Another 1/48 Apollo recovery Sea King conversion

[andyf117]

19 hours ago, Hamiltonian said:

Thanks. There does seem to have been a fair amount of variability in the shape of the black area behind the exhaust in USN Sea Kings - I don't know if it varied from model to model, ship to ship, or year to year. I do quite like the style used for Old 66, and it certainly has the modeller-maker's advantage of being easy to mask up!

There was indeed a myriad of different sizes and shapes - the Hasegawa kit decal sheet provides three styles:

I have photos showing probably half-a-dozen or so others!

 

Edited December 30, 2019 by andyf117

[andyf117]

Just looking again at your Dec 24 pic, I've realised what appeared 'wrong' to me...

....not sure what the squares are either side of the undernose antenna and ACB housing, but noticeably absent are the pair of large 'flattened hexagon' plate aerials which should be positioned immediately aft - these were a standard fit, and can be made out in these photos of 2711 (and also your earlier one asking about the sea anchor cable):

As can be seen in this earlier photo of sister aircraft 2713, the housing also carries a circular plate aerial - that and the fuselage ones were generally a tan/brown colour:

Edited December 30, 2019 by andyf117

[Hamiltonian]

Well, thanks for that.

Sigh. What happened there was that, like an idiot, I followed the instructions. (I know, I know ...)

 

They're moulded into the underside of the kit, but the Hasegawa SH-3D instruction sheet (downloaded from Scalemates), specifically labels them as structures to be removed. Which I did, with great care, considerable success and even a certain degree of satisfaction (up until now).

And, of course, having previously searched around for reference photos of the underside of this aircraft for a long time with only limited success, I turned up a blurry view on Getty Images (Apollo 10 recovery) within minutes of reading your post:

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/navy-helicopter-winches-one-of-the-apollo-10-astronauts-news-photo/90738770

Which not only shows that they're there, and a different colour from the rest of the underside, but gives a glimpse of the aft camera mount and a helpful view of the run of the aerial wires on either side of the fuselage, which is handy.

[andyf117]

No idea why Hasegawa would have you remove them, they were standard fit on USN aircraft, right up until retirement! They shouldn't be hard to replace - I simply used a couple of pieces of plastic card on my Fujimi SH-3 builds (the circular one was moulded as an outline anyway):

 

I'd not seen that Apollo 10 photo before - though it's unreadable, if I recall correctly, the wording just visible underneath says 'Hello there Charlie Brown'!

Edited December 30, 2019 by andyf117

[Hamiltonian]

My initial thought when I saw your post was that I'd misread the instructions and chiselled off something I wasn't supposed to. But that's certainly what it says:

And they're absent from the painting instructions for BuNo 152711 itself:

 

Whereas they feature prominently on the SH-3H painting instructions, labelled as 10 B 21 on the BS4800 colour chart - which Hasegawa call "hemp" but BS calls "lizard grey".

 

I'm sure I can put something together to replace them. It's just annoying to have removed perfectly good parts. Thanks for point it out.

[Hamiltonian]

57 minutes ago, andyf117 said:

I'd not seen that Apollo 10 photo before - though it's unreadable, if I recall correctly, the wording just visible underneath says 'Hello there Charlie Brown'!

You can just make out the Snoopy eyes above the text, if you know to look for them.

[Hamiltonian]

By the way, The original kit moulding was just a plain octagon, with no central "cross bar" of the sort you've modelled. I can't see a cross bar in the fuzzy Getty Image picture, or in the rather sharper view from Apollo 11 that features here:

http://museumpublicity.com/2019/07/24/museum-of-flight-program-offers-talks-with-first-responders-to-apollo-11s-splashdown/

Was the cross bar a constant feature?

[Hamiltonian]

Port side decals now completed:

Also some progress in reconstructing the octagonal underside antennae that I had previously removed. I got some use out of the lying instruction sheet by printing it out to scale, pasting the antenna images on to some scrap styrene sheet, and using that as a template - you can see some provisional results laid out in the foreground of the photo above.

 

This side of the aircraft is much less well documented than the other. I've used this photo, which featured on the Hasegawa SH-3D box art (taken some time between Apollo 11 and Apollo 12), as my primary reference:

 

There are significant differences between the photo and the Starfighter decal guide, and I've followed the photo with regard to the number and position of "Rescue" arrows - three around the door, one tilted at a slightly different angle, and a horizontal arrow behind the window. Another frustrating aspect of the Starfighter decals is that they provide seemingly endless spares of left-pointing arrows, but only a total of three right-pointing arrows - I sourced a fourth, in a slightly different style, from the SH-3H kit.

 

Barring some very implausible painting and repainting between Apollo 11, this photo and 12, I'm sure that Starfighter have got the rescue arrows wrong - they show only three, all tilted at 45 degrees, for both 11 & 12. At first I was pretty sure that some repainting had taken place between Apollo 11 and the port side photograph above - the tail "Danger" sign seems to have red text, above, but it was certainly black on the recovery day, as seen in the Apollo 11 documentary film:

 

However, I've just looked at a similar photo in Bob Fish's Hornet Plus Three (which looks very much as if it comes from the same roll on the same flight) and despite the low resolution the lettering appears to be black. I'm wondering if the apparent red text on my reference photo is due to colour bleed in the original scanning process.

[andyf117]

On 12/30/2019 at 11:10 PM, Hamiltonian said:

By the way, The original kit moulding was just a plain octagon, with no central "cross bar" of the sort you've modelled. I can't see a cross bar in the fuzzy Getty Image picture, or in the rather sharper view from Apollo 11 that features here:

http://museumpublicity.com/2019/07/24/museum-of-flight-program-offers-talks-with-first-responders-to-apollo-11s-splashdown/

Was the cross bar a constant feature?

The vast majority of the aerials appear to have been plain, varying in colour from pale to dark tan, occasionally with a visible indication of the centre 'bar' - but a small number had frames, as depicted on my models and as seen on this SAR bird (right-click and 'view image' for hi-res version):

Edited January 1, 2020 by andyf117

[Hamiltonian]

3 hours ago, andyf117 said:

The vast majority of the aerials appear to have been plain, varying in colour from pale to dark tan, occasionally with a visible indication of the centre 'bar' - but a small number had frames, as depicted on my models and as seen on this SAR bird (right-click and 'view image' for hi-res version):

 

Thanks for that. I'm getting a sense of a frame but no crossbar from the image at http://museumpublicity.com/2019/07/24/museum-of-flight-program-offers-talks-with-first-responders-to-apollo-11s-splashdown/

So that's what I'm going for.

[Hamiltonian]

Here she is after marking up panel lines and applying a little bit of light weathering to bring out some of the surface detail.

 

The canopy needs a bit of work. First time I've used Montex paint masks, and they seemed to be a little too ready to lift at the edges, no matter what I did - so there are messes here and there to tidy up when I'm a little less annoyed.

[Hamiltonian]

A fair amount of work, but not a lot to show for it. I removed the paint-mask leaks from the canopy (as well as a blob of something that looked suspiciously like a bit of epoxy), and then sanded with a succession of sandpapers and Novus scratch remover - so basically made it look a lot worse in order to end up with it looking slightly better.

And the wheels are on. I used a resin add-on from a friend's stash, which has a nice rear wheel. Getting all four front wheels in contact with the ground at the same time was the usual hassle. (Well, the usual hassle for me, anyway.) I slightly modified the kit parts for the undercarriage legs. These are supplied identical and interchangeable, but there was a slight right-left asymmetry in the real thing - a pair of little tie-down lugs that were only present on the outboard side of the legs. A moment's work with a scalpel and some sandpaper got rid of the anomalous inboard lugs, and then I just needed to remember to put the correct parts on the appropriate sides.

 

 

Time for the rotors, and all the little fiddly bits that I'll knock off while placing the next set of little fiddly bits.

 

[shortCummins]

looking something special, excellent work

 

rgds

John(shortCummins)

[Hamiltonian]

I've test-fitted the rotors - I'll remove them again while I work on the fiddly fragile bits.

I painted the tail rotor, but printed my own decals for the narrow yellow stripes on the main rotor.

 

I still need to scratch-build the retaining sling that confined the outermost rotor blades. I'm modelling the configuration of the helicopter while it was being moved from its landing point on USS Hornet's deck (where it had the third capsule decals and the "Now Hornet Plus Three" sign applied) to the elevator on which it descended to the hangar deck.

 

[Hamiltonian]

Speaking of fiddly fragile bits ...

This view on the deck of Hornet (screengrabbed from Todd Douglas Miller's Apollo 11 documentary film) shows the winch hook partially stowed, with a loop of cable dangling down.

A side view on the hangar deck later suggests it was merely hooked on to one of the support struts for the winch:

Would that be right, or is there likely to be something more complicated going on?

(It just seems like a good way to throttle an astronaut with limited vision.)

[Hamiltonian]

Bit of a lay-off while on holiday, but I now have the winch hook and cable in the correct position, the cameras mounted, and various other bits and pieces in place.

 

I've come to the conclusion that I've put the difficult-to-research forward camera mount in the wrong position. Based on the underside view of the Apollo 10 recovery I linked to earlier, it seems this was placed on the rearmost of the paired forward weapon mount points, rather than the front. So it should sit just aft of the sponson support, rather then tucked underneath it. which is where I've put it. Easy enough to move, but then I'd need to revise the cable run and yellow tape, which might get ugly at this late stage. I'll think about it.

[Hamiltonian]

The forward still camera turned out to be fairly easy to move. Patching up its previous location wasn't perfect, but the location is well hidden, and it's satisfying to have the camera in the right place, even though its actual appearance is a matter for some conjecture. I've also now added the scratch-built SARAH yagi antennae (and their cable runs) on the sponson struts, which means all the little scratch-built bits and pieces that have been living in a pot on the window ledge are now attached to the model.

Next up, I'll build the retaining sling for the folded main rotor, and then it will "just" be the matter of rigging the aerial wires on either side of the aft fuselage. So maybe my last post on this thread, unless something goes wrong or another mystery arises.

Oh, and I changed the angle of the aft cameras, which were pointing rather too dramatically downwards once mounted.

[TonkaGuy]

This is looking great so far, I can’t wait for it to be finished! 

[Hamiltonian]

5 hours ago, TonkaGuy said:

This is looking great so far, I can’t wait for it to be finished! 

Thanks. I'm kinda looking forward to finishing it myself. Whatever I build next, I want it to be straight out of the box with strictly no scratch-built details!

[JeffreyK]

That's coming along great!! I love the winch cable detail.

J

[Scooby]

Beautiful work!

[Hamiltonian]

13 hours ago, JeffreyK said:

That's coming along great!! I love the winch cable detail.

 

10 hours ago, Scooby said:

Beautiful work!

Thanks, both. I'm making a bit of a hash of the retaining sling at present, so it's nice to have encouragement.

[phildagreek]

Looks good, some very nice detail.

[Hamiltonian]

On 2/18/2020 at 8:43 PM, phildagreek said:

Looks good, some very nice detail.

Thanks. :)

The sling is on now, and I've started work on rigging the various aerial wires.

And suddenly remembered I have a couple of cockpit mirrors sitting in yet another little pot on the window ledge!

[Hamiltonian]

The completed build appears here: