

Those pics are new to me aswel, nice find!

I'm a great believer in doing routine sweeps for newly published information James....given the usual length of my builds there's plenty of opportunity! :laugh:

7 hours ago, 71chally said:

if you do need more of the PAS just shout.

I should be ok for now James - thanks. It didn't take long to reach the limits of printable components yesterday. Interestingly Damien Burke shows some cockpit photos of another Martel Vixen (XJ494) with a 'Buccaneer style attitude indicator in the centre and radar altimeter' in place of the PAS.

 

Capitalizing on yesterday's output I got straight to work first thing today on completing the PE designs for the main run of vertical instrument panels that start beneath panel AU and runs all the way around to the observer's side in a series of dog-legs:

50451266788_a5512f9d4a_b.jpg

A bit like de Havilland origami but after a couple of trial runs I managed to get things so that they can be folded into position in three dimensions from a single piece of brass:

50451266898_7db56de6f3_b.jpg

And folded in space like so:

50451970651_ebe28f07c7_b.jpg

 

As with panel AU, I'll export these from Fuison as DXF files and add the necessary bezels and dials in Illustrator in order to work up the final surface designs there for photoetching.

 

50451266958_7c96bd4a44_b.jpg

It's important no to get carried away with the design process in enclosed areas such as the cockpit interior and keep in mind the essential point that all these parts have to be capable of assembly later on in a specific sequence that allows them to fit inside the fuselage. You know yourself that feeling of starting to build a kit and only looking at the instructions later - in this case I have to keep reminding myself that I'm mentally writing the instructions in my head as we go along.

 

In the case of this large chunk of PE, I added a large mounting recess over on the observer's side and extended the PE vertically downwards to form a locating tab that should hold this securely in place without affecting visual authenticity:

50451970601_9af682be54_b.jpg

 

50452139807_814a444f15_b.jpg

 

Next up was the one bit I've been relishing having a crack at right from the start of this build - the famously dim display of the AI 18 radar console. I've no shortage of reference shots for this section of the cockpit as it really is one of those features that seems to catch the eye of everyone who's been  lucky enough to have poked a lens down inside there. Another sweep of Gurgle last night revealed this 'naked' portrait of the essential cockpit gubbins:

237.jpg

It's from the history page of The Grove Estate at Stanmore that was taken over by GEC in the 50s to turn into research labs. The site is also a wonderful relic of 90s webpage design that doesn't seem to have been  touched since about 1994 and which fills me with nostalgia for the early days of the web...

 

Within the necessary parameters of resin printing at 1/72, this is my take on the above:

50452140692_66caae5d8d_b.jpg

One of the big diffs for cockpit work of this kind is of course the act that you don't get any flat on side views from port and starboard (even in the manual)- you're always interpreting from oblique photographic angles. Nonetheless I think the console alignments are working Ok here (for features that will be barely visible in the end):

50452140212_f5d1cafa4d_b.jpg

You can see in the shot above how I'm printing the central consoles as part of the floor structure so that this can all slip into place over the wheel well at the final assembly stage:

 

50451267503_5ac1b788ac_b.jpg

 

50452140417_af6c52fdd7_b.jpg

Final set of jobs done before running out of steam earlier was surface detailing for the central run of panels J, K and L.. Unlike the vertical instrument panels, I decided to represent these one in resin rather than brass due to their constantly changing upper topoography:

50452140462_14c98e62bf_b.jpg

J,K,L and AI 18:

50452140502_3e73254e2b_b.jpg

Looking  - as the saying goes - proper busy in there now:

50451267748_89eb91d478_b.jpg

50451267898_cf5dc49b8f_b.jpg

Of course, this is in reality the most you'll eventually glimpse from the outside:

50451267803_22eda66b7a_b.jpg

-though even this angle will be interrupted by the observer's door, along with the canopy masking part of the one below:

50451267868_f1c4b09534_b.jpg

 

(Not forgetting it'll all be in shadow too!) 😁

 

Pleased with the day's progress.

 

I still have panels E,F and G to add along the port side of the cockpit for things like the throttles, plus the joystick and rudder pedals and a couple of remaining vertivcal panels separating the two crew from each other further back. Still, I've the week to ponder that.

 

Have a good one yourselves everybody and speak to you soon.

:bye:

Tony

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

Don't let @Martian hear you say that however or he'll be drawing that Canberra out for another couple of years in between dredging hapless mariners from Poole harbour in his tentacles...

 

There will be a wait anyway. I am really very unwell and am packing BM in for a while.

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On 10/10/2020 at 2:10 PM, Pete in Lincs said:

(Tonight it's bourbon)*.

 

*Stuff from the colonies I know, but the bottle was forced upon me. Hey, waddya gonna do uh? 🍷

That "stuff from the colonies", as you call it, is one of the three great exports* of my former residence, the beautiful Commonwealth of Kentucky. I'll thank you to treat it with reverence!

 

*The other two being beautiful women and fast horses. Or is it beautiful horses and fast women? I never can remember.

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Far better roast potatoes in the oven than a bun!

 

Beautiful work on the interior there Tony, and great forethought in figuring out the mounting of it all. Lovely stuff

 

Ian

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