Sea Vixen FAW.1x2

[hendie]

Merry Xmas to you and yours Tony.  

[perdu]

Wishing you and your family all the very best that Christmas can give and a happy new year Tony.      🎅 🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌   ❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

🍾🍹🥃

 

 

[perdu]

Wouldya believe it, there is no Christmas Pudding emoji on my computer

What is the world coming to, I ask you? 

[Hamden]

 

Happy Christmas to you and yours Tony and to everyone else on BM as well

 

 Stay safe          Roger

[Pete in Lincs]

I'd guessed that work was holding you back. No point in pushing yourself too far. We know where that can lead....

I'll wrap up some spare furlough (It's coming out of my ears!) and send it over for you to enjoy at your pleasure.

Until it arrives, take your time, enjoy the rest, and savour the familial warmth*. Merry Christmas, one and all!

 

 

*And maybe some of that Irish liquid with an E in it's name. I've just got two bottles of it** beginning with J.

** Trade price *(ahem) 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year... Come on ‘21 you have to be better ! 🙏🤞🏻👍🏻

[Navy Bird]

Happy Happy Joy Joy!  

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. You can have the days off Cratchet, but be back all the much earlier the next morning!

[michaelc]

I'll add my best wishes to all too.  Let's stay safe and well in the coming year(s) and let's not forget to be constructive in the passionate hobby sense.

[Space Ranger]

And from the Captain (me) and crew of the OrbitJet, in stationary orbit over the Dallas-Fort Worth "metroplex," we extend a wish for Happy Holidays and Universal Peace and a hope that Terrestrial Year 2021 will be much better to all beings of good will, regardless of planet of residence or number of tentacles!

[keefr22]

Nadolig llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda, Tony and family!

 

(sorry for the tardy greeting, t'internet has been a bit flaky last few days)

 

Keith

[heloman1]

Just found your build Tony, exemplary work indeed, quite how I missed it in the first pace being ex FAA, I don't know. I read as far as page eight this afternoon. I'll return and devour the rest tomorrow.

I like the way you are tackling the project, I think the comment that Crisp made, 'the Sea Vixen is also available in 1/48th scele...', has some merit. However, I have the Frog kit in the stash, somewhere!

 

Colin

[heloman1]

On 4/13/2020 at 7:10 PM, Pete in Lincs said:

The back of envelopes, napkins and white tablecloths have also been called into play in the past.

Pete, whilst I was modelmaking in Johannesburg, any fag packet drawing presented carried a mandatory 60% build time addition...

 

Colin

[heloman1]

Wow Tony, I've sat from earlier today at page 9 through to here. You 3D renders are exquisite.  Having tackled Technical Illustration at night school with a view to taking my City and Guilds. I'm in awe. I understand 3D very well, however to tackle it on a computer is beyond me. I'll stick to carving pieces from solid material.

 

Colin

[heloman1]

The Sea Vixen wingfold, an exercise in engineering wizardry... (page 40), I'm playing catch-up.

 

Colin

[TheBaron]

Brrrr me dearios. 🧊

 

I trust this finds you fed/overfed/about to feed/warm/too hot/just right?

 

Not even Sid Rumpole would be out rambling too far on a morning this bally chilled here: the weather station radios in from garden to kitchen display that it is indeed brass monkeys out there. With the house warming  courtesy of a few bags of fine Ash logs courtesy of the wife's cousin's farm over in Roscommon, I'm disinclined to venture far from: a) hearth, b) oven, c) book and d) Campbell's (superior) loose leaf tea. That is, of course, save to update with some recent steps taken toward the transformation of electronic patterns into material things.

 

Despite being a little more used to the magic of being able to 3d print things, it still falls into the Catweazle 'electrickery' department for me and I suspect never to be tired of.

 

It occurred to me pretty early on last week that there was ample room for error and omission in organizing all of the required parts (along with any modifications/additions required) - especially with attention turning towards the needs of printing that it would be easy to overlook some vital aspect of assembly that puts a spanner in the works later on when fitting things together. Add in some of the cosmetic differences between XJ481 and XN708, along with the fact that the former will be posed Martelling away in flight whilst the latter will be earthbound with innards much in evidence, and you have the essence of the thing.

 

Steps were therefore taken:

 - namely that I've started with the simpler XJ481 airframe and begun assembling a folder of all the required parts in .stl format as a prelude to printing. Only once I'm satisfied that all the main steps of the process are working as a workflow will I then do the same for the more complex pantechnicon that is '708.

 

Starting point then was the obvious difference of the nose section of '481 by the time of the Martel trials. As there's  no definitive visual record as to exactly what optics/electronics she had stuffed up that truncated schnozzle, so I'm simply adding only what can be seen in the photographic evidence that I have to hand. I've referenced before in this thread the excellent period shots of the aircraft at Yeovilton back in the 70s taken by Roy Cochrun - one in particular gives a most useful *almost* side-on view of the angle of said schnozzle for modelling purposes:

Herewith truncated:

Luckily my blushes were spared regarding the above in that I caught that I'd started doing the mounting plate for the optically-flat front window all wrong. Initially I'd begun simply echoing the outer cross section of the radome at a reduced diameter, like so:

Ouch! Alarm bells immediately went off and I called up the best frontal view of this region, to whit:

This of course showing a more regular lozenge-shaped affair not echoing the outer profile of the cut-off radome at all. Having whacked this image up in Adobeshop some time ago and played around with some image enhancing stuff it appears that the rear access opening for this tunnel-like feature is set off-axis to starboard, so this is my final - now corrected - expression of this set of features:

Shades of Turbinlite eh?

 

Also missing from my designs up until now were the perforated fins of the airbrake:

As with the wing fences, these are going to be a brass PE affair for scale and strength but have been produced here at 0.4mm thickness to use as a cutting tool in order to excise the required slots into the fuselage for mounting these securely into during assembly.

 

Closed fuselage with required openings also output at 0.8mm wall thickness all round:

Intake ducting retained in front:

- so that the fronts of the engines can be discerned by the blade fetishists:

As it doesn't require the whole engine to be present, I created a modified affair based on the full Monty that will be present for '708 and cutting it down to create a single part that can be printed as part of the main fuselage assembly shown above:

I did remember to copy - rather than mirror - the front of the engine, so that the starter fairing is shown at the 4 o'clock position on both; a rare moment of Baronial recollection regarding something previously noted but never written down at the time.

 

What's the odds I forget this observation later on '708?

 

A similar proposition was required regarding the exhaust unit and rear fairing at the other end:

To preserve a glimpse of internal engine detailing I again sliced off a section from the rear of the original Avon design and integrated these into the fairing design itself so that these can be printed as a single unit, along with addition of a mounting hole for installation of the arrestor hook beneath closed door.

Added around the perimeter also are some locating tabs to assist in joining this to the main fuselage during subsequent assembly.

 

Moving forward from here, considerable time and attention was required to work out the best way to proceed with printing the nose/radome section:

I'm taking a few risks here with some of the smaller parts, but my instinct tells me that with correct orientation during printing, it should be possible to run this off as a single entity.

 

Looking inside you can see the slightly different mounting base I've built here for the cockpit floor and IP's compared to '708, due to the absence in this case of a nose gear bay intruding upwards.

 

 

Also visible above are mounting slots for the airbrake fins and locating tabs around the perimeter to help with fixing the nose to the main fuselage, whilst below, support brackets for the observer's door can be seen:

 

 

Similar view to show cockpit unit slid into place from the rear as a single unit:

 

Lastly today, the *provisional* buck for the canopy:

Note that for the early type canopy detailing, that the front fairing will be vacformed as part of the canopy. Also visible in the above are a 0.4mm recess to indicate where the  frame that separates windshield from sliding canopy section is: my intention here is to give a clear visual guide for subsequent cutting of the transparency in order to mount the front and rear sections on to te fuselkage on either side of the framing. The prominent central frame/heating duct that splits the front of the windshield will again be added separately as a brass PE component (for visual 'sharpness'), whereas any less prominent framing will be added from metal foil.

 

Base also added to raise buck off the bed during vacforming:

A similar process (not shown here) was also used for the less visually-exciting transparency bucks for observer's side and door windows.

 

If it turns out  - as is a distinct possibility - that the Elegoo resin performs poorly as a buck material in relation to heat issues, plan B is to produce a resin negative of the canopy (and any other windows for that matter) as a mould instead, in order to make Milliput positive from for vacforming purposes.

 

Tomorrow I need to begin a similar examination of the wings, especially as there's the matter of the stores and extra bit of diagonal detailing to add to the inner pylon...

 

Thanks for looking by as always: I hope your festive period is affording as much pleasure and relaxation as the Year of our Plague allows.

 

Where's Defoe when you need him?

 

Tara chucks.

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Hamden]

Another great update Tony you are certainly raising the bar with every post.

Hope you had a good festive season and are staying safe from the plague

 

       Roger

[giemme]

Exciting progress Tony    

 

So, when you said are you going to print this?

 

    

 

Ciao

[CedB]

More great stuff Tony  

[Pete in Lincs]

Good to know that you survived the mince pies etc, and still have the wit to stay in the warm, instead of going ice skating on freshly printed blades.

It's also good that the T's are getting dotted and the I's crossed on the way to actually printing bits of Aeroplane.

Did I mention that somewhere in Germany, they are using cement to actually print a house!

Though it may take a while to dry out in this weather.

Stay safe, warm and happy. Pete

[bbudde]

Hello Tony. As above great work and a hopefully great new year for you and yours with a pleasing and a satisfying "Guten Rutsch" into the new year. I see you there for sure, I guess

Cheers Benedikt

[The Spadgent]

Lovely work kid. Happy new year. 🤗🙌

 

Johnst.

 

 

[hendie]

your skill levels and detail of research continue to astound Tony.

 

My only criticisms are

a) I'm not liking your chosen color scheme much - your research is definitely sub par in this particular area, and

b) You're not very good at staying inside the lines with your coloring in.  I hope you sharpen your crayons for the final coloring in job.

 

 

Overall 7/10.  Could do better

 

Those screen grabs in the last post show some wonderfully intriguing geometries. I think someone mentioned previously - they are almost worth printing on their own as standalone

 

Oh, last thing... Speaking with absolutely no relevant or practical experience whatsoever, I feel confident that the printed bucks will perform admirably as molding bucks - at least after a good polish

 

tentative date for printing???

 

 

[Brandy]

Impressive insight into the thought processes involved in creating not only a bunch of printed parts, but also the means to ensure that they can be put together accurately.

 Happy New Year to you and yours Tony, see you next year!

 

Ian

Ps I agree with Hendie about the colouring in. Please keep the crayons away from anyone likely to eat them. (Eg Rock Apes)

[Pete in Lincs]

Rocks would eat (and drink) anything! Mind you, back in the day, almost anyone in the NAAFI pigs bar did the same.

[giemme]

9 hours ago, hendie said:

Those screen grabs in the last post show some wonderfully intriguing geometries. I think someone mentioned previously - they are almost worth printing on their own as standalone

Me, me, it was me! Do I win anything?

 

Ciao